A personal evolution of cycling

Does it really matter when or how it starts?

My wild ride started because of an accident when I was a kid- when I was 11, I detached my retina and couldn’t play any contact sports for 12 months. In order to maintain some level of sanity, with two actively curious boys, we became a biking family the following year.

Of course we didn’t just ease right into it because, while recovering in the hospital the year before, we read about a kids bike race in National Geographic kids magazine (back when such things were normal). My brother and I began our real racing career (we had done a couple of little kids races around City Park in Denver but…) with the Red Zinger Mini Classic in 1983 followed two weeks later by RAGBRAI.

I genuinely don’t know how my father managed to survive that first summer (my mother was wise enough to keep some distance from this new obsession with the excuse that since she was not a teacher, she didn't have the whole summer off to wander aimlessly about on two wheels) especially the crazy idea of dragging his 11 and 12 year old sons across an entire state while dealing with tents, duffel bags, thousands of people, the abysmal weather, all while riding his own bike that far for the first time. But, he liked it so much, he called up The Denver Post when we got back and three years later Ride the Rockies was a go.

At 16, I had a decision to make- friends and team sports or solitary space and bikes. Unlike now, when so many of the best parts of the high school league are that you do it with your friends on the bike team, competitive cycling was a lonely world of devotion and travel. I put the road race bike away for the better part of a decade, finding my fun in (what was then) a new concept called “mountain biking”. Ritchey was my bike brand of choice, a Timberwolf first (stolen) then an Everest (stolen) before finding my way to Moots and titanium.

Ti bikes took me to places of solitude and gratitude, high over mountains and jeep roads, game trails that ended when you were sick of carrying, adventures that linked childhood into adulthood. My Moots Rigormootis became my first bike to have a shock on it (1995) and was instrumental in bringing me back to competition in 1998 with the great celebration that was the 24 hours of Moab. I could write an entire piece just on the nearly 10 year impact going around the same 16 mile loop in the desert had on my life. The concept that you could have fun and race through the night in the desert meant there was an entirely new universe waiting to explore.

Fun on Ti evolved into custom road and cyclocross bikes that could be ridden on all the roads of Colorado and Europe. The advent of full suspension meant you could now go anywhere and really, really far.

Salida in the late 90’s and early 2000’s was a paradise of world class athletes and miles of singletrack. We had it to ourselves before the secret got out and we reveled at the crossroads of monstrously long trail networks — high up on Monarch pass, the Colorado Trail, the Continental Divide trail and the Rainbow trail all converge at a single point, the Monarch Crest trail.

But that damn competition bug bit again, so instead of bike packing, it was more number pinning, although there were some truly epic adventures thrown in, thank you BOB trailer and Telluride to Moab huts. 100 mile races in 2002 (Brian Head Epic and Leadville 100) proved a little too long for my physical prowess, but 8-day stage races were ideal, plus you got to travel the world so off to Canada (2003), Europe (2005), Belize, South Africa (2007) culminating with my last stage race, the first Breck Epic (2009), going on right now.

I was beat up and burnt out after all that. The beginning of the 2010’s was a much more relaxed time with plenty of touring, not much rough riding, mostly paved; a revisit of old haunts. Three and 4-day tours around the West Elks, San Juans, Grand Mesa, carrying just enough clothes to have something clean for dinner while your kit dried out in the hotel room.

In 2012, a mountain bike legend had a stupendous idea. After six consecutive wins at the Leadville 100, Dave Wiens came up with a new concept, a European classic length road bike race right here in Colorado: 134 miles, from Gunnison to Crested Butte, ending atop Kebler Pass before enticing you to descend into Crested Butte for the free food and beer. The West Elk Classic remains, to this day, my all time favorite race. The 2014 version, aboard my brand new carbon Colnago, coming off a two week training trip to Mallorca to start the spring, saw me take one hour off my previous best course time, which marks by far the best Strava ride I have ever had. The funny part is that while was one hour faster than 2013 time riding my custom Gangl Ti road bike, I finished in the exact same 23rd place.

Horses began to rule my world in 2016 and bikes were a mere sidebar. Cycling fitness faded, but I could boost a bale of hay higher than ever, and scoop poop with my eyes closed. I did the occasional race for grins but the writing was on the wall through 2019 and into 2020.

COVID and Eroica saved my cycling career. The place we moved the horse farm to in California had an Eroica race, or would have, had COVID not interrupted it for two years. Using the same bike I rode the Red Zinger on, a 1971 Masi Gran Criterium, and my 1998 Moots Psychlo-x ybb, I dragged myself back into shape. Of course my Colnago gave itself to the cause, visiting wineries and seaside cookie shops, but it was the back to the beginning elements that really drove the mission. Finally, in April of 2022, we rode old bikes over ridiculously poor choices of roads, stopped for wine and cheese while oogling soviet ti tubed frames.

The push in 2020 that culminated in 2022 included my start in gravel racing, first at the Rad in Trinidad, then the BWR in Lawrence 2021, and the fun race world took off again. To me, Gravel represented all the best parts of competitive camaraderie and adventure: pushing each other and the machines to their fullest, trying to better not only each other, but ourselves.

Since 2021, I’ve done 15 gravel races, 5 mountain bike races, and two road races, ridden an average of 4500 miles per year, and couldn’t be happier with my fleet of carbon bikes. I still have most of the glory day bikes, the Masi, the Gangl, the Moots, the Colnago, but the new ones feel like instruments rather than tools. To play aboard these masterpieces is to take part in a symphony, lending your notes to the harmony of joy and pain, celebration and suffering, an emotional release as well as a physical. So while the pinnacle may be 10 years in the distance, the music still begs to play on so the art can live forever.

Cheers