The Triple Bypass is a ride we do every year. It takes us from Evergreen, CO (home) to Avon, Co which is about 125 miles over 3 mountain passes; Squaw, Loveland and Vail Pass with a total climbing of 13,000 feet. This year we did it unofficially as the four of us who rode yesterday are actually racing a triathlon the day after the "official" Triple ride next weekend. I had contemplated doing both, the Triple on Sat. and then an Olympic distance triathlon the following day but I got the look of "are you freaking stupid" from my husband! Needless to say, we agreed to do the ride the week before.
To do this ride we have to either have someone pick us up or drop a car off. Andy was nice enough to volunteer so on Wed. he drove our car over to Avon and then rode his bike back to Evergreen. He did not ride up over Squaw but he still had the "Floyd Hill" to deal with in his 100 mile ride back to the house.
Friday morning Andy, Audra (my Ironman St. George training partner) and I started our ride at 5:30am from our house. Andy checked the weather and it looked to be pretty stable, partly cloudy with afternoon showers. It didn't matter to me as I was taking all the clothes that I could possibly cram into my camelbak; rain jacket, vest, glove covers, knee warmers, armwarmers, headband and a lot of food. We were to meet our friend Steve Moats in Idaho Springs @ about 8:00am. I told him it would take us about 2:30 hours to get over Squaw pass. It was a little slower this year and it ended up being closer to 2:45. We took our time and rode pretty conservatively over the first pass. I was fighting off some sort of bug so I was all for going easy. Audra hadn't done many long rides this year so she was really concerned about overextending in the first few hours.
The weather was cool with threatening rain clouds surrounding us for most of the day with an occassional burst of sun every now and then. The ride from Idaho Springs to the base of Loveland was a good 2 hours so Audra and I were taking it pretty easy here even though I was feeling like I wanted to push the pace more than what we were doing. Andy and Steve took off at their quick pace but I knew we would meet up again before our next big climb.
We had two sections that we had to ride on the Interstate as part of the frontage road we were planning on riding was pretty torn up. It was all dirt/rock/nasty road for over 2 miles so we opted for the smoother pavement of I-70. We got a little bit of rain just outside of Georgetown but nothing we needed raincoats for. Once at the base of Loveland we were all on our own until the top of the pass. It is a 4 mile climb and Audra and I had decided to do some intervals, sit and spin for a few minutes, stand for a few min. I did mine at 5 min. intervals, she did hers at 3 min. intervals. It was a tough climb and I was hoping I didn't just mess myself up for the rest of the ride.
We all convened at the top of Loveland pass, put extra clothes on for the descent and met up again at the bottom of the pass at a convenience store down in Keystone to refuel. A red bull and some potato chips got me thru to our next stop at Copper Mountain which was about an hour and a half away. At the base of Copper Mountain the rain started coming down pretty good so we hung out at Starbucks for about 20 min. to let the rain pass and then we were off again. We couldn't avoid all the rain clouds and ended up getting wet for about 10 min. of our 30 min. climb up Vail Pass.
From the top of Vail to Avon it was a good 20 miles, most of it downhill. We were all feeling pretty good at this point and the ride into Vail was quite pleasant. The clouds were getting very dark over Avon, another 8 miles away, we tried to see if we could out ride it but still got wet the last 10min. of the ride. Overall it was a great day, I did good on nutrition which is a downfall for me. I seemed to be hungry a lot during the day so I felt like I was constantly eating. I went thru 4 Macrobars (my favorite!!!), 2 gels, 1 almond butter sandwich (on gluten free bread), a red bull and a bag of chips and half a bottle of sustained energy drink for 8:50 of riding.
Audra, Andy and I stopped at Pazzo's pizza in Avon for our after ride meal. It was our first pizza in over 5 months....awesome!! Dropped Audra off in Frisco at some friends house and Andy and I were home and in bed by 10pm. Andy had to work today and I sit here trying to figure out what my body is capable of doing today...clean house, swim, bike or run????
No comments:
Post a Comment