The Foundation

The past couple of weeks (and the next few weeks) have been largely dedicated to laying the foundation for what I hope to be a good, solid cyclocross season.
The big news from last week is that I was able to ride up a hill that I have never been able to ride before.

The short back story is that the hill pictured above is a gravel road out east of town. I'm not sure how long it is, but not super long and while I'm not totally sure of its max gradient, I'd say it's 20%, maybe a touch more. That kind of grade is hard to ride no matter what, but throw rutted/loose gravel on top of it, and only select riders make it up this monster. Now, I have attempted this climb at least 10-15 times (always on CX bike) and never made it...until Tuesday. I chomped the bit and made it.
Sunday I went out for a longish road ride w/ a strong group of guys. We put in a solid ~3hrs and due to the heat, pretty much everyone started falling apart @ ~2.5hrs the heat and most of the group had ridden hard the day before). Add to that I got stung (by something) on the neck @ ~2hrs in. I'm not the kind of allergic that requires an epi-pen or anything, but I do typically have more-than-the-norm reaction to stings, so I was a little concerned about having been stung on the neck. Turned out fine though, it just itches and is red now; no big.
Sunday's heat made my legs cramp some (actually pretty badly) and I'm still not fully recovered from that now (Monday night), but I guess it's probably good for me to suffer and push through these things right now...first race is only ~2weeks away!