Day 14: The Black Hills, Custer to Rapid City, SD

Tha, tha, that's all folks! No more hills for many days.

Beautiful ride through Black Hills - rolling, plains and Ponderosa Forest. Distant views to the plains - and fast swooping downhills to those plains. Not a hill in sight to the east.

Tomorrow starts the long, hot, cloudless march east.

With predicted east winds. Aaaaaaaagh!

Didn't get much of a picture of buffalo, but they were cute. Mom buffalo gave me a snort, loosely interpreted as: "Back off, Dude, you're in the wrong gear for a sprint". We've been reduced to washing in the fountain outside a "Sonic" drive-in!

5.5 hr in saddle, 122 km (75 miles) , 13.5 MPH av power 141 heart rate 90.

Day 13: Sheridan, Wy to Custer, SD

Rather a weak day for pictures: there were a number that I should have taken, but at inopportune times.

Gigantic coal mines and coal processing as we left Gillette - "the energy capital of the nation".

Some fun rocky canyons as weaved through the sedimentary (sandstone and limestone) layers that were pushed up and tilted, then eroded, as the basement layer igneous rock forming the core of the Black Hills were pushed up.

Then we rolled into Custer, the southern gateway to the Black Hills: a tourist trap including the Flintstone motel and campground.

Sturgis motorcycle rally appears to have spilled over to occupy the entire summer in the area, and Harley Davidsons's appear to be the predominant vehicle on the roads. Hard to tell without looking, if you're about to be run down by a large truck, or just passed by a Harley.

So, for pictures, you'll have to settle for a few choice labels from the PAC Tour vans and one picture of the finest in local wildlife.

6.6 hrs in the saddle, 185 km (115 miles), 28.1 km/hr(17.4 MPH - fairly strong winds variously tail, cross, and head), av pulse 93. 1700 foot net climb (about 4000 ft total).

Day 12 Sheridan, wy to Gillette, wy

Day 12 - oops doubled some of the pictures. Where'd the sheep come from? Did the Tour detour through Wyoming????

Suspect that today was the last look at snow-capped peaks for a while. Just a few looks back over the shoulder as we rode over a low saddle. Then, down a broad valley with lumpy hills on each side. No sign of agriculture except for hay.

Then on to Gillette - the self-proclaimed "Energy capital of the nation". Based on lots of gas wells, and a big coal mine.

We hammered hard today, as evidenced by my massive heart rate average of 88 for the day! I was taking pulls with my heart rate in the 70's.

6.6 hr in the saddle, 106 miles, 26.2 av speed, 88 av pulse and 133 watts av power.

I'm saving it for something later.

Day 12 Sheridan, wy to Gillette, wy

A day late posting, hotel internet was out:

Today was a big day – over 8 hours in the saddle and over 7000 feet of climbing – nearly 6000 feet net from bottom to top of the main climb over the BigHorns. I think that’s much harder than 6 climbs of 1000 feet each. Feels that way to me.

The Bighorns are pretty spectacular – big views, sharply cut canyons, spectacular folded layers of limestone. And the summit ridge is a broad, green meadow full of spectacular flowers. Well worth the visit.

Although this was a big day, I felt like lead compared to similar days in the past: I’m getting a feel for how much tougher it is to ride a lot day after day after day.

In the picture of the distant mountains, you can see our road diagonaling across the face of the mountains, and in the shot looking down, you'll see the road coming up through the notch. It's one of the all time great climbs.

Remarkably, though this was an all uphill, then all downhill day – at the end of the day, the averages are all in approximately the same range.

196 km/120 miles in 8.4 hours in the saddle, average of 23.3 km/hr = 14 MPH. Av pulse 99, power 138 watts. Climbing 7487 feet total.

Response to comments

Response to some prior comments: No the guy in tight jeans isn't riding with us: he's with a fast group that passed us.

As you can imagine, the guys doing massive miles don't have too much time for other stuff. Practicing social skills may be part of the "other stuff" - and it may show in some cases. Or, maybe they had a stroke that nailed their speech center.

The relatively high speeds and low pulse rates may have several explanations: our altitude is a bit lower and may account for a few beats per minute. The tailwinds certainly help - we've had some pretty long sections where minimal pedaling gets us a lot of speed. And, although we don't ride pacelines all the time, even with a headwind, tucking in behind some big young guy saves quite a few watts.

And, recall that power (and thus heart rate at steady state) to speed ratio is non-linear. In the range that we're interested, figure that any percent increase in speed requires twice that much increase in power (and I need to increase my pulse rate by nearly 20 beats to increase my power output by 20%). But, the same holds true in the opposite direction: back off your speed by 10 percent, and you can back off your power by twenty percent and for me, I'll probably lose 15-20 beats in pulse rate!

The psychology is interesting to me: without trying to figure out what effort I can sustain for 5-8 hours, I settle into a comfortable range that results in tired but not exhausted at the end of the day - and it's very consistent from day-to-day: 95-105 beats, 135-141 watts - without trying to stay consistent, and with very different profiles from day to day (flat vs rollers vs long climb), that give the same average but very different distributions of power (steady, steady, steady in case 1, vs brief on/off/on/off in the rollers, vs loooong on then loooong off on the long climb then descent).

Day 10: Columbus, MT to Powell, WY

We'll try the pictures: Low cloud decks, distant views of Beartooth plateau, welcome to Wyoming, and one of the hilltop houses!

Day 10: Columbus, MT to Powell, WY

sVery slow internet connection, so I won't try loading photos now.

Interesting terrain today, and more pleasant backroads - no Interstate riding!
Bumpy morning, lots of up and down and then an afternoon long gentle climb up to a plateau.
Dryland ranching and irrigated sugar beet agriculture. Red Lodge was a small tourist town. Rode along the front of the Beartooth Plateau with the top of the plateau obscured in clouds all day.
I wasn't aware that Montana ever had a low persistent cloud deck and high humidity - and cool pleasant riding conditions.

Every little lump of a hill seemed to have a house on the very top (with nary a tree in sight). 3 possibilities: they wanted a 360 degree view of other little hills; they really like wind, wind, wind; they needed good cell phone reception.

6.9 hours in saddle, 177 km (108 miles), av speed 15.7 mph, av pulse 94, av wats 138, 5280 feet of climbing.