Sunday we did an easy spin down to a local market to pick up some local veggies, fruit, and meat. Wednesday I did my first revised schedule at work, and took off in the afternoon for a few hour ride! It was really windy on the way back, got cold, and was almost dark when I got back, but it was cool! Looking forward to more of those, for sure. Thursday was back in the gym for some mega strengthening, and then I had some sweet weekend riding with my 2nd favorite training partner, Luke.
My favorite riding partner was over in OC taking the MSF motorcycle course to get his certification. The knees are still not doing so well. We tried dual-action Cho Pat straps, which do help the pain some, but they haven't solved the issue(s) yet. *le sigh*
I dropped Justin off at school early yesterday morning and then DROID told me how to get up to Cooks Corner. Sweet. Luke and I (it was entirely my fault) had a meet spot fail, so once I realized around 9:10 that he was at the nature center, not at Cooks, I rolled out in chase. He got up into cell range about a mile or so up Harding, got my text messages, and met me near the bottom after I'd climbed Modjeska. We set a pretty good spin pace up the climb and chatted the whole way.
Ran into Ann and Andy on the way, in chase of OMR and Gene, who were in chase of Clinky and Maxwell et al. It was great seeing everyone out there.
I hadn't climbed Harding literally in about 3 years. Justin and I climbed it once on our first half century as we were training for Counting Coup. We'd climbed up ITT, traversed over either Holy Jim or Trabuco, and tried to go through O'Neill (wound up climbing Live Oak) over to Harding and started climbing that around 25 miles in to our day. I could barely pedal for 15 yards without stopping to stretch my lower back, and Justin kept downing Tums tablets to try to break up the cramps in his legs. We got up to Upper Holy Jim just as the sun was setting, and I turned on our only light as we descended. It was a long cold trip back down ITT in the dark, and I'd never been so happy to see the truck as that day!
This trip up was quite a bit different. No running out of daylight, no back pain! The climb does go on for ever (it's around 12 miles or so from the bottom up and over to Joplin), but then you're almost home free with LOTS of descending and grinning!
I was all by myself...
After Luke "found" me we climbed nice and steady
It got COLD up at Main Divide!
Ran into some familiar faces
Droppin' in
Luke was nice enough to play photographer for me!
Don't forget to breathe!
Way off line... I was committed until then, though.
We were cruising pretty good down Joplin when Luke came up with a flat. D'oh! It's ok, we're used to it riding with Justin.
We got down to Old Camp, took a short break, then continued down STT. Luke's front tire was getting low again, so after a quick pump-up we kept going, until he was getting rim strikes!
Weather was better when it was sunny than when it wasn't!
After the ride I hung out a bit with Ann and Andy, and left early to go pick up Justin from moto school.
Sunday we got up early so Justin could head back to OC. I spent the morning cleaning house (yay!) and then met up with Luke for a pretty short road spin on the flats in town before we parted ways to watch the Chargers/Broncos game.
Stoked on my weekend! Short week coming up, so awesome.