Getting Vertical

Mt Crumpet

The Crappy Cyclist is not a hill climber.
 Surprised? Of course your not.

Here's a screen shot of my ride this past Saturday. There's nothing compelling about this ride except maybe that it's massively hilly. I don't like hills therefore I do them and often. I fantasize my friends are too afraid to ride with me for fear I leave them in a catatonic state from burying them on our hilly venture. Or even better, for my birthday I'm given one of those fun polka dot jerseys  as a gift 'cause I'm so damn good at climbing. I stand there opening the gift in front of my non goat like friends and say, " ah geeze, you shouldn't have!" while secretly planning our next hilly adventure to painfully reinforce to everyone who is *Queen Of The Hills*  A girl can dream,  can't she?

Back to reality....

 At the end of this ride shown above, ( I ) never want to look at the average speed because it's usually horrible. Ok.. always horrible.  It's not even a long ride by most standards, (barely 60 miles) but it can and usually(for me)feel like a 90 + mile effort.  I know this route well and have done it  far too many times to count.  I just point my wheel out the drive way, utter "head for the hills" and my bike seamlessly knows where to go. If there's one thing that's a constant whether feeling fit or substantially under trained,  this ride NEVER   feels easy. Maybe if I had a pie plate as a cassette and a triple chain ring up front.....

Last weekend I spent 6.5 hours with my cyclocross bike finding my way through the trails and roads of greater Boston. It was tough to say the least. 60% trails 40 of road. I was wrecked for 3 days.  Surely that would make this 60 miler feel leisurely, no?   No.

Well one thing stands true besides me being non-goat like:  What goes up (no matter how slow)

gets to come back down and THAT makes me smile.

Thanks for stopping by!