At 8 AM on Sunday morning roughly 20ish super freaks departed on their daily journey.
The group quickly spread out as terrain turned to dirt roads and began to roll.
The opening miles were a gentle climb to an overlook, before flipping it and heading back down. Then the real loop began.
A majority of the route today was dirt road. Sometimes smooth....some times rocky. The early miles were spent with Lynda and Dave Byers....that is before Lynda had some place to be and dropped it down a gear on her SS.
So for the remainder of the day Dave and myself rode alone. We both had a similar goal to ride a good consistent tempo and to finish before the sun set.Wasn't a ton of climbing today, but there were a few longer rises in the road that had the muscles scream out a little cry.
If you weren't doing a little bit of climbing, you were laying out the wattage on the miles and miles of desert roads. Tail winds good. Head winds bad.
At about this point...some 6.5 hours into the ride I started to feel drained. I stopped and slammed a Starbuck's Double Shot. With in about 20 minutes of drinking the creamy milky beverage I had rocket legs. I was back in the game...and felt like I did at mile 10.
My legs felt awesome....Dave's were drag'n a bit, so I did my part to drag him through the wind. It was the least I could do since he had the GPS an I didn't. Thanks Dave!
As we pushed into the wind, we were caught by Plesko, Kurt, and Dan. We rode with them for a bit.....and then let them go about their business.
Dave and I kept our pace all the way to the intersection at I-15. A mile or so later we caught up to Plesko and the others as they sat on the side of the trail munching on Pringles.
From that point on we pedaled back into town to finish out the 104 mile and 9500 ft of climbing effort. For me, it took 9 hours and 40 minutes from starting point to finishing point. That time includes all stops to take and photos and grab food out of the pack. All the photos and video from today are posted here.