It’s dawning on me that the bike tour date is getting closer!  I’m also a little worried about whether or not I can actually, physically do all the biking! So in order to reassure myself I went on a 40-mile practice ride today.  I even loaded down the bike with both panniers and loaded them down with about 20 pounds of stuff.

Thanks to the magic of Google Maps, I was able to create a perfect 40-mile loop starting and ending at my house.

I completed the ride in about 3 hours and 30 minutes, which comes out to almost 11 miles per hour.  I did take one break in the middle to eat a sandwich I brought with me.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with the ride. The end got a bit grueling, but I was happy with the result. It gave me the confidence to believe that I can do 50 miles over the course of a day.