07/10/2006

Unfortunately the Grand Loop was cancelled at the last minute. A cold front moved into Colorado on Friday night. The forecast was for scattered showers, but it rained all weekend. When I got to the start at 2:30am Saturday morning it looked like everyone was getting ready to go. There was a light drizzle and occasional rumbles of thunder. But when I went to get my brevet card, John Lee Ellis said they had just agreed to cancel the ride.  Of course I immediately thought about my flight, rental car, hotel, the hassle of packing and hauling my bike through the airport and was about to say "Good one!" thinking he must be joking, when he told someone else the same thing!  Doh! Since this was pretty much an unsupported ride they decided the weather was not safe enough, especially with the lightening on the mountains.  Someone had also called from Estes Park to report heavy rain showers. The temperature was maybe in the 50's in Golden, not too bad, but it was likely that snow was falling on top of the passes, so there was also a likelihood that the rangers wouldn't have let us head up into the Rocky Mountain National Park anyway.

Triple Bypass (a 120 mile fully supported ride with 10k feet of climbing) was also this weekend and there were a lot of riders staying at the same hotel as me. Since that ride had a lot of support and 3,500 registered riders, they went ahead with their ride. I talked to one couple who didn't make it to the top of the first pass. They said halfway up the climb they couldn't feel their fingers anymore, so they turned back. I went to Colorado expecting to enjoy the pain that only the exertion from huge mountains can provide, not suffer and be miserable riding through wet and really cold conditions!  John Lee and Charlie Henderson were right about cancelling and in hindsight I'm glad they did. The conditions would have been as bad or worse than that 400k brevet I did earlier this year. So, I didn't ride at all this weekend, but got a lot of practice with packing my bike into a bike case!

The paper on Sunday said that areas received over 2 inches of rain in under an hour and there was widespread flooding with washed out roads. It rained all weekend and was still raining when I left.

Now I need to find another century for July (for the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association's year rounder challenge). Annette has commitments the weekend of the 22d/23d, so it'll either be this weekend or the last weekend of the month. I'm leaning towards driving up to Flagstaff on Saturday and ride an out and back from Flagstaff to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon or maybe from Flagstaff to Strawberry...