The Summit Challenge

I have been wanting to do a century (100 miles) bike ride ever since I got my road bike this spring. There were a few I wanted to do, but none of them worked with my schedule. Tiffany told me about the Summit Challenge, a half century (50 miles) hosted by the National Ability Center in Park City. I figured a half century was a good place to start.

Linsdey is a road bike queen. She has ridden 4 centuries this summer, so I decided to ask her to do it with me. I knew that I would be slower than her, but I knew she would be nice about it and wait for me. She is so much fun to be with, so I knew that we would have a good time.

I planned to do more training on my road bike before the ride, but that just didn’t happen. I wanted to go on one long ride with Scott but we could never get it planned with school starting and everything. So, aside from a ride I did in Maui about 10 years ago, this was the longest ride I have ever done on my road bike.

I was happy with how I did. It started out with a long climb up from highway 224 up to Kamas. I felt great on that part. I expected it to be harder than it was. I just got in an easy gear and made my way up. I was slow, but I didn’t want to start out to strong. After that it was just a nice touring ride. The views and farm land were so pretty. I felt good on all of the middle of the ride. The last part of the ride was about 7 miles climbing up Brown’s Canyon. That part of the ride was really hard for me. I was starting to get tired and the climb was hard. To make it worse there was a serious headwind. I just got in my granny gear and kept on pedaling. I was sooo happy to make it to the top! Lindsey did awesome the whole time. She kicked butt on the last climb.

I was happy with how I did. I didn’t really struggle too much. If the wind hadn’t been blowing so hard I think I would have been fine on that last climb. After this ride, I think I am ready to try to tackle a century!