Searle Pass - Sunday 8/3/08

Ummmm...who had the brilliant idea of getting up at the crack of dawn to go ride for 5hrs where you can barely breathe? Cynthia??? Good idea girl!

Cynthia, Jeny and myself met up at Cooper for an awesome ride in the mountains. I have to admit, I have never ridden up a pass before and I was a little nervous about the climbs but luckily the climbs never got too steep and unbearable. I also had never met Jeny before but I've heard great things about her from Cynthia....one being that she's smokin' fast. OMG, I don't think I've ever ridden with a fast chica like her before....that being said, most of the shots I got of her were of her behind and of her waaaaay ahead of us.

The trail was AMAZINGLY beautiful! Wild flowers everywhere, the singletrack stayed singletrack and it flowed in and out of old spooky forests. When we got out of the tree line it started hailing on us and the wind picked up and Jeny saw some lightening and the thunder rolled a few times but we pressed on to make it to the top. I could hardly keep my wheel pointed straight at that point and had to stop bunches just to catch my breath and the trail did get steep and rocky near the top, rocky enough that I walked a lot. I think because of the altitude I was second guessing myself and in turn chickened out on a few things but oh well...I guess I'll have to go back and ride it again.

Jeny actually broker her front shifter cable right off on a nasty root climb. None of us had zip ties or any kind of tape but we were going to sacrifice a tube to tie it up but Jeny wanted to try and strap her handlebar light to it and it worked pretty good. And even with a broken front shifter she managed to kick butt!

I think the ride time was around 5hrs, don't know the altitude gain or mileage...that's Cynthia's department :) I do know that we were stuck in traffic for over 3hrs on I-70 trying to get home. Thanks to a couple Agave Martini's at the Rio afterwards....the trauma of the drive home melted away!

Here are the pics from the ride, click on the picture below for the entire album

Searle Pass

I realized a few things on this ride, I'm not that technical of a climber, I do not see the "lines" on climbs the first time around so I usually end up doing it over and over until I get it, I under estimate myself and when I approach something that looks hard I immediately think I can't do it but when I look back at it I realize I can so I usually end up doing it over....I'm going to start calling myself the "Do Over Queen". I'm way more comfortable descending than I am with climbing which is a completely different aspect of riding for me, I'll try way more stuff on descents than I will on climbs and I don't know when the shift actually happened. But I'm not going to argue with myself about it :)

-Kim