Today was actually worse than yesterday. It's probably the hardest day I've ever had on a bike. It snowed again, sleeted and rained and the 11,000 feet of climbing and headwinds were brutal. I'm just about at my limit right now. It's really hard to describe how grueling this is. Out of the eighteen people that started in El Paso, only three of us have survived to ride all the miles. Many people are now riding in the support vehicles for most of the day. These are generally very experienced and very strong riders. I'm hanging on by a thread, basically just hardheadedness and years of experience are all that are keeping me going. I apologize for the lack of pictures but the visibility was so bad for so much of the day there was no point in trying to take them.
The bad news is tomorrow is the longest mileage day of the trip at 213 miles. I'm going to try it but I'm not optimistic. I'm going to try to start off very slow and then speed up later in the day if I feel okay. We start at 5:30 in the morning and have until about 8:30 in the evening to finish. If we have rain and snow and headwinds again, it's all over. I'm going to give it my best try but I'm also being realistic. After posting this update I'm going to try to get some sleep but I'm just very sore and fatigued so I might just toss and turn all night. I'll let you know tomorrow if I make it or not!
Good for you for keeping on going.
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