Oval Ride

For the northern Colorado cyclist, January and February are unique months. Very few of us venture beyond our borders to take part in early season racing of the southern hemisphere or even the southern US for that matter. This affords us few opportunities to find out where our total body fitness stands. Have we been lazy through the cold months? Or are we training like madmen, yet trying to retard ourselves from coming to form too quickly? Sometimes lazy and overtraining can feel like the same thing; sluggish legs, lack of power, uncontrolled heart rates, etc.

We are the lucky ones up here in northern Colorado. We are blessed with the strength of old school wisdom and the power of youth, all of which come together to answer the same question: what is going on with my body right now? The answer is simple and easily discovered on an early Saturday morning, and with good weather permitting (always a major question), somebody is going to learn a lesson, either about him/herself and his/her body or about how to ride a bike.FAST!

It's called the OVAL ride. The logistics are as follows: meet at the Oval on CSU's campus at around 10 am on Saturday morning. All levels of riding and genders are encouraged to participate. Normally the young ones are diligent and on time, but often times the beautifully-aged feel as if they have done their time and the world should stop for them, which means they are ALWAYS late (much love AC). Aside from the minute bitterness or resentment for age one may read in my words, an eloquent relationship must be maintained between young and old so that a successful ride may venture us into the frontier and home safely. Actually, we (I'm speaking for the young ones) don't know the directions.

This past Saturday, January 26, 2008, we were finally given the opportunity to homogenize all ages, abilities, and genders on the Oval. It was a reunion of sorts, as most of us hadn't chatted as a large group in a long while, spending most of our time throughout the past months playing catch-up with sidelined chores and finally getting the opportunity to socialize as the rest of the world does, partaking in some weekend shenanogans. We headed out around 10:15 am, winding our way through Old Town connecting with Vine st. Heading east the pace was slow and comfortable and conversations continued. To be honest, I cannot tell you exactly the roads we traveled down, but in general we passed through Severance, south to Johnstown, west through Berthoud, rapping around the south side of Loveland along the eastern slope of Carter Lake, and finally through Masonville up to Horesetooth and home. The tempo picked up heading south through Severance and Johnstown, and small attacks ensued from the aggressive members of the ride. During one particular event, Brad Cole and myself (Phil Mann) came hot off one of the corners turning south to west and we were charging hard. Not to Brad's nor my surprise, the others conveniently didn't tell us where the next turn was, allowing us to overshoot the turn by a good 500 meters. To make matters worse, once the group turned south again, leaving Brad, a few others, and myself heading west, they decided to bury themselves to open a gap on the chasing group. Fueled by anger and a knowingness that they were simply attacking out of shear old-man-bitterness, we chased.HARD! The organized caos, which I just described, separated the groups for the remainder of the ride. Exciting to team Legacy Energy, is that all our participating riders (Will Hickey, Patrick McGlynn, Brad Cole, Phil Mann, and Andy Clark) on that Saturday made the selections to join the fastest group. It always feels good to be the fastest in town and it feels even better to have the fitness to lay down the smack this early in the season.

Assuming good weather, we look forward to you all joining us on the next group ride at the Oval. Come get FAST!