RTR Day 2: Cortez to Telluride

June 16 — Cortez to Telluride

77 miles

5:57 ride time

8:45 elapsed time

Started at 7:15

Okay. Kid stuff is over. Now comes the first real ride — 77 miles to Telluride, over Lizard Head Pass. My longest training ride had been 62 miles, and today we’d go over 10,000 feet to boot.

Got some sleep the night before — being tired sure helps. We have a dandy system of sleeping bags, foam pads, and Thermarest mattresses that, coupled with with the soft ground of the football field, make a pretty darn comfy bed. Ear plugs are essential as well — we are crammed together like a Bombay suburb and tent walls don’t give you a whole lot of privacy. It’s an interesting experience.

But now it’s time for up and at ‘em, wiggle into our Lycra (I’m wearing my Mizzou jersey today, to fly the colors atop our first pass), and pack up our camp. We join the many other hundreds of our tribe in the long, long line for breakfast — ahhh, breakfast. There was just no way around it. You have to eat. And so does everyone else. We tried several different ways of timing our arrival during the week, but nothing worked. There was always a line. A loooooooooooooooong line. A slow line. And I’m none too happy to be even be up at 5:00 in the morning, to begin with. And you want to get going, get on the road. But instead — you wait.

This morning was funny because the man collecting money (the morning’s breakfast supported the local public radio station) got all lit up over my Mizzou jersey. “Hey, did you see the guy in the KU sweatshirt?” he asked me, and I said, Yeah, I did. “Should have charged him extra,” he said. All during the day people were hollering at me, Hey, Mizzou! And Go, Tigers! Carol would just grin and shake her head. And I would just puff up like crazy.

But we’re just dilly-dallying here, aren’t we? We finally got ourselves fed and collected and clipped into our pedals at around 7:15. The route profile showed a sharp climb out of Cortez toward Dolores, and our first aid station of the day.

RTR 2008 Day 2, Cortez to Telluride

It was hard getting started; it takes some miles before the joints feel lubricated and some kind of rhythm comes back. We pedaled along back roads out of Cortez and then had just a bit of a climb to Dolores, not bad. That was a little over an hour of riding and a good warm-up. For the next few hours the road wound up along the Dolores River, through an absolutely beautiful green, lush, cool valley. The grade was so gently uphill that it was hardly noticeable.

These miles rolled very easily by and the morning was just delightful. As we went higher, we started seeing more aspen and sharper hills ahead. We took a good long break at the aid station in Rico, an old mining town; the grade was definitely beginning to pick up, and would continue to steepen as we approached Lizard Head Pass, 18 miles ahead.

Hills. Climbing. My Achilles’ Heel. My first pass, my first test. It’s not so bad for the first 8 or 10 miles out of Rico. Uphill, but manageable. I pulled over once to take a couple of pictures — hey, it’s not a race! Stop and smell the roses. And catch your breath.

All of a sudden, the hill gets serious, and my heart sinks. Well, here we go. Pain and suffering. It is a sharp little pitch and I set my sights on a target farther up the road — the end of a guardrail along a pull-out — and take another rest break. Yeesh. It’s gonna be a long haul to the top.

But then I’m back on and the grade flattens out — ! I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m getting up above tree line now, but the road is just wandering placidly along. It seems to have gotten the nastiness out of its system. Sure enough, a mile or two of this and I can see the summit ahead. You can tell the summit of any pass along the RTR route, because it’s a giant party. Hundreds of people, music playing, huge traffic jam, and more boatloads of freakin’ nutty cyclists arriving by the minute. There is a sizable contingent of Colorado State Highway Patrol with us all week, motorcycle cops, and they do their level best to keep us from getting run over in our giddy excitement as we jump off our bikes and start hugging everyone around us.

It’s nuts.

Pass bagging: Lizard Head Pass, 10,222'

There are bunches of photos from Lizard Head on my Flickr page; check them out.

What an amazing feeling, to be on top of the first pass! It was just huge. Just that one bad little hump, and the rest was no big deal. Incredible boost to my confidence! And a flat-out gorgeous, beautiful place to be. We grinned; we giggled; we hugged and mugged for the camera. Wow.

And 3/4 of the way to Telluride! Just 13 more miles, mostly downhill! Baby! Let’s get the party started!

Did I mention something already about the difficulty in interpreting the route profile maps? Well, the map shows this one leetle hill between us and Telluride, at the Ophir Loop Junction. And it just about killed me. It just went on … and on … and on. I passed a man on a hand bike (used by paraplegics; you pedal it with your arms) and we were both coming up around a curve to find that there was still MORE hill ahead. I can’t repeat what he said, but it went double for me. @#$%. It was just endless.

