Ride Saturday, August 20

Saturday’s ride from Starbucks will start at 08:00, as usual, and the route will be Revenna Trail counterclockwise. It should be cool with mostly cloudy skies. The wind is expected to be light from the NE again, so you’ll have a cross headwind for most of the first half of the ride, which means you’ll want to do a counterclockwise rotation to share the work. Remember, that it’s fastest for everyone if you keep a steady pace that everyone can do without getting dropped. As the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race.

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Ride Saturday, August 13

Saturday, we will return to Grey Cloud Island, but in the opposite direction from last Sunday. This 60-mile loop has little traffic on good roads and trails, but no bakery stop so bring enough food and drinks. I’ve made a small change to the route to remove parts of St Croix Trail and 110th Street, both of which don’t have a shoulder and may have some traffic. The weather should be very good with partly cloudy skies, temps from 67 to 73 degrees, and winds from the north at 9 mph.

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Ride Sunday, August 7

Update Sunday 06:02: Let's ride today leaving Starbucks at 9:00. We'll do our Grey Cloud Island loop clockwise.

Update Saturday 06:42: No ride today. There’s a line of rain coming that should be here in Bloomington around 08:00 and more behind that. We are on the southern edge of the rain, but it looks like it will reach as far south as Northfield. If it looks like we can ride Sunday without getting wet, I’ll update this post about the same time Sunday.

Saturday is looking mostly dry in the morning, and the afternoon and Sunday look worse, so we'll see what evolves. We may have a very rare rain-out weekend. For now, let's plan to ride at 08:00 Saturday. If it's raining lightly, and looking to clear quickly, we may be able to postpone the start an hour and get a ride in before the afternoon showers start. Throughout the morning, the wind should shift from the south to west and then from north, so I think our shorter Bloomington route clockwise may be a good one for Saturday. There are several options for us to shorten or lengthen the route, depending on the weather.

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Ride Saturday, July 9

It looks like we’ll have another perfect summer day for our group ride Saturday, and we’re going to head to Cannon Falls following our counterclockwise route. If you have the time and energy to ride longer, you may want to add 25 miles and another 1000 feet of elevation by going to Welch before returning to Rosemount. We’ll all stop for a break at Hi-Quality Bakery in Cannon Falls. As usual, the ride starts from Starbucks at 08:00.

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Ride Saturday, July 2

Saturday’s ride will be to Brick Oven Bakery in Northfield via our 56-mile counterclockwise route. During the ride, it should be mostly cloudy with temps from 68 to 75 and light winds.

For those of you looking for a ride Monday, you may want to do the Great Scott Bike Ride. They have 25 and 50-mile routes leaving from Lakefront Park in Prior Lake at 08:00. There’s a good chance of rain Monday, so we won’t have our own ride.

The 2022 Tour de France will begin Friday in Copenhagen with an individual time trial and two more days of flat racing in Denmark before the race transfers to France. The race airs live on NBC, USA and Peacock.

Ride Sunday, June 26

Once again, the weather looks questionable for a group ride Saturday, so we’re going to ride to Edina via the Minnesota Valley State Trail on Sunday morning. The ride will start from Rosemount at 08:00 and we’ll have a mid-ride stop at Hyland Lake Park Reserve. The weather Sunday will be cool, for this time of year, with temps in the 60s, partly cloudy skies, and 15 mph wind from the northwest.

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