I bet it's been at least 2 months since I've been on a bike longer than my 7 minute commute to work. I wanted to do 2 hours max but yesterday's ride ended up being a 6 hour death march for me. I was never lost in the true sense of the word. I always knew generally where I was but that wasn't much comfort. The temperature dropped 20 degrees at the end and although I did have my bivy and bag and a decent supply of food left, a GPS sure would have been nice. It's amazing how many fire roads we have out here.

Strange place for a nest.

Unlike the past...I ate through almost everything I had yesterday.

Saw lots of this.

And this.

A Pugsley would have been real fun here. I walked miles upon miles of this slop.

Don't know if it was because I'm not in shape right now but for much of the ride I felt exactly like I did when I was going through Sargents Mesa and the Cochetopa Hills this year. Just never ending walking and huge amounts of stress. Not a good feeling but very happy to have kept pushing. It was probably very good training that I normally don't encounter all that often. I want to do more rides like this because this is one thing I'm lacking that many of the finishers force themselves them to do. I need to spend a lot more time this year suffering through the lows.