Today, we rode the Gazos Creek trail at Big Basin State Park. According to our book, you can ride it as a 12.9-mile round trip loop with an optional 8.8-mile out-and-back for a total of 21.7 miles. Our plan was to see how we felt when we got to the out-and-back trail and then decide at that point whether or not we wanted to extend the ride.

The first portion of the ride was pretty challenging from an aerobic/endurance standpoint. The trail was not technical at all, but there were some pretty steep and extended climbs. We had to dismount and walk up a few of them. After all these hills, we were thinking that we would probably just do the loop and not add the 8.8-mile out-and-back.

Things didn’t quite go as planned, however, as we ended up getting a bit lost. We followed the book’s instructions, but the book wasn’t very clear regarding one of the turnoffs. We actually ended up heading towards the beach in the wrong direction! Fortunately, we ran into another biker who was headed back from the beach and knew where we were. We followed him back to the turnoff we had missed.

Despite getting lost, things actually worked out quite well as we got a bit more riding in. Since the trail was all downhill from our missed turnoff to the point when we met the biker, we got a good deal of additional climbing in. Our final mileage was 16.7 miles so it was a pretty good training ride. Here’s a few pics.

Posted by Roger at 7:43 am.