Matt Matteson

Thanks for joining us again for the 2007 Tour de Colorado. Today we recap Sunday’s, rider defining, mountain stage. The stage took the riders from the quaint town of Golden, through ski areas such as Loveland and A-Basin, with a spectacular finish past Dillon Reservoir in Breckenridge Colorado.

The rider that came home with the yellow AND poka-dot jersey was Colorado’s very own Matt Matteson. This young rider was not favored in this stage with his, yet then, proven hill climbing skills.

That was fun, no? So I decided last minute, after 11 pm on Saturday to rise early on Sunday and bike to Breckenridge, up the I-70 corridor. I-70 seems like a vicious and dangerous treck, but I talked with Brady and he gave me some tips to getting there with only riding on I-70 for a few miles. These notes will be posted at the end for future pedars to attempt to decrypt and follow.

Saturday night I ran over to Alex’s abode and borrowed a water bottle cage and multitool. (Mine doesn’t have a chain tool.) Stopped by Safeway to be prepared in the morning (like oatmeal, milk, Gatorade, snacks to eat on the ride.)I had full intentions to leave the house at 8 AM. That turned into 8:30, which really means I was spinning wheels by 8:40.On my way up US-40 I rode with a man in his late 40’s who was just out on a ride, was good to have a little company.I seemed to find the roads I wanted to be on, and even found the bike trail.

A stop by Idaho Springs brought gifts of ice cream, coke and water. Also, it gave my PowerBar to turn from the liquid it was back to a solid so I could eat it.

The weather was perfect. If I was hand crafting it I might have turned the sun intensity down to 8. It was almost clear skies the whole ride, wasn’t too hot, just a slight breeze. I was exercising my full zip functionality of my jersey to regulate comfort. (Full zip as in it wears like a jacket, and I can completely unzip it, which does have it’s risks of putting lust in the minds of those within view.)

Georgetown brought a entertainment of train watching. The old thing was throwing up it’s huge black cloud to haul it’s guest up the steep grades.

As I hesitated to jump on I-70, looking to make sure there wasn’t ANY thing else I could ride, I talked to the I-70 curtsey tow truck drivers and they pointed out this large animal posing for us.

The I-70 stretch wasn’t bad at all, the shoulder was well over 30′ wide. I’ll say 30′ is just a few inches larger than a bike needs.

Ace here wasn’t smart enough to refill in Georgetown and had two empty water bottles as I got off I-70 and prepared to climb Loveland pass. I wandered all around the Loveland ski area basin looking through the ghost town, past the ‘CLOSED’ signs. I had to find at least a faucet outside I could get something moist from. I saw something move way across the place, by the closed restaurant and bar. “Excuse me sir”, the guy turned to his left “Calm down boy, it’s alright, it’s ok.” This mean looking dog comes trucking around the corner. “Don’t put your hands down, the dogs a little unpredictable.”

I followed the man into a door that looked like a door to a janitor closet. It was a time-capsule.Ok , it was an apartment that you could of walked a person from the mid 70’s in, and wouldn’t have a clue it was 2007. The guy filled me up with the “good stuff”, aka filtered water, and after a chat about his 180+ ski day per year average, admiring his ski collection, and his knee problems I was on my way. He was an honest, nice tough guy. Ok, the guy from the 70’s might have been tipped off he was in 2007 from some of the skis my water-provider owned.

I cranked and cranked up loveland pass. It was my heartbreak hill. I knew once I was over this, there was not too much elevation left to climb.

I was able to celebrate at the top with all the tourists. Yahoo!

I tucked down and flew down the back side of the pass, down into Keystone. I stocked up with some more liquids, a banana and kept rolling a few miles before. CELEBRATE! The 5,000th mile on my bike!

Crank past Dillon, and up that hill over towards Highway 9, which would take me to my destination. I found the nice bike path that parallels 9.

Knowing the exact number of remaining miles I was comfortable with opening my legs up and getting some speed on the trail. I’ll be honest, I really enjoyed the feeling of passing all the roadies on the trial with the knowledge I had been spinning the better part of 6 hours.

Hooray! I made it.

I really didn’t hit any mental or physical walls. I was expecting a stretch to really wear on me. I mentioned the concern of a sore saddle to Brady when getting directions. His simple comment was “stand up more.” So I did, and it worked well. When I started thinking my bum was getting tired I would stand up and ride, when tired with that I sat down. Simple as that. (I have had some painful experiences with my saddle on a few long road races.)

My parents met me at the City Market just in Breckenridge. I picked up a quick meal, and some ‘necessities.’ (I spent the night in Fairplay with the parents, and the only thing I packed for an overnight was my contact case.)

Some numbers 6 hours 12 minutes of the wheels spinning. 7 hours 20 minutes ‘door-to-door’ 3 bottles of water 3 bottles of Gatorade 2 bottles of Coke 1 Powerbar 1 Banana

View all the photos

My route notes:

Ride 40, must get on 70 for two miles…

At 40 meets 6th
bottom of floyd hill take a left to bike path
travels south of clear creek

bottom of big hill go left again
drops you off at

Idaho springs

then at the end of town you go back to the south side of the river
ride the road all the way to georgetown

Georgetown

go to the south part of town and you will ride up the road that takes you to the train station up there

at the parking lot up there, you will ride through it and it turns into a bike path
that goes up to silver plume

Silver Plume

then you can ride the road that goes through town (north side of I-70) then it crosses over to the south
that takes you a ways up
the prettiest part in my opinion

then you get to the bridge and gotta ride I-70 to the loveland exit
over loveland
to keystone
then you ride swan mtn road over to breck
its right before the res
left turn
drops you into breck

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at Jul 23, 07 | 11:19 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.