Daylight savings took place the other day. The sun doesn’t set until about 7:30 now. Not only that, but we’re getting a little more daylight every day. The air is starting to warm up. The snow has all but melted in town. In the outskirts and higher up, it’s getting soft and starting a trickle into the seasonal creeks. I can tell that the Animas river is starting to rise just a little. There is a hint of green in some of the vegetation that was brown all winter long. Some birds that went south for warmer weather are starting to come back. Spring isn’t quite here, but it sure is in the air.
Today was actually my last day to work up at the resort, and hence probably my last day of skiing for the season. Last Friday I went up to La Plata Canyon with a friend and the dogs. We rode our mountain bikes on the snow covered road for about an hour and a half. It was the first real bike ride of any kind this year.
Sunday, I broke out the road bike and went for a two hour ride, maybe about 30 miles and 2,000 ft of climbing. My first road ride of the year-and it was amazing.
Monday I went up to Dalla park, praying that the trail would be dry enough to get in some good trail riding. It was, but just barely. Another week of this 60 degree weather and it should be in prime shape.
It became clear pretty quickly that my skills were a bit rusty, and 4 months off the bike hasn’t completely destroyed my riding fitness, but has definitely put a dent in it. The road to success in the San Juan Hut race this summer is going to be long and difficult. I have a little over 3 months to prepare. I wish I had more like 4 or 5, but there isn’t too much I can do about snow covering the trails around here, other than do lots of road riding in miserable conditions, which is what the pros do, but that ain’t exactly my cup of tea. Instead, I will attempt to play catch up and work just hard enough to get the results I want. I don’t want to work too hard for fear of injury or burnout. The cool thing is that this will be my first spring living in a mountain town. I moved here in the summer, enjoyed the fall, survived my first real winter, and now I’m looking forward to my favorite season of the year-spring. I am now fully acclimated to the climate and elevation so riding through the mountains should be much more enjoyable than when I first moved here.
Deciding to do the race this summer under the “epic” category, or self supported and attempting to complete the 230 mile course in less than 48 hours has got me really intrigued with the concept of “bikepacking”. This is simply where you rig your bike to carry enough gear to ride out into the wilderness for a few days and camp along the way. This requires a sturdy, comfortable rig, nice lightweight gear, and nice bags to carry all that gear. It’s also a practice in figuring out how you can do more with less since you obviously don’t want to be carrying any unnecessary weight up thousands of vertical feet. It will be a long time before I acquire all the gear to be a pro bikepacker (mainly because this stuff is expensive and I’m still very broke), but, I should have enough stuff already laying around where I can do some short 1 or 2 night trips close to town. I plan on doing these mini trips 2 or 3 times a month for supplemental training, but also to get out and enjoy some kick ass Colorado spring camping.
So that’s all the new news thus far. March 16 marks the one year anniversary of the accident that left me with a severely dislocated shoulder. To this day my shoulder is not right and gives me problems. A couple of hard falls while skiing this year have not helped at all. I have just sort of learned to deal with it. I’m not sure how it will respond to training again. Might not like it all, but on the other hand it might strengthen it. We’ll see. Thanks for checking into the man cave. Enjoy the spring weather, wherever you might be, and be safe out there.
-Caveman