Mixed in with that were downhills that were frighteningly steep on a road that was amply cracked and potholed. Each morning, in the wee wee hours, the intrepid RTR road marking crew went out before us with their cans of orange spray paint to mark road hazards. They must’ve gone through a few cans on that descent into Telluride; and to top it all off, there was a crosswind. So for yours truly, who is still quite nervous about the consequences of something going wrong when you’re screaming down a mountain pass at over 30 mph … it was white-knuckle time, for sure. Plus, if you white-knuckle it for long enough, you start to get cramps in your hands from squeezing the brake levers.

It was good to finally get down the hill.

We then had a lovely (not) several mile ride on Telluride’s terrible bike trail — so rough I was surprised to have any fillings left in my teeth when we finally arrived at the school. Not nice. We were getting a little frayed around the edges. Add to this that it was 4:00, and we had massages scheduled at 5:00. Mad scramble to find the baggage, claim one little patch of ground on the football field, and line up for the shower truck — but running out of time. There was a rumor of indoor showers in the girl’s locker room, and since the massage team was set up inside the high school, at least we’d be going in the right direction.

Can you remember your last ice-cold shower? I don’t even want to talk about it.

But the massages were quite wonderful and very much needed. We felt a little better-adjusted and sanguine about life, up until we realized that it was now well after 6:00 and we hadn’t had anything substantial to eat since lunch. Yes. We crashed. It was horrible. I thought I was going to keel over. It kept getting worse: instead of the community feed being anywhere near the school, it was literally over the other side of the mountain, reachable by bus and gondola. When we finally staggered off the gondola, we found that all but one of the food vendors had run out of food. The last one had a line a mile and half long. We found a restaurant but their kitchen was backed up an hour and they’d run out of food too. It was a nightmare.

We finally got back to the other side of town and found a nice little Mexican restaurant and sat down to eat at 8:30. I have never tasted such fabulous chips and salsa. We drank a gallon of ice water. We cursed the very name of Telluride to the heavens, so that it will be known for all time as “Helluride.”

RTR Day 1: Durango to Cortez

June 15 — Durango to Cortez

47 miles

3:21 ride time

4:00 elapsed

Started at 7:20 am

I didn’t sleep too badly, in spite of being tired and wound-up, and when the alarm went off at 5:00 we were both ready to see what was going to happen next. We caught the shuttle bus back to the high school without incident, got our bag loaded on the baggage truck, and sat down to breakfast in the high school cafeteria. There was hardly any line — the only time THAT happened all week, let me tell ya. I had such a knot in my stomach I could hardly eat. We hung around until the opening ceremonies were finished and then joined the river of two-wheeled humanity flowing out onto the road.

I was just a mess. I was so nervous — and I hadn’t gotten my seat height set right when we put the bikes together the day before — and the angle of my handlebars was wrong, too. I was tight all over and nothing felt “right.” I stopped us twice on the way out of town to adjust my seat; I was snappish and cranky and it’s a wonder Carol didn’t tell me to just get over myself. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The day’s ride was short — under 50 miles — but the route profile made the climb up Hesperus Hill look very ominous. (As the week wore on we got better at interpreting how these profiles actually translated into real life — sometimes more accurately than others!).

RTR 2008 Day 1, Durango to Cortez

It was really different to be riding with soooo many other people. As was the case the whole week, about 2/3 of the riders were very good about warning you with “on your left!” as they passed. Then there were the others … mostly it was just a point of good manners, but there would be times when someone would come hammerin’ right past you, right off your wheel, and just about startle the hell out of you.

The climbing started pretty much right out of town, as we wound up a lovely canyon. It was a bit of a slog, but not the monster it had looked on the profile. Some people were bailing out and walking, but I ground on up in my very low-gear grindy way and found Carol waiting for me at the first aid station.

The first aid station! Success. Maybe this WAS gonna be okay.

And what a gorgeous morning! Durango — all of southwest Colorado — is a treasure trove of mountains, valleys, and wide-opens; shading a bit into what looks like the canyon country of Utah, but still with that lovely high-mountain freshness of Colorado. From the top of Hesperus Hill we could see back into the valley of Durango and the San Juan Mountains to the east and north, and toward the drier country of Cortez to the west.

