I am sitting at Break Espresso about to enjoy my second day off from work on this 4 day weekend. I am eating a cinnamon roll (for those of you who know what I am talking about, its extraordinary) and blogging about my big climb record yesterday. I started out at the parking lot and went up spring creek all the way to the wilderness boundary.
I went pretty steady making sure to start out gently. Thoughts of middle chain ring all the way to the top dancing in my head. I blew up at around 30 minutes with my heart rate singing a miserable tune at 179 beats a minute (another record for this year). I felt the edge of unconsciousness creeping in as I tried to stay standing on the steepest part of the trail just before the junction with the Trail of tears runoff.
From there I recovered somewhat and slowly started to regain balance. I was so dizzy and all I could do was the granny gear. After 1 hour and 28 minutes I finished in the middle ring on top at the boundary. The trail was longer than I remember and the big blow out a distant memory. I was feeling great. I descended in 15 minutes and my quads were exhausted. I felt great afterwards and went home to a big plate of pasta. Ah, what to do today. Well, besides posting my new web site.
Terrain Distance: 8.3 miles