More from Pb Ville (Pb = Lead)

You can see below that we've finally arrived in Leadville. The first day here we visited the Offices and store of the Race Officials. We bought a few things and asked a lot of questions.

When we checked in to the hotel, we found it to be very nice new and clean, so that was a plus. We added a roll away bed until Steve gets a room of his own on Thursday, his wife arrives then. We decided to take the first day and night easy while we got acclimated to the altitude a bit.

The next morning we got up at about 8:30 and by 9:30 we were riding the road from the race starting point down to the first trails and started up the first mountain. We got up part way and decided we shouldn't over exert ourselves and we headed back. It was lots of fun because we did not know what to expect and we were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the dirt roads, they were not as bad as I expected. The ride back was all climb for about 5-6 miles, it was not a brutal climb but long and since we were not quite acclimated it felt tremendous. But we took it easy and had fun doing it.

We cleaned up and decided to drive out to view other parts of the course. We saw some of the worst of it and the large mountain in the middle of the course...whoa! The roughest is called Powerline and it is exactly that a dirt road under powerlines climbing up a steep messed up part of a mountain. Te large climb is called Columbine and that is not viewable from the road, but the top of the mountain is...did I say WHOA YET!!!!

We finished that and decided to do some sightseeing, and we went down to Buena Vista, where, if you look at an older posting you will find a link to South Main. That was a spectacular place in a low valley surrounded by 14k foot mountains, with a whitewater park built next to a Urban Development where houses and businesses are being built. I LOVE THIS IDEA! I wanted to buy something here but missed the opportunity.

Today we rode a 15 mile loop around Leadville, the climb was slow and long again ut it was a great view of the town and we rode it with a bunch of nice people. If you see the ride video below it is recorded from my bike with a new camera that is mounted on my bar. That was on the loop around Leadville. We ended the day by visiting Breckenridge and eating a great Italian meal. Once we got back we visited more of the course before dark. It will be lots of fun to do this race Saturday.

More as soon as I can. Sorry about the phone not working in the room, they are supposed to have fixed it already.