the challenge

Saturday consisted of just over 6.5 hours of heat training on the hills of east Tennessee. See below for the profile. My Garmin profile doesn't look exactly like that since I hitched a ride for 8 of the hottest miles. I have no problem with that either. I still got 110 miles and over 15,000 feet of climbing. I just avoided the impending heat stroke.

It was really beautiful out there, with streams and flowers and Smokey Mountains. I wish somebody had gotten a picture of the road 2 feet in front of me. That seemed to be all I looked at for an hour or so of climbing at 5 mph. At that speed you have to really concentrate on not falling over.



This is my angry face that Joel captured probably 5 miles into the ride. I really had nothing to be angry about at this point. My sunscreen/sweat slick had only begun to form, I still had water in the bottles, food in the tummy, I hadn't gotten a flat yet, and we still had 40 miles before the hills.
The new bike did well enough last weekend that I'm taking her racing on Saturday and Sunday in the Smith & Nephew/Marx & Bensdorf Gran Prix Omnium. It'll be my first attempt at a real road race, and if all goes well, I'll be in the time trial and crit as well. I plan on using the angry face, as seen above, as an intimidation technique. Grrrr.