Scott's CTR Blog: Training Summary

As I mentioned last time, I was in Orlando most of the week for an important trade show. I was hoping that I would be able to train in the evening either in the hotel exercise room, or at a local 24 hour fitness. Unfortunately with long days working the booth followed by long dinners, I was only able to get a single, one hour workout in on Tuesday evening between 11:00 pm and midnight. Fortunately, most of the weeks training was scheduled for Friday through Sunday.

I flew back to CO on Friday morning. Mickey and Sam met me in Denver for an early Father's Day lunch because Sam was going to be at a mountain bike camp, and I was going to be spending the weekend on a two night training ride.

After lunch I headed to Buena Vista where I planned to start my weekend riding two or three more segments of the Colorado Trail. Nothing was really going right. I couldn't find my iPod, or my bike computer. My rear tire wouldn't hold air, and it took me over an hour to unload my car, pack and get going. I found a bike shop to put more sealant in my rear tire, but it didn't work. I had to keep pumping it up until the next day I finally gave up an put a tube in my tubeless wheel. Saturday morning I checked my spot GPS tracker and noticed that the low battery light was on. I had told Mickey that I would bring spare batteries ( Which I forgot to do ) so that there would be almost no chance that I would lose contact. So I was forced to ride by to Buena Vista to buy batteries, and then drove my car back to the Mt. Princeton parking lot to continue where I left off.

Towards the end of segment 13, I ran into Pete, another rider training for the CTR, who had also finished in 2011.

The CO trail in this area runs along the front of the Collegiate peaks. Looking at the elevation profile, the area doesn't look terribly daunting, but I found the trails difficult. The trails had lots of short steep climbs with loose sand and rock. I spent a lot of time pushing my bike, and getting off and on over and over. I keep doing the math in my head to figure out how long this race is going to take me, and the answer is not good. I'm in the best shape of my life, and I'll be luckyif I can just finish before I have to go back to work.