Rodeo Rally Series: April

Text and Photography by Matt DeViney
GoPro Photography by Stephen Fitzgerald

It seems as though I have joined a cycling team of sorts. As in, a “bicycle racing team”. So, here’s the thing; I don’t think “racing sucks” (Surly), or that riding your bike with a Garmin requires you to adhere to some set of (still unpublished) rules, but I do think training through mountain landscapes in order to go the fastest in circles around an abandoned business park is weird. I will never view mountains as “resistance training”, and I will never be the guy opting to ride outdoors instead of on the rollers solely to avoid rickets and scurvy brought on by a vitamin D deficiency. That said, I love the sport, and I would wet myself with excitement (unlike in a triathlon) were I able to spend a brief moment of my life in a(n assuredly doomed) breakaway. It would be fun, just to say I did, but that’s low on the list of reasons I ride a bike.

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The Derp Search. Trail Donkeys with Peder

“It’s just a recovery ride”

These are probably the most mis-used words in cycling, they are around here with the Denver Rodeo crew anyway. Yesterday’s ride was supposed to be a pleasant spin to see if “the sensations are good”, but it didn’t take long for Peder and myself to get bored and start looking for silly things to do. Every time we passed a dirt offshoot of the road we’d yell “singletrack!” and see if the trail went anywhere. Most didn’t but some did, and we hit the derping payload when we took a turn onto the North Table mountain trail system. Yes, we were on our road bikes, but more and more that makes our dirt rides more fun and we were up for the challenge of seeing where our wheels would take us.

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Crazy Circles: Denver’s Meridian Group ride

Group rides. They are the best of times. You get to hang out with your friends and catch up on life. They pass the time in the saddle and make cycling a social or team sport instead of an individual endeavor.

Race pace group rides are a different animal. While a normal group ride may vary in pace, a race pace group ride pegs the meter from start to finish and can simulate a true racing experience – sans the license, entry fee, and stress of a real race. Colorado has many legendary group rides. Fort Collins says it’s is the toughest. Boulder’s Gateway and Bus Stop rides are stacked with pros. Denver’s FDR ride is quickly developing into a fantastic race pace experience with top riders, but for the time being the Meridian group ride is, in my opinion, the finest race pace group ride to blow the carbon out of your engine.

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LOUISVILLE CRITERIUM THROUGH THE EYES OF A CAT 5

I once read somewhere that you should not be trying to win a Category 5 race.  Cat 5 races are for gaining experience and learning, rather than achieving results.  Beginning racers need to learn to negotiate riding in a pack, holding lines in tight turns, and coping with the extremely high intensity.  But make no mistake:  I was racing the Louisville Criterium Cat 5 race to win.

It turns out that I finished 3rd.  Initially I was pretty jacked about this result.  But after a little time to reflect on it, I see some things I could have should have would have done better.  Plus, I’m trying to maintain the perspective that it was only a Cat 5 race… with a field of 23 other novices… for only 20 minutes.  Not exactly epic.  But I am excited about the result and even more excited about what I learned from the experience.  So I truly managed to achieve the best of both worlds.  The following is a report on the entire experience.Continue reading