By now I was loosening up and enjoying the ride. Before I knew it we were to the second aid station, at Mancos. This was the drill: get pulled off the road without running over anyone else, or getting run over yourself by one of the other dozens of cyclists coming or going; find a place to lay the bike down, or prop the two of them together (a delicate art form of balance which we perfected as the week went on); put on your cleat covers, re-apply sunscreen, get water bottles and clomp on up to where the Gatorade barrels were located; hit the porta-potties as necessary; re-apply the Chamois Butt’r; clomp on back to the bikes, remove cleat covers, re-mount and continue.

Aid stations are the best thing ever. During the course of a multi-hour ride, you need to consume a steady stream of carbohydrates, mostly in the form of sugar — stuff that can get into your muscles fast, with a minimum of processing — in order to avoid the dreaded “bonk.” Optimally, this means at least a full bottle of Gatorade, Accelerade, Cytomax, whatever, per hour. RTR obviously has a deal with Gatorade, which was okay, but as the week wore on Carol in particular found that it didn’t work as well for her as some of the other stuff we’ve used. But I digress. Aid stations at RTR were spaced at just about 1-hour intervals, which was a perfect time to top off the bottles and even get another little snack, if needed. Carol and I both carried a supply of Fig Newtons for extra carbs (“Pig” Newtons, as they came to be called), and let me tell you, having never been really all that fond of them anyway, I am REALLY over them now. But they give you a good little pop as you’re riding along.

(On a short ride like this one, on Day 1, we didn’t need to eat anything else while we were riding. But later in the week, after being out for six or seven or more hours, you have to eat as well as drink.)

The rest of the ride into Cortez was nice, uneventful, and fast. We passed by the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park and were then on a mostly flat, hot and dry stretch for the last few miles into town. Into a west headwind, of course. We hooked up with another woman rider who was going at our pace and took turns “pulling” for each other in a mini pace line. The person in front “pulls” and the others draft, of course, or more accurately “suck.” Pulling and sucking. I had many, many, many hours to contemplate their dual natures over the week. Maaaaannnnnnyyyyy.

Carol is a natural puller, being the strong cyclist she is. I’m a natural sucker. What can I say? Anyway, the three of us made short work of the last bit into Cortez, and soon enough we were at the high school.

So: first day’s ride under our belts (or I should say, sweaty waistbands), and now to figure out the REST of the drill.

First: leave bikes at secure lockup area. Check. But remember to take sunscreen out of the seat bag, leave helmet, take water bottles.

Second: where are the baggage trucks? As was the case every day, in every town, the baggage trucks are parked at the farthest possible point from the camping area (usually the football field).

Third: how do we get these two horrible behemoth bags from the trucks to the football field? Today we’re lucky: enterprising kids are offering wagons, wheelbarrows, and the muscles to move them and our bags, all for tips. Hell, kid — you got it.

Sweet! There’s a great spot right inside the fence. We’re set up in pretty quick fashion and pleased with ourselves. It becomes obvious, however, that this “prime spot” was still available because it was right next to the phalanx of porta-potties that follow RTR everywhere. It’s not that they smell — it’s that, starting at about 4:00 in the morning, there’s a steady stream (pardon the pun) of people slamming in and out of them. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Okay. We learned fast.

The next adventure was … The Shower Truck! I’ve never seen such a thing. It’s a semi-trailer, divided in two sections, each with five or six shower stalls. One for the guys, one for the women. Completely cramped quarters, naked happy cyclist bodies of all shapes, sizes, and ages; chatting and laughing, and glorious running water. It was wonderful! The line outside the guys’ side was long, and they looked pretty glum standing out in the hot sun. For one thing, there are a lot more men doing RTR than women, so there’s just a numbers issue there. But one of the women was laughing anyway, saying the guys were too shy to all pile in there like we women did … they were going one at a time.

Dang! Did the ride! Set up the tent! Showered! Clean clothes! A lovely lunch of baked potato with all the fixin’s! We were pretty pleased with ourselves. And since it was baking hot outside, we brought our two Thermarest mattresses into the high school, put them down in the hallway, and sacked out for a couple of hours. All this and a nap, too. Life is goooooood …

After our little snooze, we were ready for more fun. We jumped on a shuttle bus that took us to the Cortez Cultural Center, location of the beer garden and evening’s entertainment. We lounged in the shade, enjoyed our Fat Tires, and started to really settle into the RTR experience. Which is to say … who’s got it better’n us? Ain’t NOBODY got it better’n us!

Carbo loading, Ride the Rockies-style