a perfect Saturday morning

Today was one of those perfect days for cycling. I woke up with enough time to get everything ready to head out the door and found a disc of wedding reception music I had put together once upon a time before the wedding. It's hard to believe that next week I'll have been here for two years. Time flies quickly.

Anyway, the Saturday ride was meeting close to the apartment so I threw the bike in the car and blasted down there with the music cranked. Getting there, I find out that we can't park where we normally park and we have to drive across the street. No big deal.

We move and get ready to head out when they announce that we're going to head north towards Monument and Palmer Park and I get 'the phear'. You see, I'm a fat guy... and Monument and Palmer Park are all hills. I'm not a huge fan of hills, and part of the ride was going to be climbing up to where the dirt starts on Mt. Herman Rd (see archives for that ride report) which is in itself a big climb... but I soldiered on.

It's hard to admit that sometimes there are rides that just scare me. Names like Gleneagle, County Line, Mt. Herman, Higby and Roller Coaster are the bane of my cycling existence. If I want to ride my road bike to work in the mornings I have to climb Gleneagle. Gleneagle isn't horrid, but in the morning with sodden legs it's one steady climb. County Line I hadn't climbed, but I'd driven it and I knew how uphill it was.

I guess though that in these past two years of living here I've gotten stronger legs. I mean, you really have to... there isn't anything around it. Surprisingly though there was only 1600' of elevation gain. it looked a lot worse on the map. We topped out at around 7500' before the big descent.

If you must climb, the benefit is that you get to descend and descend we did. I'm good at the breakaway descent. I was riding with a friend of mine this morning and when we hit the descent I said "Let's go!" and popped into my 54 up front and disappeared. He caught up a few miles later when I stopped to wait for him. I had an SUV in front of me that I had to keep breaking for but if it hadn't been for that I would have been well over 50mph. Do you know how good 50mph feels? It's fairly exhilirating. (to say the least)

Anyway, 41.4 miles of distance
22.33 miles of climbing
and 19.08 miles of descending. Not bad for a Saturday morning.

Now I think I'll go wash the salt off my body so that I don't taste and feel like a salt lick and do a shave that I haven't done in a few weeks.

More later.