porcupine hill climb 2012

What's the difference between the Porcupine Hill Climb 2011 and the Porcupine Hill Climb 2012?  One minute and twenty seconds - and a whole lot less sleep prior.  Part of the reason I was trying to ride so quickly (relatively speaking) during the Antelope Island moonlight ride was that I knew we'd be getting up a little after 6 a.m. on Saturday morning so H could ride the PHC up Big Cottonwood Canyon.  With our delayed start on Friday night, he had to do the ride - 14.7 miles with an elevation gain of 3,800 feet - on about 3.5 hours of sleep.  This grueling ride is a fundraiser for the Huntsman Cancer Center; afterwards, H said that whenever he got really tired, he thought of his cousin who died from cancer earlier this year and it kept him going.

Charging up the hill

Other than the lack of sleep and the head wind all the way up the canyon, things were pretty similar to last year's ride.  H warmed up; I got some iced tea; the Citizen start went off right at 7:30 a.m. from the Canyon Inn's parking lot.  I waited a little bit, then jumped in the car and headed up the canyon, leapfrogging the cyclists and stopping a couple of times so I could take photos and applaud.  Despite how hard they were working, quite a few of the riders smiled at me, as I stood there, clapping all by myself, and some managed to gasp out "thank you!"  (One guy joked: "And the crowd went wild.  All of her.")

Just past Solitude

The finish was up at Brighton and H made it up there in 1h. 30 m., 1 minute and 20 seconds slower than last year.  He came in 50th overall and 17th out of 28 in his age group.  More importantly, he missed winning a free growler of beer from the Porcupine by ten minutes, same as last year.  I couldn't really give him too much grief about that, though, what with being sleep-deprived and all.

Crossing the finish line

After the race, we drove back down the canyon and stopped in at the Porcupine for breakfast.  We were too early for beers (not served 'til 11:30 a.m.) so we had omelettes instead: mine was "Sarah's" and had spinach, cheddar cheese, sour cream and bacon. Yum!  That was pretty much all she wrote for us for the rest of the day too.  We went home and cleaned up, and napped, and thought about doing stuff, and napped a little more, and went to bed early ... clearly too old for activities on such little sleep.  I have to hand it to H: I can't believe he was able to do that ride with so little rest.  The next time we do the Antelope Ride and the Hill Climb, we're going to make sure there are no scheduling conflicts.

Very happy to be done