Things are definitely getting tougher.
Day 12 of the Planned routes, day 13 of the trip, and our legs are hanging in there just enough to get home (hopefully).
Cleveland to Kent was supposed to be a fairly easy day, short at 35 miles, and a good portion on trail. The trail itself was a mixed bag of good pavement, gravel, compacted dirt, and worn pavement. at least the first section of trail was. Getting there wasn’t too bad, just had to go through some Cleveland neighborhoods.
Getting to the second section of trail was a little more difficult because we had a 2 mile or so section of Boston Mills Road we had to go down. Or up really. The grade in the app was showing 5.8%, which, I’m not exactly sure how they create these “grades” because to me that technically shouldn’t be that much, but, as usual, it was horrible. We ended up walking most of the inclines, partially due to the fact our legs felt like they were going to give out, and partially to the fact that even in the best of time we probably wouldn’t be able to make that climb. Or rather series of climbs.
The second section of trail was the Bike and Hike Trail, which we’ve done a few times already, riding it about a week or so before this trip. That section isn’t bad, and it got us to a Circle K for drinks. A rest there almost but not really got us prepared for the last 7 miles.
There was a hill leading into Kent that, again, we couldn’t make without walking. that lead up back to the trail. But following that particular section of trail, which the bike GPS route maker let me make, lead to a dead end with a series of stairs taking us back to the street. Not fun with 40 pounds of stuff in the cargo bags. From there the hotel was a short trip away.
Dinner was Buffalo Wild Wings with some drinking and Touch Tunes.
We’re assuming today is going to be rough getting back to Hermitage, it’s about a 58 mile route with some hills as we get closer to home. I made an alternate route, which is the same route we took 2 years ago, but it’s only dropping a mile. The Max Grade is showing a 3.3% instead of 4.0%. From what I recall of that route is that it’s fairly boring with few available stops, which means we need to load up on drinks before leaving Kent. There also seems to be the possibility of getting rained on today, although I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing. There have been a number of times on this trip, especially the last few days, where a small rain shower would have been a blessing.
