Old Caz Grasshopper (again)

So, I had an impromptu day off on Thursday and decided to do the Grasshopper loop on my single bike.  After having a great breakfast with Claire at Howard Station in Occidental, I took off at exactly 10:00 for my ride.  My main focus was to not push myself to much so that I would have plenty left over for the climb up Willow Creek at the end, and the 15 mile ride home after that.

Well, the plan worked perfect until the final climb up Willow Creek where I decided that I wanted to try to meet a finishing goal.  What a weird concept, the entire ride I'm not worried about my time, and then with 10 miles to go, I pick an arbitrary time and make it a do or die situation to beat that time.  Anyway, my arbitrary time was 3 hours and 45 minutes, and I beat it by 15 seconds.  Hurray, I think.  I was in a world of hurt on that final climb.  For most of the ride I had been keeping my heart rate under 160, but for the final climb I was hitting almost 190.  To make a long story short, I felt much better than I expected I would and the ride home afterwards wasn't even that bad.  And no cramping!!!

Here is a link to my loop.  The first lap is the Grasshoppper loop and the second lap is the ride home afterwards.  I did end up with enough energy to make some taco pizza for dinner, which I thought was great, but Claire wasn't quite as excited about it.

Oh, yea, I almost forgot.  Claire and I went up to Annadel on Wednesday and I got to ride my new Cannondale single speed 29'er.  It was a beautiful evening and we saw plenty of other folks up in the park enjoying the park.  Here is a picture of Claire riding off into the sunset.