Leadville Pre-Race

Race week finally arrived.  After riding on Saturday, and because we were leaving early on Wednesday am, I thought it would be good to ride Del Cerro on Monday instead of Tuesday.  That way, we could also do an easy ride in Leadville on Thursday before racing on Saturday and I should be well rested.

We hit the road as planned on Wednesday am and drove to Green River, UT, about 2/3 of the way to Leadville.
We stayed at a little motel called the Robbers Roost, which was inexpensive and adequate.  Israel and I woke up and had breakfast in a local coffee house, which had a cool feel to it, except the help wasn't real friendly.  Strange for Utah.  We then picked up Susan and it the road to Leadville.  The plan was to get into Leadville, scope out the situation with checking in, etc., do a little ride, then head out to our motel in Buena Vista.



We finally arrived to town and you can see Leadville maintained the feel of a historic mining town. Here are pics from 1879 and present:

During the check in, we ran into Sonya Looney, who Israel and I both have a little crush on. What's not to like right?  Hot, awesome endurance mountain biker, and from her blogs, seemed to be really cool.  Well, we're both even bigger fans now.  She was totally cool and not only let us both take pics with her, but she spent extra time talking to us, even though it appeared her crew was ready to move on.

We also stopped by the 'Herbalife Base Camp', which was right near the registration area.  Susan made arrangements for us to hang out there and also for us to get Herbalife 24 race kits.  Cool.

We headed out to ride and decided to go out for about an hour, maybe a little more.  After scoping out the options we set out to ride the first part of the course, and maybe check out the first part of the St. Kevins climb.  After circling around some and trying to find our way, we ran into a group of guys who were also heading out to climb St. Kevins and they invited us along.  We started up St. Kevins, and it was fairly steady, but there were a few steep sections. It felt good to ride, but I felt the altitude, especially when trying to catch my breath.  Maybe it was riding with those other guys, but we went a little harder than planned, and also quite a bit longer.  We ended up doing a 2-hour ride.  Not crazy or stupid but not part of the game plan either, knowing it's harder to recover in the altitude, and I am always better off with more recovery time.  Was good to get some anxiety out though.