Day 3 - Telluride to Montrose: The Worm Turns!

Finally....some downhill!  Today's ride started with a very fast decent from Telluride (9,000 ft.) to Placerville (7,300 ft.) which was exhilarating and scary.  Scary from all of the traffic, generally large trucks and buses that were passing us on the way down!

Today was a first for Team Bizzo, a flat tire!  Just as we were heading out from the rest/aid station, my rear tire had a blowout.  There was actually a lot of good news from this development:

1. It didn't happen while I was going 40 mph on the descent from Telluride;
2. It was in front of the rest area which means that I had access to a bike pump (you really don't know how hard and time-consuming it is to pump up a tire to 120 psi with a hand pump)?!
3. It was from a blowout and not a puncture.  Punctures can be notorius to diagnose.

It's all good.  From there we started the 12 mile grind up to the Dallas Divide, back up to

 ~9,200 ft.  But how about this for a view:

You are looking at a small portion of the San Juan mountains.  I haven't gotten pics from the Hammer yet, but will post those either later or tomorrow.

After the 12 miles of climbing, we settled down for about 36 miles of downhill all of the way to Montrose.  On the way down, we saw the Double RL Ranch (aka Ralph Lauren Ranch) and headed into the beautiful valley which is Ridgway.  The pics will tell the story.  All in all, there was about 12 miles of climbing and 53 miles of downhill.  Now that is a nice turn of the tables from yesterday.

It got hot today!  Almost 95 degrees in Montrose.  Hammer and I finished up at about 1:30p.  Here are the stats for today:

• Distance:  65.83 miles
• Duration:  4:27:45
• Elevation Gained:  2,089
• Calories Burned:  3,941

Tomorrow's 92 mile jaunt is sure to cause another big hurt on the legs with 5,500 feet of climbing in addition to the punishing length.  My hope is that it will cool down.  We'll see.  Stay tuned....

Chuck "The Coach"