I am the Napster!

Today I managed to make it home without stopping at any of the 4 lights along the way. I love rides like that, I feel like that scene in the Italian Job where Seth Green’s character ‘the Napster’ hacks the traffic system and changes all the lights so the crew can make their escape and they're like driving down stairs and through subway tunnels, and shooting at stuff...that's exactly how my ride home was today. Ok maybe it was not quite like that, but I did hit all the lights...and shoot at some stuff.

Sunday there was unfortunately no shooting and plenty of lights as I shamefully ditched out of the team ride departing from Parker and joined one of the local group rides (the MOB ride) for a loop up Bear Creek Canyon, Kerr Gulch through Evergreen and back via Lookout. As bad as I felt for not doing the team ride, I felt great about not making the 25ish mile drive down to Parker for a training ride. The pace of the MOB ride kept me working hard and the route featured some sustained climbing, which my climb-less legs sorely needed. It didn’t take long for me to notice that my descending skills have suffered greatly after my wipe out during the descent from the Bob Cook Hill Climb last year (front tire blew at speed…ouch). I just couldn’t grab the nerve to close the gap during our twisting descent through Red Rocks, but fortunately made up for it quickly on the climb up Bear Creek. With more practice it will come back. Surprisingly I felt relatively good climbing, though I’m sure I was pushing it much harder then some of the other guys. Still, it shows I can get close to the pace I want to get to and hold it: I just need to build the endurance back up a bit and should be ok. Considering Sunday was nearly 60 degrees here in Denver, upon returning from my ride Kate and I decided we needed to do more riding!

We hopped on our commuters and rode down to the Clear Creek path to head towards Golden for some lunch/dinner (whatever you eat at like 2:30 in the afternoon--linner.) Sunday afternoon simply could not be beat in terms of January afternoons. The sun felt truly warm, not that fake, half-assed, its 5 degrees and sunny warmth that the winter sun sometimes tries to deceive us with.


We ambled out westward and cruised up to Woody’s in Golden for the sweet all you can eat Pizza and Salad deal (nothing like burning calories and then packing them back on!) Maintaining some sense of decency I didn’t gorge myself like I have in the past, instead we hung out, watched the Jets beat the Chargers and then rode home.

Our ride home was pretty entertaining as we had contests on who could manage to coast the longest. I think if we’d started with more speed we practically could have coasted the entire length of the path from the bridge over 42nd to the exit for Youngsfield. I’m not sure coasting and wobbling a nearly stopped bike for momentum counts much in terms of quality bicycling of any kind, but I’d challenge anyone to come up with a better way to end a day of riding and pizza eating.