GR TT

I decided to try my luck at the GR Time Trial. It’s decidedly not an endurance time trial — the best time so far was:

“climb time” 27 minutes 30 seconds
“final time” 43 minutes 30 seconds

Making the descend time 16 minutes

I found myself pedaling up the Catalina Highway. I may or may not have been pedaling hard, may or may not have been doing that for a set distance, and may or may not have had a power meter on board.

The ‘I-word’ is a dirty one on this diary. I think topofusion.com would explode if I admitted to doing such unspeakable things.

By some means I was suddenly above Bug Springs, but so fried that all I could do was turn around and coast back to the lower trailhead. I spied a MTBer going downhill in the distance. Carrot found!

It took me a while to reel him in, only catching up on the last climbs before Molino Basin at the end of the ‘downhill’ portion of the GR TT. 15:06 for the downhill. Not bad. I spun around for a minute, debating whether I was up for another I——- (of sorts). I decided to give it a shot.

I was regretting it 0.45623 minutes up the trail. I was not smooth. Every rock had one of my pedal’s names on it, but somehow I never dabbed. At some point gears 3-4 gave up on me, but there was no time to investigate. You don’t stop in a 30 minute race. You just don’t.

It felt like I was going ‘fast’, but I was so deep in the pain cave that I didn’t trust any of my senses (except that which senses suffering). Quitting was on my mind. There’s no one out here, no one even has to know that I ‘tried.’

But it’s not that much further. Smoothness returned (as long as I skipped gears 3&4) and a flow was found. I dropped into the corrals at GH recreation area but had no idea what my time was (GPS would tell me later). I didn’t care either. It took me a few seconds to realize that somewhere on the climb I had folded the 3rd cog into the 4th. Gah! No wonder they were skipping.

I flipped it and descended again, this time stopping for some pictures of the moon and fading light.

Going fast is fun. It’s a good tired. But I sure enjoyed taking my time down the descent.

Windbreaker on, I blasted back down the Highway partaking of the coolness of the night and solitude of the desert.

Downloading the GPS track I found my climb time was 21:48 for a total of 38:19 (including the minute spent debating at the bottom). Faster for sure, but I technically didn’t take the challenge since I did it in reverse. Next time maybe I’ll do it the proper way.