Leg Punishing Double Header

I bookended the best day of the year (now 3 weeks earlier!) with two big activities, a big powder day at Winter Park on Saturday and a nice road ride today. A typical spring weekend on the Front Range, where you get snow in the mountains and gorgeous temps on the Front Range. Temps have gone from downright frigid for the most part to incredible without much transition, but I'm not complaining.

Saturday, Sarah & I headed off early for a ski day at Winter Park. Jill came down with some sort of head cold, so she opted to stay and rest and that was probably a really good decision given the snowy conditions we encountered. We burned up a couple runs on Mary Jane, then headed up Timberline lift to 12k feet before sneaking around the back entrance to Vasquez Ridge hoping to find some open slopes and small lines.

Our efforts were rewarded, as Vasquez was pretty open for the most part. We blasted down all the blue trails on Vasquez, then hit a couple blue/blacks before heading back to Winter Park mountain. We did several more runs there, including a new run we had previously never done, and then made our way back to Mary Jane to do a couple more runs before going home.

We did 17 runs in rapid fire succession, never stopping to rest and hopping in the singles line anytime the lines weren't instant. We covered about 43 miles of distance and 21k feet of elevation drop, while pushing our legs to the brink. It ended up being about the 3rd biggest day on the mountain but given the rutted, powder conditions it was probably the hardest on the legs overall.



Sunday I joined forces with The Punisher for an "easy road ride". I rode to John's house, and then we continued on to Boulder, then heading north up 36 to Lyons. When we hit Lyons, we both felt good enough to add on the Rabbit Mountain section. No "real" climbing, but as you can see from the elevation graph you are basically riding uphill most of the way until the drop into Lyons.

We kept the pace very reasonable, which was good for my cooked legs. I'm sure John was having a tough time swallowing all the people passing us, but then again its Boulder County and the people that blew by us could be UCI Pros for all we knew.

We averaged a pretty slow 16.2 mph for the 50 mile route, which was fine with me. I was just very pleased to be able to get in a 50 mile ride the day after such a hard ski day, and the weather was downright fantastic. March is off to a great start, and I'm going to continue to take advantage of the weather, as it can change in an instant around here.