{"id":2169,"date":"2010-07-08T21:48:32","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T03:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2010-07-08T21:48:32","modified_gmt":"2010-07-09T03:48:32","slug":"day-16-breck-100-preride-loop-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=2169","title":{"rendered":"Day 16- Breck 100 Preride: Loop 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I battled Heaven.<\/p>\n

Loop #1 of the Breck 100 starts by climbing the ski hill on the outskirts of town. As I approached the mountain, the sky over my head was blue and sunny, but a black cloud hung over the top of Peak 9. Once I found the Ski Hill Access road, the rain had started. As I climbed, it sprinkled on and off, but then started to hail and thunder once I was a mile or so up. I put my jacket on and kept going…<\/p>\n

\"hail\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few minutes later, the hail stopped, but as I rounded 10.5K feet or so, it started to sleet. Eventually, after a lot slow uphill grinds, dizzy spells, and walking, I was above the treeline. The road became nearly unridable… the grade on my Garmin read 25 -35%, and the gravel road turned in to a rock-covered jeep trail. The skies had momentarily cleared, so I alternated wallking and riding as I navigated the switchbacks.<\/p>\n

I finally reached the Wheeler Trail- the singletrack that would eventually cross the mountain and lead down to the base on the other side. However, as soon as I turned off, something crazy happened. The wind started to gust, and suddenly, I could barely see the narrow strip of singletrack in front of me. Fog? No… something was hitting my face…<\/p>\n

It was a blizzard.<\/p>\n

The snow was blinding, and the wind was gusting so hard that I could barely stay on the trail. I didn’t want to stop and freeze, so all I could do was keep steadily rolling forward. Then, almost as suddenly as it started, the blizzard was gone.<\/p>\n

\"snow\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"tundra\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Soon after the snow stopped, I reached the final grunt over Wheeler Pass.<\/p>\n

\"summit\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In my hypoxic brain, I’d conquered both heaven and earth. The ride back down was insane- until I was well below the treeline, I didn’t feel “right,” so I decended slowly.<\/p>\n

\"downhill\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At least the view was nice.<\/p>\n

The remainder of the trail was not nearly as hard (other than the initial climb up the Peaks Trail). As I rode back in to town, the thunder clouds rolled back in. Luckily, the only thing between me and a the sweet nectar of a hot omelet at the bakery down the street was a hot shower and a little walking…<\/p>\n

\"eggs\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I battled Heaven. Loop #1 of the Breck 100 starts by climbing the ski hill on the outskirts of town. As I approached the mountain, the sky over my head was blue and sunny, but a black cloud hung over the top of Peak 9. Once I found the Ski Hill Access road, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[21,16],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Uq-yZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2176,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions\/2176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}