Minnesota cycling - New personal record!

For our third day of cycling we could ride to Park Rapids or Bemidji.  Park Rapids is a smaller town and the trail brings you right to the middle of town.  It appeared that negotiating some city streets would be in the cards for Bemidji, so we opted for Park Rapids.  Either route would be just over 60 miles which would surpass our previous personal records of 52 miles.

Again the route began right at the motel with the first mile along a quiet lake front road, through a park, then on about 2-3 blocks of quiet side streets before the spur to the actual trail.  We headed southwest on the Heartland Trail under cloudy but muggy skies.  The first seven miles retraced our last miles of the previous day, through the woods and along side Lake May.  After that there was a small town every 6-9 miles that made a nice break.

Paul Bunyan and the two of us in Akeley, MN.

For some reason the first 20 miles were a struggle for me.  John got way ahead of me and mentally it was tough to catch up and that only happened when he stopped at a junction.  After 3 hours on the trail, we pulled out the peanuts and craisins for a small snack.  The last 30 minutes were so much easier.  Could it have been the wrong food for breakfast?

Once again, we questioned the mileage on the signs as we rode almost two more miles than what we expected on that last leg.  Perhaps the mileage was to the city limits (though we never saw a sign).  The trail dropped us across the street from Burger King.  By this time John was hungry enough for a Whopper and after the peanut boost, I decided a Whopper Junior with cheese was a good idea.  This Burger King had four choices for iced tea and the sweetened green tea was excellent.  We filled a water bottle each with iced coffee (John) and iced green tea (me).  The ice didn't last an hour...

Those burgers must have hit the spot way out.  We even stopped in the same places for water and potty breaks, but we do have to take out the five minutes we spent in the morning getting our photo with Paul Bunyan in Akeley!  A quick Google Earth check revealed that the elevation of each end of our route was about the same but the middle was about 40' higher.  Who would even notice that amount of change over 15 miles?

Every town in Minnesota seems to have its giant 'sculpture.'  Nevis, one of the small towns along the route, has a Tiger Muskie.

That personal record?  By the time we ate our recovery Blizzards in Walker and then slowly pedaled back to the motel, we had ridden 64 miles, shattering our personal records!  When converted to kilometers, we had accomplished a metric century!  Yippee!

Look at that!