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into the
first rest stop at mile 31 at 7:20AM - average speed
almost 25mph including a couple photo stops.
Unfortunately, the next 27 miles to rest stop number two
was not as fast. The first part went ok, but the winds
soon picked up and the last 12-13 miles were quite a
challenge. A ran into my first unhappy dogs as I came
into Byron. Fortunately, my speed was still fairly high
so a bit of a sprint got me past their territory before
they could take a bite out of my foot. Since they looked
like Australian sheep dogs, I'm sure they could have
outrun me if they really wanted to but I made it through
unscathed.
I caught
up to Doug and Roberta (both on our able crew) a short
while later and after a couple miles of pulling, hung on
the back for the rest of the ride to rest stop two. The
winds were coming diagonally from the side, so we tried
to form an echelon paceline (staggered paceline) to
block the wind for the riders behind.
After
rest stop two came THE CLIMB. This is the climb that
everyone had been talking about since the beginning of
the trip. Starting at the valley floor at just over 3000
feet, we'd climb up the Bighorn mountains to eventually
reach a peak of 9430 feet. The lunch stop was actually
just a little below 8000 feet, at the top of the
steepest part of the climb.
There was
a competition of sorts for who could reach the lunch
stop in the shortest time from rest stop two. Those that were interested in
competing officially got their start time marked on
their arm to see the elapsed time at the top. I knew I
had no chance of coming close to the fastest time, so I
didn't bother, but I did note the time anyway.
I was the
fourth one to get to the lunch stop 18 miles and 5000
feet later, but I think had only the 8th fastest time at 1 hour
50 minutes. Since I made such good time early in the
morning, I was one of the first to start up the climb. I
think I could have shaved a few minutes off this if I
hadn't stopped several times for photos, but I didn't
come close to the fastest time anyway. Marc from Belgium
set a new PAC Tour record of one hour 17 minutes - a
pretty phenomenal performance.
After
lunch, we headed up the rest of the climb, reaching the
summit of 9430 feet. I was surprised I could still
breath, let alone ride a bike up a hill. The views were
pretty dramatic, but hard to capture with the camera.
After a
gradual descent to 8000 feet, we reach the last rest
stop at mile 102, then started yet another climb. On any
other day, this 1100 foot climb would have been
considered significant, but it was so small compared to
THE CLIMB that it wasn't even mentioned on the route
sheet. There were ominous thunderclouds in the area and
we even rode through some areas that had clearly been
soaked moments earlier, but I don't think anyone in the
group actually got rained on.
After
reaching the summit of this final climb, we began a 16
mile 4500 foot descent that was pretty spectacular. I'm
still not terribly confident on these kinds of
relatively steep descents with lots of switchbacks, so I
rode the brakes a bit more than others and got passed by
several riders. Once we reached Dayton at mile 126, I
caught up with the others (Lon, Karl and Phil) and we
rode together until we reached our final adventure of
the day.
Our plan
had been to ride the last seven miles into Sheridan on
the Rt 90 shoulder. Unfortunately, most of this stretch
is under construction and there is no shoulder. When we
got to this point, Lon found someone in charge at the
construction crew and we spent about a half hour waiting
as he negotiated with the crew foreman to figure out the
safest way to get 45 cyclists down this stretch of road.
We ended
up following one of the construction supervisors (who
was driving a pickup) down a dirt road as we skirted the
construction equipment. When we got past the part that
was under active construction, we rode down a several
mile stretch of "asphalt" that had been stripped of its
top layer and was covered sporadically with mounds of
gravel and sand and had the occasional crack and
pothole. I found the whole thing kind of fun, but some
of the folks that came through later (and were a little
more tired than I was) were frustrated and annoyed by
the experience.
We
finally rolled into the motel around 4:45PM, even with
our little cyclocross adventure. When I arrived, the
aerobars my wife shipped were waiting for me and I
installed them on my bike. Hopefully, this will help the
problems I've been having with hand cramps.
We're all
looking forward to a slightly easier ride tomorrow,
although I have to say that I really enjoyed the ride
today.
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