Pedaling Paths Century

Today I rode the Pedaling Paths to Independence metric century. Long name, but great ride. In its inaguraul year, this ride was put on by the Community Center for the Blind and started at Linden Elementary school.

My riding partner Mike picked me up at 7:30 and we drove out to Linden where we met up with Mike aka, “Death Ride” - a name he earned from me after riding in the Death Ride after only training for three weeks! We hit the road at 8:50 and headed straight into a gnarly head wind.

The first rest stop came a bit too soon, at mile 12 in Farmington. We stopped for a minute and then took off ahead of Death Ride. He passed us a few minutes later and we never saw on the route again. Our route took us out to Milton Road and back up near the town of Jenny Lind. We were both pretty happy that we had a pretty decent stretch of road with a tail wind.

The flyer said there was 1,300 feet of climbing. Didn’t sound like a lot but given how early it was in the riding season, that 1,300 was plenty!

The rest stops were stocked very well and the volunteers did an excellent job making sure everyone had what they needed. We met a lot of other great cyclist that came from all over northern California to ride this new century. I kept gawking at all of the new bikes and gear I saw and by the end of the day Mike convinced me I needed a new bike (not going to happen!).

As for the cars out on the road - many were courteous, some were not. There was a lot of cars that flew by us without giving us an extra inch of room. Luckily, from what we heard, there were no accidents out on the course.

We got back to Linden about 2:00 and had a great lunch from DaVinci’s. Again, the volunteers did an excellent job making sure there was plenty of food and drinks to go around. Pleasantly, and unlike many rides I’ve done, they did not skimp on the portions either. After a half-day on a bike I was hungry and they were glad to fill me up.

Overall, the ride was excellent! The course was challenging and interesting. The volunteers were friendly and accomodating. These guys did a great job on the first try. I will certainly be adding this ride as my regular early season metric century!

Stats 67.31 miles 4:46:17 on bike Fair amount of climbing Google map of route

My trusty steed!

Check out the rest of the pics here.