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There's a wide variety of road bicycling challenges:
A basic challenge is to see if you can ride to some other place and
back. In its fundamental form, you start from a very familiar
place, like your home. Or it could be a town that you use as your
regular place for starting rides (like Rhinebeck or New Paltz).
First you try to reach places close by, and then as you confidence,
knowledge, and strength increase, you try to reach places further
away. You can develop a satisfying sense of mastery of an area in
this way.
The "regular place" from which this website has the most
variety of routes is New
Paltz. New Paltz is easy to reach by the New York State
Thruway, and has routes
with a wide range of distances and terrain. Other likely choices
include Woodstock, Rhinebeck, and Millbrook. But really it's
whatever feels like "home base" to you.
We have family in Kingston, so it became a natural "base"
for us. On the Thruway we had driven by the New Baltimore service
area many times -- so we got the idea of seeing if we could ride to the
town of New Baltimore. We succeeded, and it was fun. And
that led to trying out different variations, different starting point,
and with different riding partners over the years -- and it eventually
turned into the In
the Shadow of the Catskills route.
The classic quantitative challenge is to see how far you can go in
one ride. A first challenge could be 10 miles, then 25
miles. What's nice about distance is that the human legs are
usually good at being trained for it. The simplest formula is to
start with some distance you know you can do, and then once every week
or two do a big ride which is 5-10% longer than the previous one.
And do some shorter rides in between.
After 25 miles, people typically go for 50, and then 75 -- or
sometimes 61 or 62 miles as a "metric" century (100
kilometers). After that, some people make it their big challenge to
try to ride 100 miles in a day. Most people try these distance
challenges as part of some bicycling
event where drink and food and some other support is provided.
This website has a variety of rides at many distances -- see Routes
by Difficulty Category. But there is no category for
"long and gentle" routes. The difficulty with going for
pure distance in the Hudson Valley is that it's hard to go more than 25
miles anywhere without running into lots of hills. So you
can either do your measured-distance rides in South Jersey, or Delaware
and Maryland -- or you can ride more interesting terrain in Hudson
Valley and say that your miles were tougher.
The "long distance" game can be played with much greater
seriousness than anything on this website -- using approaches different
than what we described above. If you want to see how far some
people take this kind of challenge, check out the New Jersey Randonneurs.
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Another basic challenge is "conquering" a hill. This
offers a sharp distinction between success and failure, and often the
reward of a fun downhill run.
You can start by finding out if you can ride up all the hills on a gentle-to-moderate
route, and then all the hills on a route of moderate
hilliness.
Then you may be ready to test yourself on one of the hills on our Climbs
page. But don't start with the "Devil's Kitchen" climb
on Platte Clove Road. Back when they had the Tour de Trump road
races, several of the professional riders ended up walking on that one.
Then there are games like seeing if you can climb up some hill
without using your lowest gears, or inventing strange routes to see how
many big steep hills you can do in one ride.
This is a favorite challenge for lots of people. But it's not
one we know very well. If you want to play with this one, we
suggest getting involved with riders who are really serious about speed
-- like one of the racing
clubs.
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A worthwhile accomplishment is to ride in a wide range of areas in
the Hudson Valley. The Overview
Map gives an idea of what that could mean.
Here's a list of moderate rides that provides a broad survey:
For strong road bicyclists who've been riding a lot, this set includes some
longer and hillier routes:
Or there's the "follow the Hudson River" survey:
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For us, the most amazing thing about riding in the Hudson Valley is
that it is possible to go to places you've never been before, with
terrain and road conditions you don't know, the possibility of dangerous
animals -- with the the risk of not getting to a safe and warm place
before dark, or before the bad weather hits -- or even have your bike,
or yourself, suffer serious damage and not finish the journey at
all.
Here's our "adventure challenge": Make up one route
of your own in each of these counties: Dutchess, Ulster, Columbia,
Greene.
Warnings:
- You can go a long ways without seeing a store in some of these
upstate areas. It is possible to run out of food and water.
- Sometime a key road in your plan has a different name. Or
it's not ridable. Or it doesn't exist any more. The
alternate roads you have to take may be much longer and
harder. It may get dark, and cold, and wet before you get to
your destination.
- There are more hills in the Hudson Valley than you can
imagine. We usually check out our route ideas on some maps
that show elevation differences, like the DeLorme Atlas -- so we can
try to avoid at least some of them.
- Don't be surprised when your cell phone doesn't work out there
just when you need it most.
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