Peddling Through the Weekend

This weekend Melissa planned to ride her Century (100 miles) for the year. She signed up for the Subaru Elephant Rock ride down in Castle Rock, CO. I was planning to watch the kids but she informed me her parents were coming down and my services weren't required. So I got signed up to ride with her. The last time we road a century together was 2004 in Oregon (Reach the beach, Portland to the Coast) and the last time either of us road Elephant Rock was 2003.

Saturday morning I to took a short easy ride to shake the legs out before the long day in the saddle on Sunday. The weather was nice and freaks were out. Since it was a recovery ride I selected a scenic bike trail for my ride. It started out a little scary and I had to quickly get my camera phone out for evidence.




But things quickly improved.

Sunday morning we got up early and drove to Castle Rock for the big ride.

Long lines for parking had us waiting to exit from the highway! After about 30 minutes parked on I-25, we found a spot in Castle rock, got ready and hit the road at about 6:45am. It was a cool morning, and great riding weather. The crowds on the road were large... scary big! No.. I mean really scary, riding your bike is really hard, or at least that's the impression I got. I planned to take picture of all the fools on the road but there were so many I was afraid to get my camera out of my pocket and take a hand off the handle bar!! You had to be ready for anything, people were swerving all over the place. The first hill complicated things as people got off their bikes to walk. (on the first hill? WTF) Within the first 15 miles we came across our first crash with about 6 people. I am not sure they were riding together or just bouncing off each other. There was no way a paceline would work with all the fools out on the road. Right after the 2nd rest stop (mile 23ish) we saw another 3 go down going up a short hill. Everyone got up and appeared ok but we gave each of them plenty of berth. It became pretty obvious what had happened when we saw one of the crashies look in a direction other than were he was riding, he quickly shot across the road. It's amazing these people survive the training to ride in events like this. Glad we knew to stay away from him!

All in all we had a good time, the weather was nice. Sunny, cool and a little windy. I was able to pull Melissa a long in the windy sections. We ended up finishing pretty well and more importantly we survived the Rock! Our ride time was about 6 hours.

I was impressed I did as well as I did. I hadn't done any training for a century and the longest ride I have done so far this year was like 55 miles. It was good base miles.... for CX!