Triple Bypass 2013 - Westbound

The Triple Bypass is one of the biggest organized rides of the Colorado bike season.  This very challenging rides consists of 120 miles, and 10,000+ feet of climbing.  Traditionally, the route runs east-to-west from Evergreen to Avon, Colorado, over Squaw/Juniper Pass, Loveland Pass and Vail Pass.  At some point, they added a reverse route the following day, from Avon to Evergreen.  And then, for the last couple years, they have offered the Double Triple Bypass, which includes both days of riding.  I elected to do the Saturday ride, from Evergreen to Avon.

Sign-up for this ride was in the beginning of January, and I decided early on that this was a goal I wanted to set for myself this year.  I needed to lost weight and get in shape, and I decided a great way to do that was to set a goal for myself: to train for this event that was way beyond anything I'd done before.  I set up this blog to track my progress in both my weight loss and my training.

Both weight loss and extensive training were going to be necessary to complete this ride.  In January, I'd been off the bike for a few months, so I'd lost a lot of the power that I had last fall.  And I had put back on a lot of weight.  To excel in cycling, you really need to improve your power-to-weight ratio:  how much power you can output for an extended period of time, divided by your weight.  One way to improve this number is to increase your power, which means training.  The other part of the calculation is to lose weight.  I needed to do both.

My goal was to put in extensive training throughout the year, both on the trainer and on the road, and to drop my weight from 226 lbs on January 1 to 165 lbs on July 13, the date of the Triple Bypass ride.  That would mean losing 61 lbs in 7 months.  If you've been following this blog, you've seen that I've ridden the bike . . . a lot.  To date, I've put in well over 2,800 miles this year, both on the trainer and outside.  However, I wasn't able to get my weight all the way down.  I managed to get my weight down to 172.4 for a couple days, which is a loss of 53.6 lbs.  It's not exactly where I hoped to be, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.  And I still plan to keep working at it until I can get my weight back down to 165 or less.


The Triple Bypass

As I said above, I rode the westbound route of this year's Triple Bypass.  I ended up riding with a coworker named Brian who had been on a couple training rides with me over the last few weeks.  The event organizers let riders start whenever they want, generally, but recommend starting as early as possible to avoid the inevitable afternoon storms.  We had planned to start between 6:00 and 6:30AM, but didn't end up hopping on the bikes until around 6:50AM.

It was early, but light enough that we didn't need to bring lights with us, which was nice.  What I did carry was a little food, some Skratch Labs drink mix powder, a light rain jacket, some thin liner gloves, my phone, ID and a little cash, just in case.

We headed up Squaw Pass Road, which heads up to Squaw Pass (obviously) and eventually Juniper Pass.  Essentially, they are the same, so that only counts as one pass.  The weather was nice, and the road was quiet.  The organizers had closed the road, so there were really only some support vehicles and cops driving around.  And a whole lot of cyclists.

Near the top of Juniper Pass.

I stopped for a quick photo on the way up, shortly before the first aid station.  At this point, we had climbed about 3,100 feet in 17 miles or so.  After hanging around the aid station for a bit to grab some munchies and go to the bathroom, we continued on.  Shortly after the aid station, we passed the entrance to the Mt. Evans Road and Echo Lake, and then headed down to the town of Idaho Springs, reaching a top speed of around 45 mph.  Very, very fun.  That pass took about 1:45 to climb 17 miles, and another 20 minutes or so to descend 17 miles.

After passing through Idaho Springs, we had about another 23 miles of gradual climbing up further into the mountains, passing through Georgetown (and another aid station), Silver Plume and Bakerville.  This was a kind of frustrating section of the ride.  A lot of it was in forest and on bike trails, continuously climbing without any sign of where we were going.  I like to have some visual references so I can see how much farther I have to go, but this just seemed endless.

Passing under the Georgetown Loop Railroad.

Finally, we broke out of the trees and into the open air near Loveland ski area, and a huge aid station.  Lisa and the kiddos met us here.  We hung around and had a little lunch, refilled some water bottles, and went to the bathroom.  Then it was time to climb Loveland Pass.  Truthfully, this was a little easier than I expected.  It was steep, but not unbearable, and relatively short.  Probably around 4 miles at about 5.5% grade.  And the views were incredible.

Me and the kiddos at the Loveland aid station.

Near the top of Loveland Pass.

Finally, Loveland Pass, the Continental Divide, and the highest point on the ride at 11,990 feet.  What a great climb, and you really can't beat the views.

At the top of Loveland Pass.

After Loveland Pass, we headed down into Keystone, another screaming fast descent.  Once in Keystone, we took a turn and headed over Swan Mountain, one of the great climbs on the 2011 USA Pro Challenge race, where a massive amount of fans showed up to cheer on the race.  If you search YouTube for "usa pro challenge swan mountain", you'll see what I'm talking about.

