A ride for Sunday

I've got to keep the training going. Paceline practice in Central Park is great for bike handling skill but the climbs are not so steep and not so long. In a paceline, I can't just put my bike in a harder gear: I need to maintain a steady cadence and maintain position; on the major climbs in Israel, we'll all separate and climb at our own abilities since paceline doesn't help below 15 mph.

Regardless, I need to get as many of the NYC area WOL Challenge riders together as possible at least twice before the trips. With the NYC Century and 3 weeks of Yom Tov on Sunday I'm running out of Sundays. Therefore I'm going to put in an NYCC ride up the lower Hudson Valley via River Road leaving from the Eleanor Roosevelt statue at 8:30 AM and aim to return back 2PM. I intend to run a single rotating paceline (except on the return down Riverside Drive we'll run a double if we've enough people) where practical. It's a 55 mile route with hills. I'll list it as an NYCC B18 ride meaning we keep a 18 mph cruising speed on level ground (I personally intend to zoom down River Road from Edgewater at 30+ mph...no point to a rotating paceline on River Road, there's precious little level ground on the road from Edgewater to Alpine).

The route is a combination of the "Nyack Classic" and "Nyack with Hills" rides from NYCC library. The key difference is that I'm not taking the group into downtown Piermont or Nyack. Instead, we'll do hills. Specifically, the NYCC listed climb of Clausland Mountain Rd., an 11% grade for .31 miles. We'll stop at Tackamack Park North, which has a picnic area, for lunch. After that we'll continue up and around on Tweed and Bradley and back onto 303 to 340 and home (with the additional climb of Churchill Rd.). finishing this ride in 5 hours is a real challenge only possible if we get a paceline. If short on time and stamina, we'll have to bypass the Tweed climb.

I tried to put the complete route into Bikeroutetoaster but it drove me crazy.
Here's a google map:

View Larger Map

We might punt on coming down Piermont Ave and stay on 9W, substituting a climb on 9W for the climb on Churchill. Coming down Piermont is somewhat safer but there's more traffic lights.