BTC Day 2. the Grand Mesa.

this day would be interesting. back to back efforts of climbing at high altitude. how would Team Flatlanders respond? How would the weather be at 10,000 feet? how much would a 20 mile climb hurt? a day of questions that i hoped would yeild positive answers.

*note to self, when uploading to Blogger the first picture will be your last so upload in reverse order. Things may be wacky as a result.




the day started with sun. lots of sun. it was still a bit nippy, but man o man was that sun a beautiful sight.

at mile one into a 98 mile day we hit a steep little climb. somewhere in the 7% to 10% range. i was not ready for that. it takes me hours to warm up and i wishing i stopped at mile .5 on the edge of town for an pre ride espresso.

the first twenty miles were full of short climbs, a couple of cool switchbacks, and a wicked fast descent. Tim was looking good, both form wise and apparel wise.

here he is coming "back up" a switchback. he floated to the top then decided to roll back down a bit to snap some pictures. i caught him the second time.

there was a nice little descent as we made our way to the first Rest Stop. it was short, but steep and i picked up a lot of speed in a hurry. Tim was out front as we approached a right hand turn. the road was a bit rough in the corner, not to mention the cliff to the left. he slowed for the turn and i did not, or could not. i quickly darted to his inside and cut the corner short. before i could regroup a rider ahead was slowing for a gradual left hand turn while riding near the center line. as he floated back towards the shoulder i shouted "inside" and flew past at 40 mph. clearly i was in the wrong here, but once the speed picked up i felt like i had to ride it out and did what i had to do. leason learned.

as we slowed for the Rest Stop Tim said "hey Iban Mayo, try not to kill you OR me." of course he meant this in a nice i love you bro way.

it was heating up. the next 20 miles were uphill all the way to 10,000 feet plus. we stripped down and started to climb. the Grand Mesa awaited.

Grand Mesa didnt feel like a mountain. McClure Pass felt like a mountain. the Mesa is lined with trees and lakes. the largest mesa in the world, with an area of 500 square miles and stretcheing for 40 miles. beautiful none the less.

ten miles into the climb i started to feel good. i started to realize that this climbing is all about tempo. find it and hold it. i felt so good i tried to rock the pro climbing look.

clearly i failed here. shades placed all croocked in my helmet. only a 3/4 zip jersey.

Tim and i parted ways at one point. maybe with 10 or 8 miles to go, but not totally sure. i was picking off a lot of riders and passed by very few. there was this one guy. he was flying up the climb and has he passed he gave me the look back and this;

Him -- "hey Illinois"
me -- "yeah"
Him -- "plainfield right"
me -- "yeah" (thinking my BF fame was going to rear its ugly head)
Him -- "pick it up. lets go go"
me -- "how do you know me"
Him -- "some other Ilinois dudes told me"
me -- "cool"


Later, at the top, i meet this climbing mad man we call Portage Park for the rest of the week. one of the best riders i have ever ridden with for sure.


back to the climb. man, these reports are long, but when it takes you 2 hours 10 minutes to climb 20 miles a lot happens. i ran out of water with 5 miles to go. as i the one and only Park Station/Store i thought i should stop. i hate stopping though and figured it was only five miles. dumb, i mean five miles at 5 to 7% takes a long time to knock out, but in the end i was good.

it was very cool reaching the top. there was this excitement amoungst the riders. 10,000 feet is nothing to shake a stick at. plus, we had a wicked fast 30 mile descent coming.

the road down was wicked fast. we were off that mountain in the blink of any eye. we stopped once near the top to snap a picture or two. speeds were consistently above 40 mph. the road was not technical, but the gust of wind were tricky. we had to stay focused and keep control at all times.

what a great day this was. how could it possibly get any better.......

Day 2 - Hotchkiss to Grand Junction

Monday morning was clear and cool with temps starting out in the upper 40s / lower 50s when we set out from Hotchkiss. This was slated to be a 90+ mile day with a massive climb up the Grand Mesa.

At the end of the main drag of Hotchkiss the road tilted up in a rude awakening to the legs. This was kind of unexpected, as I was thinking the climbing would be reserved for miles 20 to 40. In any case, as the sun started peeking out from the east, we found the road rising and falling across little bluffs and mesas. The landscape felt a bit more western with sage growing in rocky fields.

Early on we climbed up a cool looking road that sliced up and left. It looked harder/steeper than it was because of the view, but would have been something middling in western Wisconsin. At the top I stopped to take some pictures back toward Hotchkiss showing that we had gained some good elevation since the start of the day.

A few miles later we saw the same hill. At least it looked like that same hill. The road slashed up and to the left on a bluff. Other riders were asking, “Didn’t we just ride this hill?” The approach was a bit different, so we knew it wasn’t the same, but from a distance a sense of déjà vu was creeping in. (IIRC, the roads were called Rim Rock and Heaven’s View, respectively).

