HC Hundie Prep

After a romp around the Ochocos on Saturday, it was time to bump up the saddle time on Sunday and log some miles.  The forecast had temps in the mid 90's so the plan was to get up and start riding early in order to get ahead of the heat a little.

It was time to start pre-riding the course and remember what the course was all about.  The course sounds like it is changing a little so I was curious to ride the changes in order to mentally gauge the level of effort at different stages throughout the hundie.  The day moved along until the heat switch got flipped and I started to ride up 4601.  My Garmin read 104 degrees and the road was loose gravel with a bit of a steep factor to it.  Another variable in the mix was that it was the heat of the day, the sun was high and there was no shade at all on the road.
I bonked hard!  The heat just baked and zapped me.  The sun was beating down on the gravel and the gravel radiated the heat back up onto me.
About 2/3 of the way up the climb, I had to find a tree on the side of the road take refuge in the shade for a few minutes.  I was getting dizzy and was starting to go deep into my reserves.  The smart move was to just sit in the shade for a few minutes and drink some liquids and let the mental and physical fatigue try to recover for a moment.
After a few minutes, there was a lone cloud that covered the sun up for a very brief window of shade.  I decided that was my window to get moving.  I hopped on the bike and finished off the last section of road and tied into Mrazek and started the descent back home.  I was still about 15 miles out and it was beastly HOT.  The further I descended, the hotter it got...urggg

By the time I got to the bottom of Mrazek, my water bottles were hot enough to make tea with.  Crazy! I made it back home but paid the price for suffering in the heat.  It was a long day and my only thought after the ride was I sure hope the temps return to 'normal' for race day because triple digits is brutal.

Some pictures from the ride that started at home, then COD to the dirt road that connected to Larsen to funner to another dirt road that hit the sand wall and continued to Vista then to Flagline connect where I decided to check out the spur to the top of Vista Butte....then back down to Swampy, up to Swede Ridge, down Sector 16, Upper Whoops, Skyliners, the inferno that was 4601 to Mrazek to Shevlin and back home...it makes me tired just thinking about it....67 miles and over 7 hrs of saddle time...but it felt like much much more considering the heat.