Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Do NOT mess with Ladera Norte

   Yesterday's bike ride was born out of an early morning discussion with my roommate about which hill is the toughest in Austin. I have run more of the difficult hills than I have biked so I needed some input on where to do some hill repeats. The three hills we talked about were Mt. Bonnell, Mesa, and Ladera Norte (translates: North Slope). While looking on mapmytri I realized all the hills were close enough to ride them all within a 20 mile loop. By the way Riff Raff does a version of this loop as a run. Are you kidding me?
  So I did three giant hills in one long bike ride but the only problem is I started at 12:30 in the afternoon in about 96 degree heat. I left from Deep Eddy and hit Mt. Bonnell first. By the time I got to the top of the hill I realized as soon as I went down the other side I was kind of roped in to finishing the other 2 hills no matter how I felt. Going down the North side of Mt. Bonnell at about 40 mph around a couple of steep blind corners and hairpin turns I decided there was no going back up this side. By the time I made it to the Mesa hill the Gatorade I had left had warmed up to a sickly temperature. I had to attack Mesa in three stages to rest in the shade and spray cold water on my head. Halfway up the damn thing I was completely spent. Mesa was way harder than Mt. Bonnell. I had no idea. I crested the top of the hill excited to fly down Far West Blvd. to cool off. What goes down must come up, or something like that. At the bottom of Far West is the dreaded Ladera Norte.
   I have built up some mental hurdles concerning this hill. The first time I ran it with Rogue a few years ago it was the first time I wanted to quit in the middle of a long run. It is a 400 foot climb for about .65 miles with a gradation of 12-20%. It is a monster of a hill and in my mind is the hardest of all three. About the halfway mark I had to stop to cool off and catch my breath. To get started again I had to turn back down hill to get enough momentum to clip my right foot in. While trying to do this I had to execute a fast left turn to avoid a truck bearing down on me. I had lost my momentum and fell on my left side since my left foot was still clipped into the pedal. It was a very low speed crash but my shoulder took the brunt of the wreck and not my bike. My right leg however used this unsupervised opportunity to ram itself along the teeth of my crank.
Those are open wounds that fit the exact shape of my bike crank if you scraped it across my leg. It doesn't really hurt and it should heal up in a couple of days. This was at mile 9.56 of a 20 mile ride. I used the last of my water to rinse the affected area and finish my ride. Luckily the majority of the ride from this point on was down hill. Like the title says don't mess with Ladera Norte.
  Taking the day off. I think.

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