Wind and hills

Great ride today, beautiful gusty fall day, decided to do a climbing ride, the 65 mile version the Rochester Bike Club's century ride from Ithaca to Elmira and back. The short version of the ride that I did today has about 5000 ft of climbing (avg climb 75 ft/mile). Temp was in the lower 50s the whole day, winds were pretty consistently from south, 10-20 gusting up to 30 near the end of the ride.

The route is great, beautiful, low traffic, and really nice climbs. The first climb is Rt 327 by Robert Treman State Park out of Ithaca (first picture on left), then onto Trumbulls Corners Rd. and Sebring: the first 15 miles averaged a climb of 100 ft/mile. Then down onto 13 for a flat bit until another big climb, Varney Hill Rd off of 224, then Jackson Creek Rd. Into Breesport, where I stopped for lunch and cut off from the century route, taking 223, another flat bit, into Erin, then rejoined the end of the century route. From Erin another climb on Laurel Hill Rd, Park Station Rd, Austin Hill Rd then a huge downhill on Austin Hill Rd to 223, and a really long nice downhill on 223 to 224. The last big climb, Jackson Hollow Rd to Van Kirk, then down into Newfield, then that nice long downhill into Ithaca.

The wind was strong but not bad, didn't slow me down since I was mostly climbing anyway, though near the end I got some crossbreeze gusts that almost knocked me off my bike. The scenery was great, most leaves down but still some up, a blend of orange and bright yellow. I was warm enough the whole way, it was a great ride.

This is a route I'll definitely do again, and when the weather's nicer I'll do the entire century, which continues from Breesport to Soaring Hill west of Elmira and then back to Erin where it picks up the route I took back to Ithaca, total climbing somewhere around 8000 feet.

Route: Ithaca - Trumbulls Corners - Breesport- Erin - Newfield - Ithaca
Total distance: 67.16 miles
Ride time: 04:57:15
Avg speed: 13.56 mph
Total climb: 5,034 ft
Low point: 394 ft, Ithaca
High point: 1965 ft, on Van Kirk Rd south of Newfield
Avg climb: 74.96 ft/mile