It was with a little trepidation that I toed in at the starting line at day five of the TransRockies. The concern was that the legs felt a little heavy on day four, and day five had more kilometers and more elevation gain than any other day to that point.
The other thought in the back of mind was that we had the quickest turn around from the finish of one day to the start of the following day. Day four had a noon start time and we finished around 4 and the start time for day 5 was 9 in the morning. After four days of riding, it was time to figure out where the legs were.
We started the ride up a dirt road for a few miles uphill until we turned off and followed a river for several miles. It was typical river trail where it was wet and rooty in areas but kept you engaged due to the windy nature of the trail. We got kicked off onto a road and followed a trail that paralleled the road for a bit until we eventually crossed it and arrived at aid station one.
Just before aid one, I managed to find a mud spot that launched me off my bike and I landed on the exact same spot of my wound from day three. As fate would have it, the wound was just starting to dry up landing full force on it opened it back up. Quickly enough I had a little trail of my own..made up of blood dripping down the forearm.
To that point, the trail was a lot of fun. It was fast and twisty and you could maintain speed which was good considering the 42 mile day that we had in store.
We left aid one and started a steep climb that went on forever...towards the top, it got steep...I grunted, groaned, might even have dropped a F bomb or two and then it got mean. The angle increased and it went from being steep and rooty/rocky to ultra steep and very rocky and non rideable. We eventually crested to some killer views of the mountains and went down a very very stee descent that was rocky...when I say rocky, I mean there was no dirt at all.
It was steep enough that I could feel my rear wheel wanting to lift so in an effort to get more weight over my rear tire (to avoid the dreaded endo onto a bunch of sharp pointy rocks). There was a brief (no pun intended) moment of panic as my shorts got caught on my saddle and I could not weight the rear tire. Disaster unfolded in my head as I had to lean forward to unhook my shorts and try the same maneuver over gain. I was concerned that the subtle forward center of gravity would be enough to spell E-n-d-o! Somehow I managed to avoid the worst and get everything back to where it needed to be.
After some nasty down, the trail turned into super fast and flowy downhill. It might just have been the best downhill throughout the event so far. After a fun and long descent we pulled into aid two at around 28 miles and Hersey had the bonkaroo going. He had licked the inside of his water bottle dry and was psyched to be able to sit at the aid station and refuel. The problem was that the damage was done and we would have to be careful not to go further into the reserve tank. We had about 14 miles left another first half of it was on trail that we had overlooked as being more or less downhill...well, we were partially right, it was less downhill...
We spun through some trail until we got kicked off onto then road for the last few miles...the only downside was that we were pedaling into a headwind and had to climb about 800ft to the top until we got to descend.
The last few miles were all about just trying to find your happy place, knowing that soon enough the day would culminate.
It took around 6 hours and we rode for 42 miles and over 6,200 ft of hard earned vert. Now the challenge is to rest up,hydrate, eat,eat,eat, rest and try to get mentally and physically ready for the hardest day of the event - day 6, this being stacked immediately behind the second hardest day of the event: day 5
Can you say ouchie?
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