We woke up in the beautiful Rocky Mountain Village Camp in Empire, and had a great sponsored breakfast of Dunkin Donuts! Shout out to our Crew Chief Antonio for waking up super early to go get those donuts! We were all able to have a couple donuts which helped a lot on the ride! It was pretty chilly when we started the ride as the sun was blocked by the two mountains that surrounded us! Almost everyone had arm sleeves on or some kind of jacket but we all shedded those when we started riding the first couple miles! Before the ride started, we were told it was going to be all downhill but it turns out we had a couple pretty significant climbs passed my hometown of Evergreen and over Lookout Mountain! Even though my pace-line swept the ride, we were rushing the whole day as we had a tough rack point to reach. I had some chain and cassette problems on the ride, but we had a ride along named Dustin Jackson who is very knowledgeable about bikes and helped me fix my bike! We weren’t able to fix the problem all the way while we were riding, so I had to ride the last 20 miles of the ride with me only able to shift to a couple gears. Once we got down to stage up in downtown Denver, our pace-line was able to go to the front of the line to ride into the capitol since we swept. It was an unbelievable experience that I will never forget! It was truly a once in the lifetime experience to ride in with my friends and family cheering for me! To round out the day, we stayed in the courtyard Marriott hotel which was in one word: fantastic! Much better than the mattress pad on a gym floor as you might imagine.
-Bridger Tenney, Eta Chi, TCU