Photo: Katrina Thibert/2009
I joined a group of Peloton-Specialized riders at a flag football crazed City Park on Saturday morning and skipped out on the usual Saturday morning suffer fest that is the Oval Ride to climb some hills and dial the intensity down a couple clicks. While BMC’s Jonathan Garcia was torturing the locals pros and ams up north, we headed west, climbing the Horsetooth Reservoir Dams north to south on the way to Eden Valley and a return route on Glade Road and the dams south to north.
We rolled out, digits numb in the 35F temps with Sam Acheson, Andy Carlson, Dustin Folger, Eric Liprandi, Jon Spindler, Paul Whyman, and myself.
We lost one early, as Liprandi blew a spoke within city limits. He had a nice time on the trainer in the basement Saturday afternoon. Strong work putting the time in.
Andy Carlson, brother of CSU Rams Cycling president Erick Carlson came out with us in his Fort Lewis College camouflage and fought through a sore back to Horsetooth Mountain Park. Andy’s a great guy and a strong rider. Unfortunately, we’ll be losing him back to Michigan in a few months.
Dustin and Andy dropped off, returning to the reality of a Fort Collins Saturday morning at Horsetooth Mountain Park. The rest of us continued on to one of my favorite places in Larimer County, Eden Valley.
We were tailed by a black convertible for the first half of the ride as photographer Katrina Thibert joined in the fun and shot images for the team. Katrina’s work is amazing, especially for such a young photo pro. I think she has a great future ahead of her!
Photo: Katrina Thibert/2009
At mile 28, Sam told me that he loves the detour we planned to take south of Highway 34, other than the section with no shoulder and a blind corner where he always gets buzzed by a truck. Sure enough, 5 minutes later a pickup truck buzzed our group while we overtook another group, on a blind corner on West 1st in Loveland…
On the road back to Centennial Drive and the dams, the group upped the pace when we ran into a Fort Collins Cycling Team rider and went into quick pulls on a rotation. I was through with that pretty quickly after six pulls and rode over Centennial Drive with the group just up the road. A compost project called and I pulled the ejector seat at Stadium Hill while Sam, Jon, and Paul rode north for what Sam called “the $@*&%# part of the ride.”
All told, Sam, Jon, and Paul rode 61 miles and climbed a few ticks more than 3,000 feet. Not bad for a near freezing April morning.
Brian