Breakthru ride

Saturday's ride was my breakthru ride...mentally, physically...the longest ride of my training season for CDA. It's purpose, two-fold... a delicate balance between building confidence and suffering just enough to foreshadow what the day may bring.

I left just before 10 am and headed for Estes Park via the Big Thompson Highway, a 22 mile stretch of road between Loveland and Estes. Big Thompson Canyon is epic... it is enormous. My thoughts and I thought endlessly about the power of water to carve out rock...Canyon walls a few hundred miles deep. There were so many people out fishing, kayaking...doing their thing, and I was doing mine. At mile 65.5 at turned back for home, and a chilly descent out of Estes. I was only supposed to ride 125 on the day, but stopping a few miles shy of EP made it seem less of a breakthru. Ended the day at 131 miles, with a total ride time of 8:08:13. The last few miles were a little painful on the bum...and my legs were certainly talking to me...saying "good, long day". I topped it off with a one-mile run off the ride and a quiet dinner and bottle of wine with Kristina to celebrate our anniversary.

For the most part, the day was incredible...The only downside was this jack-ass, red-neck farmer type, who pulled out of the ditch right in front of me, while watching my approach. To take it one step further, this beeatch held my speed for a few hundred feet, while watching me in his side-view mirror...then punched it while I was on his bumper, so a huge black cloud of diesel fumes came spewing out of his sorry, dilapidated rust bucket of a truck....Thankfully for me there was a great crosswind...Thankfully for him, he kept going or he would have had my size 10.5 Sidi crammed up his ass and I may not have made it back from Estes in as good of time. Ride safe.