Wolf Creek

Saturday's ride was really disappointing for me. I rode to the top of Wolf Creek Pass, a mountain road east of Park City. I had met up with a group of friends in Kamas for the ride.

The company was great. We all had a great time making up silly songs about the chip and seal road (to the tune of I Love Rock & Roll: "I love chip and seal! Bump-de-de-bump on my saddle, baby!") and one that went along with the song Home on the Range (I can't remember the words other than something about if we weren't riding, we'd be home on the couch eating something from a pouch.)

The scenery was gorgeous! Lots of big pine trees and wildflowers. Beautiful views really do help keep me motivated when I'm suffering.

Now for the disappointing parts. The first one that comes to mind are the bugs. It comes to mind first because I have a huge, itchy bug bite on my inner elbow that is driving me CrAzY! I knew something was biting me, but didn't think it was a big deal because it looked like a fly. Apparently, big, black flies that live in the mountains are horse flies, and they do leave nasty bites. Another time, we stopped for a photo shoot and I got a big, flying bug of some sort in my jersey. I was hopping around screaming because I didn't want to get stung or bitten. Luckily the girl taking the photo waited for me to stop dancing around waving my arms in the air before taking the picture (although, looking back, it would have made a funny photo).

The most disappointing part is my performance. My lower back decided it didn't like the climbing I was forcing it to do, and it cramped up on me in a major way. The first time I got off my bike to stretch was by accident. One of my friends had a mechanical problem with her bike and had stopped to fix it. I kept going, looking for a flatter place to stop. When I finally came to a stop, I was all alone. I waited and waited. None of my friends appeared. The next riders up the mountain were a couple of men training for LOTOJA. They informed me that my friend had told them to tell me that she was turning around. Well, that mentally ruined the rest of the ride for me. I thought I was done for the day. The girl with the mechanical problem had ridden to Kamas in my car, so if she was done, I was done, too. I figured I was all done suffering for the day. I turned around and went back down the mountain, probably about 2 miles, to find my group fixing the bike. They told me that they wish I had kept going because we were going to keep climbing. Back up the mountain I went. Hill repeats.

A few miles later, my back was cramping again. I remembered how much better I felt after I had stopped, stretched, and rested last time. So I stopped and stretched and waited for the others to catch up. But only one came up behind me. She told me that one of the other girls had turned around. And another girl was still up ahead of us. I got back on my bike and rode for the next couple of miles before my friend wanted to stop again. We ended up walking up the hill for a while because she didn't want to go any higher on the mountain. She's the same friend who wrecked recently, and it seems to have given her a bit of descending-fear. I kept telling her that we had to go find the girl who was ahead of us so she wouldn't wait for us at the top. We either had to get to the top, or find her coming down, but since we were too high on the mountain for cell phone coverage, those were our only options. I was finally able to convince her that we needed to get back on our bikes and ride to the top. Just after we started pedaling again, our faster friend came flying down the mountain. She informed us that we were only about a mile to the top and that we'd already passed the hardest part. So we kept going.

Here we are at the top. Notice the elevation sign: over 9400 feet!

Then came the descent. I don't know if it was because my friend had kept taking about how scary it was going to be, or the fact that my brakes weren't feeling normal, but I rode down that mountain in major chicken-mode! I was extremely disappointed by this! I just couldn't relax.

As the road started to level out again, a headwind whipped up. Just in time for Team Barbacoa to come pull in front of me. I was able to hide in their draft for a little while before they decided they were done playing with me, and they took off. They did they same thing to my friend a little way down the road. We figured it must be a game they like to play with the ladies: blow past you, slow way down to see what you'll do, then speed things up again. I wasn't sure I wanted to play with them, so I let them go. My friend decided she'd had enough of them when they slowed down in front of her, so she passed them. A couple of them came back around her and pulled, but the rest of them hung behind her. I think she had fun with them, too.

A mistake I made on this ride was pre-freezing my water bottles. I figured that they would slowly thaw out as I rode. Nope. Stayed frozen. And I got a good taste of riding myself into dehydration. On the way back to Kamas we stopped at a cute little old-fashioned soda shop where I was finally able to get myself a drink.

I cannot race this race the way I rode it this weekend! I'm not even sure I want to do this race anymore. I'll keep working on fixing the cramping back issue, and see how I feel about it in a couple of weeks.

46 miles in just under 3 1/2 hours.