And then some! Today it is raining out and heavy too.  I am planning a 6 hour ride tonight as well as I prepare for some endurance races.  How does one pay bills and do back to back 6 hour rides?

Yesterday I hammered myself and it took an entire pint of vanilla ice cream and berries to fully recover last night. Do you want to recover from a 6 hour 66 mile off road epic ride?  Sleep 10 hours and eat some ice cream!

So there I was about to embark on a journey that I had done before (check out the Grave Creek Growler Page) but today I planned on seeing how much further I could go until I hit the six hour mark (my weekly time budget).  I would follow my Vision Quest Epic  that I am planning. This endeavor would set the weekly climbing record previously set at 10,999 feet in February. This week I would accumulate 11,300 vertical feet of climbing and it was this big ride that put me there. And … I got some photos and videos along the way.

After climbing for an hour and 20 minutes I reached my first check point at mile 12 with almost half of Sunday’s climbing in the bag at 3,225 feet. The next leg took me over the Grave Creek Range which is a ridge that runs all the way to Petty Mountain.  I made it to check point 2 at mile 27.3 (9,8 from CP1) at around 3 hours since I had left home.  All downhill from there to Dry Gulch!

As I headed down to Dry Gulch I switched from CarboRocket to Cytomax and to my surprise it seemed that Cytomax wasn’t keeping pace and I started to slow down. This was surprising but could be attributed to all the climbing in the Grave Creek Range.  There are three REALLY steep climbs that put me at the 171 beats per minute range.

From Dry Gulch I pedaled my way across the valley floor to the Point Six Road. I reached the gate/parking area at about 5 hours and felt toasted.  After eating a baggy of potato chips I was ready to rock and roll.  This was the first time I used potato chips and to my surprise they REALLY worked.  I am not kidding.

I had run out of time before I got too far up the Point Six Road so I turned and left for home base.  Once home I crashed the rest of the evening and ate ice cream.  Ahh the first epic mountain bike ride of the summer and I only ran into two snow banks.