from Stone’s RTL blog
"I made time to ride at least 13 miles a day or to attack a very tall mountain road. There is nothing special about 13 miles – that’s just how far it was round-trip to the end of my rail trail and back. I’d often add to the mileage by taking a diversion along a paved road with few cars. This pretty trail ran alongside a river and allowing me to ride about 16 mph (25-26 kph) on a flat path. I also worked out on the bike path in New York’s Central Park, a loop of almost exactly 10 kilometers which I would usually circle two or three times. On several occasions I rode up a local mountain path instead. This ride was, thru sheer accident, an almost exact replica of the uphill section of the Lobster’s Mt Kelley, the tremendous spike on our Day-5 contour maps that looked like a shark fin jutting out of a bathtub.
As a result of my training, I felt prepared for this last ascent – in theory. In practice, it was a different matter since this climb came at the end of our final day.
The shark fin involved a climb of 250 meters over 2 kilometers followed by a 3 kilometer descent back to sea level. The three of us took turns riding up the mountain. I took over for the lengthy downhill, managing to keep up a pace of 30.0 kph, or just under 19 mph, for the entire duration of the descent, and I even managed to pass a rider on the way down. I’ve never ridden that fast for so long, and tho I did hit a top speed of 35 kph, I never outshone my speed on the gravel downhill. (see previous post) Still, it was incredible to feel the speed of that mountain for such a long ride."
