Yesterday was an all day affair on my mountain bike.  Vincent and I decided to ride the Dirty Copper Triangle, which is a 30+mile loop that starts in Copper Mountain and does 3 passes.  It is really a small loop inside the Copper Triangle, which is Copper Mountain to Leadville, thru Minturn, Vail and then back to Copper Mountain.  We’re doing that ride on Saturday.

We met up with Bob Campbell, VIncent’s friend that I rode the Old Pueblo MTB race with on a team back, in February, in Copper Mountain and then started off.  But not very fast because it is pretty much straight uphill for an hour.  We were on the Colorado Trail and it is great, nearly the perfect grade for a mountain bike.

On the way up, we ran into a rider that was doing the Colorado Trail Race, an unsupported 500 mile race from Durango to Denver.   I didn’t quite catch the rider’s name, Fabian is what I heard, but that’s not close (Jefe Branham is his name) .  Anyway, he was super nice and had time to talk for a few minutes.  He was in either 2nd or 3rd, depending on who what right, but whatever his place, he was tough.  He was 3 days into it and was going to finish today sometime.  He has done the race before, but this year he said he decided to sleep some.  He said the guy that was winning was sleeping too, but riding so much faster.  Anyway, I wished him luck.

It was beautiful riding up to Kokomo Pass.  We rode over 11,000 feet for quite a while.  It was a super day, not much wind and warm.  It is unusual to be up over 12000 feet in a short sleeve jersey.

We were taking our time.  Bob burped a tire on a descent and we had to stop a couple times to put air into it, but that was fine.  It was nice not having to concentrate on the trail and get a chance to look around at the amazing scenery.  And it was really amazing.

The last half of the ride is pretty much on jeep road.  Climbing up Resolution Road is really difficult.  It starts gradual, then get steeper and steeper.   It took me nearly an hour to climb, that that was stopping a couple times to regroup.  I was looking at the Strava times and I was right about the same as Scott Tietzel and Kris Ochs’ time of 49 + minutes, subtracting out the 10 minutes my Garmin said I wasn’t moving.  There is only one speed to go the last couple miles. And that is slow.  I think the grade max’s out at 16-18% and it is a little tricky picking lines.  I had the unfortunate luck of a bunch of quads passing me, up and down, on the hardest sections, thus bad air.

We got to the top of the pass and it was pretty much all downhill back to Copper Mountain.  It took us a little over 3 hours riding time, with most of that climbing slow.

I told Vincent that I wanted to ride back to Silverthorn from Copper Mountain.  When I got to Frisco, I decided that I hadn’t ridden enough so I started south, planning on doing a loop of Lake Dillon.  But I got to the Peaks Trail, a trail going from Frisco to Breckenridge and decide to ride it.  I felt pretty good, nearly 4 hours into it.  I was riding this trail much better than I had a couple days ago.  It flows so much better going faster.

Next thing I know, I’m in Breckenridge.  The trail was such a blast I just couldn’t stop.  I called Vincent to tell him that I was still over 20 miles away and he said he would get dinner and have it waiting.  What service!

I just rode back on the bike path that was along the road.  It was a wicked headwind.  Pretty soon, a father and son passed me,on road bikes, going pretty good, over 23-25mph.  I just got on behind them and got a free ride most of the way to Frisco.

Coming over the dam in Dillion, I had that nice endorphine buzz going.  There is so much scenery to try to absorb.  I still had 5 miles to get back to Vincent.  Right before the house, I had to cross the Blue River, which is really a big stream.  I stopped at the bridge and went to the water to do an “ice plunge”.  The water is pretty cold, not freezing, but cold enough that after about 5 minutes my whole body was chilled.  It was a super way to finish the day.

Vincent had dinner waiting for me.  And I was hungry.  Pretty great day all around.

Total I had 71 miles in just a tad over 6 hours, with 7000 feet of climbing.  It seemed like a lot more climbing, but the Peaks Trail is really pretty flat and riding back from Breckenridge doesn’t have any hills either.

This is going to be a big week, for me, riding.    I already have 14 hours and almost 17K feet of climbing.  That is in just 3 days.   I’m going to ride over to Vail and back today on my road bike, which is a little under 80 miles.  Then rest tomorrow and ride the organized Copper Triangle ride on Saturday, from Silverthorn, which will be close to 120 miles I think.  That should make the week a little over 30 hours, with over 30000 feet of climbing I think.

Okay, enough of this saga.  I should get out and enjoy the mountains some.

Here are some photos from yesterday.

 

Chris Froome is a strange guy to follow if you’re a fan of the sport.  His style is so awkward looking it becomes very unpleasant to watch if you’re knowledgeable about the sport.   His pedaling style and head dipping aren’t the prettiest.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t root for him.  He is continually getting hit with the doping questions and usually answers them nicely.  He seems like a real nice guy, from what I’ve heard and by watching his interviews.

He is getting hounded by skeptics who demand more information about his physiological abilities and such.  In response, Chris said –

“I am actually probably looking into doing a bit more testing with the team now in terms of looking into things like lung capacity, in terms of VO2 max for example. Maybe that is something we will look at doing in this next period.” 

“I think we can certainly learn from it. We haven’t done any of that kind of testing on any of the riders, from what I know. I am sure we could learn from it.”

That quote, if correct, got my antenna up.  He is saying that Team Sky, the best funded professional cycling team in the World doesn’t do physiological testing on any of its riders?  That has to be nearly impossible.  Chris himself spends weeks sitting up on top of a volcano in Tenerife, trying to get that extra bit of advantage, thru acclimation ,and he is saying that his team doesn’t do any Vo2 max testing to see if this has helped him?   Guess they just use his blood for that?

In an another interview with the Daily Mail, Chris Froome stated when asked about doping-

“It’s hard for me to give a response to that,’ says Froome. ‘Because the whole objective of all our training is to get the numbers as high as possible. And yet once we do that, we are accused of doping.”

“At some point, people have to realize that the sport is progressing. Our training techniques are getting better. Nutrition is getting better. Our equipment is getting better. The numbers should therefore be getting better.”

Numbers is the key word here.  Is his definition of numbers strictly power numbers?  Because he, and his team, obviously aren’t worried about physiological numbers such as VO2 max, the gold standard in endurance athletics.   It’s just weird.

And talking about power, when he has been hounded so long about incredible wattage climbing, especially since someone hacked Team Sky’s “numbers” stash, someone at Sky decided to address the situation.  Team Sky claims that when used in conjunction with osymetric chainrings, power meters over-report Chris’ power by approximately 6%. Tim Kerrison,  Sky’s head of athlete performance said this and two weeks too late for my liking.

It is so weird that they have a head of athlete performance and they don’t do testing of individual athletic performance , like lung capacity and VO2 testing.  I guess power is everything to them.  It is just all so strange.

Next, Contador just calls in quits in July?  I guess he is feeling bad and decided that he’s had enough bike racing in 2015.  He says he’s concentrating on next year’s Tour de France and then the Olympic games in Rio.   

I guess it is two and out for him this year, since he did double up with the Giro and Tour.   I think he did this once before, winning the Tour and then disappearing for something like 9 months before starting the next spring and smearing everyone.  I guess it works for him, no matter how strange it seems racing only half a season.

        I guess Alberto is looking for a little more beach time this year.                                                      (Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)