Ride the Rockies 2014 Registration Closes Sunday, March 2!

One week from today registration closes for Ride the Rockies 2014 and then the agony begins. And I'm not talking about training. I'm talking about waiting five whole days to find out if we got in! Ride the Rockies is capped at 2,000 riders but every year around 3,000 apply, so registration is done by lottery. Riders will be notified by e-mail on Friday, March 7 (I'll also be checking my bank account hourly to see if the $495 charge goes through!).

My typical route takes me through some beautiful ranch country along the Front Range of the Rockies. Farms and ranches help preserve open space and wildlife habitat while turning marginal crop land into high quality beef!

I've applied seven times in the past 10 years and was selected for all seven, so am batting .1000, but that also makes me wonder how long I can keep the streak alive. Theoretically, your odds of being selected would be the same every year, regardless of whether you were selected the previous year. It's the same theory that the odds of a coin flip are always one in two. But for some reason I feel like the more times I get in the worse my odds are in the future (a mistaken belief known as the Gambler's Fallacy).

Maybe that reason is because it's not a fallacy for Ride the Rockies. This year they instituted a new weighting system for people who registered in 2013 and didn't get in. "A weighted lottery means we adjust (weight) an individual’s odds of being selected into the ride any year following his or her application being declined," explains the RTR registration site. If you do get in, your chances actually do go down the next year.

So, I'll be keeping my fingers and toes crossed as I ride on my indoor trainer this week, in hopes that the miles I've been logging aren't all for naught! I'm off to a strong training start in 2014, about 200 miles ahead of where I was last year on this date. I've ridden 525 miles since Jan. 1, most of it indoors, although I've been able to get out on the road more than last January/February.

How's your training going? Any suggestions for great rides to do if we don't get in to RTR this year?

Ride on!

Daren