Summit County Ride

This weekend I hosted some tri friends in Breckenridge so we could do a long ride in Summit County. We originally planned to do the Copper Triangle, but the Courage Classic was up there that weekend riding from Leadville to Copper Mountain on our Saturday so we decided to steer clear of them.

Instead, we rode from Breckenridge up Vail Pass. Vail Pass is pretty easy, when it doesn't come at mile 90 of the Triple Bypass.

So we have Dan and Al (doing Wisconsin), then Jay, me and Liz (Jeremy took the picture)



Jay - I swim with him and he's done 4 Ironman



Al and I coming up Vail. We ride well together, about the same speed:



Dan - he's done 3 Ironman and is coming out to Wisconsin with 4 chicks:



And Liz - just one Ironman under her belt:



Jay and Liz are doing the Boulder 70.3 on 8-8 (well, so is Al) so they decided to go back to Breckenridge after Vail Pass. The rest of us rode to Leadville and back over Fremont Pass. Jeremy took a picture riding behind me and Al:



And at the top of Fremont Pass, you find Climax Colorado!





And my favorite part about Fremont Pass? The opportunity to discuss not only Climax, but molybdenum. Really, how often does molybdenum come up in casual conversation?



Jeremy even partook in eating beef jerky at the top of Fremont Pass. He offered me some but I declined. I had already switched over to Coke and my teeth were not up to the task of chewing anything, much less jerky.

I had been worrying about this ride all week, the forecast was calling for a high of 65 with lots of possible thunderstorms, but it turned out to be a perfect riding day. I'm not sure what the temperature was, but it was plenty warm without being too hot. We didn't get any rain or thunder. The first time up Fremont Pass we saw these clouds to the south and got a little worried, but they never did anything.



And those clouds on the way back. More ominous but still not threatening:



Our ride ended up being about 85 miles long and 5 1/2 hours riding time. Dan and I finished up with a 40 minute run so our total time was from 8:40 to 3:20 - about 7 1/2 hours.