Day 9: Idle Thoughts Entering the First Rest Day
Above is a map of our path from Santa Barbara to the Grand Canyon taken from my satellite tracker. We are now at the first of four rest days for this trip. Our next rest day will be October 5 in Taos NM, followed by October 13 in Tulsa OK, and finally October 22 in Nashville TN. We arrive in Myrtle Beach SC on October 29 after ~3400 miles of biking. Since leaving Santa Barbara, we have covered just over 700 which means we are just over 20% done!
Prior to this cross country endeavor, I have been on a number of bicycle trips, but never one with more than 9 days of biking. Consequently, I knew what to expect for this first segment and anticipated this portion would go relatively well. Thus far, my legs are somewhat tired and slightly sore, but they have felt far worse at other times in the past. However, as we go well beyond anything I have done before, I am not sure how my body will react to the continued stress.
For this next segment to Taos, we will be covering 550 miles over 6 days. On paper, the final day biking into Taos is the most challenging day of the entire trip. We will be biking 142 miles with 8900' of climbing. What makes this even more challenging is that we will be starting at 7000' of elevation and climbing over a pass which peaks at 10,500' of elevation before descending back down to 7000' of elevation at Taos. The oxygen level at 10,500' of elevation is about 14% compared with about 21% at sea level. This is a day that we are all talking about. I believe we are all wondering how we will be feeling entering our next rest day.