Finally, it appears that the weather will break tomorrow. First, it rained nearly every day back home, and if it didn’t rain, it was miserable grey. Then came the first two days of the year over 70F, and I take off out of town, spending 7 hours in the Denver airport waiting out a series of thunderstorms and snow showers conspiring to turn me into a permanent resident of DIA.
I’ve planned a 19 day training camp, at altitude, as I do every time I’ve got an Ironman coming up. A major goal is simply to breath the air here, each intake starving me a little of oxygen, stimulating mysterious adaptive responses which promise to make me more powerful for a few weeks when I come back down. The downside is, it’s that much harder to work at swimming, biking and running. I really don’t notice the swimming drop off, since I’ve already lost so much speed after my spinal cord injury, what’s a little bit more?
My strategy for swimming, then is just to try and get in 40 minutes +/-. six days a week, while I’m here, and hang the speed or even the specifics of the workout, just keep swimming and thinking about my stroke.
My ability to run fast intervals also disappears, so I focus on trying to keep my long runs (2-2.5 hours) at the same pace I do at sea level. In addition, I work on uphill sprints, slow motion speed really, and running for 30-60 minutes after two long bikes each week.
Cycling, I look to the mountains all around me, and the winds blowing up valley. My goal is to get a lot of saddle time in, just keep rolling at a moderate effort, and get to the top of as many roads as I can.
Here’s the list of roads that end at gravel tracks, and the elevation where that happens: Fryingpan River, 9300’; Snowmass Creek and Capitol Creek, both 8000’, Castle Creek, 10,000’; Maroon Creek – don’t know yet, wherever the snow line is, probably 8500;, usually 9600’ in dryer years; and Independence Pass, topping out at 12,096’.
Up and down, up and down, that’s pretty much it, all connected by the Rio Grande trail and the Roaring Fork valley roads, from 5700’ in Glenwood to 8000’ in Aspen, 40 miles long. Then there’re the routes in an out of Snowmass, from my house at 8400’, either down to the Intercept Lot at 7600’, or over Owl Creek summit, and into Aspen. Getting out of here is easy; it’s all down hill. Meaning getting back ain’t so fun, but it;s a good way to end the day.
My first two big rides, I’ve been looking forward to for 8 months. Getting out of the hospital, I set some way stations for myself to provide a gauge of progress. Walk to Jamba Juice (1.2 miles). Walk the length of the Cushman trail, 3.5 miles. Run that trail as a 5K, to see how slow I’d gotten. Get on my bike trainer. Start winter training schedule. Get in the pool and swim a length. Swim two lengths. Swim for 20 minutes, for thirty minutes, do a 1000 yard time trial. regain my weight.
Looking farther forward, I saw my ski weeks as a big test, followed by getting back to work and doing some technical procedures.
But I also had some emotional check points. And the biggest one, the one that would tell me I had returned to actual real life athletic training, was to ride my bike down Lower River Road along the Roaring Fork River, and not feel a shred of anxiety or tension. I’ve got the first part under my belt now.
My first ride here has traditionally been about 50 miles, down Brush Creek trail, under the highway, down the short (less than a mile ) but steep (nearly 20% gradient) AspenMass trail, and hitting Upper River Road thru Woody Creek. Cranking up the speed for a few miles, then finding my groove for the five miles of Lower River Road, where the ride really begins.
The Roaring Fork River drops in about 55 miles from over 11,000 feet into the Colorado River at Glenwood, falling about 100 feet a mile. It is a rafting and fishing paradise, as it is a truly wild and still untamed watercourse. Smack in the middle lie those 5 miles of Lower River Road, across the river from the highway where most of the traffic hums. The bike path and the back road are on the northern, or warmer side of the little canyon, and down at water’s edge, a succession of millionaires have built well-kept discreety modest riverside getaways. No commercial enterprise, no signs, sagebrush and hillside to my right, well-kept lawns and groomed forest hideaways at hugging the riverside stones on my left.
For the 12 minutes or so it takes me to cruise down this little hidden track, I can feel proud again, and start to plan my Big Training Weeks. I’ll cross back over the river, and head up from Old Snowmass, up the twin Capitol and Snowmass Creek drainages. I save the Snowmass downhill for last, as it is just about the purest, gentlest way to scream downhill without fear of crashing I know. The grade of 5% allows one to hit a terminal speed well below the velocity which requires constant braking. The wealthy homeowners here make sure the road is well paved, with no potholes and deadly seams to jolt me out of my aero crouch.
Oh, and the views aren’t so bad, either, during the brief moments the clouds part and I can see the Snowmass Ski mountain (Mt. Baldy) from this odd, western angle. To the west and south, the Elk mountains are a solid rampart of 14,000 foot hight points (Daly, Snowmass Peak and Mountain, Capitol Peak), buttressed by the smaller, but even more expansive solid slopes of Sopris, looming over Carbondale.
Crossing back over the river, I begin the climb to home: 1700’ feet up, with big leaps happening at that AspenMass trail, along the lower Brush Creek trail, and the final mile from the valley to our house, 6-10% with no easing off, a cruel way to finish the day, I always feel.
But I end up doing the 52.5 miles in 3 hours and 20 minutes, 8 minutes faster than last year, and I don’t feel like I was really working. This marks one more milestone I can check off, I can use to try and rebuild my confidence that my body still works the way I want it to.
Tomorrow, the six days of rain and snow and cold and thunderstorms which plague us promise to depart, and Independence Pass beckons. The ideal day to ride there, as the road is set to open the following afternoon at 2 PM. So I and a few other foolish early season KOM wannabes will slog our way out of town, then freeze our fingers, toes, and nose once we turn around at the top and fall 4500’ back down. Last year’s time for the 60 mile trek: 4:29. I hope I dress better this time.