Today's ride was 76 miles with 5,100 vertical ft of climbing. The grades were pretty steep and ranged from 6%-10%. As I have mentioned many times before, climbing is a new skill for me so this was indeed a challenging day.
The upside was that we got to see both the Crazy Horse monument and Mt Rushmore. When I was in junior high, my family took a summer vacation to Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Doesn't look like they have made any progress on Crazy Horse since then. Mt Rushmore also looks smaller than I remember. Funny how that happens.
I started the morning off with a flat at breakfast which was 1.4 miles into the ride. If you must have a flat, having it in a protected parking lot right in front of the mechanic's van if the place to do it. Late in the ride, Sam and Lynne both had flats within about 5 minutes of each other. I was struggling with fatigue because of the climbing so I rode on ahead and finished the day about 20 minutes ahead of the others. At that point, if I had stopped and waited for twenty minutes, there was no way I could have finished the ride. The Team understood and they were just glad I finished under my own power.
After sagging in on the Teton pass and the 120 mile days, there was no way I wasn't going to finish today no matter what it took. I had to access a new level of determination today to get the job done and boy did it feel sweet to pull into the hotel!!!
Tomorrow is an "active rest day" of only 57 miles into Wall Drug, SD. Should be fun.
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