Day 3

Posted on August 23, 2011

Today was the “climbing day”  but on paper it didn’t look that hard (it was no mnt baldy) but with 3 days in my legs I was worried how I would feel. The “fast group” was down to 3 people today as we started with a 4 mile 900’ climb so people wanted to start easy.  We started nice and easy but soon tempo rolled up and we were cookin.  Looking back at the data the hardest work I did all day was in the first 20mins of the ride.  My legs felt pretty good esp for the short warm up or no warm up.

As we climbed the sun started to come out and by the top I was all smiles rolling my arm warmers down we rolled on and could see below a HUGE wall of fog 1,000 feet below us… yup we descended right down into it and it was thick!

It wasn’t long before we caught the other riders riding cautiously in the pea soup fog. Further down the road Jim had to start at mile 12 as his gear accidently got forwarded ahead in a sag vehicle.

He jumped in with us and before we knew it we had got to the front group on the road.  We rolled on and had a nice group going.  We happened on some serious construction on the pch where the road had been taken out by a land slide last winter (which caused a reroute of the TOC in May)

After some rollers and some good ol chatting a sag vehicle started to moto pace us and the tempo started to roll up, and 1 by 1 people popped off. I was sitting 3^rd wheel when the guy in front of me lost the wheel.  I took a look up the road and though I’ll give it a try and I chased back! So now its Daniel inches from the bumper at 25mph going up hill I’m just too chicken to really get that close I’m barely hanging onto the draft and chicken out and pull the rip cord but still chase hard.  The vehicle pulls off and circles back for me and with just me behind the car I’m feeling more comfortable and now we are rockin again amazing how fast you can go in that draft!  I get pulled up to Daniel and now we are miles ahead of the group… We roll on at a fun pace and hit the main climb of the day a ~4 mile ascent to lunch stop at mile 50.  Not only do we climb out of teh fog but well above it!

We roll on the tempo and Daniel is nicer to me and holds back and we roll into lunch.

With only 20 miles to go after lunch we decided to roll out with a good size group and just relax and enjoy the breaking fog.

We stop to take some pics of the elephant seals

And some Zebras by the hurst castle.

We rolled into san simion into the hotel and chilled out another great day in the saddle!