Maui

I got for a ride today around the western part of Maui.  The northwest part of Maui just might be the most beautiful place I have ever been. 

Several locals warned me against riding the loop.  I think they thought it was too big a loop (60 miles) and that the road is scary.  The road is in fact a single lane for 10+ miles, but that turned out to be a blessing for cycling.  The speed limit was 15 miles an hour and cars were super careful and respectful since they didn’t know who might be around the corner. 

The Kahakili Highway winds up and down all the little canyons on the coast.    It climbs up hundreds of feet and then back down constantly.   There are a couple of very steep and 1 or two fairly long climbs and a different vista.  The only ride I could compare it to for beauty would be Trail Ridge Road, back in Colorado.  I also had a lesson on Hawaiian trade winds.  They are incredibly steady at about 20MPH.  Being a loop around the island though, I did get some very nice tailwinds, but I more than paid the price.

The little village of Kahukuloa might be as close to perfection as I have seen.  It is in this incredible little valley with a single lane road as the only way in and out.  It also has an amazingly good fruit/smoothie stand that was very welcome at the point in the ride.  Surprise, the local fruit on Maui is pretty good…

Snow

This might be a little much for October.  Not sure what the official snowfall count is, but it’s a lot.  I sure am glad we bought the ski passes this winter.

 

Oh well, I am off on my bike to head to work.

Mt Sanitas

Elizabeth climbed all the way to the summit of Mt Sanitas today! And she did it the hard way - the steep goat path up from our house and then the east ridge trail. More than 1200 feet of climbing on an exceptionally steep and rocky trail.

More pictures here.

Longs Peak

Rob and I went up to the Keyhole today... Not expecting that much winter.

Got back to Boulder and 80 degrees. Best guess is that with wind chill it was about 5 up there.

More pictures here.

It was fun though...

Buffalo Classic

It feels like summer is winding down... Margaret came back from her 10 day backpacking trip excited about her fitness and wanting to test it more. We made quick arrangements to do the Buffalo Classic bike ride.

It's the 1st time we have done a full century on the tandem - 105 miles actually. Margaret did great - nothing hurt except for some saddle pain. 6:15 hours in the saddle is hard even if you are in pretty good shape. Overall we did pretty well - but it was much more vertical than I expected. Looking at the course map, it ended up being 4308 ft of climbing! Not too much per mile, but it sure adds up.

There were some decent pictures of us from Sundance Images, here, here and here.

Hermit Park to Homestead Meadows

Hermit Park is the newest public open space in Estes Park. There is a new connector trail from there to Homestead Meadows, which is in the National Forest, that allows Mountain Bikes. Homestead Meadows has always been one of the coolest areas around Estes Park to bike, but it has been way to difficult to get in there. You could either go in through Pearson Park - which is the loosest, rockiest, not fun descent you can imagine, or you could go in via Lion's Gulch, which is an incredible difficult mostly hike-a-bike trail. Great for hiking, but not so great for biking.

Now with the new Hermit park trail, it is much easier to get into that great area. Don't get me wrong, the Hermit Park connector trail isn't easy, but it is almost all bike-able and it is relatively short. After 1.5 miles of single track, there is a good sized climb on a good Jeep Road. You can the take a left towards the saw mill and there is a cool looking single track behind some of the homesteads. I only rode it about 3/4 of a mile and turned around because the trail started down and Kate was waiting, but it was really nice single track. The meadow loop has a mile or so of nice single track. There is another mile or so of great single track at the top of the Lion's gulch trail. There are many miles of great double track on the forest roads exploring all the homesteads. Without trying too hard there are probably about 15 miles of great trails & jeep roads. If you are adventurous and have a generous definition of trail, there is is enough for many days of riding/exploring. One of the issues though is the area has had so little use over the last 50 years that many of the old roads and trails are disappearing.

Mostly it was really cool to be back on the mountain bike. I have been on the road bike so much this year (about 5000 miles so far) that I had forgotten about the other. I biked 30 miles or so over 2 days in the Hermit Park, Homestead Meadows & Pearson Park areas and saw 1 other mtn biker and maybe a dozen hikers total. It was also great fun biking with Kate with her new fitness. This was her 1st time on the mountain bike in a while, and the new fitness really paid off. She was doing big climbs with no issue and even riding difficult technical trails.

More pictures can be found here.

Boulder Kids Triathalon

Elizabeth did her 1st triathalon today! She did really awesome and loved it!

Here she is getting ready for the swim. It was less a swim than it was a run through the water. I think it wasn't until the 8+ year old kids that they were deap enough they had to swim.

Next was on to the bike course. She is just starting out.

On the far side of the bike course going fast...

Heading off for the run...

And finally on the run coming into the finish line!

Copper Triangle

Kate & I did the Copper Triangle today on the Tandem. After 3 major passes, and one extra climb that was much bigger than it looked on the profile we still felt OK.

Kate was amazing. Considering just a couple of years ago she struggled with asthma with even small rides, seeing her hammer up mountain passes over 11,000 feet and enjoying it was amazing. The last climb of the day was from Minturn to the top of Vail pass. bottom to top was over 3,000 feet. As we got higher and higher and the grade was getting steeper there were people all over the road massaging out cramps and revisiting their breakfast and there was Kate behind me hammer away. Not a single extra rest on any of the climbs.

The Copper Triangle was also a fantastic route. The rest stops were really well placed and well stocked with good food & drink. The roads were for the most part great. The views were amazing. The Tandem handled really well. The new disk brake held up really well. People kept telling us of their stories of high speed blow-outs from braking too hard on a tandem. It made me feel great about that disk brake on the back. We hit a high speed of 51.7 mph on the descent from Fremont pass... There was one part going up Vail pass that was probably about a 14% grade - although hearing the fearful stories of other riders it was described as 18%, 20% or even 24% - we had enough gearing to get up without too much difficulty.

More pictures can be found at here.

More from Mt Evans

The official results just got posted... I guess I didn't do too bad. 18th out of 129 in my category. I guess there is always next year...

Mt Evans!

Mt Evans! On a bike. Check it out. Always exciting, always a suffer fest. I was really bumming about this year's race because I have been training so hard, but then there was 10 days at sea level in Maine and a week of being sick and antibiotics. So I set my goals a little lower and went for it.

Good news and bad news. I beat last years time by 7 minutes+ (2:31:51 [unofficial] vs 2:39:11 last year). The bad news is that I think I didn't go out hard enough. Once I got over 12,000 ft in elevation, I just couldn't ride as hard as I wanted. I sure got my heart rate up, but the power wasn't there. I even finished thinking I could do it again - I wasn't wiped out like I was last year.

The problem was that I started kind of slow worrying too much about my condition and trying to be smarter about my pacing. I am sure I could have done better than 2:30 if I had paced better today. Maybe even 5 minutes faster than that before the 10 days in Maine.

My training was way too focused on endurance lately and not enough on speed. Largely that is from being in Maine, since it is so hard to ride long intervals with all the small rolling hills. Next year (I can't believe I am saying that already) I am going to try to focus on speed and take those next 7 minutes off. I still have a lot of room for improvement.

On a side note - Tom Danielson won the pro race in 1:42 or so. I had a 30 minute head start on him. I couldn't believe how soon he passed me and how fast he was going. I thought about jumping on his wheel, but I am sure I would have been on the side of the road puking within a few minutes. There were no other pro's with him, he had dropped everyone. Maybe he should be over in France right now.

For the geeks: Ave Power - 241. Ave HR - 164. Ave Speed - 10.8mph.