104 in the shade!

Greetings from the lovely DOW Villa Motel in the bustling metropolis of Lone Pine. My friends and I finished leg 1 of our Death Valley biking adventure in conditions that can only be described as MOLTEN. As "luck" would have it, Death Valley chose this weekend (of all weekends) to shatter an eleven year-old record high by more than 10 degrees. Doesn't Mother Nature know I need it to be cold????

My two friends and I drove to Death Valley yesterday (hence, no blog entry) and started our ride this morning at 7am. Without going in to TOO much detail, because I realize this is a RUNNING forum, the first 24 miles were mainly rolling hills with a high and low elevation of 5 and negative 280. The next 18 miles were straight up - gaining just under 5,000 feet - to the top of Townes Pass (see picture). We then descended 9 miles (losing 3,200 feet) feet and then immediately began a 20 mile 3,200 foot climb to the Darwin Road turnoff. The next 10 miles were downhill (dropping 1,300 feet) and the final 30 some odd miles were rolling.. The temperature in Death Valley when we started our climb out of it at mile 24 was 105.. that was in the shade. By mile 70, it was down to around 90.

We pulled in to Lone Pine around 5 o'clock, cleaned up, and headed across the street to a lovely little pizza place called the "Pizza Factory". Everything was served on paper plates and the "silverware" was made of plastic. I didn't care one bit and devoured the vegi calzone I ordered in a matter of minutes.

Tomorrow we reverse our route and head back to Death Valley (following the same route). It should be A LOT easier, as everything we knocked ourselves out climbing today will be a nice STEEP descent.

On a more running-related note, I got the fantastic news on Thursday before I left that Fenton's Creamery (as in ice cream) is going to let me train in their deep freeze! Fenton's has been an East Bay icon since the early 20's and will be the perfect place to add the finishing touches to my North Pole Marathon preparations (their mint chocolate chip ice cream is simply to DIE for!). Where better to train for a marathon than an ice cream shop!

Well, time to get some sleep before my head falls flat on the keyboard.

Talk to you all later!
~Bobby

P.S. Brad, FYI - there’s no treadmill at the DOW Villa.