On September 25 Joe and I rode in the Heber Valley Half Century bike ride. We rode 58 mils through Heber & Midway, up to Summit County, through Kamas and Francis and back to Heber. The map says 56.69, but somewhere we picked up an extra 1.3 miles. It was a serious challenge, but we had a lot of fun and I’m really glad we did it.
This ride was much more difficult than any ride I had done before because there were some MAJOR hills. Joe’s ride tracker said that we gained a total of 38oo vertical feet! The biggest hill was going up highway 32 from Heber to the Jordanelle Overlook. The hill was about 4 miles long and at times it has an 8% grade. If you don’t know what that means let me just say that it’s steep enough for them to put up signs warning trucks of how steep it is. I will freely admit that twice on that hill I made Joe stop just so I could catch my breath. I did however make it to the top.
And I was still smiling.
Joe also had to wait for me at the bottom of that hill too, because I was not willing to go 45 miles an hour and risk killing myself. We all know I have control issues.
One fun feature on this ride was that they include a “Biathlon Option.” When we got to the first rest stop at Soldier Hollow where the Olympic Biathlon was held, we got to hop off our bikes and do some target shooting. It was fun!
Oh, I also have to mention that I totally fell over in front of like 100 people about 1o miles into the ride. There was a lot of traffic (bikes and cars) going up to Soldier Hollow and we had to stop at a stop sign and I unclipped my right food from my bike, but I was leaning left and just fell right over. I was SO embarrassed. People were rolling down their windows to ask if I was ok. Nothing hurt but my pride.
Joe and I had 2 free nights at the Westgate Resort in Park City (because we once wasted 3 hours of our life listening to their time share presentation) so we made a weekend of it and Grandma and Grandpa Tibbs took the kids. We had a really great time and it was a lot of fun to do a long ride like this together. Joe was very patient with me and only really left me behind on the downhill portions.
Maybe next year we will ride the century course (100 miles). But then again…58 seemed far enough.
2 comments:
Serioulsy so impressed! Great job.
Awesome you guys! We have seen how steep that ride is. The last few summers we have passed bikes (in our car) after being in park city! You guys rock!!!
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