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Today I bought a used Giant OCR3 road bike with upgraded Shimano wheels, 4 years old, great condition, weighs 21 lbs. I was lucky to find it because I am so small and it's difficult to find used road bikes in my size. This one is a 42 or something like that.

So, to try it out, I rode with two other women up from Eagar to Big Lake Highway 261 and up it almost to Mexican Hay Lake--to the Overlook.

Funny thing, I've been mtn. biking a lot lately, and I ride to work, too. So I'm pretty fit on the bike. I had no trouble with that 6% grade. It was going DOWN that was the kicker. Luckily I had plenty of advice from my more experienced pals. I learned about pedaling techniques, braking, and taking curves, etc. My hands were killing me going down. I really didn't want to get going up to 40 mph, and I had to brake hard the whole way to prevent that. I thought my legs would be sore, but it's my arms and shoulders that took the beating!

Good training, bike fits me well, had plenty of help from the guys (who rode up separately) with the fitting, etc. I feel lucky today to have another nice piece of sports equipment for not a lot of money.

Mrs. big_load would be jealous. Road riding around here is just too dangerous, but hopefully she'll get her chance in a few years.

That's why clubs are nice. There is some safety in numbers. When I'm in Yuma I belong to a club. I'll be going down there in a few weeks. There are very few roadies in my town, and from what I've heard, the female ones avoid the big hills! So they aren't very serious about it, I guess. Anyway, the people I was riding with were all from that Yuma club, and regularly do century rides, which I want to do very soon. I think I could ride to Alpine and back right now without killing myself and that would be about 54 miles r/t. And that's going from 7,000 to 8500 elev. From here a good century would be to ride to Quemado, NM, and back, or to do the loop from here to Show Low and back around through Pinetop and McNary. That is 104 miles.