There is a saying in Colorado: If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. It’s true. And my experience riding the Triple Bypass on Saturday proves it. The day went from cool morning to hot and sunny to torrential downpour.
It was the second time I completed the bicycle ride that goes over Juniper, Loveland and Vail passes from Evergreen to Avon. The first time I tried it, in 2007, my bike broke down about halfway through the ride, and I had to become a spectator for the rest of the day.
I started training months ago with a few friends who decided to make the 119-mile ride with me. I need a big goal on the horizon to get out and train on a regular basis. Most of the people I was riding and training with are photographers, and we don’t have normal schedules, so riding together does not always work out. I was doing training rides on my days off and even when I had a few hours between shoots. There is only one way to get better at climbing, and that is to climb. I would ride Lookout Mountain as often as I could. It is similar to Loveland Pass as far as distance and average grade.
Even with all the training, I suffered. Going to the top of Juniper Pass on Highway 103 with my friend Hyoung was not that difficult. It was long and steady, but not too steep. But the stretch from Georgetown to the top of Loveland Pass really tested my legs.
There were times I would get into a zone and concentrate on my surroundings: the sound of Clear Creek babbling next to me, or the tick from my bike that I haven’t been able to locate, and silence. At other times it was the song that the guy next to me was singing. “Don’t go chasing waterfalls, Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.”
It was steep and unpredictable. We were on a bike path going through the woods, and you could not see more than 40 yards ahead. And then you hit Loveland Pass. From the ski area it is 4.5 miles to the summit of 11,992 feet, and an average grade of 4.6 percent. Not too bad by itself, but I already had more than 55 miles on my legs. The dark cloud at the top of the Continental Divide had me worried. I haven’t found better motivation to get over the top of a hill climb than rain and lightning. Every time I saw the flash or heard the thunder, my legs seemed to move a little faster.
The descent into Keystone was one of the scariest I have experienced. Cruising down the mountain at 30 mph through puddles of rainwater on the highway, with rain hitting my face, tested my nerves. It felt like pins and needles were falling from the sky. It was a cold rain. My fingers and face went numb, but I was concentrating on the next turn too much to care. I always try to find the best in bad situations, and on this descent the cold rain numbed the pain in my legs.
From the aid station at Summit High School in Frisco, Hyoung and I were calculating the miles to the next aid station and knew that once we made it to the top of Vail Pass, it was all downhill. Vail Pass is the shortest and mildest climb of the three passes, but it took the most energy. Once we saw the tents of the aid station at the top, it felt like we were at the finish line. We still had almost 30 miles to go.
Gliding down from Vail Pass into Vail is a beautiful ride. At times it felt like I was riding through a rainforest. We were on an old frontage road that was part of one of the stages in last year’s USA Pro Cycling Challenge. You could still see all the things people had written on the pavement to riders like Cadel Evans and Frank Schleck. Since I was riding in the opposite direction, it was hard to make out exactly what was written.
Vail had a present for us: more rain. This time it was a warmer rain that was more refreshing than the bitter downpour on Loveland Pass. I got on someone’s wheel and drafted all the way to Avon Elementary School, where they were handing out medals for our accomplishment.
Ernest Hemingway once said, “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” This sums up my cycling experiences in Colorado, and riding the Triple Bypass was indeed a learning experience.