After descending Swan Mountain, we headed into Breckenridge and another aid station.  After a quick bite and refilling the water bottles again, we were just getting on the bikes when it started to rain a bit.  It wasn't much, but enough for me to don the rain jacket I had stuffed in my back pocket.  We hit the road (actually a trail at that point) and started moving.  After about 2 minutes, the rain stopped and the sun came out, and I was roasting inside my rain jacket.  I didn't feel like stopping to take it off, so I just unzipped it and kept moving.  That's probably for the best, because about 15 minutes later, the skies opened up and we got dumped it.  It was a lot of rain.  I mean, a. lot. of. rain.  That lasted pretty much until we got to Copper Mountain.  I think about 30 minutes or so.  I was completely drenched.  My jacket was fine, but I didn't have rain pants or shoe covers or anything.

We quickly road through Copper Mountain, then hit another bike trail at the end of town, and started heading up to Vail Pass.  This section of the ride was all on bike trail.  It was a little crowded, but not too bad.  And I think I posed for a pretty good picture from the professional photographer parked on the side of the trail.  I assume I'll see those photos in a few days or so.  At about mile 93 we got to Vail Pass and the final aid station.  The was absolutely the best aid station, because they had tons of watermelon.  After seen just oranges and bananas at all the previous aid stations, eating a bunch of watermelon was pretty awesome.

After leaving Vail Pass, it was basically all downhill.  We hauled ass downhill for about 5 miles on a narrow bike trail, occasionally riding basically on the shoulder of I-70, which was interesting, before eventually crossing under the highway to a somewhat wooded section, and then onto old Route 6, which is now just a giant bike lane.  This has been the site of the uphill time trials in the 1st and 3rd editions of the USA Pro Challenge, and the old Coors Classic.  Fortunately, we were going down it, not up.  The grade was still generally downhill all the way through Vail, riding through town and along some frontage roads.  Eventually, we left Vail, continuing our ride pretty much alongside I-70 all the way to Avon, before finally turning into the town of Avon and the finish line.

I mustered up a last bit of energy and rode hard into the finish, where Lisa and the kids were waiting.  I grabbed my finish line medal as I rode by, tossed down the bike and fell in a heap.  That was a long, long day.  Overall, it was basically 8 hours or riding time, and about 10 1/2 hours overall.  I really needed to cut down my aid station time.  That was pretty ridiculous.

At the finish.

Brian and me.  Brian is sporting one of our awesome Davis Partnership jerseys our company ordered for a big ride last year.

I wasn't feeling very good, and needed to lay down for a minute.

We stumbled our way over to the finish line festivities and grabbed some lemonade and eventually some dinner before just relaxing for a bit.  Then, a quick shower at the local rec center, and hopped back in the car for the long, long ride home.  (That was a pretty epic drive, but it is probably a story for another time).

Note:  For more photos, the Triple Bypass website has some great shots that really show off the scenery on this ride.  It was really pretty amazing, and these shots show it off a lot more than my crappy cell-phone pics.  Check them out HERE.


Exercise:

• Triple Bypass, duh.  118 miles, 12,200 feet of elevation gain.  Strava report HERE, Garmin Connect below.
• That was Saturday.  I took yesterday off, watched the Tour de France, and did some work from home.  But today, I went for another 4-mile run while my daughter was in her gymnastics class.

The End?
Of course not!  I'm just getting started!  This has been a great year so far, and which this might have been the craziest ride of the year, I certainly have more stuff planned.  I don't know if I have any big plans for August, bike-wise, but I am planning on a couple September rides that should be pretty good, so stay tuned.  In August, we have some vacation stuff planned, which may include some mountain biking, but probably not road riding.  Then, the kids are back to school and the USA Pro Challenge is in town, so things will be a little crazy.  Might just continue to ride with the Lifetime Fitness folks when I can.

And I'm sure I'll be doing some nice rides in October, too.  But the definite plan for October is another 5k run with Caitlin, at Red Rocks.  That should be a good one, so stay tuned!

Not sure if I'm going to keep posting the daily food and weight updates any more.  I'll probably post occassionally about my weight, just to keep tabs on how I'm going, but the July 13 date was really my goal for the year, so I'm not going to keep making boring posts about that.  I'll probably only post when I have something interesting to say, which is probably best for my readership.  We'll see.  I've been really busy with work and stuff lately, so trying to write new posts has been a little challenging.  Especially if I was feeling like I needed to write something every day.  So, keep on reading to see what I'm up to, and what my weight it down to, and follow my continuing adventures.

And for anyone who has been reading this thing all year, I'm sorry.  I'm sure you had better stuff to do, and I'm not sure this was really that exciting.  But thank you anyway.

--brent