happybday29475

Being a local yokel, I'm happy to help with logistics/advice where possible...eg bike shipping address. PM me if I can help. (I'm size 61!)

Racer Ex 

We need a who can meet/where/when calendar I can look at. My brain full.

Heathpack 

Ill edit the original post once I get a few details straight.

Basic gist at this point is that it's looking most likely that there will be some rides with the Colorado locals the weekend of June 25, maybe Sat in the Breckenridge area and Sun in the Denver area.

Otherwise rides in the Breck area from June 19-24.

sarals 

I'm interested, definitely. It will mean NOT doing a couple of things to make it work, like PSG, which I wasn't going to do this year anyway. Realistically, I don't know that I can come to Colorado, at the moment, but I'm going to dig into it and see. Heathie mentioned this to me Saturday morning at breakfast, and it slipped my mind!

For those who know - would it be unreasonable to drive from California to Colorado? What, two days? Something for me to chew on.

Heathpack 

Yes, two days. I've had clients drive from SoCal to get radiation therapy for their dogs at CSU (because its cheaper).

Racer Ex 

Don't you have a helicopter? Remember those Army flights where you'd pick up crates of artichokes any fly them to various spots for "training"?

Your crew chief awaits.

Seriously, you could be the next William Cimillo.

IBOHUNT

Ack... falls on a race date for me.

valygrl

I think if you buy a ticket on southwest in advance it's cheaper to fly, once you count gas and lodging costs. S.w. Is $75 each way for the bike. Or you can ride my backup bike.

YogaKat

The company I work for has a warehouse in Aurora. I may have to plan a business trip (if you don't mind the baby cyclist tagging along.)

Heathpack 

@IBOHUNT, sad to hear that. How badly do you want to do that race anyway?!
@YogaKat, absolutely. It would be good hills training for you.
@sarals, LAJ has the scoop on shipping a bike inexpensively, if the Southwest ticket seems like the best cost option.

sarals 

I've got an offer from VG about a bike that I can't refuse! However, I'd like to ride my own bike, so I'll be investigating.

I'm going to try hard to make this work.

YK - you'd BETTER (notice the emphasis? ) come, if you can!

YogaKat

There is enough advance notice that I'm really going to work on making it. Great opportunity to finally meet some of you in person!

LAJ

https://www.bikeflights.com/

Many shops will pack your bike for you, if you aren't as comfortable doing that. Just remember, once packed, if you aren't comfortable throwing the package across the room, then it isn't packaged well enough.

sarals 

LAJ, terrific! I just looked at the site to get an idea. Very reasonable!

YogaKat

Oh my goodness! That IS affordable!

IBOHUNT

It's an A race so pretty bad.

Heathpack 

Well if it's an A race then you are excused.

Racer Ex 

FWIW Sara, you drive through Reno to get to CO.

IBOHUNT

Trust me, there are quite a number of folks that post here I'd love to ride with... (read get dropped by)

Heathpack 

A little story:

After I had completed my first KOM type climbing century, I wanted more. I asked a friend for a good route in the 130-150 mile range, she sent one in the Santa Barbara area with 10,000 ft climbing. It looked good to me. She volunteered to ride it with me, and then a friend of hers decided to join.

Nowadays I can barely hang on with these guys for the first 50 miles, and I still can't keep up their pace for 100-200 miles. But I did not know this back then. She completed Leadwoman this year (which is the Leadville 100 Mtb bike race, the Leadville 100 Trail Run, the Leadville marathon, plus something else I can't remember, all in rapid succession), whereas he completed Paris-Brest-Paris this year. You know the types.

The route in question contained a 50 mile stretch in the middle of it which has no water, little shade, riding through a remote area and an 8 mile climb at 8% with some sustained double digit stuff at the top.

He wanted to start at 8am, my instincts said 5am. It was July. He was late and we didn't get rolling until 8:30. I was slower than he anticipated.

