Location: Ride Studio Cafe in Lexington, MA
Ride Type: Mixed Terrain Ride
Date & Time: Weekly Thursday evenings 7:00pm departure
Distance: ~15 miles typically for a 9pm return
Price: Free
Details: The Thursday evening mixed-terrain ride takes cyclists all over Lexington and beyond. The ride follows paved roads to trails, dirt roads, grassy areas, and other places off the beaten path.
Watch the embedded YouTube video, below if you need any motivation to come out. It’s fun in a new way to ride at night!
The ride departs at 7:00pm and returns at 9:00pm; we ride based on time rather than distance. We have a designated RSC Super Domestique leading the ride and pointing out turns. We sometimes have a sweep rider for this ride and riders who fall off of the pace will need to be comfortable navigating back to the start. It's not fast, but it's also not a no-drop. The group will wait for mechanicals.
You need to have had experience riding single track with somewhat technical features (roots, rocks and bridges and climbing) during the day before participating in this ride at night. We advise coming out to our Sunday morning 9:30am mixed terrain ride first, prior to attending this ride if you're new to mixed terrain or night riding.
Lights Required: You also must bring a front light of 500 lumens or more that will last 2 hours on one charge, a helmet light is advised though not required, and a rear light that can stay on steady without blinding riders behind you. More equipment requirements are listed further down on this page.
Route: The route is available to attendees the evening of the ride. The weather and trail conditions dictate the route. We do not ride on soft trails ever; we have rain trail-friendly routes prepared.
Estimated time: 1 hour, 45 minutes-ish
Ride Notes: The pace is a moderate 8-9mph on the trails, ~16mph on the back roads. Another way to say this is that it is difficult to hold a conversation, but is not fast. We ride together.
Last Minute Information: Watch Ride Studio Cafe's Twitter feed for last-minute updates, weather cancellations or other changes.
Contact Information: Email - connect@ridestudiocafe.com, Phone - (339) 970-0187
Riding Rules, What to Bring, How Our Rides are Different: All riders are required to read and are expected to abide by These Rules.
Waiver: RSC requires a signed waiver before your first ride. Please fill it out online prior to your first ride.
How do we decide if we’re having the mixed-terrain ride each week?
Thunder storms: If there’s a 33% or greater chance of a thunder storm at the rollout time, we don’t ride. It is not safe to get caught out in a thunder storm.
Rain or sleet: There are a few variants of this. We don’t ride sensitive trails when they’re wet; this can cause damage that’s not repairable. Fortunately, we have some rain friendly routes that don’t damage sensitive trails.
If it’s raining 1 hour prior to the ride we cancel the ride. If it’s only threatening to rain, we ride.
If it’s misting or drizzling 1 hour prior to the ride and less than 50% chance of rain in the coming hour, we ride.
If it’s been raining a lot for a couple days, but not raining on Thursday evening, we ride. Our rain friendly routes avoid sensitive trails. Of course, every few years there’s such a bad storm that we won’t ride on a Thursday; we take the force majeure very seriously.
Snowing: We ride; it is so much fun to ride during a snow storm.
Snow on the ground: We ride. It doesn’t matter if there’s 1 inch or four feet, we ride. We recommend studded tires or fat bikes for these kinds of conditions. The only exclusion to snow riding is when there is a state of emergency and we’ve been asked to stay off the road.
Icy conditions: We ride. For this you have to have studded tires in order to ride with us.
Cold: It doesn’t matter what the temperature is, we ride. The coldest ride started at 5 degrees. It was a blast!
Ride leader: A couple times a year we don’t have a designated ride leader. It’s not fair for us to send you out without someone to help guide. Of course, if you want to ride without a ride leader, you are more than welcome to!
The proper bike for this ride includes the following:
32c knobby tires minimum. Wider tires are nice, too. Tire choice depends on your riding skill set.
Clipless pedals and shoes. These are important elements of bike control. If you ride with platform pedals you’re likely to be over your head in some of the more technical parts of the ride.
A bike that’s in safe working order. We don’t stop for preventable mechanical issues.
Higher tire pressure than you’d ride on a cyclocross ride. We recommend about 80% to 90% of maximum rated tire pressure, for two reasons:
First, we want to minimize flats on the ride; waiting for someone to change flats is not why we ride. We typically see zero flats on our ride. One of the primary reasons for this is due to higher than average tire pressure.
Second, on average, about 50% of the ride is on pavement; having slightly higher pressure makes the road sections go by faster.
Come by at least 15-minutes early so you can make any last minute bike adjustments. We will have the Studio open 15 minutes before and sometimes after the ride.