Today was a pretty fun/intense ride. I went with a friend and she has a hybrid bike, so we paced it pretty slow, but let me paint a mental picture ( I might go out and photograph this place soon just b/c it's sooooo pretty)...
You go to a fairly unassuming road that has almost a 2% decline, ride about 200 yards and then your decline starts to DECLINE! You're thinking "crap! How far down are we going?! And can I get back out??!!" . You come to the bottom of this first downhill after about 1/8 of a mile and cross a really pretty wooden bridge that crosses a beautiful little creek...however...you never see the creek b/c you become immediately distracted by the seemingly 900% grade on the hill in front of you! And did I mention that there is very little speed to be made from the giant downhill due to TWO hair pins at the bottom of the road?
I'd go on, but I can see that this will become a VERY long story and so I'll cut to the meat and potatoes... The ride goes like that for 3 miles to the end and then 3 miles back out (there are NO shortcuts), well we thought we'd be rock stars and do that stinkin' thing twice. For the mathematically impaired, that's 12 miles total. You're thinking, "12 miles, HA! I could do that in 30 minutes!" It took us over an HOUR!!!! Now I mentioned she was on a heavier bike, but I'm not gonna lie, I think the ol' heart-rate was peaking on my end for sure! I didn't count the hills, so I need to do that. I'm also going to bring my Garmin when I go again to see the grade percentage and what the heck my poor heart is doing, and that speed thing would be interesting too, but the crazy turns back it almost impossible to start the uphills off a down. I might bring Mike so we can PR it and see how long it takes at a race pace. I'm pretty sure tomorrow is an off or light day :)
First thing I ever learned about biking, what ever goes down, must come back up, and it sucks
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