3 county, 3 mountain Sunday

Sunday was a tough ride. Left the house at 7 AM to hook up with a couple folks. Zoomed down the frontside of Signal on the bike to the K-mart. Headed out through Falling Water to Mowbray Mtn. Ascended Mowbray and rode around up on top for a while. I'd never spent much time up on top of that ridge before and really liked it. Hurtled down Hensen's Gap into Sequatchie Valley and headed south on East Valley road to Powell's Crossroads. From here I got to climb the back side of Suck Creek Mtn, which is quite an effort. Fortunately, I wasn't concerned about speed and did it far lower than race pace. Descending the front side of Suck Creek was the same as normal, sedate. Not a lot of curves and not terribly steep. At this point I had ridden about 60 miles and was debating whether to do the final climb up Signal and back to the house or to catch a ride up with a friend in their voiture. I chose to do what my man Stuey O'Grady says and "Harden the F*ck Up." I did the final climb, but used every gear I had to do it. It hurt a quite a bit. All told I think I had over 70 miles and three significant climbs on the day. Woo-hoo!