Cowboy Cross at the Western Stockyard Complex. The smiles won’t soon fade.
In my opinion it is the best CX race and best atmosphere of any race in the Front Range. The labyrinth course in, through, under, and around the stockyards is SO. MUCH. FUN.
Evening derp sessions #traildonkey
#Crossishere twelve months out of the year for us. Playing around on local trails and bike parks is a pretty great way to mix up the rhythm of the summer months between road riding and mountain biking. It is also a great way to experience familiar terrain in a new way. It is also just fun! A lot of people spend time doing cyclcoross drills to build skills and that is very useful, but we think that people should see cyclocross bikes as everyday bikes, not race day bikes. If you spend time on the bike regularly and just go out and have fun it’ll fit and ride with perfect familiarity on race day. You might just be surprised at how tame a cyclocross course is as well after you’ve finished a summer of shred on your local trails.Continue reading
Rodeo Rally // Rampart Range // Video
Rampart Rally was one of the most difficult, most incredible rides we’ve ever done. Patrick, Chris, Peder, Jacob, Tim, Michael, myself. All the usuals were there, the guys who show up time and again for the biggest things that we do as a team. It strikes me that, when boiled down, this is the group that casts the mold for Rodeo. Not everyone will ride bikes the way we do or do the things we do and that is okay, but at the end of the day when it comes to telling the story of who we are as a team, you couldn’t ask for a better crew.
Rampart Rally covered 80-100 miles each of the two days, but through conditions that we ourselves would admit were often over the top. We were each equipped with bikes that had fairly skinny, fairly slick tires, but that is where the similarities ended. Steel, carbon, road, MTB, CX, everything was represented. We aren’t biased towards Traildonkeys and Flaanimals, we love each of the bikes that showed up to tackle the course. At the end of the day on a ride like this, just showing up and pedaling until you arrive at your destination is the most important requirement. Everything else is gravy.
I couldn’t be more happy to call these men team mates. It is an honor to call them friends as well.
-Stephen
Go chase the sunset.
Last night was all about chasing the sunset, Team Dream Team style. I wanted to get up to Raptor Point to see the sun dip behind the hills. 5000 feet of climbing and a late start stood between me and my goal but somehow it all worked out and I got up there with a few minutes to spare. The sky is so dynamic at sunset. In the matter of a minute everything can change. Watching it all evolve while on a bike on my current favorite road was a pretty special thing. The realization hit me that being high up in the Rockies at sunset meant being high up in the Rockies after dark, alone, and without even an extra vest. Thankfully last night was a trophy summer night. Warm breezes and clear skies were my companions. Sunset was beautiful, but the light right after sunset was, to my surprise, even better. The colors became electric, the shadows were at their softest. I had nobody to share what I was seeing with, but as always I had my camera. This is why I started taking photos of my rides in the first place. I want to relate to people what I’ve seen and what I’ve experienced. Photos rarely capture the true feel of a place, but that is always the goal to aspire to. I’m still buzzing from the experience.
A different kind of loop
We took a different type of route on Sunday morning. We just weren’t feeling the normal ruts we sometimes ride in. A figure 8 course way up high gave us about 10 miles of gravel, 10 miles of pavement, and 10 miles of singletrack. This is my favorite type of riding. It feels less like routine and more like adventure.
https://www.strava.com/activities/360013948
Rodeo In The Buff
It was an excellent weekend of camping, trail riding, unicorn hunting, and s’more roasting in Buffalo Creek, Colorado.
And then we road East
Dirty Kanza cometh, and five Rodeo guys will be heading east from Denver to test ourselves against the 200 mile course.
Recently I had posted a journal entry lamenting the fact that I hadn’t ever really ridden east of Denver before. On Saturday that was remedied. We road East with a capital E.
Back to Falcon today. More 2.0 testing.
Source: Ello | stephenfitz | Back to Falcon today. It
You ain’t seen nothin’, son.
*Blip!*
My phone lit up. Text from Peder.
“Looks wet”
His timing was uncanny. It was Monday, I had cleared most of my to-do items for the first half of the day and I was beginning to consider whether or not I’d be able to head out for a ride. My monitor glowed with the Doppler loop of Weather Underground’s precipitation map. Even though we’d been hit with a couple of days of solid rain and the clouds still sat threateningly low, the map actually showed surprisingly few green and yellow blobs of wetness.
“It’s not as wet as you think.” I texted back. My attention was fixed on a spot on the map thirty miles south of me. For about a month I’d been drawn to a place where the flowing undulations of Colorado’s prairies are suddenly, unceremoniously violated with sharp spires of sandstone sticking out of the ground at sixty degree angles. That place was called Roxborough State Park. I had never been there and I had no good reason why not. The idea of finally visiting for a first time has been a dripping faucet in the back of my mind for a better part of a month and on Monday I was considering shutting the faucet up.
Of cycling, friends, and fun
Cycling is so great because, at least for Rodeo, it’s fundamentally about having fun and spending time with like minded people. Yes, it’s also about rad gear and exploring and racing and the outdoors, but who cares about any of that if you don’t have friends to share it all with?
Rodeo is fundamentally not “pro” in the traditional sense of the word. We don’t field the fastest race team, our feats will never come close to being mentioned amongst the top ranks of the sport. That’s fine with me. We are “pro” at a couple of less traditional things though. One of those things is having fun. We hold our w00ting skills in high regard. Bonus fact: Nobody wins or loses at having fun. There is no leader board, there is no way to accurately measure it. There is no KOM of fun. You just go out and do it and you know you’ve done it right if you come back from a ride and you feel like maybe you are levitating and you can’t stop talking to people about what just happened. When you’ve had fun you feel compelled to share it, and therein lies some of it’s value: Sharing our best experiences with each other is one of the simple joys of being human.