My journey is underway. We start riding in 2 days… right now I am sitting in the Portland International Airport baggage claim area waiting to rendez-vous with one of my tour roommates, “Nurse Nan”. I arrived at 10am and her flight arrives at 2pm.
Anyone who has gone to the blog site recently would have guessed that things got a little busy for me in the weeks leading up to my departure. It was a struggle to find time to fit in my training rides – there was no way I was going to be able to find the additional time needed to blog about it. I’ll catch folks up a little now while I wait for Nan and promise to do my best to make regular blog entries over the next 50 days.
May finished up with a little over 800 training miles. The longest ride I did was an 80 mile out-and-back from the farm up to Estes Park to visit my folks where were camping. One of my main goals for May was to get out on Scooter every day possible and get in at least an hour of riding. I only missed three days (all Wednesday s). For an added twist, and to balance my training, I joined in on 6 PowerMax classes offered by the Boulder Center of Sports Medicine. The classes that I participated in were designed to improve my body’s ability to tolerate blood lactate and allow me to work at higher intensities for longer periods. All I know is that the classes were killer!!!
The big test of my tour readiness was The Elephant Rock century. The ride was held the first Sunday in June. My neighbor and riding buddy, Sara, rode it with me. We went down to Castle Rock the night before to avoid having to get up at o’dark thirty and drive 2 hours down from Berthoud the day of the ride. We started off around 6am as the sun was coming up. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me as the sun rise was beautiful and would have been worthy of sharing. It would have been awesome to capture photos of the ribbon of cyclists winding thru the rolling hills that go south from Castle Rock.
As luck would have it, less that 15 minutes outside of town, I came upon a co-worker, Dale, who had also signed-up for the ride. As it would turn out, a second co-worker had “technical difficulties” and was late to the start. I rode along and chatted with Dale, who was on a mountain bike, for a while but when the grade increased I had to move on because my gearing didn’t allow me to match his speed without dropping my cadence too low. I was a little envious of Dale’s gearing, but not the weight of his bike!
There was a slight cool, head-breeze as we started out which increased gradually over time into a moderate headwind by the 25 or 30 mile mark. The Elephant Rock route heads south to the Black Forest in the first half-century and then after reaching the southern most point, turns around and meanders west and back north. It was quite obvious to me on this ride that I really had made peace with the wind over the past 9 months. Many riders I passed (yup, I actually PASSED riders on an organized ride!!!!) appeared to be struggling with the wind (and the hills…) and really pounding the pedals to keep from coming to a complete stop! I felt good. Scooter felt good. Together we sliced the wind with relative ease. My focus was to keep my cadence above 85 as much as possible with a “stretch goal” of keeping it above 90. Scooter and I were like PacMan the way we ate up those climbs! The route through the Black Forest takes Roller Coaster Rd – which is perfectly named. This road is a major contributor to the 5,200’ elevation gained on the ride. There didn’t seem to be much level road in that stretch. You were either climbing a tough grade (8-12%) or descending one of equal length and steepness. It is the Rocky Mountain version of “the rollies” – definitely rollies on steroids!
The second half of the ride was much less difficult – except for those poor folks who had already expended all their energy on the first half. Scooter and I felt remarkably fresh at the 75 mile mark. This is when the tailwind kicked in and pushed us along. On one downhill, Scooter and I hit 45 mph. Now, THAT’s fun! Normally, we wouldn’t get going that fast unless we were at elevation where we experience less air resistance. I was holding some energy in reserve because I remembered from riding the Elephant Rock years before that the route ends with a hellacious climb up Wolfenberger Rd. As we got closer to Castle Rock, I started to wonder how the route was going to get us to the base of that climb because we seemed to be going east back toward I-25 and town. We did actually end up at the frontage road of I-25 and to my great surprise, the route took us SOUTH again (now that awesome tailwind was a monster of a headwind!). For over a mile we battled the wind again, then crossed the highway. I was perplexed now. Wolfenberger Rd is on the west side of the highway and we were now just a handful of miles away from Castle Rock and on the east side. What the heck? I double checked my bike computer and realized that there would be no hellacious climb this year. That’s what I get for not looking at the route map! So, I finished with energy to spare, in 6.5 hours. In 2004, I rode the Elephant Rock with my friend, Jenny, who was preparing for her ride across America (on the American Lung Assoc.’s “The Big Ride”). That year, I rode it in 8.5 hours and when I finished, my tanks was EMPTY!.
What a confidence builder that day was. It was the longest ride of my entire 9 month training and it was the pinnacle. The next two weeks were planned as ‘tapper down’ time. Good thing too. I had lots of non-bike activities that needed my attention. I spent long days at work, evenings and a couple of vacation days working with Beth to get the Fjord Herald put together and uploaded for layout, and started organizing my gear for the trip. Unfortunately, I didn’t get everything done. I gave it my best effort and came close on several fronts. Russ, no our tax information didn’t make it to the accountant but the Fjord Herald did get handed off and should be in the mail soon to the NFHR members!
Normally I would have taken the entire week off prior to a big ride (like last year’s Triple By Pass) but I felt it was important to stay in the saddle this time. I decreased my ride length and intensity during the last week and I found that I was riding an hour or two very comfortably. Scooter was put in his hard-case cocoon Friday afternoon for an early Saturday morning flight. He’s sitting right next to me (still in his cocoon) as I type this.