Sunday we climbed up to Jamestown again, and added a little extra climb in on the way back. It was a beautiful day, but not long after starting, we realized we had a nasty head wind to contend with. For the first 5 miles, it was coming directly at the side of us. At one point I let out a 'girl scream' because I was 95% sure I was going down. It blew me off the road and I was completely out of control. So scary! I managed to fight my bike back onto the road and keep it upright. At that point, we weren't sure what we would end up accomplishing.
At the 5 mile marker, we turned to begin our ascent. Now we were taking the strong wind right in the face. It was definitely adding insult to injury. Climbing, AND a head wind? Not fair. We decided right then and there that we would only be able to do 1/3 of the climb, and then turn off and loop back to the car. We were getting passed constantly. Boulder is filled with professional cyclists. To them, this climb is nothing. It was embarrassing to get passed like we were standing still! We fought the wind (slowly) to the turn off, and then I made the call-Nope, let's keep climbing as long as we can. This was our technique the entire climb. We set a goal, made it to the goal and decided that we should press on. We realized at this point that it was mental strength getting us up there. On ride day, you can bet there will be times we want to give up. We need to learn how to press on, regardless of obstacles.
As you would imagine, we felt GREAT when we reached the top. Just a 2 minute 'stuff food in our mouths' break, and we started the descent. Shortly after starting to descend, a team of 4 professional cyclists passed by us. They were tucked in, giving it their all to get down the hill the fastest. They were peddling their hearts out too. As they passed me, I decided to tuck (try to make myself as aerodynamic as possible) in and gain some speed.
Seriously.....the most hilarious part of the entire day was watching as I came up from behind and completely caught them off guard. They keep looking over their shoulder like "WTF?", and then peddling more to go faster. I had to use my brakes to stop from overtaking them (not a word of a lie). They were the cocky kind of riders.....after they passed us, they expected that they were in front and didn't even attempt to stay to one side of the road. They were all over the road, thinking they were blazing the trail down. Then comes me. I set a new personal downhill speed record that day. 79 kms an hour, or 49 miles/hr. Crazy fast. (Now, my new goal is to break 80kms some day. Den says there is a good opportunity to do it on ride day).
After the descent, we had another climb ahead of us. As we headed up the road, we saw it ahead in the distance....and I'm not going to lie-it was totally intimidating. Our mantra that day was to overcome mental fear though, and we pressed on. It wasn't pretty. We were almost ground to a stop at one point, but both of us climbed that sucker too......and boy did it feel good to get to the top and know it was nothing but downhill from there on in.
YAY!
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| Pictures NEVER do the inclines justice....but you can sort of see the road curving up to the left in front of us |
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