After another good breakfast… Clay and I got our bikes and got ready for day 3 – the LONG day.
The ride was another net downhill…. but it was the longest of the tour.. It started with a pretty good hill – some down – up some more – and then it settled in for the long gradual downhill through Folsom to Sacramento.
I snapped a picture or two at the first aid station around 25 miles into the ride…
From the rest stop to Sacramento was miles and miles of a very nice bike path. For part of it Clay and I were on our own enjoying the scenery….
and for part of it we joined a fast moving pace line… A pace line is a single file line of bikes riding fast. The person in front, sets a solid pace and the rest stay close and enjoy the benefit of less wind resistance. It is hard work for someone of my ability… I hung in the back and tried to hang on. The difficulty was that there was lots of turns which you had to sprint out of to catch up again…. Meanwhile, Clay was riding behind…. I looked to my side and Clay rode by passing me and then the whole line while filming us on video,,
Clay and I enjoyed a nice long break at Old Town Sacramento. By the time we left it was getting warm – into the 90s. We continued west out of Sacramento, along a bike path to Davis where we had another rest stop… and then another LONG 15-20 into a bit of a headwind to get to the finish.
Later, we walked across the road to a park where a caterer had yet another delicious dinner set up: