Spring Warm-Up Ride with Micah

This morning Micah and I rode the Spring Warm-Up Ride hosted by the Fort Collins Cycling Club.  The event featured rides of 12, 26, 43 and 62 miles all starting and finishing at Spring Canyon Community Park (our park).  Micah and I signed up for the 43 mile ride a few weeks ago and I have been looking forward to it ever since.
We got up early and each ate a hearty bowl of oatmeal, put on our cycling attire, filled our water bottles and rode the 1 mile stretch down the street and through the park to the start.  We checked in, picked up a map of the route and were headed north on Overland Trail by 9:00 am.

ready to ride             photo by Ean

The route took us north on Taft Hill through fields and farms on a beautiful stretch of road that I'd never been on.  The road rolled along and Micah and I talked, joked around, discussed the various interesting smells that noticed as we passed horse ranches, cattle pastures and some place that smelled a lot like beef jerky.  We both did really well considering that our preparation for this ride consisted of nothing more that riding back and forth to school a few days a week.

Micah, the careful navigator

After 16 miles, he course turned east and a couple miles after that we reached the first of the two aid stations set up for the ride.  We took a short break to fill up or water bottles and eat granola bars and then we headed onward.  Before long we turned south and then veered east in to Wellington where we stopped at the park set up with the second and final aid station at mile 25.  There was a nice group of other riders here and we enjoyed a slightly longer rest with bagels and almond butter.  The weather was perfect today with warm sunshine and a pleasant breeze.  We talked with a volunteer at the aid station who told us that it snowed on the day of the ride last year. 

The May Team

With only 18 miles to go, we continued south towards Fort Collins past the Budweiser plant where we added barley and hops to our collection of interesting smells of the ride.  Micah and I talked about going out for rides like this more often and maybe looking for a 100 mile ride to train for.  The miles continued to slip by as we rolled back in to town and on to the Spring Creek Trail for the final 8 miles.

racing towards the finish

We were getting tired by this point and I asked Micah if he wanted to take a break, but he said he was fine and we should keep riding for the finish.  Before the ride, we had estimated that we'd average around 10 miles per hour and finish the ride in 4 and half hours.  To both of our surprise, we rode quite a bit faster than that and with only a few miles to go, we could see that we'd be done in under 4 hours easy.

what a nice day to be out ridging bikes in Colorado

We rolled back in to the park after 43.5 miles at 12:45 pm.  There was a great lunch set up with sandwich fixings, chips, veggies, soda and cookies.  We sat down for a nice lunch and commented on what a nice group of people these bike riders are.  Definitely a different culture than out trail running group, but still great people that enjoy spending time together playing outside.

My handsome, talented and wonderful son enjoying the post ride lunch at the park