Distance: 105 miles
Terrain: Hills and switchbacks.
Conditions: Humidity
Max climbing distance: 8000 ft.
Max Elevation: 9426 ft.
Today we climbed Rabbit Ear's Pass, which was no joke. It hit us immediately, and it hit us hard. After a long and tedious climb, we finally hit the summit - the continental divide. Typically, we have a huge downhill after hitting a summit, but instead we just got more rolling hills. The downhill was more steady, and we really only descended about 2000 ft. It took a while to get through the mountain pass, but once we were finished, the scenery became beautiful. Mountains surrounded us, everything was green, there was finally a minimal amount of roadkill, and the wind was at our backs. However, about 50 miles into the ride, the knee pain that I once knew from the soccer field came back. It was piercing, and I hobbled to lunch at the 65-mile mark. After eating I took two Advil pills and it lasted me about another 10 miles. After that, the knee pain just kept coming. Considering there's a guy on our route that has been riding each and every day with excruciating pain due to a broken pelvis and part of his lung removed, I chose not to rack myself. I just kept pushing through the pain, and it eventually became easier to ride with.
I was riding with Doug and David. They both were nice enough to ride at a pace I could handle. Somehow we still made great time despite my pain. However, like always, Mother Nature struck in the last ten miles. Not with wind, not with heat, but with torrential downpour. Lightning, thunder, cats, dogs, and the like were all there to grace us as we tried to finish. Crew tried to rack us, but since we were so close we convinced them to let us book it to the finish. Mud was flying everywhere and we were all getting soaked, but we stuck to it and made it to the end. It was the most satisfying thing to finish in the rain. We all worked extremely hard to get there and it felt great to have fought through the knee pain and finished a century day.
For dinner we went to a local grill and ate with the Rogers family and a lot of KRG Capital employees. Everyone that was there is going to ride along with us tomorrow, so it was fun to get to know them before doing so. When we got back to lodging, everyone was pretty bored so about 10 of us decided to play the "last person to sneeze loses" game. It went on for 45 minutes before people went insane and had to call it quits. We had a lot of fun today, and tomorrow is only 45 miles before a day off.
1) At the continental divide
2) The sky...before it got dark.
3) My pace line after the big finish.
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