Distance: 95 miles
Max Elevation: 8,000 ft.
Total Climbing Distance: 12,000 ft.
Terrain: Hills, some more hills, and then some more hills.
This post is late as well since I was way too tired to write last night. I'm currently sitting at a laundromat so that I can get wifi.
We woke up in Jackson at about 5:30am and went back to Mel's diner to have a sponsored breakfast with a TON of food to get us enough calories for the day. After breakfast we headed out to Kirkwood, our immanent doom. It was flat for about 5-7 miles, and then the first hill came. I was riding with Jack and Doug again since we had done so well the day before. Again, we planned to just keep it steady the whole day. I found myself going a lot faster than them this time around, so I knew that I wanted to move up a pace line at the next crew stop if we ran into anyone. One of the other cyclists was in the same situation as me, so we decided to form a pace line of two. As the hills kept coming, I still found myself ahead of his pace. We were averaging about 4mph uphill, which was actually hard for me to do since it was rather slow. The hills kept coming, and my partner started falling further and further back, so I knew that I was going to have to switch it up again.
We managed to make it to lunch together, which was 38 miles in to the ride and 6,000 feet up. After lunch, since my partner was hurting so badly, he decided to rack himself, so I switched again and joined up with Kevin, who will be a senior next year at the University of Iowa. Kevin hasn't been riding the past couple of days due to a formerly broken pelvis hurting, and having once had part of his lung taken out. Both of those in mind, the fact that Kevin made it to lunch was extremely admirable. Kevin and I took off together and were finally at a pace that was fast enough for the both of us. It was great to finally be on the move. However, I didn't really realize that the hardest part was ahead of me.
As Kevin and I continued through the mountain passes (we were to scale 3 total), we found hardship after hardship in not only making it up the hills but keeping cool from the heat and exhaustion beginning to set in. It had taken us 6 hours to get to lunch, and we had no idea how long it would take to keep going. The hardest part of the ride was immediately after lunch. It was about a 10 mile uphill. At the top of the hill, crew was waiting for us. One crew member told me that people ski here. That was about the last thing I wanted to hear. We then had about a 6 mile downhill. There was a lot of wind and the roads weren't that great, so it was hard to control the bike and my speed at the same time. That's when I started flying though. I hit about 43 mph and decided that it was terrifying, so I slowed down to a comfortable speed.
After the downhill was a lot of flat land, but I noticed Kevin beginning to fall behind. We stopped at the next crew member's turn signal, and Kevin was coughing a lot. He also mentioned that his pelvis was hurting him pretty badly. The wind had blown him into a pot hole and it bumped him enough to hit something in the wrong place. The crew member and I both thought that Kevin should stop, since we were at 75 miles and still had 20 to go. There was also another mountain pass coming up that would be pretty hard on him. I decided that I would wait with Kevin and either rack with the next van since I couldn't continue by myself, or wait for the next pace line and join with them. Luckily, the next pace line came before the next van. The pace line had 3 people in it, so we split up to two pace lines of two.
Kevin told me to finish the ride for him, so I pushed as hard as I could with my partner, and at about 7:45pm, we finished. We spent 12 hours on the bike, and I was more than sore. My legs were burning, my head was aching, and my bottom was just a culmination of pains.
We reached the finish at the shoreline of Lake Tahoe and headed to lodging to shower. It was great knowing that I had finished one of the hardest days of the trip. Scratch the first day - I have never pushed myself harder than this day.
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