Ride the Rockies 2015 starts tomorrow! Wait. What? How did that happen?

Once again this year I expect to ride a majority of the miles alongside my buddy Woody, who I met on my first RTR in 2005. Woody's wife, Lora, is the daughter of one of the founding members of Team Bar2Bar!

Every year its the same thing, only every year seems to pick up speed. In early February you register for Ride the Rockies and wait an excruciatingly long month to find out if you get in. Then the notification comes but it still seems like a long time until June. Then it snows in April and May and you don't ride as much as you had planned and suddenly it's June and the ride is just days away.
Then the haunting questions set in:

• Did I train hard enough?
• Will my body hold up for another weeklong ride in the Rockies?
• How will I keep my iPhone, Garmin 810 and new Ivation Bike Beakon charged all week?
• Where did I put my tent?

One of the best parts of RTR is meeting back up with friends from previous years like The Hankster and Flip Flop Jenny (so named because she rides the entire route in dime store flip flops).

I think I have the answer to the last two but won't know about the first two until the ride gets underway. Day Two should be a pretty good indicator -- 96 miles and 7,631 feet of elevation gain climbing from 5,000 feet in Grand Junction to 11,000 feet at the summit (6,000 feet in 20 miles!). We did this climb on my first Ride the Rockies in 2005 and it is rough. More than 500 of the 2,000 riders were unable to complete the climb and had to SAG to the top. One of the major reasons was heat and it looks like it's going to be another hot one this year with temps in the 90s on Monday.

But that's what makes Ride the Rockies epic: long days, big climbs, screaming downhills, and cold beer waiting at the finish line. I can't wait!

This will be the first post-retirement for Paul the (former) Pilot who retired from United Airlines shortly after last year's ride.

Stay tuned to the BEEFMAN blog for updates and lots of pics throughout the week.

Ride on!

Daren