Clad in our best pajamas (mine, it must be said, floods), we shifted our feet in the rising water, drowning our anxiety with gossip. I hadn鈥檛 ridden my bicycle since the sky had cracked, and I worried aloud about my training plan. I secretly hoped, if only for a moment, that my basement would flood, too, so I wouldn鈥檛 be consigned to the trainer.
My Front Range roadie friends and I are going crazy. The Boulder and Larimer floods have turned our premier rides鈥攖he veinal canyons that rip the Rockies鈥攊nto huge culverts, wiping out roads, homes, entire towns. The inconvenience is temporary and trivial for those of us merely put off our favorite roads. It may even be callous to mention. Yet so much of serious amateur athletics is selfish. We don鈥檛 acknowledge the oxymoron. What are America鈥檚 fittest cities to do if they can鈥檛 out-Strava one another on steep canyon climbs, or engage in daily, unofficial stage races?
A relatively recent convert to cycling, I bridged the gap to middle age and a post-divorce life by becoming a fervent amateur racer, a Cat 4. I used to bench twice my bodyweight; now I鈥檓 lithe, legs shaved and shiny. The Front Range鈥攊f not all of Colorado鈥攈as a way of turning otherwise sane, productive people into obsessives and weight weenies. Moderation鈥檚 for flatlanders.
Shut out of our beloved hills, our tribe has been forced to improvise. One local triathlete is preparing for the Virginia Triple Iron by doing seven hours of a 16-minute loop, drilling himself into the ground. A Boulder racer gets his interval and hill work, normally supplied by long, creek-side grinds into Sunshine and Lefthand Canyons, by scaling the two miles to the National Center for Atmospheric Research鈥12 times a ride. Others respond with a 13th repeat, eleven-plus-minutes a pop.
Sullen Cat 4s in skinsuits line up outside my gym. They want to be first inside to lay claim to the best spin-class machines where they form an echelon in the crosswind of the instructor鈥檚 fan. Burying themselves in pretense, the high C in the instructor鈥檚 song becomes the sprint sign at the crown of the false flat. Their classmates stand on the pedals and do the prancing pony. I鈥檝e never been called a 鈥淐rash 4鈥 indoors.
Many of us are fanning out on the eastern plains, discovering new roads in the places we thought we knew, particularly the flat, seemingly endless ribbons of dirt that unspool through the grass. But the canyons remain our proving grounds. Everyone knows the meaning of the mailboxes and who is and who isn鈥檛 the KOM.
Recently, before the deluge, I was hammering up Lefthand when the air got abruptly humid. A pack from New Zealand鈥檚 PureBlack race team blew by鈥攁 churning, steaming train producing its own weather. I hopped on and sucked the last wheel for close to a mile before getting spit out the back. I pedaled faster than I thought I could, then all of a sudden much slower. 鈥淗ammering鈥 became a bluntly relative term. Again. I was old and fat, but also inspired. The Kiwis and I shared chocolate chips at the general store at the top, swapped stories about shaving a minute off personal bests and how someday the Tours of Utah and Colorado would lead to France.
If all ditches want to be creeks, and all creeks want to be rivers, and all rivers want to be floods, then all rec riders want to become racers, and all racers fantasize they鈥檙e pros. But something strange has happened in the wake of the floods: We鈥檝e been busted out of our narcissistic training bubbles. The fastest guys trying to drop everyone else in the canyon are now helping us all work together, pulling each other to the summit.
Even before the rain had settled to a steady drizzle, the leaders of our Lycra-clad community had started soliciting cyclocross racers for donations鈥攐ffering up even bigger brats, better beer, and barrel-roasted s鈥檓ores at the start of the otherwise free 鈥榗ross races. , a grassroots group, is partnering with local teams and as well as , to host another fundraiser later this month in support of one of the many mountain towns cutoff and devastated by the flood. Through the sale of area trail maps, Fort Collins and Loveland鈥檚 is coming to the aid of a fellow shop, in Lyons, an enclave on the Lefthand and St. Vrain loops that awoke one morning during the rain to find it had become an island.
The money can鈥檛 begin to impact the millions of dollars in repairs the region faces, but it鈥檒l help a few families who鈥檝e lost their homes or worse to the water. Eventually, with cooperation, there will be gravel through the canyons again. Then hard surface. Maybe we鈥檒l remember the best part of racing is the fellowship, that the best training plans put us into position to help a teammate and, depending upon circumstances, a stranger.