Glenwood Springs, CO to Fruita, CO

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Today's Stats
Miles: 100.26
Riding Time: 5:20:01
Avg. Speed: 18.7
Max Speed: 32.5
Elevation Gain: 1460 ft.

Today was our first century!! No, I did not ride around the parking lot of the motel to reach 100 miles! It was a true 100. Today was our first flat tire, as well. Luckily, it was within a few hundred yards of our first stop.

The original plan was to ride frontage roads and Highway 6 most of the way and only ride on Interstate 70 when necessary. After riding on Interstate 70 out of Glenwood Springs we found the experience to be quite safe as the shoulder is huge and fairly free of debris. So we decided to stay on Interstate 70 all the way to Grand Junction, about 90 of our 100 miles.

The weather was very nice in spite of the rain, snow and hail that most of Colorado is experiencing. Except for the hour of rain yesterday we have been very fortunate with weather conditions.

Today's route followed the Colorado River. It is running very high. As high as I have seen it. Since we were following the river, most of ride was a gentle downward slope which was countered by a brisk headwind for the last 50 miles.

You might be wondering how we could have 1460 feet of elevation gain when most of the ride was downhill and our ending elevation is lower then our beginning elevation. Cyclists, at least this one, measure the workrate of a ride by the mileage and the amount of climbing. So any hills that are climbed are added together to come up with the elevation gain. My bike computer calculates this automatically.

Ken, Kevin's father-in-law has now joined as our support vehicle driver for the rest of the ride. Bekkey will be heading home tomorrow. She did a great job! Ken has a challenge to do as good a job as his daughter!

Rib City was our restaurant of choice tonight. If you recall from the preview, this is where all this madness began.