WA to MT Day 5 - Into Idaho
Unlike the first 4 days, I am not writing this post late in the evening. Since today is a rest day, I just went straight to bed last night. Yesterday, we rode 125 miles from Colville WA to Sandpoint ID. Despite being 23 miles longer than two days ago, the ride only took me 12 minutes more and was overall less physically draining due to a lot of drafting.
We started out with a gradual rolling climb for the first 33 miles. This climbing was much easier than the steep climbs of the past 2 days. This photo gives a nice sense of the type of gradual rise that covered much of this opening segment.
As has been the case throughout this trip, the views were lovely.
While the climbing was not particularly steep, the group does tend to spread out as different people have different climbing paces. Unlike the flats where there are significant energy saving advantages to drafting behind other riders, the pace of climbing is almost entirely based on the steepness and each rider's power to weight ratio. My legs were a bit dead this morning, so here is a photo of Ruth, Jesse, and our guide slowly riding away from me after a stop.
Following the climb, there was a nice 4 mile downhill where I was able to average about 35 mph. We all collected together after the descent since the remaining ~90 miles was largely flat. As a result, we all decided to ride as a paceline for a while. Here is a photo of all us rolling down the road.
The paceline significantly reduces the aerodynamic drag on the trailing riders allowing for much faster speeds with much less aggregate effort. Collectively, we averaged over 18 mph for the 30 miles until lunch.
Following lunch, we continued to have fabulous scenery.
While biking, we have often seen deer. In this case, I happened to have my camera out. The deer in this photo ran alongside us for several hundred yards.
At around mile 90, we entered Idaho, a significant milestone in our journey.
The scenery continued to be a mix of water, mountains, and trees.
We mostly continued to stay together in a paceline until our final rest stop at mile 112. At that point, each of us were feeling various levels of exhaustion. Ruth and I rode the last section together. This bit of road was rough chip seal. This causes constant vibrations in the bike which can lead over time to hands going numb, feet developing hot spots (nerve pain that feels like burning on the balls and toes of the feet), and a generally sore posterior.
The final bit into Sandpoint was an extremely long bridge over Lake Pend Oreille. Here is a photo of Aileen on the bridge bike path.
I'll write a short second post tonight about our rest day.