Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Wednesday 8/3/11

130.9mi 8.01
avg 16.3mph
max 66.5mph

We left Missoula today fairly slow. Just had some written direction to follow. Once we got to the interstate it picked up a bit. Mark came up with a brilliant idea to paint arrows on the road where we should turn and once I got to those it was smooth sailing until I missed one arrow and came to a dead end. Had to turn around but my luck it was not to far off.
At last we got to our big climb. It was a little shorter and about the same grade of 5% just like the last one but I made a point to take it as slow as I could. I swapped the 73 tooth chain ring for a 49 tooth the night before and that allowed me to spin easy at 4mph but still I found it a little harder than before. Got to the top at last. The Rockies was concord! Going down was good but I did not have the 73t to push so gravity was the only option.
So we got to the bottom and reached Helena and I thought game over but the gps said still 20mi to go. So it turned out that the 20mi had 2 big climbs of grade 7.5% !!!!! Very tough and I was very glad I swapped those chain rings.

1 comment:

bill said...

Frans, have you been using that 72t chain ring since you left Portland, Oregon?

I'm having fun following your blog.

Bill Bates
WAW-042
Portland, Oregon