What a great weekend! Been a little while since I have posted. Sorry for that! This weekend started with a wonderful BBQ dinner Friday night and then an early visit to bed as I was getting up early for a long solo ride. I was tired of doing the same old rides so thought I would do a new ride. I had seen a turn off to Shotgun Creek Rd. and Recreation area out off of Marcola rd. before, but knew nothing about the ride. I asked one of my buddies about it Friday, but he hadn't done the ride before and just said "I heard it was REALLY hard."
Ok, perfect. I mean I'm training for IM so tough is good right? I loaded it into map my ride before going to bed and it didn't look that bad. About 3500 to 4000 feet made the bulk of what appeared to be the difficult part of the ride. Well, up early and off around 7:30am or so. The plan was for a solo century as I normally do my long rides with friends. I made it to the turn off in great time and was eager to start climbing. I was on my TT bike as my road bike is up in Portland.
Instantly the road service turned to crap. Don't know if it was chip seal or what, but it's maintained by BLM and was extremely bumpy. I'm thinking to myself, "oh well there is nobody out there so what if the road sucks. This climb will be epic." And then the climb started. After a few sections of what I would guess where 20% grade I was getting pretty discouraged. At multiple points I was worried about not only making it to the top but also descending on the road surface on my TT. I thought about walking up one of the hills it was so steep, but was actually worried I wouldn't be able to walk in my cycling shoes any easier.
I get to the top finally and there are only two ways to go. Right or back down from where I came. I decided to go right. I mean it was kind of like a horror movie at this point! Go back down the hallway where the killer just chased you from or go down the unknown dark hallway? After about a mile of descending the grade was again so steep that I was worried my brakes were going to fry. Overheat basically. Half way down my bike computer gave out on me. Great. I decide to finally screw the brakes and just go as fast as possible so I can get out of this hell hole. Not 30 seconds later Bambi decides to walk across the road - just missed her! I tried to stop to take a picture for the post, but she decided not to hang out. Finally I notice ahead that the road service was about to change. Sure enough, I came to an actual road and rode another 10 to 15 minutes into Brownsville to refuel. I came back another way to complete the century ride and as I passed the turn off to Shotgun Creek I made sure to flip it off!
Luckily the ride ended without incident after this. Ended up being about 5.5 hours with all the slow climbing and what. Later that night we went over to a friends house for a pizza party (he built his own outdoor oven recently) and were hanging out with a friend that is doing IMAZ as well and turns out has actually done Shotgun Creek. When I mentioned I had done it that day he said, "Oh man." My response, "yeah, have you done that ride Morgan?" "Yeah, did it once. There were times I was worried I wasn't going to be able to continue to move forward it was so steep!" Shotgun Creek - you suck! Especially on a TT bike. But, I'm happy for finishing it and stronger for doing it! Luckily the pizza was awesome, had a few beers and now can laugh about it all.
Sunday was much more relaxed as I did a 70 min run followed by a short swim workout with Meg. Currently relaxing and working my legs with the stick. Tomorrow is an off day and I'm stoked about that. I tried to snap a picture at the top of Shotgun Creek, but my damn camera wasn't working on my phone. More pics next time...I swear! Thanks for reading,
-T
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