The Alpine Hills

After work I met up with the Utah Velo Club for a ride up the hills of Alpine.

We had a small group of 8 and left from the Bike Peddler in American Fork and headed north to Alpine.

The first climb was all the way to up to the end of Grove Drive. It's mellow at first but gets steeper toward the end with some 12% grades. It was hot today (in the mid 90s) and I got a good sweat going. I was the first to the top, but I don't think it was really contested.

Down Grove we veered off onto Heritage Hills Drive and up Fort Canyon Road. It was pretty mellow and rolled a bit.

Coming back down we peeled off onto Meadowlark Drive which climbs steeply with a 16% grade. It looked like a wall. I was glad I had a triple. We ground up it and headed over to Highland Boulevard for a climb up to Suncrest, but first we stopped at a fellow's house to get water.

We started up and the other strong climber lead out and I followed. He held a good pace and I was working to stay with him. The plan was to only go half way up because it was getting late. When we reached the turnaround I asked what he wanted to do and he wanted to go on so I went with. On the second-to-last climb he stood up a few times and opened a gap on me. I tried to close it, but I didn't have much to answer with. I pushed the pace the best I could and just motored steady. On the last climb I took it up a notch and was closing slowly, but it was too little too late. It was a good climb.

We turned around and zipped down. We tried to catch the group, but knew it was a long shot with the lead they had on us. Highway 74 heading back to American Fork is slightly downhill and we poured on the speed in a 2-man paceline. We did 30 mph most of the time. It was a rush flying along that fast. That's a great stretch of road to bike. Even has a bike lane. Near the shop we saw two other guys from the group heading home. We didn't catch them, but it was still a good effort.

We said goodbye and I loaded my bike in the car and headed home for a delicious, home made burger for dinner - bacon, lettuce, cheese, grilled onions - yum. My sweet wife is good to me.