On the road again

Got out on the road bike for the first ride of 2011. The first time I rode out here, I had just come in first in my division in a sprint triathlon. My bike time was what did it, so I was feeling pretty confident. I headed out on a ride that I found on mapmyride.com and soon discovered that it entailed riding about 10 miles in each direction along a 60mph undivided highway. No.

So I trekked up the road to where I had stayed when visiting Fort Collins last March. It had seemed pretty low traffic and mellow. Although I had seen warnings about the big climb on Rist Canyon, I thought, no problem, I will just turn at the big climb. Um, it was not that there was "a big climb" on that ride, it was all a big climb... 3000ft over 12 miles.

I had just arrived in Colorado, so was not acclimatized.  After grinding away for about an hour, I had made it about 1/3 of the way up. I wanted to take a nap. So I took a break, ate food and then descended at over 30mph, which took like 5 seconds. Depressing.

Not from today, but the stupid look on my face is not far off from how I must have looked

 

With that in mind today, I was wondering how hills would be now that I can breathe up here. Well, I made it up all of them, but it wasn't pretty... there was gasping and snot, not gonna lie. But I was pretty happy that I made it.

I didn't take the monster hills (the one in front of my house is actually called Monster Hill), but I still made. I frequently wished that I had one more gear (my bike is geared for the flats of the Mid-Atlantic), but I must be finally getting some brain calluses from the bi-monthly torturefest that we call Towers, cuz I just kept going.