54 miles: Thurmont - Catoctin Mountains

This is a route reposted from an earlier entry. I plan on doing this route on a group ride in July. It'll be a good bit of saddle time, and a lot of climbing. I've ridden most of these roads riding with Ernest and Mark, one of our sales reps and a friend (and a great climber). After I ride the whole thing I'll update the post.

61 miles: Columbia - Woodbine Loop

Another route I came up with to possibly use on a group ride next month. Going to go try it out today.

Update: Not a bad route, on a cloudy day. All the roads are rideable and reasonably safe, and there are several convenience stores and gas station marts at which to refuel. The ride was also quite hilly—it was always climbing or descending, never much in the way of flat roads. There were two roads that were really great: Woodbine Morgan Road, running for one mile through the woods along a branch of the Patapsco River; and Shaffersville Rd, a tree-lined road gradually descending for 1.7 miles southeast of Mt. Airy. Almost the entire rest of this ride was in the sun, and with not a cloud to be seen and temperatures in the 90s, I was exhausted by the time I finished.

72 miles: Mt. Airy - Thurmont Loop

A possible ride for 72 miles through the rolling country east of Frederick up into the Catoctin range and back again.

29 miles: Point of Rocks to Mt Airy

The rest of the loop back to Mt. Airy from the last post. In between that and this is about 14 miles of C&O Canal towpath.

54 miles: Mt. Airy to Harpers Ferry

This is a one-way route across the Catoctin and South Mountain ridges linking Mt. Airy, east of Frederick, to Harpers Ferry West Virginia. I'm planning on making this part of a longer loop that incorporates the C&O Canal towpath - but I can't map that using Google Maps!

45 Miles on Day 30

Here is the link to the ride Andrew and I did on our 30th and final day of riding our bikes this month. It was a great route (even with the long out and back section on Patuxent River Rd). The weather cooperated for us and it was a fantastic way to end our daily-ride challenge.

Challenge: 30 Days of April

I'm taking part in a challenge between a few of us at the shop. Sometime in March we decided we were going to ride for at least 45 minutes on every day in April. We're now 25 days in; Andrew, Scott, and myself have all managed to ride on each of the last 25 days. I've been trying to take a camera on each ride, or at least take a before- or after-ride picture. The link to the Flickr page with my photoset is here.

The whole endeavor has changed my view on riding a little bit; on group rides I find myself much more content to let people break away, figuring I'll eventually catch back up. I've been spending a lot of time in the little ring so as to rest my leg muscles as much as possible. It's also been a new experience going for short rides every day, instead of long rides a couple times a week with plenty of time in between to recover. It's been a lot of fun and a neat accomplishment... but I'm really looking forward to day 31.