Redemption and adaptation

I know, confusing title without some background of what needed redeeming the past two weeks on the bike.

The shape of my cycling week here in Colorado:

Saturday is the training ride with the local hot shots who meet at 10:00 at the Starbucks on Tejon.  A mixture of local guys, visiting pros, and top amateurs, this is the ride to be on in the area.  I ride to the start from our home in Manitou, about 8 miles down the canyon to Colorado Springs, then an easy tempo for the first 10 miles east past Peterson AFB.  Once the road heads south, the fireworks begin and the group lunges up a hill after the turn.  From that point, it’s balls-out, race-pace to the first sprint about 12 miles up the road at the top of a small climb.  The last sprint is just before the turn-around where the road tees into Hwy 115 south of Ft. Carson Army Base.  We turn and pick up folks that had to pee, couldn’t hold the pace or had a mechanical and carry a tempo back to the start.  55 miles of training ride and 8 miles on each side for warm-up and cool-down.  It’s a nice ride and every week we ride the same course with slightly different results depending on who’s in town.

Wednesday is my long ride and this week I spent it with Scoots, aka the evil Mountain Elf, on the road north of Woodland Park.

Two days this week were spent with Karl on a loop through the Garden of the Gods and these rides, more than any other, keep me in love with cycling.

Monday Karl had a half day at the elementary school, his first day at his new school, so afterwards we aired up his tires, cleaned the Nebraska bugs off his frame and located some gloves and his helmet.  We rode from the house for the first time, down Manitou Ave and then zigged over to El Paso for the ride into the Garden of the Gods. 

Karl was nervous at first, but then was shouting, “Dad, I got up to 37 miles an hour on that hill!”  We laughed and I shouted out pedestrians lumbering up the bike lane.  It was a sweet and beautiful way to spend a recovery ride and Karl showed some panache on the longer climb on the north side of the park, accelerating away from his dad.

Two days later, I figured it was time to do some base miles to build up my endurance fitness.  One thing I’ve learned since moving out here a month and a half ago; you can’t ignore the difference between the rolling hills and thousand foot elevation of northeastern Iowa and the Rocky Mountains.  Recovery is longer and so are the climbs.

Scoots came down and we saddled up at 9:30, envisioning a 118 mile loop from Manitou, west to Woodland Park, north to Deckers, over to Sedalia and then down through Palmer Lake and the Air Force Academy. 

I’ll make it official here: Scoots is now a climber.  From Manitou it’s straight onto the climb up Ute Pass, the only warm-up the brief descent from our home on Pilot Knob to Manitou Ave.  Then it’s up.  For twelve miles.

I’ve been up the pass four times now and each time I give myself about twenty minutes to let the muscles cool, but not this time.  Maybe it was the rider just ahead on Highway 24, maybe it was some inner alpine demon struggling to possess Scoots, but we went up the pass in record time, even with my friend slowing down for me on the steeper ramps.  By Woodland Park, we had only 106 miles to go and I felt like I’d just been put through the ringer and there was still suds in my hair.

Descending to Deckers is a blessed thing.  There is a climb on the way, past hills scorched by the Hayman Fire, but soon the pines come closer to the road and the cool breeze coming off the Platte River rinses the sting from the quads.  We stop in Deckers for some gatorade and run into two cyclo-tourists from Washington, Lauren and Tai.  Great folks, I invited the

m to stop for the night at our house; we’d be there in the middle of the afternoon, just 85 miles to go.  Right.

The sweet scene continued along the Platte.  The water was muddy from a landslide a few weeks before and when the north fork entered, the clear water ran next to the brown and we scooted along at a respectable 17mph as the tarmac gave way to packed dirt.  We must have been looking at the water, because we rode right past our turn to Sedalia.

We noticed this fifteen miles later, when our road teed into Foxton Road and Scoots said, “Hey, if we take that road we’ll be in Denver.”  So we turned around and passed the fly fishermen, the kayaks playing in the rapids and the astounding scenery.  One worry was the waterbottles were running low, putting off the peanut butter sandwich in my pocket. 

At our turn for Sedalia, we stopped for a snack and Scoots read a sign at the base.  He laughed and as we launched up the gravel road, just three miles from reunification with tarmac, I saw it too, “15% grades ahead”  Shit, it was plural.

I tried, I really did.  I tried so hard, I wrenched my back and landed on my balls when the rear wheel spun out and my testicles had no where to go but down to meet my top tube.  One climb, then another. I walked up one and felt relief when I could see the road leveling to a saner ten percent grade.  Then the air went out as we rounded the corner and saw the steepest climb yet. 

“Scott, I can’t do it.”  For me, this is rock bottom.  I’m never the guy that quits, but I am now.  I just can’t do it.  My water is low, my back throbs and my bike just won’t go up that climb.  I suck.

Scoots is good about it.  We turn and descend that hard-fought mile of gravel we had just endured and met our road again, the road that seemed to keep us close.  We headed the ten miles back to Deckers. 

Bonk.  The word is peculiar to cycling and for a rider it is the worst thing that can happen short of being smashed in the face by a semi-truck.  It’s sneaky, too.  Taking advantage of you when you’re being stupid, it makes you stupider.  You forget to eat, you forget to drink, you keep pushing until, suddenly you don’t feel right and the bike you’re riding just doesn’t seem to roll anymore.  I bonked on the way back to Deckers.  I met the man with the hammer and he visited a wallop on my skull.  As we rolled in, I said I would just call Janet and have her pick us up.  It was three, we’d been on the road for 5 and a half hours and I hadn’t eaten my sandwich yet.  It was gone in a flash, along with a large gatorade, a bar, a liter of Pepsi and something else that may or may have not had fur on it. 

By three fifteen I felt better and we decided to give the climb to Woodland Park a shot.  If we could get there, it was a twelve mile coast to home.  By three thirty I knew this wasn’t going to happen.  By three thirty three I was pulled over on the side of the road, dizzy and incapable of riding more than twelve miles an hour.  We’d gone 88 miles and I was done. 

The long and the short of the rest of the story is that we did indeed call Janet, but Scoots had to ride back and forth over a mountain to do so.  We then waited for a while before realizing that we’d made a mistake in the directions and she was driving in the wrong direction.  This necessitated another ride for both of us over the climb and we nearly made it to Woodland Park before the blessed Scion arrived to take us away. 

The rest is a wonderful dream involving Fat Tire Ale, bean burritos and lots of laughs.