A classic piece of pavement: Colorado Highway 92 between Blue Mesa Reservior and Crawford, CO.
Today, Suzee and I are deep into major house cleaning. I have piles of accumulated detritus in numerous locations that I’m wading through while she makes various hard, shiny surfaces gleam. Nothing like the hand prints (and other telltale prints?!) of the many kids that rabble rouse, somehow, in every nook and cranny of the house. It’s unlikely that I will throw my leg over a bike today.
And yesterday, while Lance was winning the Colorado State MTB Championships on a classic and technical course at Snowmass Mountain near his home in Aspen, I was riding the road, sharing a classic stretch of Colorado pavement with a few cars, a few cyclists, including Suzee, dozens of packs of motorcyclists - the slow touring variety, as opposed to the high-speed crotch rocket set, some on big ‘ole Honda Gull Wings or Gulf Wings or whatever they’re called and BMW touring machines and about an equal number of leather-clad, loud piped, Harley riders, either wannabees or the real thing, as one posse that passed all wore weathered leather vests, backs emblazoned with HIGH PLAINS DRIFTERS - and two ambulances, the same number or highway patrol and the other assorted emergency equipment that accompanies them to, in this case, motorcycle crashes. I hope each rider is okay but to see not one but two separate crashes, both 50 miles of winding road from the nearest EMS post and probably an hour from their arrival on the scene, was a bit surreal.
This road, Colorado Highway 92, the Black Mesa highway, is a classic and the best road riding close to Gunnison. It’s a twisting affair
Just a peek of the alien topography of the Black Canyon from high on the Black Mesa.
with little traffic (and what there is are slow moving, casual folk) that undulates along the North Rim of the Black Canyon, a huge and isolated gash in the earth’s surface carved by millions of years of the Gunnison River working its way west toward the Pacific Ocean. I parked along Highway 50 for a busier 5 mile warm-up before turning onto 92 and dropping onto the Blue Mesa Reservoir dam and beginning the roller-coaster ascent to a high-point, just over 9,000 feet, about 25 miles in. From there, it’s a long, gentle downhill to the relatively unknown hamlet of Crawford, sometime home of old-school rocker, Joe Cocker. Crawford is the turnaround then it’s about 45 miles back to the car.
Last year, this ride took me about 4 3/4 hours but this year, try as I might, I couldn’t break 5. Here are my excuses. (Please mark in #2 pencil): A) The winds shifted making for a headwind the whole time. B) I stopped to take pictures and make adjustments to my bike. C) My brakes were rubbing. D) I blew. E) All of the above. Regardless, it was a classic, bluebird Colorado day with no thunderstorms; no clouds even. A great bike ride!
This ride also was the capstone on my training for next Saturday’s Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race. Sure,
The igneous remains of a volcanic core. Joe Cocker's Mad Dog Ranch is back there somewhere, a dark, foreboding English Tudor heavy on gray stonework, and tall, narrow gables.
I’ll log about 10 hours between now and then but that riding is more ritual than training; a script from the past that has seen every kind of race result imaginable follow on its heels; an attempt to optimally prime the engine: not too much riding, not too much rest. This year’s preparation has been a bit different from the last two but it has all gone according to plan (if you can call it that!) and my feeling is the same as last year: I couldn’t be better prepared and if I could, I wouldn’t change a thing. As for how I feel, it just doesn’t matter. Last year I didn’t feel great at times leading up the race, especially the day before, but that’s just the way it is. I won’t know how I’m feeling or what kind of day I might have until we get a good bit into the race. Or perhaps I’ll know in the first few hundred meters of the first climb!
What I do know is that Lance is going to be a much different bike rider than I faced last year (I still haven’t gotten a response from his camp about him riding with one arm tied behind his back!) and this says nothing about other fit and talented riders who will be lining up trying to knock us both off. The 2009 Leadville 100 will be infinitely more competitive and difficult for me than any of the other 6 that I have been a part of, but that’s why I’ll be lining up on Saturday: win or not, I dig a tall challenge. If winning was the most important thing to me, I would have taken my ore cart trophy from last year, gone home and called it quits. That’s not why I do it. Don’t get me wrong, I love to win and will do everything I can to bring home a 7th ore cart trophy, but at the same time, I know the proverbial odds makers likely have a much larger number for me on the right than on the left.
Bustling downtown Crawford, Colorado on a busy summer afternoon.
How important is winning? I was reading something recently where not winning was likened to death. Not in my mind; couldn’t be further from the truth. I know what it will feel like to win this race on Saturday. I have no idea what it might feel like not to win it. And in that emotional uncertainty there is so much life! I will say it again: I want to win this race and will give it everything I have. But, as for emotions and character, winning this race has very little to offer me. It would be neat to win but that’s about the extent of it in those contexts. Not winning will offer a healthy and positive dose of both (in the long-run). And that’s all I’m going to say about it! (I still want to win!)
Now, a bit more on the Leadville 100 race. The last few years, this race has garnered much attention due to the amazing talents that have come to compete in “The Race Across the Sky.” There has been a lot of attention focused on the front of the race. I would like, even if only momentarily, to refocus people on the true spirit of the Leadville 100 bike race. While the Tour de France is a race purely among the best professional bike riders in the world, the Leadville 100 is a race that has no criteria for entry other than being successful in the lottery process (no small victory these days!) and the willingness to believe that “you’re better than you think you are and you can do more than you think you can!” This from the Leadville 100 competitor’s handbook. Here’s more:
We know for certain that once you leave the starting line you will be tested, forged, ground, splattered, ripped, tempered, and then refined and regenerated as you, 100 miles later, cross the finish line. We know you’ll never be the same person that started the race. Now YOU are different-tougher, stronger, better. A better YOU: a you without limits; a you that has been stripped to raw nerve and never quit; a you that now is aware of an inner inexhaustible well of resolve, determination and courage. And we hope if we can provide the trail that makes a better you, you’ll share that with others along your separate and individual lives. Then we’ll have made it a better Leadville, a better athletic community, a better you, and a better world.
A rusty and derelict relic from the past. A long-ago, happy memory frozen in time along the road. Not unlike finding an ore cart trophy from 2009 in a dusty attic in 2039.
Men, women; young, old; elated, heavy-hearted; fit, less-so; great bike riders, novices; riding for themselves, riding for someone else. And as Ken Chlouber has said, even people from Arkansas! Wherever you are, whatever you do, if you haven’t ever or lately, get out of your comfort zone and accept a challenge that is seemingly impossible. You can do it!
Best, Dave
