jamesdak 

Well I took leave last week just to get away from work. Usually I would have been in the woods somewhere doing wildlife photography but the creaky knees are limiting my hiking ability and everyplace was hot as hades. So I stayed home and decided to do long rides each day. Somehow that soon progressed to seeing if I could ride 10 days straight without a rest day while averaging over 50 miles a day. Today was the final day of that silliness. Each day I also took out a different bike to add to the fun. I will admit that on the later rides I started picking the bikes I knew would carry me comfortably and easily over the daily miles. I also had to resort to over 20 minutes in an ice bath after the day 8 ride to alleviate some sore muscles. It was weird because I had plenty of energy each ride but the thighs were sore to the touch and getting pretty tight. Then yesterday the right calf started giving me issues and then was the biggest problem today. I was going to finish out this 10 marathon with a climb up Powder Mt which is a local HC category climb. It's the toughest climb in Utah and is ranked like 22nd toughest in the world. 10% avg grade over the 6 miles but maxes at 17% with the last 3 averaging over 13%. I'm sort of glad the calf was jacked up. I did go about 1/3rd of the way up the climb and then figured I didn't want to risk tweaking the calf and messing up my riding for the next week or two. So I turned around and added in more miles with lighter climbing. All the bikes performed admirably although I did have issues with the De Rosa today. I started getting so weird pinging in the back end of it after coming off that climb. Seemed like a spoke or something but I couldn't pin it down. Anyway. 10 days straight, a little over 537 miles with 9272 feet of climbing. To be honest it was actually 11 bikes as I took out my new Azor for a 11 mile test run the one evening. Max temp I saw during this period was 100.4f. Most days were much cooler as I tried to get out around 8:30 each morning.

3 Jul 40.58 miles - Giordana Xl Super II (blue and white one)

4 Jul 40.64 miles - Schwinn PDG Paramount

5 Jul 52.02 miles - Fuji Opus III

5 Jul 11.02 miles - Azor

6 Jul 50.01miles - Wayne Evans custom

7 Jul 60.05 miles - David Kirk built Fishlips

8 Jul 60.12 miles - GP&GS Lemond

9 Jul 55.02 miles - Davidson Impulse

10 Jul 50.06 miles -Trek Y-77 Y-Foil

11 Jul 56.17 miles -Team Z Lemond

12 Jul 61.45 miles - De Rosa Neo Pro

537.24 miles total
9262 ft climbing

These 10 days proved to me that a pint of Chocolate Whole Milk with a Banana is an effective recovery snack as that's what I chomped down each day while walking to cool down from the ride.