A great day to cycle up Pikes Peak, especially after the fire
At the top of Pikes Peak, the air is as thin as the bikers who climb it.
Riders at the Red Noland Pikes Peak Cycling Hill Climb went up 4,700 feet and around 154 turns, gasping to the peak in what was the best day for so many in the wake of the Waldo Canyon fire.
Some of the 150 groaned during the devastating incline Saturday morning; others sang.
And some even stopped to enjoy the view while others passed by.
In the end though, none came close to pro-race winner LeRoy Popowski (1 hour, 8 minutes, 36 seconds) who looked down from the peak at the white-mouthed riders he’d left hundreds of feet below.
“(I) just felt good,” he said at the top after the first such race and third ride to the top. “Hard to breathe but besides that …”
The 37-year-old optometrist started off slowly as he was sandwiched in the middle of the pro group.
But by mile two of 12.4, he was in the lead for good.
“And then I just kept pushing,” he said.
With his competition hurriedly fading, he dodged uneaten bagels on the road and then passed the earlier-starting riders who had carelessly dropped them.
Then by mile eight, his lead had hastily spread like the fire that nearly took his business weeks before.
“(Elite Vision) was forced to close for a couple of days on that first Thursday and Friday after it broke,” he said of his practice, which was in danger of becoming the next victim in a scorch that burned roughly 19,000 acres, destroyed 346 homes and killed two. “The fire came close but the firefighters … they’re heroes.”
Now, Popowski knows he’s lucky. Women’s pro-race winner Katie Compton (1:30.46) is too – she was in New Zealand for the duration of the fire and she was able to let friends, who had been evacuated, stay in her house.
But even on a day when the temperatures were calm, it was hard to ignore the frantic fire that had affected thousands.
Or so one would think.
When asked about the fire, one lady said “I’m just here to ride” — before she rode just out of talking distance.
Maybe people were too out of breathe to divulge into their experiences with the fire.
But then another man said, “It’s too beautiful of a day to talk about that.”
Maybe it was just too soon.
Or it could have been the way Compton summed it up when she said of the climb – “I enjoyed the suffering. It was hard and tough … I loved it.”
Maybe, it was just what everyone needed.
