It seemed like the weather had peeped at my schedule and decided to wait up for me. Waking up to wet streets bathed in almost sunshine, I decided not to take an extra day off and conquer the last formidable mountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deciding that was a stroke of genius. Beyond the initial stretch, gorgeous roads winding through hills and cloud-capped peaks, I met my nemesis for the day. A 10 km of uphill with a cruel 750m climb. It was a Herculean struggle, with gradients peaking at 20% incline. After winning that epic and soaking in the stunning vista from the summit, it was time to erase all the altitude I’d piled on today, plus a bonus from yesterday, almost 30 km of pure downhill rush. With temperatures hovering around 7-8 degrees at the peak, I armored myself in layers. What a thrill it was, zipping down at 50 km\/h, though it was bone chilling cold. I had to stop every 5 km just to thaw out a bit. By the end of 30 km, I was nearly a human popsicle. Checking the weather again, everything was surprisingly perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I paused a few times to marvel at the mountain views, though my mind was mostly racing ahead to tomorrow, the final leg and the sweet thought of home. It’s comforting to be greeted by a friend’s family and to crash somewhere familiar for the day. The weather forecast is promising and the road well known. It’s going to be a treat sleeping in my own bed again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seemed like the weather had peeped at my schedule and decided to wait up for me. Waking up to wet streets bathed in almost sunshine, I decided not to take an extra day off and conquer the last formidable mountain. Deciding that was a stroke of genius. Beyond the initial stretch, gorgeous roads winding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,63,10,71],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycling-2024","tag-adventure","tag-austria","tag-cycling","tag-day-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/87"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wheres-marin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}