News
ROAD TO LEADVILLE Part 13: PULLING DOWN THE HARDTAIL
Dave Wiens gives his thoughts and tips leading to this years Leadville 100 MTB Race.
Monday, July 26, 2010 – I worked all morning and didn’t throw my leg over a bike until 5pm, which was fine; I was thinking today was going to be easy or off completely. Last night, I retired my fully for the next few weeks and pulled down my hardtail , number plate still on, the whole bike coated with a thin layer of Breckenridge dirt. New tires, transfer over the seat bag (just unclip and reclip with the Topeak ProPack. I have F22 Fixers mounted on all my saddles so moving seatbags around is cake.), flat kit velcro’d on and my old hardtail is back in business!
We have a trail here right above Western State College called the Contour Trail. It’s dead flat and follows the 7,900 foot contour for miles to the north and east of town. Just a 200 foot climb to get to it then it’s as easy a spin on singletrack as you want it to be (Of course, you can hammer it, too, but not today). And I wanted it to be easy. I stayed way below 125 HR and had a nice, casual spin, all kinds of random thoughts spinning in my head, too, but then that’s part of why we like to ride, right? It was a beautiful afternoon with lots of dark storm clouds around but this time, none threatened me. CB looked like it was getting nuked, though. 90 minutes and back just in time for dinner. I’m still a little sore from lifting and this is really noticeable when I dismount my bike.
I’ll be getting up at 430am tomorrow, on the road by 515am heading to Canon City for work. The drive is awesome at that time: no traffic, sun’s coming up, over the Continental Divide, through Salida and all the way down the lower Arkansas River Canyon to where if finally breaks free of the Rockies and begins in slow meander toward the Gulf through the Great Plains. I’ll brown bag it so that I can eat my lunch in the car on the way back to Gunni. More traffic then and the light’s not as good. I have a portabella mushroom and turkey sandwich with all the fixings on tap.
I’ll go straight to the gym for weights session 3 and then directly home to get on my road bike for Phosphate Sprints. 8 reps of 10 seconds with 3 minutes in between. An hour is doable. I’d really have to work at it to stretch the ride to an hour and a half. Susan’s parents are coming in from Cali sometime in the afternoon so we’ll have a nice dinner with them. Susan started making corn chowder yesterday that, along with corn and other ingredients, contains pablano peppers and bacon. Oh yeah. As you can tell, there’s no food obsession here.
I hope to ramp up the training on Wednesday and beyond but work looks to be just busy enough to keep me around and occupied through most of the day. I’ll have to get out early or late and go hard, I guess. Susan doesn’t think I’m getting in enough long rides this summer, which is unusual for her. She’s usually telling me to do more shorter, intensity. Ya just never know! And by the way, the Hell’s Angels are in town for the week, I’ll try to get some photos. Maybe I’ll go downtown in a skinsuit and see if I can’t get my picture taken with some of them. Where’s Ross the intern when you need him?
