Colorado Wrap Up

After the rides out of Ft Collins I spent most of my time between my brother's house in Big Elk Meadows and my friend Whitney's house in Boulder. I did one ride from Boulder up Lefthand Canyon to Ward, along the Peak-to-Peak Highway to Nederland, and then down Boulder Canyon back to Boulder. This is a really great ride...one of the better mid-distance rides in the area...lots of climbing to start; 4000 ft in the first 16 miles. Then a pretty scenic ride on the Peak-to-Peak, and Boulder canyon is one of the better descents around the front range. So its a fun ride, but the first time I did it (Monday, 7/14) my legs still felt really heavy.

I took a day off and then did the same loop again and felt a bit better. When I returned to Boulder on this ride I met Kraig and we did a ride back up Lefthand to Jamestown and then back over Lee Hill back to Boulder. We mostly rode easy and talked. I think this was close to 80 miles and probably a little under 8000 ft of climbing.

My last ride was out of Lakewood, CO with my friend Doug Bittle. We left his house at 8:30 am and rode up Lookout mountain, connected to Highway 40 along Highway 70, and then came back through Red Rocks into Lakewood. This is a really nice ride, especially considering that its right on the edge of such a major metro area. There is very little traffic on the lookout climb and its not super steep or hard, but still goes up over 2000 ft. We rode really easy, got passed by about everybody, and had a good ride.

In the end I got about 8-10 hours less than I had hoped the first week of the trip. Mostly because I made the trip from CO to IA a lot faster than I expected, so no complaints about that. The second week I was too tired to get the hours in I had hoped to. At least I was smart enough to cut the hours and try to rest more. There were times in the past when I buried myself trying to stick to a too-ambitious training plan. Other than it was a good trip, although I would really have liked to have gotten into some really hot weather...