done and done!

I survived Cycle Oregon! I even had fun along the way, though the ride itself was brutal. On day three or four, my friend and I agreed it might be our last CO. But by day seven we were already getting nostalgic, so no promises that this is the last. It's definitely the last for quite a while, though!

The route was tough - 400 miles and 30,000 feet of climbing if you did the basics, no extra legs:

My friend and I sagged after 33 miles on day four (i.e. quit early and caught a ride on one of the support vehicles) - we could've gone longer, but it's unlikely we could have finished the day, so we quit early in order to get a ride before the sag wagons got totally swamped. It was a good call.

Also, on day 6, we "only" biked 70  miles and then went white water rafting for 8 miles and were driven the rest of the way to camp. It seemed like a good idea, but we wound up waiting about 90 minutes to get started and FROZE on the river in our bike gear. So it wasn't all that much fun, but it was different!

In total I figure we rode 350 miles and climbed 27,000 feet - that is plenty for me!

The scenery was amazing:

And we were really happy to be done.

 

Really, really, really happy. 

I'm also happy to say I think my training was at least adequate. I may have been able to finish day four - almost definitely, if crawling into camp in tears counts as finishing. But I felt pretty good, overall, and like my endurance was decent. The hardest day for me, mentally, was day 3 - at the beginning I just did not see HOW we could do it, but we did! And now it's over! We'll see what fitness I do this fall.