Cycling Update

Road Race This Weekend

This coming weekend I have my first ever road race. It is the Garden Creek Gap Road Race a little south of Pocatello in Arimo. I am excited and nervous at the same time. I have been training a lot, but not enough. I have improved drastically, yet I still feel like I have a long ways to go. This race is a loop course. I will make two laps of 25 miles each for a total of 50 miles. I have decided that if I am in second-to-last place I will be thrilled. If I am in last place, I will still consider it a great learning experience. The course is set on a hill. The total elevation gain between the two laps is about 1800 ft. Here is an elevation map of the hill for a single lap.

Training on Sunnyside Hill

In preparation for this race, I did the longest hill ride ever yesterday. I rode a total of 60+ miles up and down both the front side and back side of Sunnyside hill and all the way to Bone. That is a total of 3600 ft in elevation gain, twice that of the race this weekend. According to my heart rate monitor, that is 3200+ calories (1 pound of fat is equivalent to 3500 calories) Below is the picture of the elevation. Pay special attention to the grades. The purple and red are the killer parts of the hill where I went up. At times I was in the easiest gear pushing as hard as I could and only going 5-8 mph. The orange parts are the backside of the hill coming back up the hill.

Here is a picture of Sunnyside Hill, taken in April (when there was still snow). There is a huge wind farm behind the hill. On my ride yesterday, there were numerous semi-trucks hauling pieces of the windmill up and down the hill. The trucks take up just about the whole road so it was spooky when they would drive by. The flaggers would flag me and tell me to slow down. Did I mention that I typically ride between 40 and 50 mph down this hill? My top speed is just over 52 mph. My slowest speed is about 3 mph going up the hill.

The 75 Mile Date

This month, Melissa and I went on a 75 mile trip together. We left from Denny's on the north-east side of town. We traveled North and West around Shattock Butte, then North and East around the Menan Buttes and finally back to Denny's. This was the longest and hilliest ride Melissa has done. 75 miles is a LONG trip. We finished in just under 5 hours. We had fairly nice weather although it got windy at times. I am very proud of Melissa. She is quite amazing.

Here is Melissa attacking a hill.

And me at a rest stop at the bottom of the Menan Buttes.

One of the best parts of the trip is the scenery and farm lands. I love the mountains in the background.

Here is one of the Menan Buttes. Apparently they are famous "The Menan Buttes are two of the world's largest tuff cones—volcanoes formed when basaltic magma boils up through ground water." I rode past these hills a couple weeks prior and the fields were completely brown.

We got to cross the Snake River a few times. Here we are on the Menan Bridge.

Apparently the farmers heard about the upcoming frost and decided to cover the crops??? That is a LOT of plastic.

After a long day of riding we went out for Dinner. There is no better feeling than knowing that after all the effort and calories used that you can enjoy yourself with a good meal.


Brian