I went for a looooooong bike ride today. I wanted to do the entire Marvin Braude trail, but I came up a little short.
The entire trail is 22 miles each way, and I have to bike 2 miles each way to get to the trail. If I’d done the whole thing, I would have gone 48 miles.
Instead, I went all the way to the South end, about two miles south of the Redondo Beach pier. This was about 5 miles South of where I stopped the last time I rode the trail, which was a significantly larger gap than I had realized, so I was a lot more tired by the time I reached the South end when I thought.
The wind was whipping pretty good coming back North, so I think that’s part of what tired me out so much. I think I also need to bring more than a granola bar along to refuel.
I wasn’t really hungry per se, but I noticed I got a lot more tired than I did during my last ride that far South, during which my friends and I stopped for brunch. Pancakes and Guinness are apparently a far more efficient fuel than one wee granola bar.
But I managed to get all the way back to the Santa Monica pier, which is just over 18 miles north of Redondo (and about 3/4 of a mile north of where I got on) before my the combination of the setting sun and my body saying “GET OFF THE BIKE!” determined that I should probably head home.
I wound up breaking down and buying a comically overpriced 20oz Gatorade at the S.M. pier, and I felt WAY better after that, so perhaps I shall invest in some for my next ride.
However, I did 39 miles total, which is nothing to sneeze at, and about 80% of the entire way. We’ll see how many of my limbs I can actually move tomorrow, but for right now, I’m pretty happy I managed to go as far as I did.