(Trying to) Keep up!

I love the weekends! This weekend I headed out with my crew of the Epic Endurance Cycling Team for some great riding and technical skills training.

Whenever I can I try to ride the wheels of the pro guys. Saturday not only did I get to chase Bryan Alders, but Yuki Ikeda from Topeak-Ergon was along as well. For me it was a day I could have an advantage. Bryan joined us by riding up from Boulder with a few other guys, and they were running late, so they pinned 32 miles of road before getting to the trail. Yuki had just returned from two months at sea level in Japan a few days prior and was suffering from the change in altitude. Feeling pretty good I was able to mostly keep up with the two pros so that I could follow their lines and try to mimic their movements. It worked out quite well and I had one of the best days of very fast technical riding ever! There were a few spots I refused to even try to ride though, but those are not typical trail conditions for the endurance races I've been in, well I guess that's not entirely true, but defintely spots that during a race I would dismount anyway. The last 1:40 of the video was my favorite part of the day!

The area we rode on Saturday is just West of Ft. Collins mostly. We started at the trailhead at Devil's Backbone which is technically in Loveland, then rode up through the Blue Sky area to Horsetooth Reservoir.

Sunday I joined Les Handy for three laps of the Front Range 60 course down at Bear Creek Lake Park. As usual, whenever I meet someone down there and I ride the ten miles to get there I was late. I was supposed to meet at 9:30 AM and didn't leave the house until 9:05 AM so I had to TT all the way there. No thanks to a couple of stop lights I was almost 15 minutes late!

The course was mostly dry as it usually is this time of year except for the section that climbs up the Southeastern part of the park by the golf course. We had to go around that section due to excessive mud. This year the race course goes the opposite direction from last year and has a few small changes. Overall I think it will once again be screaming fast. I plan on riding full rigid for the race as I did on the days ride. The only section I think I'll be a little slow is the decsent down from the the afore mentioned Southeastern area by the golf course, it is currently fairly washboarded and since it is steep with a huge drop on over the right side there will be no need to bounce myself over the edge. It is only about 50-100 meters of trail anyway.