27.4°C

Contrary to popular, and long held, beliefs in the mountain bicycling community, road rides can actually be fun. However, for this to occur, a number of important criteria must be met – its a little like a solar eclipse: rare but worth experiencing when it happens. Simply pulling on lycra and clipping into a skinny tired bicycle is not sufficient for the fun to commence. Yesterday, all the factors were in place to have an enjoyable 50 mile spin around Boulder county.

The morning starting very slowly, with Peter and I making a concerted effort to be as disorganised as possible in leaving the house. Thus, rolling out of the garage at 10:05 to meet a group leaving at 10am did not work, and the chase began. The gentle Sunday morning warm up turned into sucking each other wheels out of town – the rough idea of where the group was heading and a vague hope we could catch them before it became too late. Twenty five minutes later, we cruised onto the back of a group of 50 people – who knew that CU cycling could command such an army!

After we’d caught on, and survived the concertina effect of riding along with so many people, the group split, and a much more manageable bunch of 15 or so headed up left-hand canyon – apart from a little burst of testosterone here and there we stayed together and rolled up Lee Hill. Everyone was in a fantastic mood – quiet Sunday roads and no wind were big determining factors here.

With inches of snow forecast in the coming days, it seems like my bare legs have probably had their last outing of the season. The eternal-summer mindset is starting to fade and I’ll be looking forward to some Tucson sun later in the winter!