Tag: Cycling

11,394 feet

Today’s ride bumped me to 11,394 ft of elevation gained on my bike for this week (this week being Monday-Sunday). That’s my second biggest week of elevation gain solely from my bike, the first being Cycle Oregon in 2016 when I did over 28,000ft…

Considering it’s the third full week in January, I’m feeling pretty good about that. Also sore ?I’m definitely feeling sore.

Today we completed the ride that sent us home turned into miserable popsicles just two weeks ago. Many things were the same: it was still windy, (albeit a little less so down low, but more … Continue reading

Cycling, snow, and tummy aches

I seem to tagging a high number of this new year’s posts as “mishap”, a fact that has not been lost on me out in woods or on the roads. I AM learning from them. But each one is a bit painful.

This last round happened on Saturday.

We had the idea to bike up to Ward (at about 9K ft) via a new route (route 7, to be exact). The steepness was a little gentler than our other two routes, and we could do it as a loop ride. We’d start with 12 gently rolling miles out to Lyons, … Continue reading

Cycling, sunshine, and tummy aches

Apparently it’s Wednesday. I’ve been confused about the day of the week for the past three days. But no matter. It was a beautiful, sunny, and warm (58 degrees!) Wednesday.

Unfortunately, my tummy has been quite unsettled for the past three days. I sort of wonder if all the cold air from the past couple activities has contributed to it’s out-of-sortness. But it was SO nice out, that despite feeling a bit blah, I really wanted to get out.

The deal I made with myself was that I’d go very slow, in order not to suck in so much cold … Continue reading

How To Incorrectly Layer

Today Paul and I went on a bike ride. The ride is known in Boulder as “Super Flagstaff”. If you’re really curious, you can read a breakdown of the sections here. Suffice it to say, it’s a hard 4.5 mi, ~2,000ft climb. The average grade is somewhere around 8% (though it goes up to 20% in parts) with the hardest bit in the last mile. The whole thing unceremoniously tops out at 7,625ft at a row of mailboxes on the side of the road, where you feel like you’d like to collapse.

The Strava record on the course is … Continue reading

The Second Attempt: [Part 3 of 3]

THE SKI/CLIMB (part 1):

We grabbed our skis and climbing gear from the car, and headed out to the start point. By the time we actually started climbing it was just after 3:00 AM.

I was so hopeful, because our two skis done after hard bike rides had ended up feeling really great. This one, not at all. We were tired from the start. My legs felt like lead. I was so sleepy that I would close my eyes for four glides, open them for a few minutes, and close them again. I was practically sleeping on my skis. We … Continue reading

The Second Attempt: [Part 2 of 3]

THE BIKE (part 1):

It sort of felt hard to believe we were now about to bike to Mount Hood, but off we headed.

We took off from Hood River to start the climb up. It’s hard to replicate a climb like this, because unless you’re biking up a mountain it’s rare to have so much uphill and so little downhill. We’re talking 7,300ft of climbing over 46 miles. The elevation profile looks like this:

There’s one 1,000ft descent around Mount Hood Meadows, but it’s a bit disheartening because you then have to make up that loss (and more) to … Continue reading