In the spring of 2021, Dylan and I completed the Grand Traverse Ski from Crested Butte to Aspen. It’s known one of those uber-classic Colorado events and being into it’s 25th year, is the longest running ski mountaineering race in North America. Around a decade ago race organizers decided to add Grand Traverse summer events, namely an ultramarathon from Crested Butte to Aspen which follows a very similar route as the ski race, along with a mountain bike race from Aspen back to CB the following day. Ever since finishing the ski I had wanted to go back for the run and bike races, and finally did so at the beginning of the month. Keep reading…
At the end of August Steve Cummins and I motored down south to participate in the ninth running of the Telluride Mountain Run. It’s a race that offers three different distances (13, 24 and 40 miles) which traverse the ridgelines and peaks above town. All three courses are pretty tough relative to most other races of the same lengths due to the elevation gain associated with each (5,000, 9,000 and 14,000 feet respectively). In fact it’s tough to find a race as steep as this one anywhere in the country in terms of vert-to-mileage ratio in addition to average elevation above sea level.
Saturday morning at 5:30am rolled around and those of us running the 24-miler were off from the Telluride Town Park (with Steve running the 13-miler, I wouldn’t see him until the end of the day as his race started at 8am). I didn’t get to the start line until 5:32 and thus set off a few minutes late behind the pack of runners, following the headlamps south from town into the mouth of the Bear Creek drainage. Keep Reading….
One consistent thing about my biking ‘career’ is that it has almost always felt like a massive struggle. Contrary to most other sports (particularly those involving mountains and/or endurance), biking has never really felt natural. Or easy. Or consistently enjoyable. Or that I was ever any good at it. Over the past 20+ years I’ve discovered all kinds of novel ways to realize that me and biking simply aren’t an instinctive fit. I mean, just the inherent challenges of going for the a casual ride are seemingly endless. Keep Reading…
Crooked Gravel is part of the Ride Collective, which includes the classic Copper Triangle, a few races out in Grand Junction and then a tour in New Mexico called Enchanted Circle (which got cancelled this year due to construction projects). It was close to Denver and looked intriguing so I signed up. The race was a hard start at 8am and roughly 350 riders were participating in the 67-mile course. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated at the start with a bunch of people elbow to elbow, a good portion of whom looked like they were “in it to win it”. My unofficial goal was to finish in under 5 hours. Read more…
