Thursday, 9/10/09

80.2 miles
~6,500 vertical
5 hours

After being a bit lazy and scared off by lightning on Tuesday, then doing my civic duty participating in the trash bash on Wednesday evening, I wanted to get in a good ride today. Allison wanted to join, but I wanted to get in lots of miles and vertical, so I sent her along in the car to the mouth of Lefthand and boogied over there on my bike to meet her. I got a bit of a head start and she passed me on Jay road near Diagonal. I thought I would be chasing up the canyon, but arrived at the Lefthand/36 junction just as she and her friend Jen were about to start. I rode with them for the first 8 miles, then upped the pace a bit and continued all the way to the Brainard gate. At the gate, I sweet talked the nice older lady into letting me through without paying and she even gave me a People magazine to keep me warm on the descent. Things were quiet at the lake and I took my time riding around it, soaking up the awesome views. I really love this spot, especially when it is vacant.

I cruised back down at a quick but safe pace, met up with Allison and Jen at the general store in Ward, chucked my People magazine in the trash and coasted down the hill to fill my bottles with spring water. While there, I glugged a full bottle, re-filled then joined the girls for the effortless descent. I felt good and considered biking through Lyons and Longmont to get 100 miles on my odometer, but then decided to go up the backside of Lee Hill to run an errand in Boulder.

By the time I got into Boulder, I was too worked over to run the errand I went there for and knew I was on the verge of bonking. I had eaten 3 Gu's, 2 packs of Shot Bloks, a sample size Clif Bar and drank 5 bottles of water, but was bird fooded out and just needed some serious food. I worked my way home, realizing I would only get 75, so I looped around through the neighborhoods to make it over 80, which is a high for the year I think. 100 would have been easy if I had stuck to the flats, but with all that vertical, it was not in the cards for me today.

As I was churning along nearing home, I was thinking of some of the tougher stages of the Tour and could not imagine still having to cross the Galibier or the Tourmalet. Ughhh, I'll just leave that to Lance.

Weighing in at 140 lbs today, but will work to counter that with non-stop eating tonight and the Pancake House in the morning.