GMR to the Shack, the Hard Way!

 23 miles with 3,018 ft of gain. Wow, what a tough day. Guess I am getting old ha ha! Not sure why but my hammy cramped at mile 4. I turned back down to spin it out a bit then headed back up, Got to mile 4.5 then it cramped again. WTH! So I rolled down to about mile 2 spinning it out. Then turned and headed back up to the shack. Cramped again about 1/8 of a mile before I got there but too late to turn back now. I headed down then realized I had 2700 ft of gain so I stopped, turned back up one more time to get the 300 so I ended up with 3018 to make sure I get the 3K.

Maybe I cramped because on Thursday nights, we go fast dh but when heading back, it's a gradual climb and that is where I pick the pace for my workout. So maybe, from Thurs night to early Sat morning, not enough recovery time? Either way, man I got up at 5 am to hit GMR. Still not early enough as the temp was 85 most of the way up. Then saw once I plugged in, maxed out at 95. So could be more than one thing and getting only 3 hours or so of sleep didn't help. Sure is hard to go to sleep early on a Friday night. Sun was out when I started, no shade so I'm guessing I'd have to get up at 4 am. Hmm, that would be harder than climbing GMR ha ha!

Ran into Jason. I think we met back in about 2004 through Bicycling Mag forums. He's a super fast climber! Fastest dude I've ever seen. There was a guy few years ago called UMD on the forums. Always giving advice on the forums about how to be a cool racer type. Always talked about power meters etc and if you didn't have one, you were nothing ha ha! Well Jason joined the Everst Challenge. He was ahead of UMD and his group. Flatted, fixed it then passed him again ha ha! Finished well before UMD, big time gap, I want to say 40 minutes but maybe 25? Either way, Jason only did like 1 race a year to keep his license and joined in the public category. He beat almost everybody on the ride so I asked him after the race, years back, DID YOU TRAIN WITH A POWER METER? He just laughed and said nope, I just rode a lot! Ha ha ha! That was classic! He also had the #7 spot back then for the gate to shack segment on Strava.  Until the Tour of Calif did the course. But hey, still he's up there and still blazing fast! After we said goodbye, he took off like a bullet. I turned on  my go pro but by the time the recorded beeped, turned on etc, he was already around the turn. Wow ha ha ha!

After the first cramp, still gotta smile for the pic!

Down and up the second time. No cramp, not yet!

How I felt at the shack.

had to show my cry baby face today! :-P