Durango Day 4 – 7/17

About a week ago I got an e-mail from a dude I sort of knew through racing, Rob Houlihan. I’d never actually met him but we knew of each other. Anyway, he e-mailed to ask about the cabin that we stayed at last year when we were in Durango. I told him the what and where and it turned out that he and his family were going to be here at the same time that I was. So after a couple of phone calls we were finally able to hook up for a ride. We left the cabin around 7:30 in the AM and rode down to the Telegraph Trails. My legs were still very sore, I don’t ever remember having legs this sore from the previous days rides. I probably should have taken it easy today, but it was the only chance that I’d be able go for a ride with Rob. We hit the trails and maintained a pretty good pace up to Pilaski’s Point. After a while I could tell that Rob was a little quicker on the technical descents than I was, so I made a point to make sure he led the way when going downhill in the interest of preventing myself from wrapping myself and/or my bike around a tree or rock. It’s a lot more fun for me to follow somebody that is better than I am at technical descents. I followed his lines as long as I could hang onto him and had a great time of it. I ended up getting about 4 hours of total ride time in. I was only able to get about 24 minutes of Zone 2 in with rest being Zone 1. I didn’t try to push myself too hard because I was obviously in need of some rest. It did end up being a great ride despite how tired I was.

Durango Day 5 – 7/18

I decided to take a recovery today and do a road ride with the old man. I woke up with some very sore legs, were talkin’ lifting weights with the legs for the first time in a year kind of soreness. It hurt to walk down stairs, it hurt to walk downhill and it hurt to get out of bed. We headed into town and scored a breakfast of bacon, eggs, potatoes, pancakes and coffee at a local greasy spoon. The only bad thing about the meal was the freeze dried coffee, but that’s how it is at greasy spoons, if they have fancy coffee then it ain’t a true greasy spoon! We tooled around town, rode up to some of the neighborhoods at higher elevations to check out how the rich folk live. I can’t even begin to imagine how much some of these pads cost. I suppose it doesn’t really matter because as long as I continue down my current path of employment, I will always be classified among the common folk and I’m A-OK with that. Pops cut out of the ride after about 90 minutes because he was feelin’ a little cooked from his rides over the past couple of days. I continued onward at a nice easy pace of about 110 -120 in an attempt to help flush some of the crud out of my legs. It ended up being a nice easy three hour ride, enjoying the Durango cycling vibe and scenery.

Durango Day 6 – 7/19

Headed out in the morning and rode Dry Fork up to the Colorado Trail. Rode the Colorado Trail down to Durango. Rode up Animas Mountain and did the big loop to the top of Animas Mountain. Paused to enjoy the amazing view of Durango and the Animas River valley. On the way up I passed a couple of peeps that were running up the mountain. Pretty amazing stuff because the climb up was mostly very technical terrain and a lot of granny gear climbing. Once I got back to the bottom of Animas Mountain I rode back over to the Colorado Trail and back tracked it back to the cabin. My legs were still pretty tired, about the only time that I could get my HR into Zone 2 was when I was going uphill. I didn’t really persist, my legs were still in obvious need of some rest. So at the end of the day I had about 5 hours of total ride time, 2 of which were in Zone 2. My average HR was around 131.

Stay tuned for more updates,

Thanks for reading,

CK