Bob Cook Memorial Mt. Evan’s Hill Climb, Idaho Springs, CO. Saturday, June 22nd. Gary and I made the long trip (1000 mile drive) to the town of Idaho Springs for our second trip up this monster. For those of you who don’t know about this event I’ll fill you in a little. It’s the highest paved road in North America. The start of the event is at 7,500ft and it finishes 28 miles later at its peak of 14,200ft. To put that into some sort of context, it starts higher up than Luz-Ardiden, L’Alpe-Huez and the Col du Tourmalet finishes. Its net elevation gain is almost double that of those three climbs. The Col du Galibier and Col de I’Izoard are 18.5 km and 19.4 km in length and Mt. Evan’s goes for 45 kms. There are roughly 26 switch backs on the climb and you are climbing above the tree line for approximately 12 miles. Starting to get the picture? If there’s a climb to be done you should try this one. Gary and I left Fountain City on Wednesday evening, stayed over night somewhere in Iowa and made it to our hotel in Colorado around 3:00 as we went back an hour somewhere along the Nebraska/Colorado boarder. After getting unpacked we changed into biking gear and started riding up the mountain to stretch the legs and just have some fun. Of course it was raining but we didn’t care. It just felt good to be out of the car! About 6 miles in I got a flat and we pulled over to change it. After we got it changed and started back up the climb the rain started to subside and the sun began peeking out of the clouds. At about 10 miles Gary said he’d had enough and turned back around. I decided to go on as I was feeling good. I continued up to Echo Lake which is the half way point and got to the check point (it’s a closed road you have to pay a fee to go up) so I decided to give them $3 and continue on my way. I clicked off a couple more miles and was soon out of the tree line. Although the rain had stopped a while back the roads were wet and it was getting pretty cold. I remembered the hail and snow storm that whipped up out of nowhere last year on the descent down and decided to not push my luck. As it was I about froze my butt off coming down. Once back to the hotel I jumped in a hot shower and Gary and I headed out for some food. Idaho Springs is a touristy little town and they do have some good restaurants. We picked one and managed to get a spot right in front of the TV. It was showing Floyd Landis and his epic breakaway on stage 17 of the TDF. It was totally motivating and after the good meal I was unable to fall asleep right away due to my mind racing with the possibilities of human achievement. Friday was spent relaxing, eating and getting my pre race haircut. There’s a cool little barber shop downtown where I got my hair cut last year and since I finished thought it would be good luck to do the same this year. That’s me in the photo below getting my golden locks clipped. Ed the barber is a good guy who’s got some stories! You want to know about a place, ask a barber. Gary and I then went site seeing and took some more photos, most of which are below. Event day is almost here and the only thing between us and it is a good nights sleep. I really didn’t get one and I don’t know if Gary did either but Saturday is here so since we’ve registered almost a year in advance I guess it’s too late to back out now. I wished Gary good luck as he entered the citizens event this year and they started at 7:30. I was doing the Pro1,2,3 35+ age group and we were slated to start at 9:15. I made sure I had everything and headed over. Our hotel was only about a mile from the start. I put my bag of warm clothes and food and camera in the vehicle which was to drop it off at the top and went to warm up. While doing so I bumped into a guy who as it turned out took second in our race last year. His name was Mike Larsen and was little brother to one of US Cycling’s best riders, Steve Larsen. We talked and I learned he was the one who started all the attacking at mile 8 where the gradient kicks up to about 8 or 9 percent for about a mile or so. That’s where the field really split last year. I began to formulate my plan. We all headed to the start line and soon the gun went off and we were on our way. As is my typical fashion I decided to go on the offensive and I shifted up to the big ring and took off down the left side of the road. I waved to Mike and smiled. I didn’t do it to be cocky at all. I knew he was part of the local scene and we’d talked enough that he knew I was a lowland hack from Wisconsin and wouldn’t be a threat so I was hoping he’d spread the word to the group and maybe they’d forget about me for a while. The way I saw it was the air was only going to get thinner the higher I climbed and the gradient was the least early on at about 4 percent so I’m clicking off the miles in my big ring and doing a shade over 20mph. The lead car is in front and a motor bike is behind me and he comes up and tells me I’ve got 30 seconds on the field. Great. I’m dying and it’s about 5 miles into it and that’s all I’ve got. What a bunch of over achievers I say! My goal was to get to mile 8 so I could take the hardest part at a pace I could muster and once they caught me I was hoping to hang on. Not to be. At roughly 6.5 miles I was swallowed up by the group. Mike said nice job and that I’d flushed out the leaders so he seemed to be happy as he was chasing the mythical 2 hour barrier. I settled into the middle of the group and soon learned that I needed to get to the back of the group because I was going to crash someone due to loss of oxygen and plain stupidness so I drifted to the rear as quietly as I could and tried to recover. Pretty soon I was off the back and as I looked up I watched the race unfold in front of me. Mike did go on another series of attacks at mile 8 and soon the field was shredded. I tried to look for riders with 200 numbers as I climbed as they were in my category but I didn’t see many. I hooked on with a couple of other people from our group and we tried working but sometimes I’d leave them and then they’d catch me and they’d leave me. It was weird. The higher I climbed the lower my heart rate went and as soon as I would stand and try to up the pace and the heart rate my body would go way over the top and I’d be forced to sit back on the saddle and slow down. I’d be passing people who were huffing and puffing like I should have been doing but I couldn’t go any harder. I guess that’s the big difference for a lowlander who goes to such a high altitude. I’m not using it as any excuse and actually I’m quite proud of the fact that both Gary and I completed the event in respectable times considering we weren’t from the area. (Little side note: most of the participants were locals or came from the high country.) I did manage to recover in a big way near the top and I think I moved up 4 or 5 spots in the last 3 miles. Once I saw the 1km to go sign I practically sprinted just because I was on the verge of a really good time for myself. I ended up riding it in 2:13:04 which was over 7 minutes better than last year. Gary really improved and he knocked almost 20 minutes off his time and finished in 2:52:15. Afterwards he said he thought he could have gone even faster but I told him that I really didn’t want to come back again next year to try and beat what we did this year. I figure we could try some new challenge and leave this one on a high note…no pun intended! He tends to agree with me now that we are looking back on it. I did get him to go for a little ride with me later that afternoon/evening and we climbed up the hill once again. About 7 miles into it he turned around and I kept going. I made it to Echo Lake once again and decided to turn left over the pass and made it another couple miles before turning around and heading back to the hotel and some food. My Garmin Edge 305 showed a distance of 86 miles and 11000 ft climbed for the day. That’s a personal best I don’t think I’ll top in a while, if ever. Thanks for reading!
