Long day in the saddle…

I met up with my bro this morning for our first road ride together in eon’s. We started in Provo, and worked our way over to American Fork canyon to ride the Alpine Loop. This is my favorite ride. The upper part is so cool. Narrow road, little traffic (on a weekday), spectacular scenery, lots of switchbacks, and a looong climb.

Unfortunately, we were turned back near the top due to some hasty construction work being done to repair a section of road that had washed out in a recent storm. Undaunted, we headed back down the canyon and climbed over the SunCrest road into Salt Lake valley. A huge crosswind on the descent (and some loose bearings in my rear wheel that I discovered later) had me crawling down the hill like a near-sighted granny with the emergency brake engaged and the hazard lights flashing. I think Phil was a little worried about me, the bike was just feeling REALLY squirrelly and I got spooked when I let it run.

My bright idea was to take the frontage road along the freeway as we headed south. I’ve ridden it a few times before and thought it was ok. What I didn’t think of is that it had always been on a weekend – fairly quiet. Today is Friday and there’s a huge gravel pit in full operation. That means trucks… No shoulder to ride on and a huge headwind made for a pretty scary time of it. I put my head down and just started cranking into the wind with Phil on my wheel trying to get us out of there as quickly as possible. We had to sprint through a construction zone complete with ruts, holes, mud, dust, and puddles. Fun!! not

When I got back to the house, most everyone was out shopping, so I took the opportunity to contine my ride and get some more miles in. I headed up Maple Canyon (steep 4 mile climb) with 90 miles of hard riding already in my legs. Turns out I was able to tie my personal best that I set (with fresh legs…) 10 years ago. Nice!!!

I finished off the day with 101 miles and 6 1/2 hours of riding.