Saturday Rides Starting from Starbucks in Rosemount, MN
We’re going try Zwift’s new meet-up feature to do an indoor, virtual group ride. The ride will be Saturday at 09:00 and it will be led by Cory Wagner. The ride will follow the NYC Knickerbocker route, in reverse, for 50 KM (31 miles). To join the meetup, you must be a Zwift user who follows Cory, and he needs to invite you to the ride. If you are a Zwift user and you haven’t been invited, follow Cory and he’ll invite you.
Read MoreThroughout October, we collected feedback from our riders via a short, nine-question survey and 37 people participated. There are 45 paid members and 100 addresses on our mailing list.
The first four questions were basic satisfaction inquiries. All participants reported that our group rides meet their needs, 97% of participants said they were very satisfied or satisfied with our club, and 95% said we have very-high-quality or high-quality rides. Safety of our rides was rated as above average or excellent by 92% of participants. None of these responses are surprising, because you’d probably riding elsewhere if we weren’t meeting these basic needs.
Read MoreOur club shop and sponsor, Grand Performance, is offering special club discounts, through December 15. Sale items include several models and builds of Wilier Triestina bicycles and frames, HED and Zipp wheels, SRAM components for road and MTB, helmets from Giro and Kask, Sidi shoes, Speedplay pedals, Vittoria tires and tubes, and more.
Read MoreIt's going to be a rainy weekend, so we won’t have a group ride. So, get outside today or jump on a spin bike or trainer to keep up your fitness. Hopefully, we’ll get a few more group rides in before the snow and winter comes to make the roads dangerous for road bikes to end our season.
Please take a couple of hours to volunteer at Free Bikes 4 Kidz this weekend. Volunteers, like you, have already refurbished more than 2,500 bikes. FB4K needs your help to fix about 3,000 more bikes, so they can give them to Minnesota kids in need. Every volunteer and every hour counts. I will be there Saturday, at Noon, and I hope to see you there, too.
Help FB4K meet the goal of refurbishing and giving away every bike that they can salvage. Please, sign up to volunteer! The time you spend changes lives.
Read MoreWe should have normal temperatures and light wind this Saturday and that will make our ride this week more enjoyable than the previous couple of weeks. If you've been riding indoors, try coming back outside and join us this weekend.
This week, we will leave Rosemount at 09:00 and ride to Prior Lake and back, with a stop at Edelweiss Bakery. I think the trail along Blackdog Road and 35W is closed due to construction and flooding, so we may need to take another route to Prior Lake. If you’ve ridden there recently, let me know the status Saturday or via email. I have a couple of other routes we can use.
Read MoreI hope you had a chance to get out for a ride today, like I did, because it was beautiful and this weekend it will be back to abnormally-cold and windy conditions. The forecast for this Saturday is worse than last Saturday, so we’ll ride on Sunday morning. At 09:00 Sunday, we’ll follow the Orchard Lake route, which will provide some shelter from the wind and give us a good workout.
Read MoreJoin us this week as we follow our Northfield route again and stop at Brick Oven Bakery for a snack. We’ll be leaving Rosemount at 09:00 this week, so we can start with the temperature above 40°.
Read MoreThis week, Gary Johnson, the club’s founder and former ride leader, will host a special ride from his new home town. Gary’s ride will start at 08:00 from downtown Wayzata's Starbucks (740 Lake St E, Wayzata). The route will go south through Chaska, Victoria, Excelsior, and back to Wayzata for about 60–65 miles.
If you can’t make it to Gary’s ride, meet at 08:00 at Starbucks in Rosemount and ride with other club members. I plan to join Gary, so let me know if you want to lead the ride from Rosemount otherwise those who show up will have to figure out a route.
Read MoreThey are predicting our first frost of the season on Saturday morning, so let’s push the start time back an hour. I don’t mind riding in the upper 30s, but not until later in the season. The cool temps last week didn’t hurt the turnout, so I expect the same this week.
This week, we’ll leave Rosemount at 09:00 and follow our Orchard Lake route counterclockwise. So, you can do the full 45-mile route, or cut it short for 35 miles. We’ll stop at Orchard Lake Beach for a nature and food break, so bring food.
I’ve created a short survey to see how we’re doing. Please take two minutes to fill it out.
Read MoreThis year’s hot weather is mostly gone now, and Saturday it will be a lot cooler than it was last week, so you’ll need to get out your cool-weather kit for the ride. If you need some help figuring out what to wear, check out the posts about clothing on our Cycling Tips blog, including a new post, titled “A Clothing Guide for Cyclists,” that I wrote to help new riders extend their season.
It’ll be windy from the south again this week, so we’ll try to avoid the cross winds by riding to Cannon Falls. We’ll leave Rosemount at 8:00 and follow the posted route clockwise, with a stop at Hi-Quality Bakery.
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