Beautiful Day to Ride Through Colorful Trees

century ride, Colorado | UltraRob | Sunday, October 1st, 2006 at 12:01 pm

After the cold snap the weekend of the cyclocross race, last week was a beautiful week. Saturday was the last day of the month and I hadn’t gotten in my century for the month for the UMCA Larry Schwartz award. To get the award, you have to ride a century each month of the year although you can make up 2 months. That means you could ride 12 centuries in 10 month. So far I haven’t missed any months this year.

Since my longest ride in over a month has been under 3 hours and most weeks I haven’t been getting in much more than 2 or 3 hours, I thought of doing a flat ride. With the aspen turned and winter coming, I decided I’d rather go up into the mountains because I can ride on the boring prairies all winter.

I rode up to Divide and there was a lot of traffic which wasn’t surprising since lots of people go see the leaves. I decided to take some country roads to the north that would have less traffic but didn’t go too far. Then I went south on Highway 67 toward Cripple Creek which is a popular area to go see fall leaves. The first few miles has a bit of a shoulder but once it starts climbing it gets narrow and winding. I didn’t feel it was safe to go on the narrower section and it was way too nice of a day to commit suicide. Even at over 9,000 feet, I was comfortable in shorts and short sleeves. I went in to Mueller State Park which has a good climb. I then headed back home. I only got in 92 miles with 5361 feet of climbing. 90 miles is enough to count as a century for the UMCA Larry Schwartz award. I believe this gives me exactly 6,000 miles in 35 rides for the UMCA Year Rounder Challenge so my average ride length is 171 miles.