Sunday, April 15, 2007

The gloves are off...

Getting ready for a grueling 1000 mile race with 100'000 feet of elevation gain I am convinced I need to simulate the race a bit more to not get annihilated during the race.... so I need to do climb, lots of it.... and there is not really too much nearby... at least not uninterrupted 3000-5000 feet... hurricane ridge is the best on the bike at the moment, but one has to drive 2h and take a ferry.... mad lake and devils gulch are still snowed in... so I did L'alp d'Issaquah.... named after L'alp d'Huez its barely a homeopathic version of that in terms of total climb, but its 2.7 miles and 1400 feet of climb, not that bad for out here ey?
So I drove there and climbed it.. once, twice, (as riders looked at me, wait, did he not just... why?) four times plus once from the back side... got in just under 6'000 feet of climb by 10am, when I had another job to do... Eric was organizing one of his Northwest Trail Runs and I agreed to go pick up all the flags and markers from the half marathon course.... so it was another 13ish mile run with 4000 feet of elevation gain... great training doing 10'000 feet of gain that morning, something I need to do lots from now on... and we certainly have the hills to train on....


Photo by Murray Maitland, who did aid station...

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