WOW.
Clearly, the best day I have had on a bike so far this year for sure. I was debating for weeks as to if I was going to actually do it or not. A quick inventory of my physical being a week prior to the ride showed little doubt that I could do it, so I sent in my email to Chad. Good decision. An early drive up with Yuri, and a planned camp out with Karen and Tegan allowed me to forget about logistics and just enjoy the ride for a day..
What a ride. I had no idea of just how much connected singletrak was around Prescott. We sampled a good portion of it with the loop that was planned.
A lot of the guys in the picture (from the MTBR forum), are just stupid fit and pretty fast, finishing about 2 1/2 hours before Yuri and I – who were riding pretty strong, at least I thought – finishing a shared 5th place of 13 riders. At any rate, we were not racing the race, we were just riding.
Coming off a whole six month slap down with multiple gout attacks, lower back issues and general unfitness, I thought I would be in pretty bad shape at the end of some 8000′ of climbing and 50 some odd miles of panoramic views. Luck prevailed and I finished out feeling really pretty awesome. The sweet ripping singletrak and quad aching climbing put me at ease for most of the day, grumbling only once about how I was about finished. I think the key was continuous eating and incredible trails.
(photo by yuri)
I gotta get back up to Prescott to ride that again real soon.
