February 3, 2026

It was very cold this morning when I left. It was also windy. I didn’t think much of the wind, other than it took much more wattage to hit higher speeds than it usually does. I thought that meant I got to practice my aero form a bit, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

My goal was to climb hills, so I went back over to horsetooth to grind up some of the mega hills there. I found another killer climb that I’d like to train, on which I averaged 8.1 mph. Lots of room to improve for sure. With my messed up derailer, I’m not sure I could climb a hill at a much slower pace than 8.1 mph.

I also found out today all these hills are category 4 hills, which is the LOWEST category of hill climb. So these hills that are kicking my butt are barely even on the chart of big hills. Definitely looking forward to finding some bigger hills to learn to ride up.

The reason wind ended up being an issue on top of the dam, and the reason for the title of my post, is once you are up there, there’s no easy way down. It’s about a four mile stretch with no turnoffs. At around mile two, the wind gusts were too big and were threatening to knock my bike over. Will told me that gusts can blow your tires out from under you, but I didn’t really consider what that meant until I got up the big hill and found out the hard way.

In response, I decided to bomb off the side of the dam and take the “A” hiking route down. A beloved path amongst mountain bikers, being on a road bike presented some significant challenges. I stopped every few minutes to check my tires, especially after hitting some rocks extra hard, and eventually made it down. Would not recommend mountain biking on a road bike.

All-in-all, it was probably an 8/10 ride. New experiences, new paths, but also a bit scary at times.

I’m going to do a longer ride soon to make up for this shorter one (that was supposed to be long).

See you out there,

Ben