Pushing the limits of the Triple Bypass
| July 13, 2009 | 9:01 AM
More journal entries from Hank Schultz »
I love the looks I get from strangers and uninitiated friends when I tell them I’m going to do the Triple Bypass. They get a concerned look and say something like, “Um, maybe you should be at home resting instead of having that second beer.” I’m just fleshy enough to make people wonder if I might really have heart disease.
But no, the Triple Bypass is the annual Evergreen Bicycle Club’s play-on-words epic mountain ride: one day, 120 miles, 3 passes. This year’s 25th annual version was held Saturday.
The question most people in the 98 percent sector of the population classified as “sane” would ask is, why? I guess you could ride a bike that far over the mountains, the thinking goes, but why would you want to?
For me the answer is complicated. I’ve loved riding bikes from the moment I was shamed into learning how when my little brother learned first. I discovered that in athletic terms it was a way for me to escape the limits I inherited from my low-slung Hessian forebears — built mostly to gut pigs and conserve heat. It’s my way of answering Marlon Brando’s lament in On the Waterfront; it’s my way of being somebody.
The ride begins as the sun comes up in Bergen Park, near Evergreen. Before you’ve even warmed up (or, in my case, woken up) you start climbing up the road toward Squaw Pass and Echo Lake. This first long climb is where the true and faux speed demons assert themselves. I learned the hard way to take it easy on this stretch and to let them go; some of them will be seen later, and not looking too good.
People were pretty frisky as they completed this first test. This was the time to enjoy the smell of the pines and to take in the awesome views of the snowcapped Indian Peaks from the aid station at the top. Other smells would replace that woodsy tang soon enough.
And it was time to eat. Riding a bike this far is sort of like exercising inside an all-day breakfast buffet. By the end, you can hardly look at another banana.
Cresting the Continental Divide farther on at Loveland Pass formed a figurative watershed, too. If you’ve trained enough, as I did this year, you’re thinking that the rest of the ride is a formality. If not — and I’ve been there, too — you’re thinking, “SIXTY MORE MILES?!”
Even the rain on the far side of Vail Pass, a given almost every year, couldn’t put a damper on things. I finished the long downhill stretch into Avon in a 28 mph pace line behind a super-strong mystery rider, with visions of Tour de France breakaways dancing in my head.
Riding back in a car piloted by my daughter, I was awash in delicious exhaustion. Another contradiction in terms for most people, I admit. But the way I look at it, comfort and ease are your enemies, not your friends. It’s only by pushing toward your limits that you find out who you truly are.
cycling, evergreen bicycle club, triple bypass
