Redlined

Saturday morning was cool and overcast - barely warm enough for short sleeves - but damn fine for a mountain bike ride. I filled my personal fuel tank with some home brewed espresso, cottage cheese, toast, and fruit, and left the garage 'round 10 minutes after 8am. As I was rolling over towards the start line for next week's race I ran into the course marking crew from a local bike shop that is help sponsoring the race. Alex K, Margaret G and Chris L to name just a few of the crew were embarking on a 1/2 day journey around the loop with signage. All very cool people who are committed to local racing. I traversed to the west side of Elden and back downhill to pick up Wilkens and we left the flats of Flagstaff 'round 9am.

4.5 miles later we had climbed 2,300 feet and as much as I tried to pace myself, there's no pacing myself on this climb. It's just hard. Wilkens crushed me by nearly 3 minutes over the nearly hour-long climb, which if replicated next Saturday, will be give him a sufficient cushion to beat me, even though it's another 19 miles back to the finish line. The wiry mother f*cker has like 38" legs, a small torso and can just climb like a goat - he always beats me on sustained climbs, and I'll probably be chasing him until I die trying to catch him.

On my big wheels and with adrenaline putting a huge grin on my face, I made up 45 seconds on him down the 1900 foot drop over the backside of the mountain, and from there on out we rode together back 'round the front side to the finish line in around 2:35 minutes. The thought of entering the marathon category and doing that loop twice wasn't even a thought because I dismissed it before finishing thinking about it. So - it's the open singlespeed class for me. It'll be a small field, and I'll be bringing up the rear or close to it.

We added a few miles at the end for training's sake - rolling into my garage at about 4 hours ride time on the nose. I was just on the edge of hydration/cramping issues but never quite got there, thankfully. I ate as much as I could, slept for an hour, took a walk with Jamocha, had a nice dinner with D, but Good God my knees were sore and my legs were toast. I think that was about max effort without risking a blown engine, and I'm not really looking forward to racing that course again next weekend.

But damn....after a day like that I feel incredibly fortunate for my health, this mountain town and all its idiosyncracies, and the fact that we've been able to make it work here albeit by the skin of our teeth at times. The only upward mobility here is biking, hiking, climbing, or skiing up the mountains. Right now, I'm cool with that - because "at the end of the day", it's all downhill home.