Around mile 16 we got a good view of Grand Mesa in the distance. It doesn’t look serious, but that may be due to it lacking some sort of striking peak. It did look massive. And we still had a decent little descent down to Cedaredge before the real fun started.

On the descent Arron put his Paolo Salvodelli hat on and came flying by me Il Falco style. Granted, I had braked a bit too hard into a blind right corner, but he could not be stopped. Next thing I see is him hollering “Inside!” to a guy in front of us. Whoa! No worries, as nothing ill happened, but it was a good point to discuss at the rest stop at mile 20. The sun was out and not a cloud in the sky, so we took the opportunity to ditch arm warmers, knee warmers, and vests for the coming climb.

As we left Cedaredge the road just smacked us with deception. It didn’t look steep, but it slowed us down significantly. We pedaled along to the base of the Grand Mesa. The climb just went on and on and on through forest of fir and aspen trees. I had unzipped my jersey and about halfway up needed to stop and zip it back up and throw on the vest again. As I did this Arron kept on going. He was cooking up the mountain. He’s got serious high altitude ability and I didn’t see him again until the summit.

I stopped two more times on the way up. Once was ostensibly to get a photo op and another just a mile from the top. I don’t wear an HRM, but know that if I can hear my heartbeat all the way up in my ears that I’m in the red zone. Each time I stopped this was the case and I was glad of a short rest to let my brain stop pulsing in my skull.

About 3 miles from the top I encountered Slacker Sue (aka Sagwagon Sue), one of the many characters we met during the week. There is a general store along the route and I saw a woman unload a bike from a van. She hopped on and started riding up the mountain. Huh? Hang one a second here. I asked her if she skipped much of the climb she said yes and had hitched a ride with a couple who were heading over the mountain. Are you kidding me? The thought of this was foreign to me. Why would someone show up to Bicycle Tour of Colorado and skip riding parts of it, especially on a perfectly golden day like we were having? It didn’t compute for me and in some ways didn’t compute for me for the rest of the week whenever we saw a Sagwagon van loaded with bikes fly past on the route.

I had loafed enough on the climb that it was perfectly reasonable to expect that Arron had taken off from the summit aid station without me. As luck would have it, when I got to the top he was just getting ready for his photo op with the summit elevation sign. I rode right up with my bike and joined him. He had been there for 15 (or more) minutes. That’s patience.

Arron doing some sort of Dave Zabriskie impression.

The descent off of the Grand Mesa was incredible. 20+ miles of pure downhill bliss. We stopped just after the start of the descent to get some pictures of the valley below and canyons off to the west. As we left the photo op I heard an odd noise whistling through my ears and quickly discovered that I had not buckled my helmet straps. Eek. A quick stop to snap it in and I was back to chasing down Arron.

The cross wind on the descent was pretty tough. We were buffeted side to side and at one point I was at 49.5 mph when a big gust knocked into me. I tacked into it and stayed upright. We passed Powderhorn ski area and enjoyed excellent views of the Grand Mesa’s bluffs from which we had just come and the canyons leading to the Colorado River where we would be shortly.

As the grade slackened through the canyon along Plateau Creek, the headwind kicked up a little. With the gradual downhill we kept up some good speed and at one point hooked up with more characters, dubbed Team Budvar for the jerseys they were wearing. The leader of this motley crew was a guy from Chicago we named “Portage Park” for the neighborhood he lived in on the northwest side. He was a strong rider and pulled us along in a pretty fast paceline past the gulches and cliff walls. At one point it was just me and Arron hanging on his wheel. The rest of Team Budvar had been left in the canyon dust. Portage Park slowed to wait for his crew and we pedaled on to the final aid station of the day, which was right at the end of the canyon.

At the aid station I ambled over to the medic car to see if they could get me a hit of sunscreen for my face and arms. A nice lady went to get the sunscreen, but her partner medic started to chew me out that I should be carrying my own and that the sunscreen they had in the car was only for emergencies. Seriously? Really now. It’s mile 70 of a 94 mile day. Anyone with a sun emergency is not going to be helped out by applying sunscreen. Not wanting to dip into their precious supply of Banana Boat, I refused the sunscreen and headed back toward the food and bikes. As with each day’s stops, there was a DJ playing tunes and I noticed he had an assortment of sunscreen on his table. I asked if I could use a bit and he said that’s why he brought it, even paying out of his own pocket (but that when it was gone, it was gone for the week). Very cool, Mr. D.J. Very cool. Thank you for helping me in my time of need.

The final leg of the day put us on I-70 for four miles. It sounds worse than it was, but aside from the higher speed of traffic, being on the interstate was no less or more stressful than riding a two lane road when two cars decide to pass at the same time. Colorado state motorcycle police, who were along throughout the week, were rolling along in the right lane helping to keep traffic to the left lane somewhat, and though they don’t prevent anything, we stayed inside the rumble strips on the shoulder and cruised along with the Colorado River roaring to the right of the guard rail. It was a relatively quick transfer and we jumped off at an exit to the final 20 miles into Grand Junction.

