OP Pre-Ride

I finally got back on the bike today. Star and I headed down to Oracle to pre-ride the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo course. Neither of us have been down since last year and we thought it would be a good day to reacquaint ourselves with the course. It was dry, temps were decent, and the sky was slightly overcast when we got started. The course itself was perfect, hardpacked and smooth, things certainly started out well. The dark clouds rolled in and it started raining at mile five, raining hard at eight, turned to snow at eleven, and it started to stick when we got back to the lot. I was feeling pretty good after I was in dry clothes, only my feet and handles(yes, handles, not hands) were slow to warm back up. Star on the other hand was not looking so good. She was having trouble operating the last gate, about three miles from the car, and by the time we got back she couldn't tell that she was biting into her fingers when she was trying to get her gloves off. We headed into Oracle for gas and grub post-ride and by the time we headed out there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground and Star had still not warmed up. She eventually thawed out at about the same rate as the road on the two hour drive back. Anyway, the meat of the ride was 15 miles, 2 hours, and 1300 feet(according to the GPS, the epicrides site claims 1000 feet). I just wish one of us had brought a camera, snow on cacti is pretty damn cool. Now if I can only motivate myself again tomorrow.