Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Tourmalet from the West











So the real debate was this, would it be 1 Tourmalet or 2. I wanted to do both sides, but couldn't get a quorum, so we just did the west. This is reputed to be the more difficult, but as the only climb of the day, It wasn't too intimidating. My goal was to summit in less than 90 minutes for the 1408m of ascent. Basically 50vertical feet per minute Juan and I made it with 1 minute to spare, and didn't hurt ourselves in the effort.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Pont d'Espagne






So after the dissolution of our Dolomites group Juan, Carlos, Gerson, and I headed for the Pyrenees to get a bit more self induced agony. Upon arrival in Argeles-Gazost we decided to do an evening ride up to Pont d'Espagne. This is a very pretty climb rises 995m in 18.5km or about 5.5% average. Unfortunately I think that we missed the best views by not finishing with the long walk at the summit of our Ride. This climb has a pretty disappointing finish after a very scenic ascent, the parking lot is pretty anti-climatic

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

last Dolomites Day
















So I guess I owe anyone following me a bit of an appology for the totally incomplete postings here. Facebook has kind of replaced my blog for daily updates, but honestly, you cannot get very deep there. So yesterday I discovered that all my pictures from day 4 riding were lost. still don't know how, but that is the downside of a 2gb stick. So you know I was pretty slugish on the Stelvio, but what happened next?

On the last day of the Xtreme Terradiversions tour we did Mortirollo, ranked as the 65th most dificult, and 1:25 for me, then 'cause we really want to endulge Angel, and his Sadistic nature, we finished by doing Gavia the hard way. And Oh did I suffer. I can only say thanks to Juan for riding with me to the top, like only a true friend would.

Mortirollo is a truely difficult climb, so steep for so long. I suffered, but i think some of the steeper, but lesser ranked(shorter) climbs may actually be more difficult.

My quote for the day. "The real riding starts when you run out of gears"