July 6th: Less than 48 hours to go

My upcoming US bike starts on Friday 8th July. After the tour with Tanja in 2018 I had planned to do a tour of Colorado with Tim from Montreal in 2020. As with everybody else’s holidays Covid killed that plan and continuing restrictions prevented us doing it in 2021. As the general travel situation started to improve, the tour was planned for this summer but, unfortunately, Tim had a family commitment and couldn’t join me. It turned out that another friend had developed an interest in cycling and decided to join me and that person was John Lenz from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. As a result of John’s interest, I am flying to Chicago on Friday 8th July where John will pick me up and we will drive to our starting location in Georgetown, Colorado aiming to arrive there by Saturday evening. During the weeks of discussing plans with John he mentioned them to a friend of his who also cycles and so it is that Mark Gilbert, from Sun Valley, Idaho will join us for the tour.

So what is the purpose of this tour? Ultimately, we hope to ride the two biggest road climb challenges in America, Mt Evans and Pike’s Peak, at the end of the tour. These two mountains rise to 14272ft and 14115ft respectively and, although we will only be climbing 4000-5000 ft starting from car parks/visitor centres, the real challenge is in doing it at an altitude where the oxygen level is about half that at sea level. Everything prior to these two climbs is basically a training program to tackle this challenge.

Like me, John and Mark are busy packing and getting some final training rides done while looking forward to a challenging three weeks and I hope you are able to follow us on this blog.