I rode the Whiskey 25 course in 2:56*, and I’m happy about it.

I felt slowish on the initial road climb, and just slow on the singletrack climbing. No way to not go seriously anaerobic on those damn waterbars on trail 48. I got off and walked a couple times to keep my eyeballs in my skull. At the hour mark a was about a quarter mile below the saddle on 48. The descent reminded me that it’s my least favorite trail in Prescott, it cruelly picks on my weaknesses as a rider. Loose, chunky, sandy. I’m a control freak, especially where speed is concerned. There are plenty of folks (Max, Fred) who seem to deal fine with blurring the edge of control, which is what going fast down that trail requires. Not me. I felt like a neophyte. Such unease, combined with general fatigue, led to discard the 50 option in a hurry.

The key to cleaning to road climb up the canyon, at least on a SS, is to moderate efforts a bit, as the worst climbs (insofar as traction is concerned) come at the end. This worked well. I stopped at the junction, killed a bottle of Heed and chatted briefly with some old folks in jeeps, and headed up. I don’t recall how long it took me to do that climb when I did it with Chad last month, it could have been quite a bit faster, or not. It sure felt harder today. I hit two hours a few hundred yards below the saddle on Copper Basin road, and was starting to think that in spite of an uncooperative body my goal of healthily under 3:30 might well be possible. My secret goal was to beat the 3:11 time of the top three SSers last year. That still seemed improbable. Regardless, there was almost no climbing left, so I tapped deep into the tank, using the minute flats of the last stretch to the overlook to steal a few traces of recovery.

The last singletrack descent was much easier without postholing. The soil was tacky, and I felt a bit more comfortable hanging things out on the rocky sections. Reaching the last, switchbacking singletrack descent, two questions overwhelmed my mind in sequence: how long was the damned paved downhill?, and was sub-3 hours possible? Time to burn it all down finding out. I barreled through the creek crossings at full tilt, attacked every short climb as hard as I could, and felt pretty damn competent about it. I hit the road with about (?, memory not too good on anything but the overall) 15 minutes left left to 3 hours. I killed myself spinning out and tucking into the top tube as best I could, a frustrating process on a fairly gradual downhill.

I turned up Park Ave knowing I had it in the bag, but that didn’t make going up (hill) for those three or four blocks hurt any less. Bystanders thought I was a bit off with my tour stage finish imitation pulling into the parking lot.

Now I’m almost tempted to race the damn thing. Almost.

* I did start 2 blocks west from the official start/finish line. Add 30 seconds. Whatever.

The only obnoxious coda to the morning was my GPS. I was intending to gather some good tables and charts for my own enlightenment and the public good, but it took too long to acquire a signal at the beginning, so I stuffed it in my jersey pocked and assumed it would sort itself out. Apparently my arm warmers have magic purple powers, as it never did get a good signal, and I have no data with which to work.

Alas. You’ll just have to take my word that I didn’t just go nap under a tree.