Time is short now… Lots of pictures and videos this week!

Time is short now… Lots of pictures and videos this week!

 

We are in October.  Time is short now we are 13 days out from my Century and about 18 days out from me leaving for Indiana.  Wow! Where does the time go?  Chip has his ticket to fly out.  The movers are scheduled.  I am closing tomorrow on the California home and on Friday we close on the Indiana home.  Really where does the time go?

 

Last Saturday was blow your legs out day!  LOL!  That is what is felt like.  The directive was to ride about the same distance and the prior week but add more climbing to it.  So, it took all my stoogely cunning to get a ride mapped out that was approximately the same distance but added more climbing. The issue is to match up the distance with the climbing.  Getting one or the other isn’t the problem, getting them, both lined up now that was a bit tricky, but I did it, I just had to something I really didn’t want to do but that seems to be par for the course these days!

 

I had to break out my new Big Foot Socks for the ride!  I only ride with the most fabulous socks after all and the ones that match my Big Foot Jersey! 

 

To hit the distance and climb targets I was shooting for we had to start the ride off with my least favorite but still sort of favorite places to ride and the is the Category 5 climb from my house to then of Cross via Patterson Pass.  Then because I like to keep things difficult I had us immediately turn around and come back up Cross to Patterson.  That was good times!  All kidding aside, it was good times and good riding, hard but good.  We did an out and back from my house.  Which is really nice because you don’t have to carry as much stuff with you and you can count on clean bathrooms and good water at least one of your stops that day.  

 

I could ride Patterson pass every day for the rest of my life and I don’t think there would be anyway it would ever get easy.  It isn’t the steepest hill or the longest, but it is a lot of work to get from Greenville to Cross Road via Patterson.  It is one long steady up that doesn’t really look like a long steady up, so it is tricky.  The hardest part is when you pass over from Patterson to Cross and you must go up the mini hill that is super steep.  I hate that mini steep bump in the road and the look on my face in the video of me climbing it tells you everything that you need to know about it.  

 

After our rest stop at Casa Burkle, we headed out to our favorite spot Manning Road.  Today we did the curly Q at the top of Manning.  This is only a curly Q in my mind, and it is basically when we ride to the top of Manning, then climb Carneal which should be flat but isn’t and then take Highland to CCR and climb up CCR and then take Carneal back to Highland.  So, we did that… Again, hard climbing but good climbing.  My legs still felt pretty good at this point. 

 

From Highland we headed to Windemere which has become one of my favorite places to ride and climb.  It is a good long climb with just enough challenge to it.  Now I had never climbed I had already gained 1500 feet of climbing before, but there is a first time for everything, and this was my day to climb Windemere with 1500 feet of gain on my legs already.  There is where my legs started to feel it. For the only the second time since we had started climbing Windemere did I start to doubt if I would be able to reach the top.  More importantly than that my thighs were on fire in a way they haven’t been for a very long time.  They were started to wonder just what in the fuck was going on here?  However, they never gave out just ached a little bit and I didn’t give out and made it to the top of Windemere once again.  

 

We took out normal rest at the top of hill at the dog park.  David suggested we head home and watch football and order pizza.  An option that I found to be all to appealing.  However, we were close now and as much as I would have loved to go lounge around the house and do nothing, we had more riding to do so we pushed on.

 

From Windemere we took Bollinger Canyon to Dougherty to Crow Canyon to Blackhawk Road.  This was a little rollie pollie route with a few ups and downs but no major climbs.  The hardest thing about it was coming back from Blackhawk because the left turn lanes were four lane turns and that is never fun to try and do on a bike.  This leads us back to our favorite dog park where we had a spot of rest and then we headed for home. 

 

Going from Highland to Carneal is never fun.  There are climbs and while they aren’t huge climbs they are climbs and when you have 45/50 miles on your legs the last thing you want to do is more climbing.  The good news is this route takes you back to Manning Road and coming back home on Manning is always fast and fun! I think I topped out in 26 mph coming down Manning on Saturday on the way home.  Love it!  Then before you knew it we were back home and waiting on Kona to show up so we could go get some dinner!  Good riding! 

 

Ride Stats:

 

Distance: 61.86 miles

Elevation Gain: 2,828 feet

Moving time: 5:44:48

Average Power: 113 W

Average Speed: 10.8 mi/h