We caught on to a paceline to keep our speed up into town and after a while I just wanted to cruise along, so dropped away. The temp on my cyclometer showed a balmy 100 degrees, but it was a dry heat. After a bit of maneuvering through the city we reached GJHS and our digs for the night.

We hopped on the BTC Shuttle Bus to see if we could get a ride to the nice little downtown for some dinner. The driver said he didn’t go that way, but Arron convinced him to take a detour to drop us off. We ended up at the Rockslide Brewery on a recommendation of Dave S., who used to be a weatherman on the TV in Grand Junction. It was a good choice.

Check out the nachos appetizer below. I had the Chicken Capollini entrée (grilled chicken and zucchini over angel hair pasta) and a stout. Recovery at its finest.

Some JANKY nachos.

A walk back to the school, a visit to the REI to get Arron’s Knog light some fresh batteries, and then a Heath Blizzard at the DQ and I was ready to call it a night.

Days 0 & 1 – Glenwood Springs to Hotchkiss

After a fun trip from Chicago to Colorado that included the most biblical Iowa deluge through which I’ve ever had the pleasure of driving, discovering how cool an iPhone is, discovering that writing anything of substance on an iPhone is a pain in the neck, downing a few lattes, passing under the Divide through the Eisenhower Tunnel, topping over Vail Pass, and driving the upper deck lanes of I-70 through Glenwood Canyon for the first time, Arron and I arrived at Sopris Elementary in Glenwood Springs.

BTC 2009 Start/Finish.

The Load Out

Keeping the saddles dry.

As we were getting signed in I got handed a Medium t-shirt (hmm…I requested Large) and the lady at the table said I must know the drill since this was my third BTC (hmmm… this is my first BTC). Hang on a second here. This envelope has my name, but I’m not from Ohio! Whoa. Some guy with my name has been riding BTC! And he’s got to be short to be requesting a Medium. The lady re-checks and finds my envelope (Large… first BTC…. Check, check). I never did find my namesake during the week. That would probably just have been awkward and led to some sort of namesake smackdown that couldn’t have been good for anyone. Live and let live.

Needing fuel, we hopped on the BTC shuttle that was running back into town. Unknowing, we hopped off at the first stop, which was where some local festival was happening. Not many restaurants around, but we did find a joint with $5 pizzas at a place called Uncle Pizza. Not the greatest, but it hit the spot.



I slept like junk at the school. There was a wicked t-storm around midnight and the wind kept making the tents outside pop and crack like firecrackers. Despite not sleeping much, we were up and ready to go by 6:00 am. It had been lightly raining, but stopped when we went out to get the bikes. I was able to drain a bit of water out of my frame before we headed onto the roads.

Iowa rain on Colorado pavement.

The M.E.Rider shot.

The morning ride took us up through Carbondale and then along the Crystal River (I think this is right) on Colorado 133 toward McClure Pass. Looming along the left the for morning was towering Mount Sopris. Though we weren’t looking to outshine anyone, our pace had us picking off riders at a steady clip throughout the morning. The fast cats must all be sleeping in.

Ominous clouds gathering in the pass.... the sun would win out.

After a lot of steady climbing along the river, we hit the pass.

3 Miles to the top.

McClure Pass was not especially long, given what we’d see later in the tour, but it was fairly steep and had great views.

Looking back down where we had been.

Atop McClure Pass at Aid Station Two.

The descent was a lot of fun. Wide open with not a whole lot of technical turns. I didn’t have on full fingered gloves, so my hands got a bit cold and I let off the descending to keep warmer. When we got down farther into the valley the sun came out and the temps started to rise.

We cruised down along the North Fork River and Paonia Reservoir, passing coal mining operations in the mountains.

Mr Pensive at Aid Station Three.

Soon we were nearing Hotchkiss and the end of Day One. We got to the high school right as the truck was tossing our bags into the parking lot, so it was good timing, or an indication that we were overanxious and left way too early in the morning.

We wandered off to a local tavern for lunch (They were out of chicken fingers, so I ordered a French Dip). The network in Hotchkiss left a bit to be desired, so we walked down to the far end of town to see if the local coffee shop had Wi-Fi. It was closed. Arron was none too happy that we had just walked all that way (a whole three blocks or so) just to turn around. Ha. Next step was taking the bikes to a local car wash and getting all the rain travel and sand out of the gears.

Bustling downtown Hotchkiss.

Later we walked all the way to the other end of town (about three blocks or so) to grab sandwiches with the locals at Zack’s BBQ, as Mount Lamborn and Landsend Peak loom in the background.

Dining with a view.

A pretty good start to the week, I must say. We headed back to the gym to rest up for what we were told would be a grueling climb on Day Two. More on that in the next posts.