Lucky me! I entered the lottery again this year to ride in the Ride the Rockies http://ridetherockies.com  and made it! Yea! I get to spend about $2,000 (I don't do camping) to suffer for a week climbing mountain passes, getting saddle sores, sunburn (I am awful at using sun screen) and repairing flat tires on my bike! Yes, I am quite the lucky guy!

Training has started, getting on the bike every day that I can and riding up Deer Creek Canyon. My one hour ride during the work week gives me about 1,000 feet of elevation gain, and the longer ride I do on the weekend gives me about 3,000 feet of elevation gain. So the leg muscles are getting stronger, lungs can breathe more thin mountain air and I feel stronger each day. Tracy (my “smarter than me” wife) tells me I should mix my training up more and do some fast flats, but I worry about the climbing and figure the few miles I ride from our home to the base of the mountain gets that job done. Maybe a long ride this next weekend on the flats.

Plus I will be spending a week with Tracy and her tour company www.crossroadscycling.com riding about 30 or so miles a day over varied terrain. I’ll join her in Flagstaff AZ and ride to Santa Fe NM, riding and helping staff where I can each day.  So that should help with the training and getting ready. And I’ll ride the Elephant Rock Ride (62 mile option) the week before to help get me used to riding with lots of other cyclist on the road.

So I got it covered (or at least that’s what I try to tell myself!).

I’ll post my training http://tpks.ws/2c64 and other interesting things here (well, at least interesting to ME!)  I use Training Peaks to publish my training information, which includes route, elevation information, heartrate and power data. Really cool stuff.

Then of course I’ll post lots of pictures and information each day of the actual rides (on tour with Tracy and the Ride the Rockies).