Badly Rd to the Village...8/5/11

Today was some good climbing, from Mills and Baseline to Baldy Village up Baldy Road. Eyemage and I got an early start so the heat wasn't a factor. It was Eyemage's first time up Baldy Road and my second time since 1998. I was actually shocked that it didn't feel as bad as I expected. Yeah, steep compared to GMR but much shorter. I could hear Eyemage shouting out grades from his Garmin, 12%, 14%, 16%. Good thing I had my triple cause I'm not sure I'd make it on my standard double right now ha ha!

Eyemage did very well for his first time. Matter of fact, I expected him to attack near the top. I was waiting for his attack and I kept thinking to myself, "go now suckuh, Go now suckuh!". I knew that if he went too early, the final steep section before the village would slow him down then I'd catch back up ha ha! I paced myself well and never really felt too much of a struggle. I'm actually shocked though!

Well, 9 miles pretty much straight up with 2,467 feet of climbing. Doesn't sound like much but it felt like most of it was in the second half of the climb. Surely just my imagination but that's when I really started to feel the grade. Well OK really, I felt it as soon as we left the Von's parking lot ha ha!

Good thing is that once you are up there, it's all downhill from there. It's a fast descent but I stopped to take a couple of pics so at my top speed of 42 on the upper section is when I applied the brakes. I'm sure that I could easily do 50 but at my age, no thanks! I did hit 45.8 on the last drop but its a much nicer strip of road on that section. Thankfully, I wasn't as lucky as Eyemage. Poor guy had a car tailgating him through the tunnels on the descent. Boy, those tunnels are dark and there is no shoulder at all! But, it is a bit of motivation on the way up to lift the pace ha ha!

That is Eyemage in the pic, descending Baldy Rd. The first 30 narrow seconds of the video is footage from Eyemage.