When it comes to classic Colorado road cycling routes, the ride up and down fourteener Mt. Blue Sky (fka Mt. Evans) from Idaho Springs is about as famous as they come. Though admittedly not much of a pure road biker myself, this one had long been on the list in the must-do-at-least-once category. So when Brian shot me an invite to join he and his cousin Kevin on a ride up the highest paved road in North America earlier this summer I immediately signed up.
In terms of route description there’s really not much to say. Start in Idaho Springs (in our case from the Westbound and Down Brewing parking lot) and ride up the Mt. Blue Sky Scenic Byway (aka CO Road 103) to Echo Lake. Nail the single right turn up the Mt. Blue Sky Road (aka CO Road 5) and follow it all the way up the summit at 14,268 feet. Then reverse it all the way back down and drink beer. The only question mark for the day was the weather, as we were looking at 60-70% chance of rain and thunderstorms in the afternoon with clouds building and rolling through the area all day. Keep Reading….
In a recent ongoing effort to sample the growing number of Gravel Races throughout Colorado, I was successfully able to convince Ben and my brother to sign up for the Salida 76 this year, along with Gaper Kevin who has slogged up a number of races with me over the years. Salida 76 seemed like a great compromise. Of course, it fell on a weekend that saw the most precipitation of the summer, after what seemed like 40-50 straight days of sun and dry. But that’s all part of the experience right? It was a torrential downpour on me on the entire drive down there and I got stuck behind an excavator around Fairplay and could no longer see the road, much less a place to pass, all the way until arriving in Salida. Keep Reading…
Leadville’s Silver Rush 50 is a run and bike race series that was first held in 2008. The races act as a qualifier for the Leadville 100 and seems to become more and more popular every year.
Several years ago I completed the Silver Rush 50 Run and I’d always wanted to head back and try the MTB version someday. This year wound up being the year, as Parker pitched the idea to me over the winter that we should both sign up.
Parker and I are usually pretty evenly matched on bikes so we were able to stick together for nearly the entire race. With a significant portion of the field on lightweight XC bikes and hard tails, we knew neither of us were going to be breaking any speed records. The main goal was to finish the race, not crash, and enjoy the day. One of the reasons I had interest in this particular race on the bike is that nearly all of it entails fire roads. This makes it much easier to pass people, and perhaps much more pertinently, be passed. Keep Reading….
As silly as it may sound, one of my primary motivators for recently completing The 2024 Arizona Ironman was to see how it compared to a 100 mile ultramarathon. I had seen some discussion about this in various endurance communities online, but I was very curious to glean an understanding for myself. My hypothesis was that a 100 miler would be the bigger feat, but there was no way to know how it compared until I had completed both events for myself. In 2022 I ran The Bear 100 in Utah & Idaho. Now that I’ve added the Arizona race to my resume, I figure this would be a fun chance to compare and contrast the two events against one another. The results were a bit surprising. Keep Reading…
