UniLog
- South Lake Washington Trek Complete
I finally got around to doing the South Lake Washington Loop. It was a little more than 40 kilometers.
Not knowing how much trouble I was going to get into pain wise, I decided to take it slow, or so I thought. I just tried to keep as balanced as possible. Sometimes trying to go a little faster keeps me out of a comfortable balance envelope and then I need to accelerate to get back on top. Keeping balanced seemed to be the ticket. I was spinning the whole way and actually increased my pace as the ride progressed.
I started the trip at the tiny hand boat launch park below the I-90 bridge, just below Mt. Baker. My thought was to get most if not all the climbing out of the way in the first third of the loop and then no worries. I think I took a too short cut up to the bridge and needed to walk about a block up a very steep road. The better route would have been a mile or two longer, but would be easy on the Coker, if a little more dangerous wrt traffic.
Anyway I started at exactly 1:00 p.m. and had made it across the I-90 bridge and to the Feroglia Fields park on Mercer Island (Just past the tennis courts on top of the Lid) in about 28 minutes. I took some fountain water, a swig of my salt spiked PowerAid, took a few photos and rode on.
I noted that I had just completed about 4.7Km, so it seemed very slow. My average speed was just over 12.5km/h at that point.
From there I took the known route to Bellevue and turned right at the Lake Washington Blvd. T. I continued to the bike trail that runs alongside I-405 and stopped at the top of the hill for a rest. At that point I was about an hour in in clock time, and at about 12km. Some idiot on a tandom asked if I had everything I needed, like a chain or something...
I continued on south, entering the beautiful resort area known as Renton. The road is smooth and undulates like an abused waterbed. Along this route the trail goes on and off road. Mostly there is no traffic, max speed is like 35, which I didn't appear to reach.
After another half hour, about 1:35 of clock time I reached Gene Coulon Park. Previously I had started at this point and did an out and back around the south end of the Renton Airport and almost to Seward Park. More on this section later.
Cene Coulon Park is a great place. It is a hugely popular boat launch and boardwalk type location. There is even an Ivars and Kidd Valley food court. I chose Ivars and got some 'American' Fries and a Coke. But the line was long and service slow. I lost ten minutes just waiting for food. That gave me some time to recover and figure out what was going on.
In the 1:35 clock time I had covered 20km. My average speed had gone to about 14.2km/h. I'm still focusing completely on 'spinning', as I feel no fatigue even though this is my usual practice distance. I'm starting to think that riding in attack mode on a Coker is counterproductive for more than a minute or two, maybe if you have a very steep incline to get over. Otherwise slowing down over the hills didn't seem to really eat into my average.
Once the chips and Coke were done, I headed off for the next not so fun due to traffic section. Here you head through beautiful Renton and past the Boeing facility. The only thing of interest here is a short section of trail along the Cedar river, which I mostly avoided since I didn't want to navigate the zig-zag path to cross the bridge at the end. Instead I took the airplane bridge. Not sure of the road name, probably Airport Road since it hugs around the airport until you can get onto Rainier
Rainier Ave. is a busy road. There is a wide bike/park lane, however the emphasis is on 'park'. Many cars are parked very near the edge of the lane so you either need to ride the sidewalk or go for it and venture into traffic. I chose to stick my arm out to indicate I needed room whenever I went around a parked car. This seemed to work. I also rode the sidewalk on my test ride last month. It is 'fun' but not fast. The undulations for the driveways are the biggest I have ever seen, sometimes up to two feet. But they are smooth and you can ride them easily. It makes for a fun ride, unless you want to make time. This stretch is about 2.5 miles or so and it goes by fast. It is slightly uphill, but you don't really notice that.The excitement caused by the traffic keeps you going pretty fast.
At Coulon Park I lost about 20 minutes, combined with other losses, I had started again at about 3:00. By 3:35 I had made it past the traffic of Rainier and on to Seward Park Ave. Another boat launch park provided my next rest stop.
RIding time was at 2:00 exactly and the distance was about 30km. At this point my camera batteries stopped working. I just took a brief break to dring some salt spiked PowerAid and eat an energy bar.
The next few miles were slightly uphill. You don't really notice it as uphill, but maybe a combination of the concrete pavement and the grade makes you look down to see if you have a flat tire or something. After the climb, the cutoff to Seward Park goes down. Normally this would be the last of the hills you would see, the rest being downhill or flat-flat-flat. However, I ignored a sign which pointed to the Washington Loop and climbed up a nice little hill before I decided something must be wrong. I took a road which didn't really appear to go anywhere, but it turns out it did lead me back to the lake level road. So from Seward Park on there is a thin but smooth path off the main road. I chose to ride on the road to avoid people, animals, root bumps, etc. Traffic is constant but polite. This is a truly beautiful stretch of road, and with a group, it would be well worth going slower and following the path, which at times is right on the water's edge, and zig-zags around more than the road.
Eventually the park ends and there is a sign directing bicycle traffic to go into the last parking lot and follow a sidewalk to avoid climbing a hill on the road. This is a mistake. The sidewalk is a little too steep and the road is just fine, cars can see you just fine and the road isn't that narrow. At any rate you will be back on the road once you climb this short hill, so why not just stay on the road.
Once up the hill the end of the ride is only about a quarter mile.
I clocked in at about 4:15 at a total distance of 40.19km. Total riding time was 2:35:46 , average speed was 15.4km/h.
In the future, I think a starting point further along the Lake Washington shoreline would be nice. This would allow a more gradual, and interesting ascent to the I-90 bridge along a recognized bike route. This would leave only a tiny descent to the park above the bridge where I would probably need to dismount due to the steep slope.