Report by Erica
Gorgeous summer evening with temperatures in the upper 70s. There were 5 of us, Olivia, Maria, Heidi, Jordan and I. Corrine stopped by at the beginning and rode with us until Ballaine (she took the photo). I could tell it was windy but didn’t realize how windy until we got to Farmers Loop. We parted ways with Corrine and greeted Jordan who joined us there. The group pace was ‘slow’ and whoever took the lead was pedaling hard, and fast. We tried to switch things around often so one person wasn’t in front too long.
On McGrath we separated for the hill climb. A lot of us were reluctant to leave the comfort of the pace line to ride fast AND pedal through headwinds. I finally was faced with taking a charge up second half of McGrath (strong headwinds on a hill are tough)! We paused at Hagelbarger to make sure we all grouped up. Heidi led the charge down Old Steese. As we got near the intersection with Goldstream, we had to pull off to let a fire truck go by, their sirens were blaring. Apparently there was a fire in Goldstream somewhere (found this out after).
On Goldstream, the winds persisted, and so we persevered! We dropped Heidi on the first big climb, then Jordan pulled us to the second climb after the fire station, only to also get dropped. However somewhere before the fire station Olivia’s front tire hit something (thinking Jordan’s rear tire) and her bike went sideways then she was riding in the gravel off the road. It all happened so fast but so grateful nothing bad happened from that incident! After we dropped both Jordan and Heidi, it was Maria, Olivia and I pace lining all the way back to UAF riding hard, speeding. Heidi and Jordan were not too far behind us.
Throughout the ride we went from super sun to stormy skies. Jordan got poured on biking home, the rest of us were done biking before UAF got hit! Great ride. About 30 miles with an average pace of 17.5 to 18.3 mph.
