65 miles, 3 x 30min intervals, sunshine, & recess visit with darcy!

i had a great bike ride today. probably the best 'training' ride in a long time. i rolled from george wilson rd to hodges gap, oak grove, old bristol, us321 to sugar grove. i finished my 60mins warm-up rolling up old421 with a few fastpedal and a few PI's. along the way i discovered Kern's Bakery - it doesn't look open today:



so returning to the 321 end of old421 i started 30 minutes of tempo headed toward trade. after finishing with a short loop i took a minute to stand/stretch/recompose myself and then started up 30mins of 'steady state' headed back towards sugar grove. unfortunately i went too fast, had to make a u-turn roll back to sherwood rd or so then recovered for 10 or 12 minutes including shedding a layer (long sleeve jersey and glove switch) since my next 30minutes was going up georges gap rd:




well i got to the top (beautiful view):



again, i misjudged where to start my interval so i got to the top in 21 or 22 minutes. i re-installed my long sleeve jersey and rolled/coasted to bethel elementary school playground to kick it with mrs grimes during recess =)

after some lance crackers:



i headed out rush branch rd to 321 south to rominger rd then watauga river rd:




some of watauga river rd was in perfect shape for the road bike:




some of it was not:



i managed to ride up nc194 forgetting the bridge was out:



so i walked over a 2x8 bridge then did the standard bairds creek, dewitt barnett, laurel fork. passed some mailboxes:



to nc105-bypass:


i finished up with an easy spin back down to george wilson rd and thought to myself this was a great way to spend 5 hours while getting in my workout. this is roughly my route (mapmyride.com didn't save it):



thanks max for the workout - thanks to everyone else (thousands of ppl) for reading. jg