Memorial Day Group Ride

You know you've had a fun ride when you're two and half hours into it and it only feels like you've been riding for a half an hour. That's how today's ride was for me.

Six people started the group ride in Orem at 6 a.m. It was a bit chilly and the roads were still just a little wet from the downpouring of rain we had last night.

We rode out to the base of the Traverse Ridge climb where the group split up. Two of the riders had to get back for another ride at 9 a.m., so they went up the climb on the south side.

The rest of us continued around the Point of the Mountain past Cabella's and into Draper. We stayed on Highland Road until turning up to ride past the Draper Temple. That is quite a climb! BDE told me it was it was going to hurt, and if he thinks it hurts, I knew it was going to be steep. Little did I know (glad I had BDE along to show me), the road past the temple takes you back to Traverse Ridge Road. I would have taken the group back down Highland and started at the base of the climb to Traverse. But taking the temple road put us nearly halfway up the Traverse climb. Cool.

Here is the group at the top of Traverse:


The descent off the south side of Traverse was the most fun I've had in a long time. It was also the first time I've not been the last one to the bottom. Yay! Alicia (a girl I met at the UVU crit last week, and who I had raced with at Bear Lake) told me that I was a fast descender. Nobody's ever told me that before. I've definitely lost my fear of descending! It felt really fast, so I was surprised to find that it was only two-tenths of a mile per hour faster than my top speed at the crit race on Saturday. We were flying at that crit.

Once we got back to Lindon we decided to do one more climb. We came up 2000 North in Orem. I told one of the guys (the one on the thirty-pound bike) that it was all downhill from the top. He retorted, "That's what you told me an hour ago!" Heehee! He really did do a great job keeping up with us the whole ride on his heavy bike. He's going to be a threat once he gets a lightweight bike.

I rode back to the starting point with the last couple of riders and felt like I could keep on riding. Three and a half hours was not enough for me. But I had a lunch date to get to, so I had to go home and get ready.

It has been a great Memorial Day!

55 miles in 3:28 with 2850 feet of climbing.