USA Pro Challenge

On Sunday, the USA Pro Challenge came through Denver for their final stage.  We look forward to watching every year, and this year was no different.  The race started at 1pm downtown, so I figured I had a little time to get in a ride of my own beforehand.

Baseline-Valmont-Lookout
Lifetime Fitness was doing a ride in the morning, but they were starting at 8am, and I was hoping to start a little sooner.  Instead of riding with them, I decided to basically do their route, but I started at 7am from home, instead of 8am from Lifetime.  By the time I got to the first major intersection of their route, at Huron and Baseline, it was still probably about a half-hour before they were going to be starting, so I had a good head start.

I cranked through their scheduled route, then kept on riding, taking a bit of a long way home.  I ended up stretching their 40-mile ride into a 60-mile ride, and was still home by 10:30AM, with plenty of time to take a shower before heading downtown for the race.



USA Pro Challenge - Stage 7
We gathered up the family and headed downtown to catch the race.  After finding a parking spot, we walked to Civic Center Park to get some lunch, and hopefully weave our way over to the starting line.  Unfortunately, it apparently takes 20 minutes to make a quesadilla for some reason, so we missed the actual start.  The race consisted of 8 laps of a 9-mile circuit through downtown, so we'd still have plenty of time to see them.

We ended up finding a good spot around Colfax and Lincoln where the race would pass by twice on each lap.  We were in the middle of the road, so after the race passed by in one direction, they passed the other direction about 10 minutes later, and all we had to do was turn around.  It made for some pretty constant excitement.

After watching them for four or five laps, we started to wander closer to the finish line, looking for a good spot along Broadway.  We had a hard time finding a spot right along the fence, so we ended up a few feet back, behind some other people.  We put the kids on our shoulders, so they were able to see fine for the last couple laps.  And from this spot, we were able to hear the race announcers talk about what was going on, so we were able to get some race updates the whole time.

After the race finished, we were close enough to the finish that we were able to go and watch the final podiums.  That was pretty cool.  Well, actually, it was really hot.  Especially with kids on our shoulders.  The temp was approaching 100-degrees yesterday, and there really wasn't a breeze, so it was pretty stifling down there.  After the final podiums, we stopped back at Civic Center Park to get some ice cream and water, and wandered back to the car.

At home, we watched the race on TV, trying to see ourselves.  We actually got a few split-second shots of ourselves a few times during the race, and could see the back of the kids' heads during the final podiums.

All in all, a pretty fun day.  Here are a few photos.

At our pretty good vantage point, where we watched most of the race.

The breakaway, probably on about the second lap.

Between laps.

It's tough to get a good photo with a phone, so Lisa was pretty excited that she managed to get both Peter Sagan and Tejay Van Garderen's butt in this picture.

Waiting for the peloton.

The final podium.  Tejay, Tommy D and Matthias Frank.

And a quick video of the riders coming through on one of the laps.  This should give you a sense of how close we were, and how fast the riders were going.  They averaged about 30mph throughout the entire race today.

That's it for this year.  Looking forward to watching again next year!