Green Tea Sherbert

Monday, May 18, 2009

Riding with Patrick Okens

My friend Patrick, came to visit me from Vancouver for some cycling and R&R in Boulder.

I've spent the past two days trying to keep up with Patrick up The Front Range Mountains close to Boulder.

Patrick loves to tell the story of the first time that we rode together. Somehow it was just him, me and Cypress mountain. We both pretended to be just having a normal conversation talking about such banal things as the weather and what we wanted to do when we grew up. At the same time we went as hard as we could to see what the other had. Eventually conversation faded as I had to drop behind Patrick and draft off him just trying to hang on. If I recall correctly he was about 200m ahead of me by the end.

Boulder is at about 5000ft. According to Emlyn, at this elevation there is 12% O2 in the air. At sea level there is 18% O2 in the air. Things like walking up the stairs, running, and cycling up mountains tends to hurt. Since I had acclimatized to the elevation I thought I could easily keep up with Patrick this weekend. So our first ride was a flat ride, with a sharp climb at the end.

We started out slow and steady because Patrick was unsure how he would feel at elevation. After about ten minutes, I felt a bit restless, and decided to take it up a notch or three and kept the cruise control at 38kph for a while on the flat. Hmm, Patrick's dropped off a bit. Good sign. Hopefully I will hurt him enough on the flats so that I can actually stay with him in the mountains!

Well it was not to be. Patrick DaLuca is a rhythm climber. Once he hits a nice long he puts his head down hill he gets into a solid rhythm and doesn't look up, or slow up until he's at the top.

Here is me fixing a mechanical on Day 2. It was a real mechanical, but it was also a convenient time to rest up for the long climb. I remember feeling great after this stop. I think I was actually leading the climb after this stop.

We had a couple of fantastic rides this past weekend. Snow capped peaks, famous mountain man Ward cookies at the top of the mountain.


Here we are, time to refuel! No comments about the apron!

5 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Sherb, nice post! And I really am glad that we split our time between hills and flats...I couldn't keep up below a certain % (and yeah I was pretty sure you were trying to take the sting out of my climb!:)))

Thanks- we shall do this again sometime!

12:41 PM  
Blogger Chris said...

It's good you can just make out your shorts under the apron!
Theresa and I bailed out of our long team ride last weekend because we were exhausted from moving. We'll have to do one this weekend or we'll be in trouble.

2:46 PM  
Blogger zoltan said...

Yes, normally all I wear around the house is my apron.

If you eat right, get lots of electrolytes, and rest regularly, you'll be fine. You can rest on the bike too.

11:58 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Very interesting Steven.:)

11:03 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

go Steven go:)

11:04 PM  

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