{"id":562,"date":"2009-07-25T19:36:59","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T03:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/?p=562"},"modified":"2010-08-01T11:15:59","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T18:15:59","slug":"scmc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/2009\/07\/scmc","title":{"rendered":"Road: Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just a short report on my participation in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.santacruzcycling.org\/scmc\/\" target=\"_blank\">2009 Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There were a few reasons I signed up for the ride:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Erik would be on call, so I had to &#8220;play by myself&#8221; (as in typical Ch-English),<\/li>\n<li>Erik had done this ride and even had a T-shirt to show for it, so I want one too.<\/li>\n<li>It would be two weeks after my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/2009\/07\/2009-death-ride\/\" target=\"_blank\">Death Ride<\/a>, so I should be in shape.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It turned out to be a so-so ride for me. The reasons were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was spoiled by the Death Ride. At the DR, the route was extremely simple and clear (with three out and back&#8217;s). At SCMC, I was handed a route description printed on a piece of paper that itself seems a mile long. Having never done other organized ride than the DR, I thought for sure there would be signs and ride organizers at every turn so I almost left the handout at the car. I missed the turn within the first mile or so and ended up riding out about two miles before back tracking. After that, I tried to pay attention to the small arrows on the road, but it took the relaxing aspect out of the ride.<\/li>\n<li>I was also spoiled by the scenery at the DR. I&#8217;ve heard some people say SCMC was the most scenic ride they had done. I definitely don&#8217;t want to argue against their personal experience, but for me, the ride is not much different from my rides from home, so it almost seemed too familiar. (I know, I&#8217;m rotten spoiled just like my two little kitties.)<\/li>\n<li>And then, I was feeling sluggish. I didn&#8217;t touch my bike the week after the DR, but on the couple of short rides I did after that, my butt still hurt. Bummer. In the morning, I almost fell asleep while driving to the start. Bummer. I was still yawning left and right a couple of hours into the ride. Unbelievable!<\/li>\n<li>I had lunch at the lunch stop, and had upset stomach for almost an hour after that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But, I should look at the bright side.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I ran into my friend Alison, and had a nice chat with her and other women during lunch.<\/li>\n<li>Despite feeling extremely un-motivated and sluggish, my time at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.santacruzcycling.org\/scmc\/2009\/jctt2009-GenderTime1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Jamison Creek Time Trial <\/a>was better than I expected (at 25&#8217;36&#8221;) &#8212; actually it plain surprised me.<\/li>\n<li>Because I blew past almost all the stops during the DR, I made a point of stopping at every single one of them on this ride. The lunch was relaxing. I had some post-ride food too although not too much because I was in a rush to leave.\u00c2\u00a0 The ice cream cone was definitely my favorite.<\/li>\n<li>After lunch, I decided to cut my ride short so I could try to make it to a Santa Cruz (that&#8217;s a brand) mountain bike demo in Santa Cruz (only 9 miles away). I did make it and rode a newly out Blur LTc at Wilder Ranch. I was impressed with how well it climbed. That was a great discovery.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.illumixstudios.com\/gallery\/9071049_DP4ye#604072957_mtswo-A-LB\" target=\"_blank\">one photo of mine<\/a> from the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just a short report on my participation in the 2009 Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge. There were a few reasons I signed up for the ride: Erik would be on call, so I had to &#8220;play by myself&#8221; (as in typical Ch-English), Erik had done this ride and even had a T-shirt to show for it, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-road-biking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mxi2000.net\/mudworm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}