the Way of the Turtle

20.8 Mile Ride Along the Mohawk-Hudson Bike Path
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

I had originally hoped to ride the bike path west of Schenectady, but when I finally managed to get out of both work I realized that was going to add too much travel time and ended up back at the Niskayuna Lions Park.

Between the dark cloud cover and the ever-earlier sunset, I knew I'd be spending a lot of this ride in the dark, so I took my ATB which has mounts for two headlights and a rear blinker light. I hadn't ridden it since the Labor Day weekend camping trip in the Adirondacks, so it was good to get out on it again - especially since I'm riding it in a duathlon in 1 1/2 weeks!

I did the first 20 minutes or so on the way to the Colonie Town Park with no lights - there was still plenty of natural light. After that, I had a short stretch on a road, so I put all my lights on blink mode to hopefully have a little more visibility. As it got darker and darker that also became an important consideration for riding on the path - to be seen rather than to see.

By the time I got back to the park it was pretty much completely dark and I had switched the headlights over to their brightest mode - not that that's all that bright, since they're very cheap lights. But it was enough light for me to see the path, and seems to have kept me somewhat visible, since at one point a pace line of road bike riders with more expensive (read: very bright!) lights blazed by me and dropped to single file as they went by.

As I was making my way back from turning around at the base of the old landfill, I looked up into the woods of Lock 7 State Park and saw a line of lights making their way through the trees - mountain bikers on the Lock 7 trails. I guess last night was a big one for riding with lights!

The next two days are supposed to feature some pretty crappy weather, so I think I'm going to make both of them rest days and give my legs some time to recover for the 14 mile Diamond Hill-Birchwold trail run in Rhode Island on Saturday morning... and then the Mohawk Towpath Duathlon Sunday morning!

JMH