My dad came up to Aspen last weekend to do the Ride for the Cure, a little 100-mile bike ride to benefit the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
He’s into the whole road biking thing after symptoms of degenerative arthritis in his hip put an end to his 20-year career as a marathon runner. You could say Dad is a bit on the competitive side. It doesn’t matter if it’s running, biking, snowboarding or seeing who can do the dishes faster – it’s always a contest with him.
Now that his illustrious running career has closed, he has turned his competitive prowess to road biking. In some ways, cycling is even more fun because of the whole equipment aspect. It’s not just configuring the perfect setup for his bike. Oh, no. That’s only the beginning.
There’s monitoring his every move in the saddle with his Flight Deck computer. The first thing he’ll do after a ride is rattle off the stats: number of miles ridden, average miles per hour, fastest pace (and where that likely occurred), slowest pace, and his favorite – miles ridden to date (this summer he’s up to over 2,000).
Then there are the nuances of riding technique: how to spin, when to stand, how to pace for a long uphill (he gets a lot of practice climbing on regular rides up Rabbit Ears Pass near my parents’ place in Steamboat). Then there’s the question of identifying the best “fuel”: Cytomax and PowerBars or a turkey sandwich and chips?
“They really ought to have coffee for us caffeine addicts,” he said of last Saturday’s ride. “I would’ve given anything for even half a cup.”
During the Triple Bypass in July, he brought his coffee maker and instructed my mother to make sure there were lattes in the SAG wagon waiting for him at every stop. I guess he has that part of the winning formula figured out.
At the Ride for the Cure, he had me beat from the start when he signed up for the 100-mile ride and I settled for what I thought would be a relatively easy 33-mile route. I just won’t even go there anymore.
“It’s just a ride, not a race,” he repeated over and over, though not to anyone in particular.
He was so laid back about the whole thing that we were late getting to the 8 a.m. start. On the way in to downtown Aspen, we got stopped at the roundabout, where cyclists already were heading up to Ashcroft on the first of many climbs along the route.
“How far is this from the start?” Dad asked.
Knowing my response would determine his next move I fibbed a little bit and said, “Like a mile,” even though it’s probably closer to 2.
“Let me out,” he said, his hand already braced around the door handle. Before I had a chance to look in the rearview mirror to see if he had managed to get his bike off the rack OK, he was off. He looked like a little kid going off to camp, more interested in what lay ahead than what he left behind.
The “short loop” kicked my butt. We rode from Woody Creek up to the Snowmass Monestary, up Snowmass Creek, back through Woody Creek, up to McLain Flats and “Heart Attack Hill” back to downtown Aspen. The perfect blue skies, changing leaves, bubbling streams and massive gray peaks seemed to mock me the entire way. I could almost hear the trees whisper, “Go ahead and complain, little baby. Living in Aspen must be so tough.” It was humbling to know my dad had ridden more than twice that distance at 64.
We passed each other as I was coming down Snowmass Creek and he was going up. I called out to him and he rode right by me, in a daze from more than six hours in the saddle. I whistled, and he finally stopped and turned around.
“Hey! How the heck did you get in front of me?” he said, looking more than slightly shocked. I explained they started the short loop riders at 11 a.m., well ahead of the lead pack. With over 30 miles left to go, he was tired, but far from exhausted.
“I was thinking I’d ride home to get the car afterward, just to get those extra 2 miles in I missed at the start,” he said.
Most people talk about what they’re going to eat after the ride is over or which condo complexes they can go to poach into the hot tub. But not my dad – he’s all about going the distance.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