My being slow resulted in us getting to the 8 mile climb late, at midday. I ran out of water. Then we had miles more of rollers along a ridgeline, no shade, no civilization, no water. Triple digit temps. I became a little hallucinatory, all I could think of was that when I got to the bus stop, I was going to just wait there with my bike. There were no buses in that remote place.

Then came a long steep technical descent in my hallucinatory state. Then a longer than planned for lunch to let me recover. This got us further behind. More bonkiness from me post lunch. Eventually I needed a dinner stop too. Now it was evening and we had only 1 set of lights (mine, because the other two did not expect to be out so late).

Everyone made it home fine, fortunately my friends knew what they were doing and looked after me. But there were many ways that ride could have ended very badly. My lesson from the day was that I need to ride with people of at least similar abilities, those will be the best rides. And I think they realized that they did me no favors by dragging me out there for that ride and those conditions at my level of experience and fitness.

I'm only posting this story because I was thinking about my reply to @YogaKat, encouraging her to join this Colorado camp. But the more I thought about it all day, the more I was worried that I'd be getting her into a situation like I was in above. I just think Colorado is maybe a little overly ambitious for her at this stage. Not anything reflecting on ultimate abilities but just where she is right now and can reasonably be by June. Altitude, sustained climbing, long and possibly technical descents, and a lively-ish pace. I communicated all this with her privately and I believe she is reconsidering.

Just wanted to throw this public confession out there, though. It was a difficult thing to do, because I genuinely don't want anyone to feel excluded. But I think when you are trying to be encouraging to someone, you also need to be responsible and stay within the scope of what makes sense for them at the time. I missed the mark upthread, I fear. Mea culpa.

YogaKat

I also initially read this to be a more casual get together than I realized. Another thing that occurred to me is the altitudes there that I am not used to.

I do want to give props to @Heathpack for taking the time to message me and using care to explain the situation. I know that message was not easy to write not knowing what my reaction would be. I appreciate her honesty.

Heathpack 

The intention is to be pretty casual, although sometimes these things do get ramped up. But even being casual about it, when there's a big gap in fitness and experience between riders, what's casual to one person is a big stretch for another. In my story above, for example, the ride we did was an easy training ride for my friends ridden at what seemed to them like a very casual pace. But for me, it was the hardest ride I'd ever done at the time and it pushed me to my limits. It took me a bit to wrap my head around these kinds of things- when I first starting doing endurance stuff, I just looked at rides in terms of what I could do. Now I realize how huge a factor it is who I'm riding with and how this affects pace. Just like climate, terrain, etc. You will figure all of this out too, you just have to go through that learning curve at your own pace without people like me leading you down a primrose path.

As to altitude, it's always a bit of an unknown. Some people are affected by it greatly, some people are barely affected. Some days it has a bigger impact than other days. Often there's an increasing detrimental impact on performance starting on the second day after arriving at altitude. The only way to learn how it will affect you is to stick your toe in that water periodically. But even then, you never really know on any given day. You can think you'll be ok and then just be off your game all day. That's the nature of it.

Again, apologies over this whole thing. We are all glad to have you here and to watch your love of cycling unfold before our eyes. I just have to remind myself not to push inappropriate things upon you, sometimes I forget that it has to happen for you at a managable pace.

shovelhd

If there is more than one ride leader, the group can be split on different rides.

happybday29475

Also, lol, kind thoughts Heathie, but, lol, are you mistaking Colorado for the moon? We get more and more Californicated every year...you'd have to look pretty hard to find a 50 mile stretch without water, or even a brewpub! (Or even a pot shop, if that's your thing.)

If/when y'all drop me on a hill, RacerEx TT's away from me, or LAJ exceeds my maximum radius...all things that are likely to happen...I'm OK finding my own way home to beer and ottoman, as I should be.

happybday29475

One other thought just came to me: for those that are interested in trying a velodrome, Boulder Valley Velodrome has "Try The Track for a Day" sessions that come with track rental bikes. They'll put on a session for some small minimum number of riders. Not sure if there's time or interest while y'all are out here, but that would be fun for me.