Saturday, April 16, 2011

Tortillas, Canyons, and Hills. Paul is back in the Rando business.

Went out today to start my P4 award.  The R12 is a bit tough for me right now with my kids being at the stage in life that they are but I find the P4 is made of rides that are about the length of a good training ride.  So today I started with the one I just put together that heads back to the end of the pavement above Tortilla Flat and back. Was it foolish to do a ride with this much climbing the week before the Mother Road 300k ride?  Well,  I haven't been able to ride a whole lot the last week and a half and if I didn't get out I'd just bust.  So there you have it.  Am I up for a double century next week?  Probably.  It won't be my slowest time I am sure but neither will it be the sub 12 hour time I got last year.  Anyway!  This morning's ride was great.  I actually managed to get to the information control with enough time that if it had been a real control I would have easily made it.  I thought that was pretty cool considering how much climbing is involved to get there.  Couldn't have been a more perfect morning,  temp was 60 when I started out and 80 when I got back.  Hope the folks doing the high country 300k don't get too hot this year.  It's funny to think there was 10 inches of snow up there last week and this week it will be in the 70's to 80's up there.   Anyway,  I took some video of today's ride and will link to it below.  I am sure it wasn't my fastest time but if you subtract the stop at Sonic on the way back and the late start,  I finished in about 4 hours 20 minutes.  Officially it was 5 hours and 3 minutes.   Not too bad for having headwinds both ways  with a few tailwinds on the way back before the wind shifted.

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