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I’ve tried Yoga a couple of times and love the flexibility it is giving me. But Pilates; this is a great core workout. I did an hour class today and boy I can feel it in my back.

I think I’m going to add this to my schedule from now on.

Finally, I found some good hills to train on around this town. I guess I just needed to do a little driving to get out of the flatland.

We got to the shopping center on the corner of Lincoln Way and Foresthill Road in Auburn and geared up for the ride. We laughed at the ½ mile 8% downhill that starts the second you leave the driveway thinking how much fun that will be to finish the ride with. The ride up started with a nice mix of rolling 5% – 7% climbs with short downhill’s and ending the uphill part with a good steady climb up to a little store off Timberland Drive. We did about 16 miles up with 2775 feet of climbing and an altitude of 2930 feet.

After filling the water bottles we started back down, looking forward to the downhill part and seeing what kind of speed we could get out of some of the longer climbs we did.

That is when it happened; a sound came out of my bike like nothing I have ever heard before. It was a squeal you could hear for half a mile I think. We stopped and looked it over and couldn’t find anything, I check the gears and it was shifting fine so we started going again. As soon as I hit about 25 mph it started again but this time Todd and Dave were looking for it. The chain went slack on the top and it looked like it was pulling the bottom tight. That was it must be the rear hub or cassette, and that meant I was riding the breaks the rest of the way and keeping up under 20 mph.

Over all not a bad ride and I get to take apart a cassette and/or hub for the first time to boot.