Snuck One In by Old Man Winter AND Mother Nature

For March 29 the conditions were probably about as optimal as they could be.  Snow and mud are spotting the black sleeves of my top as I am following Tim aka Footfeathers down a huge descent that we had just spent the past 45 minutes climbing.  The suspension on the bike is wide open, mud and shit flying everywhere like I said previously and my cheeks were HURTING and I mean seriously aching from smiling so much riding that drop.  It was a blast and exactly why I wanted to start mountain biking again.

Tim is training for Leadman too... his goals are far more ambitious than mine... but in training I think that we are sort of facing one the same problems and that is isolation.  For me, everything that I am doing here in the Springs is so one-off from everybody else that I miss a lot of group runs and stuff and when others are riding I am running.  Tim... he's living up in the middle of nowhere without another athlete anywhere close.  So to combat this issue we came up with the idea a few weeks ago that when the weather and our schedules allowed I would head up there and we would get a ride in.  As it worked out that is exactly what we got to do yesterday.

The ride was basically seven climbs, seven drops or so... 41 miles and change, and according to my Garmin about 6400 feet of climbing.  There was not a gentle warmup as we were facing a damned near 1000 gain straight off the bat out of Central City but that was probably the worst of it.  The rest of the climbing was what I would call appropriate and the drops were the best... I hit 44.2 mph at one point and I think that is the fastest I have ever been on a bike.  That was right before we went into Golden Gate State Park which had zero traffic in it!

Weather wise... we had wind, sun, warmth, wind, rain, sleet, gropple and then more sun.  At one point I thought we were done for as we were climbing this one section and it almost became a whiteout.  15 minutes later, it smells like rain, the sun is out and the birds are chirping.  When we got back to Central City and I was putting the bike on the bike rack it finally started to rain, hard.  We made it back just in time.  We pulled it off!

I am looking forward to heading back up there again soon to do it again.  I think the courses he has up there are very Leadville-like and beneficial to ride.  It was the most fun ride of the training season so far and it was definitely a bonus to pick Tim's brain a bit on bikes, racing, running, ultras, etc.  And again, for for that altitude and this time of the year, we basically got by with murder weather wise!

You can see the climbing started from the very beginning of the ride.

Today's run wasn't as spectacular.  The upper part of Buckhorn and parts of Bear Creek Canyon are still a bit messy yet with ice and slush.  Managed about 21 miles, 4300 gain.  Easy ride tomorrow.  Nice.