What a fun day of watching cycling!!!!! After a week of watching/listening to the USA Pro Cycling Challenge it all ended Sunday right here in Denver. The stage started in Golden. You may remember Golden from a post I did here when I rode on some of the very same roads that these famous riders such as Levi, Frank, Andy, George, Cadel and Christian were about to ride. And then the climb up Lookout Mountain* that you may remember from the post when Jill and I conquered it for the first time. They then headed back through Golden and into Denver.
I had a plan...I really wanted to be able to see them climb Lookout so I decided that I would watch it live on the Shack Tracker and then, since they would be passing only miles from my house I would then hop in the car and go down to watch them pass and If all went well I could then be home to watch a couple laps in Denver and see the finish! It worked perfect! Here are a few shots I took as they passed. It goes so fast that trying to figure out who is who is almost impossible! It was nice though that they were broken up a bit when they passed. First there was a lead group of just a few riders, and then one chaser...I didn't get good photos of these guys and soon came the first half of the peloton being led by Team Radio Shack.
As you can tell we were on a little bit of an incline here, not that it seemed to slow them down any!
Here comes team Liquigas heading up the second 1/2 of the peloton. Do you call it a peloton when it's broken up..is that one or 2 pelotons? As you can tell I'm still pretty new to this whole bike racing thing.
Wow!!!! A seriously great day for Me, Denver and all of Colorado as they are saying that this race seems to have drawn crowds larger then any other race in the states! And it will be BACK! And next year I will be making plans to experience a little more of this race.
*Just a little side note about Lookout Mountain...my 15 year old son has just taken a driving class which included 6 hours of driving time with an instructor. Zach had spend little to no time behind the wheel of car prior to his first drive with the instructor, which as you may have guessed by now had him driving up Lookout Mountain!!!! Makes me just a little more nervous about going up that hill again! :) But it's funny...things haven't changed much over the years as when I was learning to drive (more years ago then I want to count) I too had drive up Lookout Mountain.
