i think i could've...

on saturday, part of our 'saints to sinners' relay team entered the 'i think i canyons' charity event. the event benefits the 4th street clinic for the homeless in downtown SLC. the event was to climb 4 of the canyons along the wasatch front. with the idea being that you think of the suffering of the homeless as you suffer up the canyons yourself.

the profile we rode yesterday:


as you'll notice, there are 3 climbs shown. this comes from my garmin, and sometimes life gets in the way. we all talked our wives and families into letting us go for part of the day and when as the day stretched on and the time of promised arrival home approached we decided we'd hit the biggest canyons and could feel good about a hard day in the saddle...

the 'saints to sinners' relay begins just under two weeks from now and we have been anticipating and preparing for this event since we rode it last year. the first order of business was to get ourselves looking like a team.

joseph and brent are modeling a perfect team pose just before the event began...


they are sporting the jerseys i designed with the team's help. we are pretty excited about them even though our wives aren't sure what to think of the skulls..:)

joseph and i have been time-trialing up AF canyon this month (over email we've compared times) and we've broken below 53 minutes. unfortunately, this led us both to think that we should ride little cottonwood with the same zeal. not so bad if you aren't following the effort with 2 other massive canyon climbs. the first climb felt good for all 4 of us (my colleague brian oliver also met up with us for the ride.) the poor quality of the photo with alta in the background here doesn't correlate with how good the first climb felt...


all the canyons were gorgeous on saturday with perfect riding weather in the early morning. here are the four of us smiling at brighton to cover the burn lingering in our legs from the big effort coming up big cottownwood...


the last canyon we rode was millcreek. i'd only been all the way up millcreek 7 years ago during medical school. it was every bit as hard as i remembered it since my first experience came as a newbie roadie with jonathan guenter as my guide...the experience on saturday came after climbing 8,000 vertical feet at hard tempo. i was standing up in my lowest gear at times wondering how much further i was willing to go...

i thought at the start of the day i could ride in honor of the tour de france riders going up five mountain passes including the plateau de beille. instead, i suffered for several hours on the bike, but i'm not sure i honored anyone..:)


it was a great event and will hopefully grow every year (it's in its 5th year--started by a current 4th year medical student.) we have these amazing canyons closer than most urban centers in the world. very cool and should be ridden :)

for us, it served the purpose of continuing to prepare our legs and bodies for the 'saints to sinners' relay the end of this month. we are each projecting between 120-170 miles over 28 hours as we ride and pace each other from SLC to Vegas. it's hard to describe how unique and enjoyable this race is.

we'll let you know how it goes!

all of the day's data here:

some more random stats on the day...