There and back again......

Saturday wanderings of a tall skinny man in the low elevations of the Wasatch.

Rhonda hooked up with Lucy, Heather and Tasha for a not so girlie ride in Park City on Saturday so it left me with the day to myself for a nice long solo ride. I started up the Alexander creek trail next to Mountain Dell Golf course and slogged up to Parleys summit. From Parleys I headed down through the far west side of Jeremy ranch on the Moose Hollow trail where it hooked up with the 24-7 Connector and eventually Flying Dog. Using the Preserve connector I made a pretzel out of Flying Dog allowing me to descend both sides on the same day so I could officially end the debate over which side has the better descent (switchbacks win hands down). Dropped down to the Glenwild parking lot for a water bottle refill, did two laps of Glenwild and headed back on 24-7 to retrace my steps up over Parleys and back to the car. The combination of the 60 mile distance (99% singletrack), plenty of climbing and the heat made the ride quite a spankdown. About 20 miles in I was losing some motivation and considered turning around but by 30 miles in I was loving life again. At mile 40 I found a second wind and decided to turn my planned 50 miler into a 60 miler by doing one more lap of Glenwild. At mile 50 as I was climbing back up Moose Hollow (the steepest climb of the day) I was cursing my stupid ambition as I ran out of water and couldn't choke down my hot energy drink. Once I got back to the car and got my hands on some cold fluid once again all was right in the world. Total saddle time I think was in the neighborhood of 7 hours but I'm not exactly sure since my HRM had a hiccup and reset on the final climb up to Parleys. I think I'll be good to go for the PCP10 in a few weeks. My only problem on the ride was a loss of interest in warm fluids during the second half so I'll make sure to have plenty of ice in the cooler for the race. Other than that all was good, my back felt great and I had plenty of energy until I got dehydrated near the end. Since I dont have any fancy electronics other then a cheap HRM and odometer the google earth map is a handrawn representation of where I went and not an exact track.