Mt Vernon Trail

Yesterday Zach and Sarah joined us for a ride on the Mt. Vernon trail, which is easily my favorite trail yet. It runs 17 miles from Roosevelt Island to Mt. Vernon. Most of that is along the river, which makes for a beautiful ride with a nice breeze. Except for the short section by the sewage treatment plant, but you can almost hold your breath the whole way past that.


The ride was a lot of fun, and surprisingly easy. We went out to Mt Vernon and back again, for a total of 35 miles. The trail is mostly flat, which is a big reason I found the ride easier than the last 30+ mile ride I did. It also helps that this was my second 30+ mile ride. I'm getting in better shape all the time, and it's nice to see my own improvement on rides like this.

I did have a little trouble with passing etiquette on the Mt. Vernon trail. It's both slightly narrower and much windier than the W&OD. Because of this people are more wary when it comes to passing. I'm used to the fairly aggressive passing that happens on the W&OD, which most people treat as though it has 3 full lanes, with the middle reserved for passing. I've even seen it treated as a four-lane path once or twice. But that sort of thing isn't acceptable on the Mt. Vernon trail, which really does only have 2 lanes. I got one or two angry looks for passing when other people thought I shouldn't (I felt like I had enough room, though).

I'm looking forward to doing this trail again. It's a 3+ hour ride, which isn't always easy to fit into the schedule. And as the weather heats up I may not want to go for such a long ride. But this one, and how good I felt afterwards, has me confident that it won't be long before I can tackle the W&OD in its entirety.