Cedaredge – A seemingly different Dennis Simpson churned up the heart-pounding 19-mile climb over the Grand Mesa on Monday from the one who started bicycling for fitness six years ago.
“I could ride six blocks and I’d be dead tired. I worked my way up from there,” said Simpson, who is participating in his first Ride the Rockies bicycle tour, a week-long, 405-mile jaunt across the Colorado mountains.
Like many of the 2,000 participants in this year’s tour, Simpson, 55, has used bicycling as a hedge against America’s explosion of obesity, having lost 60 pounds and increased his fitness level riding around his hometown of Grand Junction.
He once weighed a hefty 255 pounds and subscribed to a sedentary lifestyle when his oldest daughter talked him into a one-day bike ride in 2000.
He got hooked and lost 60 pounds over the next 18 months.
It’s a good thing, because on the unforgiving 6,000-vertical-feet climb up and over the Grand Mesa during Day 2 of the tour Monday, any extra pounds proved to be an effective anchor for riders.
“This is the toughest thing I’ve ever done,” Daren Williams of Olathe, Kan., said of the relentless climb he had just completed. “There was one stretch there, frankly, I didn’t know if I could do it. … Ten years ago, I never would have been able to do this,” he said, adding that he had been classified as clinically obese.
Many of the tour riders didn’t make it to the top of the world’s tallest flat-top mountain Monday. More than 500 ultimately resorted to the “sag” vehicles to carry them to the summit.
Monday’s kind of 91-mile bike ride is actually impossible for millions of Americans.
In an age of super-sized meals and 1,400-calorie ThickBurgers, obesity has become a national epidemic, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We’re enticed with food,” said Dr. Laura Kettel Khan, the CDC’s deputy chief for chronic-disease nutrition. “The portions that they are providing are three or four servings’ worth of food. … People don’t realize that’s way beyond what their physiological need is.”
Between 1980 and 2000, obesity rates doubled among adults, and today about 60 million Americans are classified as obese.
Adolescents and children have seen similar increases.
Colorado always has been considered one of the fittest states, but today as many as 14 percent of the adults here are considered obese.
Bicycling, even at the pace of 10 mph, burns fat efficiently, and, coupled with a healthy diet of modest proportions, can be a key component toward reclaiming fitness.
Williams said he learned firsthand that only the sacrifices of diet and exercise really work.
“I think rewards and goals are extremely important if you want to lose weight,” he said, noting that he rewarded his dedication to riding with a new Cannondale road bike one Christmas.
“Don’t say you want to lose 70 pounds, because you’ll get discouraged. It is very daunting. I thought I would never be able to do that. But when you start cycling and you start losing a little bit of weight, your body wants different foods, and you drive by that fast-food place and you say: ‘I don’t want to waste a meal on that stuff.”‘
Watch Larry Green on CBS4 at 5-7 a.m., noon, and 4, 5, 6 and 10 p.m. today with reports from The Denver Post Ride the Rockies presented by Wells Fargo.
RIDE ASIDES
Young and old get to be big wheels
Participants in this year’s tour, chosen in a random drawing from a pool of about 4,000 applicants, represent 48 states and eight foreign countries.
The participants range from 10-year-old Kelly Stewart of Evergreen to 79-year- old perennial Dorothy Neary of Dillon.
Riders leave behind economic boost
Like locusts that devour everything edible in their path, the 2,000 riders in the 20th Denver Post Ride the Rockies will carbo-load their way through Delta, Montrose, Gunnison, Salida and Leadville along the way, leaving an average of $175,000 in each host community.
All totaled, ride organizers estimate the economic impact during the week at $1.3 million.
Proceeds to benefit local charities
Proceeds from Ride the Rockies benefit Post-News Community, a charitable arm of the Denver Newspaper Agency.
This year, the program is awarding $5,000 grants in each of the seven host towns to nonprofit organizations that help promote literacy or assist disadvantaged youths.
“We want to thank the host communities for everything they give. This is our opportunity to do something more lasting for the community beyond the 24 hours the riders are there,” said Kristin Stork, who serves as the community-relations manager for the program.
The programs that will receive funds include Tree House Center for Youth in Grand Junction; Partners of Delta, Montrose and Ouray; Montrose-Black Canyon Boys and Girls Club; Gunnison Literacy Action Program; Boys and Girls Club of Chaffee County; Full Circle of Lake County; and the National Repertory Orchestra.
Compiled by Steve Lipsher
More online: Follow the misadventures of DenverPost.com’s “Hack in the Saddle,” a Ride the Rockies blog by Bryan Boyle. www.denverpost.com/extremes
