Training for Ride the Rockies

Even before I became serious about cycling, I had a desire to participate in Ride the Rockies.  I don’t remember the first time I heard about the event, I just remember always wanting to do it.  Ironically, I’d not really looked into the specifics.  It just looked like a fun journey though Colorado mountain towns. Turns out it’s an intense ride with crazy climbs and long distances, not to mention six back to back days of ridding. From time to time on rides I would bump into people who had ridden, and I always asked them how it was.  The answer was always positive, but everyone said how hard it was.  I was up for the challenge though.

This season I figured I’d give it a try.  But it’s not that simple.  There are only 2,000 riders allowed to ride and many more than that want to participate.  So there is a lottery system.  My thought was, I might as well try and if I don’t make it then I’ve got the season to train for next year.  So that’s what I did.  And to be honest, I didn’t think I was going to get accepted.

When i’m not on a bike, or writing for cyclizing.com, I’m either behind a camera or in an edit bay.  The Friday the Ride the Rockies lottery winners were picked I was on a shoot at Avery Brewing Company in Boulder, CO.  I stood behind the camera, in the middle of an interviewer checking my email on my iPhone hoping to get an answers.  I was terrified of the ride, I mean 473 miles through the Rocky Mountains, but I wanted it so bad.  There is was the email, I was accepted! I couldn’t believe my eyes, I had to look at it twice just to be sure.

So there I was, one of the luck 2,000 getting to ride in the 2014 Ride the Rockies!

The realization, quickly sunk in that I need to train. This is an intense ride. The good news was it was a mild winter here in Denver, and I’d been ridding outside on a fairly regular basis.

I devised a plan to get really serious about training.  I would work on tempo training two times a week for one to two hours. Then I would work on climbing two days a week for one to two hours.  Weekends I would do a long ride if possible, these would be 3 to 6 hours or more. Then I’d do two days of strength training at the gym. This was a lot to chew, and I knew I would need adequate recovery.

Currently it’s a month and a half before the ride, and the training has been good.  I’ve modified things a bit and have been doing some spinning classes, which I think add some good variety. But there is still a lot of work to be done.  Stay tuned to cyclizing.com for updates and more posts on my training rides.