started the day buying doughnuts for my family's breakfast before i met up with my riding posse for the golden, co trifecta (green mt., red rox, and apex-no figure eight). got a call from alec saying he couldn't make it. sahhhite (read: that's okay). it was going to be long, hard day for me anyway because the three of us were getting miles and saddle time for the beloved firecracker 50. alec probably could've hung with us at green mountain though.
when we all meet up at the rooney road trail head parking, i peeps that grant now owns a 29'er. cool. i was really impressed by the whole 29'er scene at the 18 hours of fruita. he had the racer-x version of the titus line. at green mountain he's off and climbing like a fiend. apparently he's pretty fit. kenny and i are off the back chatting knowing that if we try to match his pace we aren't going to finish the two other trails. green mountain trail volume was full. bikers and hikers in all manner of dress and fitness were out there enjoying the ultra-violet radiation therapy. kenny was killin' it in his all-mountain bike, climbing like he was on a hardtail or something. pretty impressive. he lets it run on the fire road descent. my hardtail capabilities were floored trying to stay in his draft. i wish we had a speedometer. i haven't descended that fast since i owned my specialized fsr xc. at that speed if i had to bail there would've been permanent disfigurement...we even dropped grant at kenny's downhilling speed.
we hit the zorro trail to descend into red rocks. we go over kenny's favorite spot: dakota ridge. not really, he can't stand that part of red rox. we cross the road to actually go into the red rox complex. my chain's really dry at this point (guess that's what i guess for using a dry lube--it's like dry cleaning, go figure) and whenever i have to quickly bail into the small chainring, it comes completely off and i have to dismount to manually put the chain back on. drag. oh, and some freds see us coming and from their rest they get back on their bikes and pedal quickly away. grant sees this and ups the pace and i do too. we catch the last guy and the other guy's caught when we cross the street again. grant's climbing like a fiend again and kenny and i are at our own, slower pace mode. we go up the easy saddle at red rox. on the way down, some dude wants to pass, so we let him. after he passes us i glue up to his wheel and he's really not that fast. grant and i are pacelining behind him nascar-like and we wait for kenny at the fork. at the bottom we hit the head and go on the road to apex park. kenny winds it up on the road and grant and i tuck in behind his slipstream. at apex, since kenny and i know all the technical spots grant dismounts and we slowly catch up to him. he takes off again and waits for us at the first fork. after the enchanted forest exit, i go off the front and lead for a while. i was definitely on the way to being extra crispy finished at this point. i lead it all the way to the fork to chimney gulch and i'm done and out of water to boot. i think grant was just actively resting behind me on that climb. in the enchanted forest my yeti is telling me to do bad things and i let her run. put a nice size gap on g and k and wait for them at the footbridge. from that point on i lead the downhill and with kenny riding my behind we scream down towards heritage square. kenny's bike, i think, tells him to do bad things as well. kenny mentions that on the downhill he notices that i descend like a pinball, and i tell him that i descend like i mogul ski. the bumps control where i go and i steer reactively and generally plan my fall-line 20 to 10 meters when i bike and ski respectively. kenny says he could've descended faster but didn't want to risk going for the pass. there's really no comparison during the descent at apex between a hardtail and a dually. this reminds me of the descents at breckenridge when i was flying and passing all manner of dually's but at the bottom i had to stop and physically stretch my lower back. fun.
on the way back to zorro via red rocks, i cramped on the road in front of the la farge stone quarry. i ate my last triple threat power bar (chocolate, caramel, and peanuts) and voila, the cramps dissipated. incidentally the triple threat gave me a mean case of the number twos. i was last climbing that hellish fire road to go zorro; but once the downhill technical portion came up i blasted that. back in the parking lot we all agreed it was a blast. grant's so hardcore he did another lap at green mountain while kenny and i had a burger and fries at the blue moon eatery in morrison after the wait staff took their sweet time with everybody else (those overworked bastidges!). total ride time: 3H 8 mins. total time: a smidge under 4h.
it's monday and my legs are still done, hence the picture of the fork.
