Cycled around lake Tahoe - 'Tour de Tahoe'

Headed over to Lake Tahoe with Scott and some of his buddies to cycle around the lake (72 miles). Coincidently it turned out that an event called 'The Tour De Tahoe' was occuring at the same time (Elevation Map), so it meant lots of signposts warning of bikes and extra police around. So, quite lucky that our trip coincided with this really.

On the drive up Kingsbury Grade from Minden at 4,700ft to the summit (Heavenly ski resort) at 7,700ft I passed a sign saying 6,000ft. By this time we had been steadily climbing for quite some time with lots of mountain still to climb. But around 6,000ft I was struck by the fact that the lake itself sits at 6,500ft, so after all this climbing we weren't even level with the lake yet!

We arrived at the Lake at around 7.30 and were ready to roll just before 8am. We couldn't help noticing that it had turned cold. The thermometer on my bike read 0 degrees C (32 degrees F) which was colder than I expected by quite a lot, and I was not thrilled to be the only one in fingerless gloves (though was well happy to have those leg cut-offs to go with my cycle shorts - great Christmas present dad!). A few of us went through the drill of putting suncream on, though it seemed weird to have to strip off arms and legs in the freezing cold to do that.

So, we set off just before 8 and I couldn't feel my fingers for the first 30 minutes at least, which made changing gear a bit tricky, especially with my new bike which has shifters on the brake levers (which is an excellent improvement though doesn't work great with frozen fingers).

As we got to the south west corner of the lake, the traffic died out, we had a nice climb to do and things warm up a lot. From then on the temperature was great. After various stops for mechanical things, bio breaks or whatever we eventually got on our way. At about 25 miles in, a few of the leading group got a bit fruity and were very hard to catch. So we had a bit of a spurt to the 35 mile mark and our lunchbreak in Subway.

The way back was pleasant too with one big climb of 1,000ft up to Spooner Lake but after doing climbs like on the Deathride this was very easy (I had my Deathride shirt on too, determined to look cooler than when I actually did the Deathride). At one point I was riding in a group behind Scott, Scott and Big Daddy (Keith)- you can really get an idea of the benefits of 'drafting' when you are cycling at the back of a group of big blokes, the shortest of which is 6ft4!

Mostly very fast downhill from Spooner but with a couple of little climbs to keep us working. We got back in about 4.5 hours (rolling time, not including stops). Not a heroic time but a good fun fast ride and a great test for my new bike, which performed very well (especially after Scott showed me how to adjust my gears with a half click on the chainring side, very helpful feature of Ultegra components). Mind you, at the end of the ride my camera failed so no pictures of me on the new bike (which is quite lucky because I still have those awful bike glasses!).

After the ride I would like to say that I felt fresh as a daisy but in fact I felt a bit ragged and wasnt walking well. Though it didn't last much more that the rest of the day so I think I'm just used to riding a long way at the moment. My lifestyle here doesn't involve daily cycling like it does back home.