Tuesday night hammer ride

Even Steamboat has a tuesday night hammer ride. I started out today with a 3 hour mountain bike ride this morning. After that, I started eating every carb in sight and had an afternoon nap in the park while my laundry was going to give myself half a chance at hanging in with the "A" group. Parking lot at Orange Peel fills up at 5:15 for 5:30 departure. A's number just over 20.

The route goes northwest, out past Clark, the right on a secondary road toward Mt. Zirkel and a campground called Seedhouse. There might even be a town there, but roadwork had us turn around 2 miles before getting there. The road is false flat for the whole 40k out, but with nice rollers. No real climbs per se. I figured if I could hold in with the group to the turnaround, all would be well as I've always been good at holding tempo on slight downgrades like the way back. 4 of us make it out to the turnaround together.

After the turnaround, we started chatting a bit. The guy who seemed strongest of the four of us was wearing full Moots kit and riding a Vamoots SL. Said he'd been in Steamboat for 10 years, but grew up in Portland. I asked him what brought him here, and he said building bikes. He'd built a few on his own prior, but then started working at Moots. I mentioned I currently had an order in for one. He asked my name. "Erik from Canada?". Yup. "I did the drawings for your YBB, and have started building it. Cool. Knuckles of respect went both ways after figuring that one out.

The pace picks up, and we're all having fun on the way back as the pace is around 50kph for the first while. About halfway back, attacks start. Moots ends up breaking away, with me second, and another guy behind me. I can't bridge up, so I hold a comfortable pace and wait for guy behind to work his way up to me. We battle for a while, and before you know it we're at the town limits, huffing and puffing and all bleary eyed. Talk about a good high intensity workout. Especially since Steamboat is 100 ft lower than Canada's highest paved road (town is like 6,900 ft, and is Colorado's lowest evevation ski town).

I guess my body responds well to rest, relaxation, training and good nutrition I guess, even if it is cramming!