13.2 Mile Ride on the Albany County Rail Trail
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
I had planned to go for a run tonight but a look at the weather forecast suggested that I wouldn't want to ride for the next couple of days (it's going to be cold.... 😞) Plus the strong winds hadn't reached Albany yet, so I packed up the bike and headed over to the rail trail.
Since this would be a shorter ride than I'd prefer I decided to make it a workout and pushed the pace the whole way... made it to the South Pearl St trailhead in right around 21 minutes (5.15 miles.) Of course, 3 miles of that is substantial downhill and 1.5 miles of the rest is gradual downhill... plus, once I turned around, I discovered that the wind had arrived. So not only did I get to push uphill most of the way back, I got to do so heading into the wind.
And apparently my brain froze while I was doing that because once I got back to Slingerlands I turned around and rode back to the crossing at North St -- because apparently fighting the wind for the 1.5 miles to Slingerlands wasn't enough the first time.
But on the plus side, when I came out of Shop-rite the woodcock was once again calling in the scrub field next door, and I even caught a glimpse of him heading up into the sky to do a flight. Given the wind, it's impressive that he landed near where he started instead of being blown into the next town.
JMH
