Day 19: Salt Lake City (Park City) to Duchense, UT

Actual Kms: 148 km

Overkill Kms: Probably 2 km when I go call Tim after this.

Road Stuff: A live real moose right in front of me! A live deer, dead dear, dead snakes, dead racoon, lots of live and dead grey chipmunks or are they moles? Also, singular shoe.

Money Spent: Sunday: $32 shorts. I know, I know on Sunday. Today $8 for night time cold and sinus medication, lip balm (gave my other stuff to Corinne), coffee and cheesy brocolli soup.

Wipeouts: 0

Interesting Person Pick: Bill and Rita Wybenga who are riding tandam together. They are about 65 and flew past me near the end of the day shouting, "Come on Sarah, let's go!". Also Rita gave me a hug when I entered camp today because I was so tired and just wanted a nap.

Favourite Part of the Day: Taking a nice shower and long nap in the coolness of the building.

Worst Part of the Day: Dreaming all day about when I would get to camp and when I could take a nap...I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night due to my coughing and hacking.





Today was a challenge. Last night we went over the route and we didn't have an elevation map so we didn't know what to expect. However as Ed said "We are in the mountains Sarah, so expect a lot of climbing." Ok Ed. He was right.





I left around 7 am after walking all the way back to the gear truck. The state camp had our tents and gear truck about a 1 km walk apart because they didn't have enough space for the tents any closer to the truck. Brian and Matt and I set off and moved quickly through the first 30 kms or so. Then came the climb. I met Eritia and paced with her for a while but we were frustrated because it looked like we were going downhill and we were only moving at 15 km/hour....it was an optical illusion, we were actually climbing. We climbed up and up for about 15 kms straight. Not a nice winding climb, a lowest gear, going 10 kms an hour kind of climb. It was brutal but beautiful. Here are some pics.




I kept dreaming about cresting the hill and getting into camp to nap. I was so tired and cranky because of too many factors...hill, no sleep, coughing, noisy sound in the crank of my bike and 120 kms to go. When I finally got to the top, Lois was there to greet us with gatorade. It was beautiful...an almost 10,000 foot summit.



Brian, Matt and I (Eritia had already passed us as usual) raced down the hill for 20 kms...and I mean raced. The boys were hitting 70 kms an hour, but I sheepishly used my brakes to slow myslef to at least a 60 km/hour pace. We almost ran over some sheep that were crossing the road!
Riding downhill at 60 km/hour. :)


After that, there was a lot of slow downhill and we sat back, talked and enjoyed the 30 km/h ride. We made it into a little town about 100 kms in and had some lunch. After about an hour, we reluctantly got back on the road and found one more medium hill (4 km) to challenge us. After that hill, I booked it to Cory's SAG (about 30 kms from camp). When we hit the last road, we had a great tailwind, and although the road was pretty busy, we went at our own pace and I kept a steady 45 km/hour into camp. When I finally got to camp, Eritia saw me and asked me if she could set up my tent for me. I love you Eritia! We set up the tent, I showered and napped (finally!).



After I woke up, I read for a bit and then (surprisingly) it was supper time already. We had hamburgers, a lot of salads left over from the Celebration Sunday in Salt Lake and lots of fruit. Now I'm blogging, going to call Tim and head to bed with the promise of a restful sleep due to cough drugs. Yes!
And this is what I just did to my leg. Tripped over a bicycle. How ironic.