Saturday, June 20, 2009

Day 12 – Hard Ride

Today Scott, Carol, Chris and I rode various parts of Tour de Blast. Chris and Scott finished the whole thing. Carol rode the 54 miles up to Elkhorn Ridge and back. I only rode the first 57 miles. Earlier this week on a ride up Cougar Mountain my back wheel went out of alignment very suddenly. I noticed it on the decent as the back end of my bike wagged like an excited dog. When I got home I was able to adjust a couple spokes and get most of the wobble out.

Today however about 30 miles into the ride I noticed a crack in the rear wheel. Slowly the wobble returned and gradually worsened. I made it the 42 miles to Johnston Ridge but on all the descents I had to keep it under twenty. To get back up to Elkhorn Ridge on the other side of the river I had to remove half of the rear brake to keep the wheel from rubbing the brake. I wondered why it seemed so hard to ride up the grades on the ride, but riding uphill was still much easier than going down. I decided not to attempt the ride down from Elkhorn back to Toutle and caught the shuttle. Although I’d done all the climbing in the ride, it was a bummer not to finish. This is my third time on Tour de Blast and I’ve never done the whole ride.

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