Up and Down and Up

So I think today's hills were the worst of the entire trip. The big steep hills of virginia were just that Big and Steep.  You could just set up granny gear then grind them out until the body said take a rest. Do this a couple times and you're done. The hills in Kentucky were shorter were still long enough that shifting gears and grinding them out worked. Illinois and Missouris hills until today were more like one of those terrible old wooden roller coasters; you grind slowly to the top then a fast bumpy ride down that takes you almost all the way up the next hill.


The first half of today's ride was actually quite nice. I could have easily made it last night had I pushed on. The second half of the ride had the hills.Today's hills were not like any of the previous ones. First off they were Steep. Steep enough to require max granny gear for basically all of them. Secondly they were short. So short that by the time you started to get in a climbing groove you were done. Thirdly they were space out far enough that any momentum you got from grinding up the previous hill was gone by the time you reached the next. Oh and throw in a headwind which they hills were to short to block except for a very short period of the climb making it practically impossible to get in a groove. Rinse and repeat for 25 miles and that was the second half of my day.

Luckily I reached the small town of Ash Grove and decided to take a break and wait for the wind to die down before moving on. They had a really nice community park with a pool and a biker hostel to boot. Needless to say I didn't ride on.