Another decent weekend in Boulder and with that another good day of riding. This weekend a bunch of us choose to ride from my house in Boulder with an attempt to log as close to five hours on the bike and near 100 miles. A few plans and routes were hashed out – to Horsetooth, to Mead, to Carter Lake. In the end because of strong winds we decided to just do the normal Carter Lake loop and possibly throw in an extra loop at the end.
Bad mojo was in the air when I woke on Saturday, usually I have coffee made, my cycling gear all ready to go and bottles made and food rationed. The group started to show and we were behind, some were lost, some late and me, well, I was sort of both – lost brain, late body.

After a few coffees and some chatter we rolled out into the wind, it was strong and gusting and the ride was fast tempo to start. The wind never makes it easy, riders go to hard to compensate for the slower speed and it causes the group to break. A few new riders with massive strength but a bit of lacking knowledge on when to use it or not pushed the tempo and in with 4 miles it was splintered. I was to blame for the fast start, but sometimes rolling out of town it is good to step it up just a hair to tighten up the group, force the double paceline and keep it steady to reinforce the task at hand for the day. When Bill and I pulled off the front the next two had their game faces on.

Things settled down and the ride sorted itself out, but for some reason riders still had trouble and were quick to comment. It is a training ride is my thought and it was not race pace, so I am not sure what the problem was but it was turning into one of those days. Couple that with a sudden windy snow storm and it got even more interesting. The snow lasted only a few moments and then just turned back to a massive head wind.
The Route: The route was modified mid-pedal stroke and we ducked down a dirt road and onward towards Mead, Colorado instead of heading to the Carter Lake Loop. This was fine except no one had any idea where we were going, so we freestyled the route and just headed north and east as that is were Mead was supposed to be.
I took the Berthould townline sprint. The only thing is no one on the team sprints for townlines, so I had no competition. Back home in Philadelphia, town line sprints are gold. The exclamation point of a small team ride, county line signs are double exclamation points. I tried to explain the concept of town line sprints but no one was listening. You would think that such as cycling area like Boulder with its reputation would know about the townline. Perhaps Boulder cyclists are above the town line sprint and only go for race day sprints. Needless to say, I go it and I enjoyed it.

Mead Colorado:
Why did we head to Mead, Colorado? Well, it sure wasn’t for the women, the first major race in the area is the Mead Roubaix ( there are no cobbles). We decided to go run a couple laps of the 15 mile course which consisted of a bunch of dirt roads, a small main street with no stop signs or traffic lights and some rolling paved sections. This race is going to be hard. The dirt sections are long and straight, a tough mans course for sure. Also, the winds are going to be howling and when they are it will add that next element of pain.

The main dirt sections are long and rolling, the dirt was very loose and the tires sank and squirmed. Hopefully some rain will hit and harden them up because the way it sits not will make for some seriously interesting racing for sure. It was almost sand and 25MM tires on road bike plodding through sand is not going to be that much fun. Once off the first long dirt section the road continues straight and fast towards town with a slight downhill. The final sprint will be cool, with a right and left hand turn back into town which will then open up into a drag race for the line on Main Street, Mead, Colorado.

The ride back home from Mead was nice and social with a few scheduled tempo sections, a coke stop and the final sprint back to Niwot ( I took that one too ).