Year: 2009

I haven’t had time to finish my Black Forest report and am just now posting, several weeks after the fact.

I rode my first 300k Saturday, May 23. It was #3 of the RMCC’s 1-2-3 challenge. It was an awesome ride! I write that facetiously because every successful breakthrough workout or event is “awesome” after sufficient time has passed. In this case, it took about 15 minutes.

It was a nice route. Some of the roads weren’t great, (expansion crack problems mainly) but it would be difficult to find any route that had 180+ miles of perfect pavement and didn’t travel the same section of road more than twice. There were also a few miles of roads with heavy traffic and little or no shoulder, not bad to ride at 6 AM, but places I’d normally avoid on a Memorial Day weekend afternoon.

Physically the ride went well too. I wasn’t too tired at the end even though I’d tried to stay near the top of my aerobic HR range for most of the first 120 miles or so.

The weather was overcast and colder than I’d expected, but ok until the rain started after mile 70. There was a break in the rain for 40 miles or so, then alternating showers and heavy rain until the last hour. Not surprisingly on the wet roads, I flatted about 25 miles from the end. Fortunately, I made it to the finish on that tube. As I discovered the next day, with all the rain and wet (and no reading glasses) I hadn’t removed all the glass from tire and it had a slow leak.

If you’re riding in the area, the best stop was the Black Forest General Store, near Burgess on Black Forest Rd. Clean restrooms and a great selection of food, including Amy’s soup and Alternative Baking Company vegan cookies.

The route was something like this:

The Universal Sports‘ coverage of the Giro is great! The best cycling coverage I’ve seen in awhile, if not ever. I did my first 200k last weekend. Actually I rode about 210k because I wasn’t sure of my route and I wanted to get in at least 200k. I was feeling pretty good about myself until I took a look at the Giro route. Stage 6: 248km, Stage 7: 244km, Stage 8: 209km. That’s just three stages of a 21 stage race. Makes my 210km look pretty unremarkable.

I’d planned to do an organized ride, but a majority of the other riders voted to cancel 15 minutes before the scheduled start because of inclement weather. I can understand rescheduling a club ride because of weather; especially low visibility, i.e. drivers can’t see riders well. However, if someone had made the call 12 hours earlier it certainly would have saved a lot of time and fuel.
 
I needed to get in a long ride and didn’t have a lot of daylight left after driving from Longmont to Pueblo. The “route” I chose was pretty awful. Using “route” loosely, because I only had a vague idea of where I was going and spent a fair amount of time riding around in circles getting the mileage in. The weather was decent though, dry and overcast with mild wind.
 
The “bike trail” at the Pueblo reservoir is paved, but in such poor condition that it is unrideable except on a mountain bike. The road surface is not much better. Really the main road around the reservoir is in absolutely terrible condition. Many drivers are not polite and two yelled at me to get on the bike path. There was one excellent part of the road, the spur to Osprey lookout. Nice pavement and the testosterone level of the drivers seemed much lower in that part of the park … away from the reservoir. I rode Route 96 for a few miles west of the reservoir. It has a decent size shoulder, but is in nearly as bad condition as the reservoir road. It is covered with sand and has cracks every few yards, each supporting a good crop of weeds. I came home with two thorns in my front tire. One was causing a slow leak. I was lucky to make it back to my car just before dark without having to change the tube.
 
My route covered these roads and trail, though obviously some them were ridden more than once to get to 130+ miles. Other than the road conditions, it was a nice, easy ride.