Patrick Anderson's Blog

This was a fun ride... until the end...

We started in Glendale and headed out to Morrison and back. The first leg of our ride took us on the Cherry Creek Trail up to the REI downtown. This is a nice trail to ride except that it can get crowded with other cyclist and pedestrians on Saturdays.  It can actually be more stressful to ride on a crowded bike path than on the road with cars. People on these paths have a tendency to wear headphones, step out in your path, etc.

After reaching REI, we hopped on the streets to get out to Golden (via 23rd, then 26th and finally 32nd Ave.) This part of the ride is deceptive. It seems flat, but actually has a slight incline. Add in a couple of stop lights and it can easily wear you out. The last section is my favorite - from I-70 to Coors on 32nd Avenue. There are no lights, good scenery, and slight rolling hills. Jim, a TNT alumni, and I paired up on this section and caught the lead group just as we got to Golden.

After a short break in Golden, we headed out to Morrison. The last mile or so is the descent from Alameda on Rooney Road. This was a blast to sprint down the hill to our halfway SAG stop. It is easy to just coast on the downhills, but it is worth it to pedal for that extra speed - and more fun too!

After turning around in Morrison, we made our way back to Glendale via the same route. On the section between Golden and I70, we were able to get in some good paceline practice. This technique means having different riders take turns leading the line of cyclist. The person in front works harder to break the wind for everyone else. By taking turns, no single person gets burned out and the result is that you have an overall faster pace. It is both practical and fun. But it also takes practice... you ride very close to the back wheel of the person in front of you and takes coordination with everyone not to crash and keep an even pace.

This week, we joined up with our Colorado Springs counterparts for a joint ride. To make things easy we met at the Douglas County Fairgrounds. Our Denver coaches were out of town this week, so we were led by Ben - the COS coach. 

Because we were scheduled to only do 50 miles or so, we were going to to try to shorten one of the Elephant Rock roots. This sounded good in theory, but turned out to provide a big obstacle for our team. At about mile 10, we turned onto the first road of our shortcut. It was a dirt/gravel road. The first part of the road didn't look too bad - sorta like a crushed gravel bike path. We figured, let's just go for it and maybe at the next turn in a couple miles, we would be back on pavement.

Unfortunately, that was not to be the case. We ended up staying on dirt/gravel roads for about 14-15 miles. If you have never ridden far on dirt/gravel roads, it is an experience. You have less control over the bike, you get less traction, and a lot more rolling resistance.

The uphills were a pain because you couldn't always get enough grip to power up the hill. The flats were OK as long as the wind wasn't blowing too hard (it was most of the day). The downhills were scary because of the lack of control.

On one particular downhill, I thought I was going to crash. I started the decent slowly, but was quickly picking up speed. At first the road was pretty stable - the dirt/gravel were packed and relatively smooth. As I picked up speed, I hit a section with deeper gravel and dirt. I tried applying the brakes, but just started sliding. The wind was a heft cross wind and was making me more unstable. Luckily, it was a relatively short downhill and I was able to avoid a crash before reaching the bottom.

This week we revisited a ride that I absolutely hated at the beginning of last year. Deer Creek was the first real climbing we did last year and it was the first for many on this year's team. And this year we started further up the Platte River Trail (at Overland Pond Park).

The ride down the Platte River Trail looks flat but it is actually a slight incline. It isn't too bad and with fresh legs, is just an easy ride. Once we hit Chatfield State Park, we were confronted with our first real challenge: we had to climb to the top of the dam. It is a pretty short climb, but is definitely a wakeup call. This brought back memories of last season when I fell to the pack of the group and need to lay down in the grass at the top of the dam. This year, I chugged up the climb and just kept going.

After we left Chatfield, we took a short break on the side of the road to refill our water bottles and grab a fig newton or two. We had 8 miles of climbing ahead. We kept the break short because we didn't want our legs to cool off too much and we just wanted to get the climb out of the way.

A small group of us left the SAG stop early and started the grind up Deer Creek. The weather was a cool 45 degrees or so, but we soon worked up quite a sweat. As I was trudging up the road, I once again thought about last season. The first time I did Deer Creek, I stopped 3 extra times and nearly fell over at one point because I was going so slow. Deer Creek is still tough, but I was able to go up without stops and and a decent pace.

Of course, the best part of any climb is going back down. The roads were in pretty good shape and we were able to fly. We ended up just pushing all the way back to our start point without any stopping (well, we had to stop for a flat, but that is it.)

I had this copy of my Moab Century video on my hard drive since last year, but I didn't want to upload to YouTube since I used copyrighted music. But from what I understand, You tube won't necessarily delete a video with copyrighted video, but they will show links for people to purchase the music. Just to be safe, I uploaded this with my other account.

So here it is... With better music:

This week we met at a church in Superior and then did an out and back to Hygiene. This is normally a fun ride and a chance to practice our team pacelining. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't going to cooperate. Not only was it cold (about 32 degrees), the wind was bad. The whole time we had about a 22mph cross wind with 32mph gusts. My neck and shoulders were sore from trying to stay in a tucked position (to lessen the effect of the wind) and from trying to keep from getting blown over. As always, it felt good to be done with the ride and felt even better knowing that we did it in tough conditions. 

The day's mission moment was from a fellow rider and former LLS board member. He initially got involved to commemorate the anniversary of the passing of his father many years ago due to Hodgkins. Now Hodgkins is much less of a death sentence due to the research that has been done. With work by organizations like The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, more and more cancers will be treatable or hopefully curable.

Map of this week's ride: MapMyRide.com