I'd say today was the second hardest day yet, the worse being the 70 mile death ride in the desert on Day 5. We had 24 miles to ride today, piece of cake, right? Wrong. In the first 10 miles out of camp, we climbed over 2,000 feet. Climbing 1,000 feet per 10 miles is tough (in Horribly Hilly Hundreds, you climb about 1,000 feet every to miles, Ironman WI it's about 600 feet per 10 miles), climbing 2,000 in 10 miles is painful.
I got off to a later start today because I had to get breakfast and lunch together, but I still managed to get out by a little after 7. A couple miles into the ride we passed through a tunnel that was in no way made for cyclists. The tunnel held a tight 3 lanes, no shoulder, a couple of lights, and a 6.4% grade. Nothing like riding up a mountain enclosed in a tunnel with traffic racing by! Thankfully that part is over!
We continued up for awhile and had some of the most spectacular views yet. Much to my pleasure, there are more trees up here, although I still haven't seen any body of water (the dried-up rivers and streams obviously don't count). After about 10 miles (which took me an hour and forty minutes to ride), we came to a sign that said 6% downgrade for the next 7 miles. We were extremely grateful for this until we reached another climb about a mile later. All I could think was what a bad joke the sign was. The community we reached at our highest point today calls itself "Top of the World".
Our highest point today was about 4,600 feet, and Superior was 2,888. Now we are back around 3,700.
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