If you have been reading my blog lately, then you will know, that I have been exploring a lot of new roads on my bike lately.  With a planned three hour ride today, I had a great opportunity to explore again.

Before leaving on my ride this morning, I took a quick look at Google Maps and plotted a new route.  The route turned out to be quite nice, but it was way too short.  I was done with it in well under two hours, and so spent the last hour of my ride, circling the lake at the local park.

I really should have paid a lot more attention to distance while planning my route.  I could have explored a whole lot more.  For my next ride, I will be using a route planning tool, so that I don’t make the same mistake again.

The one benefit of finishing my ride at the local park however, was that I was able to use familiar roads, to incorporate several sprints and several big gear intervals into my workout.  Doing something other than just ‘riding’ on long rides, is very beneficial to overall fitness.  Even when I am doing 4-5 hour rides, when preparing for an Ironman length race, I still put in a few “efforts” at some point during the ride.

Even though my route today was shorter than expected, I was able to find and photograph another new barn.  This one was a little run down, but somehow still beautiful.  I hope you are liking my barn photographs … I’m hoping to find lots more over the summer.