Reliving long days on the bike helps keep the motivation alive during the offseason, a reminder that the snow will melt and the days will, once again, be long. While impatiently waiting for spring to round the bend (the birds are already chirping!), Hailey Moore recently looked back on a full-value day from last summer, riding Mount Blue Sky, a Colorado 14er home to the highest paved road in North American, on her Rodeo Labs Trail Donkey:

“There was fire in the air on the last day of July. The morning felt thick with haze from the three Front Range blazes as I rolled my bike outside. Colorado has been lucky the last few years, but there’s always the chance that fire season will mar my otherwise favorite time to live here. At least the air doesn’t smell like smoke yet, I thought as I swung a leg over and pushed off. The day would be long and the air thin enough where I was headed: from my home in Boulder all the way up to the 14,000+ foot perch of Mount Blue Sky.”

Hard efforts are often as much about what happens inside your own head as the world around you, and Hailey’s Mt Blue Sky reflections reveal how she grapples with both emotional and physical challenges along the way. Read the rest in Rodeo Adventure Labs Journal!