Why I Am Riding the Iron Horse Classic

The rapid physical deterioration I seemed to have experienced between the ages of 48 and 50 was literally breath taking. My hair started going gray. The bald spot move to the front of my head. My eyesight has gone from reading with glasses some of the time to needing glasses for looking at anything closer than an arm length away. My metabolism slowed down and I got my first real gut/tire combo that I can't poop away. Starting last fall, I couldn't walk up the incline of my driveway without chest pain and panting like a dog in the summer heat.

I had always walked quite a bit and our neighborhood has elevation changes of 500 feet from the lowest point on a road in our area to the highest. There is one 4/10 of a mile stretch that Linda and I walk that has an 11% grade (see my panting like a dog comment above). However, with winter coming, my thickening middle and my worsening ability to breathe, I thought I needed to put more effort into staying/getting fit.

I always liked riding bicycles although I didn't have one in college or when I lived in Chicago. I bought an old Schwinn when I lived in Zuni and rode the 5 miles to work once a week or so most of the year. I bought another old Schwinn in St. Paul and did my once a week biking to work thing there as well. The kids also had bikes and we often rode around the Twin Cities for cheap entertainment. This changed when we bought our house outside of Durango.

Our house is 7 road miles west and 1000 feet higher than Durango which makes getting to and from town by bike problematic for someone like me who has always been a wimp climbing hills. In fact I never made the 500 foot 1/2 mile climb into our sub-division on either of my heavy old Schwinns. 4 years ago Linda and I bought a couple of hybrid mountain/recreation bikes that were lighter could handle the rough dirt roads in the area. However, I still couldn't climb into the sub-division.

Folks may remember that even last fall when gas prices didn't drop that the experts were already predicting that gas would be $4 this summer. I want to be able to run to town for 6 pack of beer without wasting gas and if I can pre-burn the beer calories that would be a plus. I just needed to be able to climb back out of town. Training for the Iron Horse would help me do that.

Finally, there was the appeal of the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic (see http://www.ironhorsebicycleclassic.com/ ) itself. The annual ride is held on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. It is 50 miles from Durango to the San Juan Mountain town of Silverton along one of the most spectacular mountain drives in the USA. It features 2 major passes that top out at 10k+feet and the ride has a total elevation gain of about 5,700 feet. It's called the Iron Horse because the goal is to beat the narrow gauge train that takes about 4 hours to run between Durango and Silverton (I'm not not pretending I'm going to beat the train). I figure that if I can do this ride, I will enjoy a great way to start the summer and will be able to ride just about anywhere in Colorado.

I started training in December through http://www.ironhorsetraining.com/. I started this blog in late April because it has only been in the past week or so that I have come to believe that I can actually pull this off.