A Goal Reached And A personal Best!
Well, I now have more miles in 2006 than 2005.
But even better than that...I took 2 minutes off my best time on one my local climbs.
I time myself from when I leave my house until I get to the parking lot at the summit of Morgan Territory, about 30 miles from my house. The road I take to get out there, Deer Valley, has a few little hills in it - probably a quarter of mile long, 5 % grade. It has no shoulder, so during the week, I wait until after 8:30 to head out as it does get some commute traffic.
I then turn onto Marsh Creek Road and into a headwind. Marsh Creek definitely rolls, but has an upward trend. The final hill on it is a bear! Krebs gives it two chevrons. It's one that has gotten easier to do over the years. :) It's kind of nice to do a hill like that regularly.
Then you turn onto Morgan Territory Road. This starts off as a beautiful two lane road, very little traffic, lots of ranches and horses. Just really pleasant riding. However, eventually the road deteriorates into what some refer to as a goat path. It's like a lane and a quarter wide. There are patches on top of patches, there are potholes you could lose a small child in. But it's shaded and there's almost no traffic. It runs beside a creek, and you can hear the wind and the critters.
Now, I know I'm having an awesome ride. At each road junction I'm aware that I'm on a record setting pace. And on Deer Valley and Marsh Creek, I was definitely trying to push hard, down in the drops, just trying to hammer.
Once I got to the climbing on MT, I stopped focusing on the average speed and thought about climbing as fast as I could, without blowing out my knees, or redlining too much. Because that's the way I need to think when I climb on a double century. If I could get a personal best - great and if not, it would be close. Which is great too! This is about a 4 mile climb, average grade of 5 - 6% with two spots that push up around 10%.
I was so stoked when I hit the parking lot at the top and saw I was two minutes faster. The climb felt a lot easier.
Now, I get to descend this road. Whenever someone tells me a descent has crummy pavement, I ask them if they have descended the Clayton side of MT. This is in my mind, the epitome of crummy pavement. Not only that, but it's a twisty, narrow little road with critters. You have to constantly be on your toes on this road, both as a driver and a cyclist. You can't let your mind wander.
I'm almost to the bottom, when two things happen. The first, a truck comes around a corner, hauling a$$ and I'm so glad that I'm only about a third of the way into the single lane we need to share. Obviously, I got to the right just fine. But, I hope it made him think about going a little bit more slowly. He couldn't see around the corner any better than I could. Anyway...
The second thing... the road was so bumpy, it made the GPS bounce out of its RAM mount. It hit my right arm and went flying down the bank towards the stream. God, I thought for sure it was going in the water. But, no, it landed halfway down the hill.
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. I discovered two other places to get water. Neither tasted great, but on a hot day, you can't complain. :)
V.
