Cycling race 7:11:00 [3]
Day 3 of Crank the Shield. Even though this was technically the hardest day (2x the amount of climbing of Day 1), it was definitely my favorite. A lot less mud, some sweet singletrack, and even though there were tons of quad draining uphills, that resulted in some ardrenaline inducing holy shit should I be doing this downhills. I felt physically really good (better than Day 2 - I think in part to Hammer Recoverite) and mentally positive knowing that it was the last day. My partner had a tough time, but she's awesome at hunkering down and suffering, and I kept reminding her that we were almost done! Since the other all female team hadn't made the cutoff on Day 1, I didn't feel like it was a genuine "win," so I told my partner I wanted to beat them fair and square today. We saw them a few times, but knew we'd be faster on the singletrack and hike a bike than they were. We came in about 13 minutes ahead of them, good enough for our stage "win" (after all, there were only two in our category) and the overall title. Some pretty awesome swag - a huge trophy and two jerseys. Great way to end the weekend. I'd definitely do this race again, but with different training and racing prep.
