A Different Altitude

We are a family of mountain bikers and one summer, after our son had expressed a desire to try a big race out west, we decided to make a vacation of it. There happened to be a pretty good race series in Colorado, so we packed up and headed to Crested Butte. There were 4 of us in total - me, my husband Brooks, son Mike and his college roommate Mueller. All plans were a go and we flew out from Greensboro, NC one fine morning in July, as always super excited to be taking a bike trip out West.

We arrived in Denver about 5:00 pm, got into our rental Tahoe (with GPS, thank goodness!) and began the 5 hr. drive out to Crested Butte, a small, picture-perfect town in the middle of absolute nowhere! Things were going well, until we got there quite late and couldn’t find the key to our condo…at 2:00 a.m. Just when we were thinking of sleeping in the car, we figured it out and thankfully, stumbled into bed, already gasping for oxygen at 10,000 ft. of altitude!

Once we got settled in, things started clicking along nicely. Mike practiced downhill runs, Mueller went on long solo cross-country rides, and Brooks and I managed to find some nice trails as well. The altitude affected everyone immensely. I had never spent that much time at 10,000 ft. and let me say, it is different from 5,000 ft. for sure. Then try to do an aerobic activity in it and you find yourself bent over heaving every last particle of oxygen you can find into your lungs!

Race day turned out to be beautiful weather and we spent the day on the race course. It was a fairly straight forward run, not too technical, just fast and Mike chose to use his 6-in. trail bike instead of a full-blown downhill rig. The course started at 11,000 ft., descending to about 9,000 ft. with lots of pedaling. Mike finished 13th out of 56 riders, and everyone was highly impressed that someone from North Carolina could manage that well at that amount of altitude. We were impressed too!

So our time in Crested Butte was awesome. That town did not have a single bad restaurant and the beer selection was outstanding! It was a great adventure for all of us, even if we did leave part of our lungs back there!