Mt Lemmon Assault #2

Feb 25 - 65 miles.  25 mile climb.

I'm totally beat from the last 2 days, so this is going to be about 2 paragraphs.  After yesterday's 103 mile leg crusher, we climbed Mt.Lemmon this morning.  I actually felt great, and knocked off over 15 minutes from my climbing time on Monday.  Bob, Kyle, and I started off a pretty quick pace the first 2-3 miles, then Bob picked up the pace a bit.  Kyle and I caught up to a group of 4 from another camp in town, and rode with those guys until mile 14.  I was feeling good, and told him that at mile 14 I was going to turn the screws a bit and see what I had in me....maybe I could catch Bob.  So I gently accelerated and got into a steady rhythm.  After a couple miles I had Bob in sight, several minutes up the road.  I had a sneaking suspicion he was just cruising at a low tempo pace, and if I made contact he'd drop the hammer and make my sprinter-self look silly for even trying to challenge him on his uphill turf.  By the time we reached the Ski Village at mile 25 I had closed the gap to about 45-50 seconds.  Considering the gap was many minutes on Monday, I was pleased.  We rolled down to the giant cookie store together and met up with Sara, Kyle, and Linnea for a coke and a cookie.

Sara, Linnea, and I descended together into a nasty headwind.  We still managed to go 30-40mph the whole way, it just required a lot of pedaling.  It was a 3 person pace-line all the way down which was pretty damn fun.  Sara may be small, so you don't have a lot of draft behind her, but while descending it's not too bad, and she carved some great smooth lines.  I think she's done this once or twice . . .

Tomorrow is the famous Tucson Shootout ride.  Every town has it's local weekly "world championships", but in Tucson that typically involves 100+ dudes, many of whom are professional cyclists.  It's a legendary ride, and while my legs are thoroughly thrashed from a week of great training, I'll be out there and in it until I pop (which, admittedly, may not take too long). But I now live by the Jens Voigt mantra, "Shut up legs!" and thus to the shootout I go with whatever ammo I've got left.  Bang bang.