A tale of two rides

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Location, Location, Location. It's important in more then just real estate! We found that out the hard way this weekend with our two rides. One was super fun and grin inducing. The other? Well, I was afraid to open my mouth because of the mud...

I was planning on the group road ride on Saturday - the weather was great and I was mentally ready to start suffering again. Physically was a different story, so I bailed on the road ride. I wasn't quite ready to get dropped five times because I was still tired from 24 HOP. Went to work for a few hours in the morning, then decided it was time to ride. Nick and I were planning on doing a road ride, but he decided to head south on the Santa Fe Trail. That way I could ride hard like in the group road ride, get some power numbers and we still wouldn't have to worry about cars. We were also pretty sure it would be clear - or mostly clear. Well, it wasn't as clear as we thought! In fact, there was still inches of snow in places and the trail was super muddy almost the whole way down to Fountain. It was still a good workout, but everything was covered in mud. My bike was brown, my clothes were brown and I wasn't drinking out of that waterbottle! It took almost as long to clean everything after that ride as the ride took.

After I got some intel on Pueblo, we decided some canyon fun was in order. Without the turtle, it seems silly to drive down to Pueblo to get a fix of dry singletrack, but we were both desperate. Judging by how busy the parking lot was - the main lot was jammed full, and cyclists were spilling out of the lower parking lots - we weren't the only ones going through trail withdrawal. This was a no agenda ride - no power numbers to worry about, no heart to monitor. Just get out, ride our bikes and have fun. As such, we stayed on the east side of the park, in the canyons. I was riding the right bike for the day and was able to clean everything. I even made a new line in Rock Canyon that I've struggled with before. It took me two tries, but once I figured it out... Every climb meant a fun descent - Pinball, Freeride, Water Tower... We did them all. There were plenty of people riding - but most of them were heading west towards the Limits and VooDoo. Staying in the canyons meant we had pretty quiet trails despite the numbers. It also meant easy bailing back to the car when the wind kicked up. And it got really strong about 10 minutes before we called it a day. I was hoping for a little longer, but not with that kind of wind.

Now it's back to the garage or the road for most of my rides. The fun trails in COS are gonna be snowed in for a while I think...

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