Day 9 Ride: 10 Hills + 1 extra interval

Today we rode the "10 hills" ride. This ride is brutal. It starts off with 5 mellow climbs, ranging anywhere from 2 to 5km in length. Number 6 we do standing up the entire climb. Pain! Number 7 was steep, but 8 kicked my butt. It was incredibly steep and long. Lots of false tops. It was a huge mental game getting up it. Hill number 9 was hard because your legs were toast by then. It was 3km long, but relatively gradual. Hill number 10 was just brutal. It's a 600-700meter climb with a constant 16% grade. I was never able to sit down and could barely keep pedaling forward. There were a few times I actually thought I would roll backwards. Needless to say, I was happy to be done with the ride. Ended up with just under 100km in 3hrs 50mins. Good times. Ok, now the fun part...pictures!

Einat is always smiling.

A crazy train of some sort of caterpillars. Gross! These things were all over one of the roads (dead and alive).


Smile!

In the "pain cave".

Megan looking at the scenery.

The top of hill 10 looking into Limoux. You can't really tell how steep it is though.

Tomorrow is market day. Then we will go for an easy spin in the afternoon. Saturday we had to Cholet for our 2nd race here on Sunday. Thanks for reading!
-A

UPDATE
Tonight we did the 11th interval. We went searching for crepes, but found that the store was closed. So instead, we went to a cafe and got some ice cream. Ok, not some...a lot! It was good fun. Lots of laughing involved. That's something I've noticed about here - not many people laugh, or smile for that matter. So we did enough laughing for the entire town of Limoux in one night :) Here's some pictures. Good times were had...and now my abs hurt. Sorry if some are blurry...I was laughing to hard to take them.

Deliciousness

Oh yes. (Picture stolen from Megan G.)

Megan giving the thumbs up and Lauren waiting to devour.

Einat and I ate the whole things by ourselves. Ok...maybe not really. (Picture stolen from Megan G.)

Gone in 60 seconds. Ok...maybe more like 6 minutes. But we definitely ate it fast!

No comment.

Ok. Bonne nuit!