WTF?!
It’s Sunday the fourth, and I find myself climbing Tantalus with Ckucke and Scat again.
My recent conviction about enjoying riding comes into question right around the first chicane below the Contemporary Museum. My legs feel better this time around, but the heart rate climbs, and my ability to uptake oxygen maxes out. The sitting area has not yet recovered from the New Year’s Eve ride, and the arms are definitely experiencing the wiggles from not having trained or ridden for far too long. I am pegged through the turns and up through euco. Although I am able to recover heart-wise and lung-wise when it flattens out, I only become aware of the discomfort in my ass, feet, and hands as a result. I essentially ride alone, having been dropped by Ckucke and Scat back when the houses ended.
At the one-lane-bridge, I find my legs again, and upshift to pick up the pace on the final leg of the climb. My legs and ass appreciate the change from crappy to smooth pavement, and I am able to run two gears higher as a result of the decreased drag. I am feeling the burn in the lower back and my legs are spent as I turn into the parking lot at the top. I lie down to stretch my back. Scat had nearly gone upchuck when he reached the top from pushing the pace and keeping stuck on Ckucke, the climbing machine. I managed to take three minutes off the climb this time around.
The descent went quickly, with less water on the roadway to worry about. I still was a little tentative about cranking the speed though- the XTR V-brakes on the Bridgestone don’t fill me with a pile of confidence, and I don’t really feel like testing the threshold of cornering grip on the tires. My short-travel dual-suspension air-shock disc-brake drop-bar bike project seems to be closer on the horizon…
My ass really hurts.
D = 16.67 km (10.34-miles), Vavr = 16.3 km/h (10.1 mph), Vmax = 61.1 km/h (38.0 mph), T = 1-hour, 1-minute (climb took 45-minutes, so descent was therefore 16-minutes)
Pictures here
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