Day 20: Loveland Pass

LOVELAND PASS - WOW. What a climb right off the bat. For the first 11 miles of the 89 for the day, we were pushing and not getting very far. Loveland Pass was potentially tougher than the Sierra Nevadas, but was luckily nowhere near as long. The pass took us up to almost 12,000 ft. elevation (11,990 ft. to be exact). But, once again, the views were unreal and possibly worth the pain. It was soooooo great to have Wally and Bobbie with me today. They have been teammates for the past 4 years and we all know how each other works and how to support one another. I give them HUGE props for trekking through some of the hardest climbs we will see the entire trip...I'm not sure they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into considering they hopped on their bikes again this morning.

Wally on our way up the pass.

Bobbie and I on our way up the pass.

This time, the pass did reward us with a big Continental Divide sign, elevation engraved. The views were by far the best we've seen yet. You could see everything from up there. This summit is the highest altitude we will reach during the entire trip. Unbelievable. And we also had snow next to us again. Still one of the weirdest and craziest concepts to have snow next to you in the middle of the summer. So weird.

Us at the summit!!!

We had a number of awesome photo ops and stuck to mostly frontage roads and trails again. I also hit my max speed today, finally breaking the 40 mph barrier with a top speed of 41.3 mph. Pretty insane. Of course this was on a smooth frontage road with not a car in sight and the rest of the road visible ahead of me, so we were good to go. Another funny and crazy thing was that we literally had to break so we weren't speeding. How crazy is that?!

After the summit we were blessed with a lot of downhill but were shocked by a few unexpected steep climbs randomly thrown in the mix. But once again, we prevailed, despite Bobbie's scraped knees and elbows, Wally's insane (but usual) sunburn, and altitude's edge over me, we finished the day out all in one piece. And best of all...we conquered the Rockies.

We ended the ride in Denver, CO and I headed back up to Boulder with the guys for the 4th of July and to spend some much needed time with familiar faces. We started the Boulder stay off with a rewarding Ben and Jerry's binge. We deserved it.