Mt.Evans

A bit delayed. Where does the time go? Nevertheless the Fourth of July ride this year was good. I passed on a 2nd Firecracker and instead joined Erik for his annual Mt.Evans ride. I headed out from home a bit before 4:30am and enjoyed a nice ride up to Idaho Springs. Marni was waiting there to play SAG for the crew climbing the mountain, prefering to save her energy for the weekend's XC race. After swapping bottles and hitting the restroom we all headed up the mountain staggered a bit to try to arrive at the top at similar times. I chased Erik hard, closing the gap to around 3 minutes at one point but then Erik began to open it up on the upper slopes and I could never catch him. I got a little sleepy on the upper climbs but rallied on the last bit of switchbacks bouyed by the altimeter's climbing reading. Soon enough I hit the top and ate some of Marni's homemade cookies before switching shoes to climb to the summit witih Marni and Turbo for a picture. On the way hiking back down the clouds rolled in quick and it was time to head down. The girls all drove down in the car while Erik and I took off down the mountain enjoying a roughly 28 mile descent back to 6700 feet from over 14,100 feet. Aside from a pretty killer headwind we enjoyed it a lot especially since I had been climbing almost solidly for the past 70 miles and 11k+ vertical feet. I cruised over to Beau Jo's on bike to wrap up my century and then I joined the group for some tasty pizza. It was a great day on the bike and much better than being at work. I fueled with concentrated Perpetuem the whole time and it worked as expected. Next up was the weekends MTB racings so enjoy the pictures while I work on the next post...