A great day to cycle up Pikes Peak
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 cyclists groaned during the devastating incline Saturday morning; others sang.
And some even stopped to enjoy the view.
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 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 of the 14,115 mountain. “Hard to breathe but besides that …”
The 37-year-old optometrist started off slowly, 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 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 burning in the Waldo Canyon fire, which burned roughly 19,000 acres, destroyed 346 homes and killed two people. “The fire came close, but the firefighters … they’re heroes.”
Women’s pro-race winner Katie Compton (1:30.46) was in New Zealand for the duration of the fire. Friends who had been evacuated stayed in her house.
But even Saturday, when life was calm, it was hard to ignore the frantic fire that had affected thousands.
The fire was far from most racers’ and riders’ minds.
“I enjoyed the suffering” of the climb, Compton said. “It was hard and tough … I loved it.”
Maybe it was just what everyone needed.
