Day 6 – Aspen to Leadville (the mother of all, or, excuse me, the Queen Stage)

We had a lot to think about in anticipation of today’s ride. After leaving Aspen (we didn’t spend the night there – no rooms under $400/night), we drove to Leadville. The way to Leadville is to follow CO-82 up over Independence Pass. We had to cross it yesterday afternoon on the way to Leadville and this morning on the way back to Aspen. This is where we give serious Kudo’s to the princess. This morning’s wake-up call was at 4:30a with a 5:15a departure.

Normally you say, “Come on Coach – suck it up. Get ‘er done”. Let’s go over the daily morning routine within team Bizzo. Granted, the order and some of the steps may change depending on the team member, but I can tell you that this gets close:

• Get up and brush teeth.
• Take Ibuprofen.
• Scavenge around and get breakfast (and hopefully coffee) ready. Eat/drink it.
• Take the morning constitution (optional).
• Gather up cycling clothes which were laid out the night before.
• Apply Chamois Crème aka Chammy or Butt Butter to the lining of the cycling shorts.
• Strip down. Apply sunscreen to legs, arms, neck, ears, nose and face.
• Put on heart rate monitor.
• Put on cycling shorts (BTW – this step takes your breath away (see step above with Chammy Crème), socks, jersey, arm warmers, tights, bandana, jacket, and shoes.
• Stuff jersey or backpack with money, Gu, Clif Bars, bananas, PB&J on whole wheat bagel, sunglasses, cycling gloves and wallet. Don’t forget water bottles.
• If we were camping, you pack up all your crap and haul it over to the baggage truck.If we need to be driven to start point (as was the case this morning), we load the bicycles. Of course, you have to take off some of the stuff, i.e., jacket, backpack to be comfortable in the car, that you just put on. If you head out on the ride, you jump on the bike. In either case, you hope like hell that you didn’t forget anything.
  
  

OK, back to the story, we left at 5:15a for the 1-1/2 hour ride back to Aspen. Independence Pass is a stunning pass. Firstly, it tops the Continental Divide @ 12,095 ft. in elevation. Let me assure you that breathing at this altitude is work. There are no trees at this altitude. Treeline in this part of Colorado is about 11,500 ft. Secondly, it has a number of switchbacks which define exposure, i.e., steep drop-offs with no guard rails. Given that a decent portion of the ride was above treeline, there are no trees to stop your careening body/bicycle from going downhill. Our good old teammate Cubby said it best, “I don’t like this very much” on the drive up and down the pass. You can imagine where the pit in everyone’s stomach came from?!

I parked the car just outside of the Aspen city limit sign. There were already plenty of bikers beginning the slog up the Pass. Here’s Team Bizzo just before setting off:

One of the things that I’ve learned over the last 15 years or so of riding bicycles is that riding high mountain passes requires patience. This is true in both terms of the time that it takes and the pacing effort (measured in heart rate) required to get you to the top. The boys of Team Bizzo did an extremely good/disciplined job at both. It took almost 3 hours (actually, 2 hours and 50 minutes) to climb the 4,027 vertical feet from 8,068 ft. in elevation @ Aspen to the 12,095 ft. summit. My average heart rate was just shy of 120 bpm. Cubby’s was in the 145 bpm range and Hammer’s was around 130 bpm. While these wouldn’t be considered extremely high by cycling standards, the maximum heart rate (the ability for your heart to beat fast and support aerobic effort) was seriously reduced by the fatigue of the previous five days of riding. I estimate that at Dallas, TX elevation with no overtraining, these would be 20 to 25 bpm higher (which is relatively high by cycling standards). On some of the steeper slopes, we did good to ride @ 4.5 mph.

Still….what a cool ride. Team Bizzo came, saw and conquered. Here’s some pics from the approach:

Cubby and Coach on the way up:



The upper reaches of Independence Pass from about 2,000 below. Can you see the road? It's the horizontal line about 1/3 down in the picture:

View from the road in the previous picture; looking back down:

Same view with camera panned right to the massive switchback:

Looking straight down the climb:

Team Bizzo @ the top and playing in the snow:

The Biz @ 12,095 Feet:

The day’s ride was really broken down into three segments, the first was an 18 mile grunt up the pass, followed by a 17 mile dash down to Twin Lakes, and 22 mile slog into Leadville. The dash down to Twin Lakes was fun, although, it did have some challenges. First, just as we were coming off the pass it started raining /or/ rather, it was sleeting. The sleet was about the size of a green pea. When they hit our jerseys or arm warmers, they just flattened out to about the size of a dime. Thank goodness the sleet lasted only about five minutes.

The last part of the ride went into Leadville. Let’s count up the issues, headwind of about 20 mph, uphill for about 1,500 of elevation gain, and lastly rain. It’s been the first time in two years of riding Ride the Rockies that I’ve run up against rain. The first sign of impending rain was three fairly large bolts of lightning about 1 mile in the distance which brought Team Bizzo to a screeching halt on the side of the road. We were hoping that the storm would pass ahead of us. Sorry, no go. The rain cloud started moving towards us, but the lightning subsided. So, we charged ahead only to stop about 300 yards ahead to put on our vests in a downpour. The only option at this point was to circle back and go the other way. I had seen a condo complex during the 300 yard jaunt and decided to sprint for the safety of their porches, which we did. It rained for about 30 minutes. Just waited it out.

After the rain, we resumed the slog into Leadville. I have to admit that I’ve ridden this stretch of US-24 three times over the last six (6) years and I’ve never enjoyed it. Leadville always seems to be at the end of a long day where you want to shower, get warm and grab some grub. Lisa met us at the local high school. Team Bizzo did share some luxurious quarters (two bedroom condos with a loft) in Leadville at the Grand West Resort. Here’s some shots of the dealio:

Also, here’s a pic of yours truly updating the blog:



Here’s the stats on today:

• Mileage – 54.98 miles
• Time to Complete (Ride Time) – 5:28:30
• Average Speed – 10 mph
• Maximum Speed – 43.3 mph
• Calories Consumed – 4,040 Calories
• Elevation Gained – 5,700 ft.

Sweet. Glad that one’s in the books.

The Coach