We got advice from the local working the campground. I'm guessing she is not a cyclist. She told us that we could go two ways. One was short and steep. The other way was flatter and a "little" longer. We chose the latter. We chose wrong.
Here's the map and elevation profile for the climb portion of our ride:
In case this is too blurry to read, that's about 1,100 feet of elevation gain in a little less than 4 miles. Most of us were on mountain bikes.
If we had gone the shorter, steeper way, this would have been our elevation profile:
That's 600 feet of elevation gain in a little under two miles.
Instead, we did nearly double the elevation gain and more than double the miles. We are such bad asses! Even though we worked way harder than expected, it was still a great ride. Everybody made it, there were no casualties, and only one flat tire. And there was wine at the end. Success!
My crazed smile suggests that I think I'm a lot closer to the top than I actually was at the time.
Since I hate the feel of ultra-padded bike shorts, I usually bike in my tri-shorts. For this ride, I wore my tri-shorts under some neon yellow-green running shorts (to match my safety yellow sports bra).
Because I had yet to test run my tri-shorts in the water (and I was too hot, sore and tired to find and change into my swimsuit), I stripped down to my tri-shorts and sports bra and ran directly into the river.
It was like an all-natural ice bath. We also pretended to be salmon and tried to swim upstream.
Verdict: Tri-shorts* are great on bike and in the water, but a little muffin-toppy.
* The tri-shorts are the Pearl Izumi Women's Tri Short. I got mine at the outlet in Lake Taco. They were 60% off because the logo was in the wrong place and therefore, irregular. Deal! I liked the black ones so much for biking that I went back and bought the gray as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment