Two Bills

Rolling through an aspen grove

Hello from Park City, Utah.  Sam and I drove here on Sunday; it was an uneventful fifteen hour slog. 

Yesterday I started my acclimatization.  After a ten mile warm-up around town with Sam I headed up to the Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) armed with a sweet mountaintrails.org map.  I found a nice wooded switch-backy trail called Spiro and followed that to Powerline past Comstock Mine and up to Shadow Lake.  All said and done I did 3500’ of climbing. 
 

I felt strong on the uphill and I was consciously taking it easy, but my heart rate was off the charts – I topped out at 200 BPM.  In Seattle, at sea level, I’d be hard pressed to approach 170 BPM, that’s full on heart attack off the front of a crit numbers.  A heart rate of two bills, I’ve never seen that before.  I only went a little over 30 miles and even though I was taking it slow I really felt the effort last night.  Today I have to back way off, just an easy cruise for me.

Comstock Mine

The trails here are so easy and so accessible.  I am definitely jealous.  There is well over a hundred miles of sweet cross country riding right here from my friend’s front door.

My two concerns for Leadville are the altitude and my sore butt.  I haven’t had a problem with a sore backside for like thirty years but now my ass is really bruised and tender.  Stuff like that makes for a long day.  I put a longer stem on my bike last night in hopes of bringing me further forward on the saddle.  We’ll see how that works today.