Biked it – Liked it

We are back home after our weekend in Tahoe and the ride around the lake. Everything went according to plan as outlined in my previous post. The drive around the lake on Saturday gave us a good idea what to expect from a biking perspective. The dinner that Diane made was wonderful. By the way, Diane stayed across the street from us at the Marriott Grand Residence Club @ Lake Tahoe very upscale place! We were up at 5:30am on Sunday, ride day, after a restless nights sleep. Met Diane and Ben on the corner outside the Stardust and took off around 6:45am. Although a bit on the chilly side, we were prepared and dressed accordingly. Kind of cool to be riding up highway 50 towards the “Y” and seeing the snow capped mountains in front of us. We were nice and warmed up as we made our way up to Emerld Bay. The climb up to Emerald Bay was fierce, legs burning and sucking wind big time to make it up and around the hair pin turns and up to the top. BUT, for each tough uphill, there is always a great downhill. The ride down to Vikingsholm Castle rest stop at mile 14 was exhilarating. After a short break, little food and a photo op, it was another steady climb up the other side of Emerald bay. The ride up the west side of the lake was great. Million dollar views along the way. Nice rolling hills, nothing too strenous all the way to a rest stop at Homewood at mile 26 and then to lunch at Kings Beach at mile 42. The peaceful ride through the multi-million dollar homes in Incline Village was but a prelude to the 9 mile uphill climb to Spooner summit rest stop at mile 59. Definitly the toughest part of the ride. From the Spooner rest stop it was a GREAT (but windy) 5 mile downhill. What a rush! The last 7 miles back to Stateline and the finish at Horizon Casino was difficult. At the finish, and at spots along the most of the 72 miles around the Lake were people rooting us on. What an inspiration they were! Among the 3500 of us riders were 1900+ Riders from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training, doing the ride as a charity event. Turns out this is one of their “destination events”, so teams from all over the country were in Tahoe for this ride. Their support group were the ones cheering us all on. It was inspiring for us and really helped us to finish. We always seemed to pedal a bit faster when we were coming up on a crowd of people ringing cow bells, blowing horns and cheering for us as we made our way around the 72 miles of Lake Tahoe. Stats: Total time from start to finish= 6h:45m. Total Bike time= 5h:17m After the ride it was back to the hotel for a well deserved hot tub soak and celebritory food (frozen Milky Way) and drink (Hieniken). Made some great bloody marys for Barb and Diane. Dinner later was Rib eye steak at the casino. All in all a great great day. Be sure to check out the rest of of ride pictures here. You can also read the Tahoe Tribune article on the ride here.