BC100

After last week's attempt with the Redneck, and wanting to do a solo-ride with some big miles to "train" for my tour to Durango, I headed out Saturday for another 100 mile attempt. This time, I headed down to the Flatlands and back up for some long road miles in between some singletrack. I headed out around 7:30am, i thought I'd be back by 4 at the latest...

After a nice 25 mile ride into the Rock, on a mix of singletrack and dirt and paved roads, I met up with the Pilot and headed north out of town. Along the foothills we went, on up to one of the L-towns via a newish link that dropped right into town.

Contrary to the frequent complaints by mtn bikers in this town, there is some great singletrack close to town, both in the north and south - some of it very recently opened. Sure, it takes some riding on road or bike paths to get there sometimes, but it's still there and I'm not familiar with that many cities of 100K people that have this many trails close to town (with some notable exceptions like CO Springs). I could be wrong. This is one example of a trail that we arrived at by riding on a bike path, to a dirt multi-use trail, and then hit singletrack for the next 5 or so miles out of town. Not bad for a little city.

Say bye to the Rock! The view behind us as we left town. My house is behind those foothills and to the right out of the picture.

Once we left that singletrack, we crossed a road and hit some dirt roads for another few miles. Then up a canyon a short distance where I learned the 'new' thing in road biking is to park at the bottom of this canyon and ride up and back. Odd thing I thought to myself as we pedaled on by up to the trailhead of Heil Ranch. Up and up the rocky singletrack that had recently been revamped. It's a great trail, it's just the soil isn't cooperating. Low grade bench cuts with the most amazingly built bermed switchbacks I've ever seen. It's a well built trail but the soil is so fine that any rain erodes it away and leaves sharp big rocks. A rigid here would truly suck...a hardtail was harsh enough. I learned they actually have sections of trail here that they dug down to get most the rocks out, then overlaid roadbase - and these sections are the ONLY smooth sections of trail. As the day went on, I realized i picked a route with the smoothest roads, yet roughest trails in this county.

Down into Ltown. This began the best part of the trail in my opinion. It opened up into fast, less rocky singletrack, and the soil turned red and reminded me of Durango.

5 plus miles of downhill singletrack!

Pilot and I stopped for a cool down in Ltown.

It was one of the hotter days of the year. Smrp heckled me for heading to the flatlands because of that and she was right, my nordic blood was boiling.

The Pilot took off for home after pacing me to Ltown. Even though he has only 11 rides under his belt in the last 6 weeks, he's still stronger than me (like usual)! I don't get how his fitness just doesn't disappear! Anyways, as there are no trail links (that I know of at least) going up where I wanted to go back to, I headed up the road. This was always my favorite canyon to ride up when I owned a road bike. It's a mellow grade, beautiful rocks and flowing creek...and it's one of the longest sustained climbs in the County at 21 miles and 4,000ft of elevation gain.

Finally, back to the dirt. Totally wiped from the heat, I had to sit and take a break. I am not as fit as I had hoped I was for this ride. I realized at this point, that I should've tried a shorter ride, but i was 70 miles into it and still at least 20 miles from home - on the road . The road was burning me out though so I kept with the route and hopped on some nice singletrack right off the highway that led me up another 1500ft vertical. It involved a lot of hiking, but I was just happy to get off the road and out of the sun. Something about being in the woods energized me and I was instantly much happier.

Out of the flatlands, back into the aspens.

...and lush vegetation

At the top, or almost there at least. I sat creekside, the same creek i had followed up for almost 30 miles now from the flatlands back at Ltown. I dunked my hat and washed my head in the ice cold water. I was tempted to dunk my head and take huge gulps of water.

Loving the elevation. Those mountains in the distance mark where started and still have to go. I'm at the high point of the ride now finally and it's all (mostly) downhill from here.

All in all, it was 95 miles on the odometer (but I'm rounding up to 100) and around 11,000ft of elevation gain. With my planned route it would've been 100 miles easily, but I was already late coming home - way past 4pm. I need more fitness to get er done in that amount of time! Next year, I'll reverse the route, and do the two sections of trail that I opted out of. The follow up to the Yay we live here! -- the BC100 (Boulder County 100).