Tour de Left Hand

Marc and I made our annual pilgrimmage up to Left Hand Brewing for their Hops & Handrails beer festival a few weeks ago.  Made a few tweaks to the route which I think made for better riding, but of course the one thing that didn't change was the fact that a lot of beer was consumed.

Kicked off things at Fossil Brewing with a Mammoth IPA.

And then it was over to Red Leg Brewing.

Then the standard Red Leg to Pikes Peak via the Santa Fe trail.

We decided to take the journey west this year, heading to Palmer Lake and jumping on CO 105 to take us north.  No trip to Palmer Lake is complete without grabbing a brew at O'Malley's.

Then it was a long ride up to Sedalia.  We battled the wind and earned a stop at Bud's Bar.

One last brewery stop for the day.  Really love Living The Dream and their Arrogant Hipster Lager.

Then it was off to the hotel.  Which doubled as a dinosaur exhibit.  Pretty cool.  And it was right across the street from the Rusty Bucket, a local Steelers bar.  Met up with Kircher and Garcia here and drank a shit ton of Iron City.

Kircher continued with us on Saturday morning.  After some wandering around trying to get across the I-70 barrier, we made good time to the first brewery of the day, Four Noses.  We were deep inside GZ country at this point and tried to get him to come out and play, but he used some lame excuse about family to bail.

Then it was off to Louisville.  Awesome stop at what was probably my favorite brewery of the weekend (playing Phish certainly helped), 12 Degrees.

Breweries were falling into our lap at this point.  We didn't even know we'd be passing Liquid Mechanics.

At some point we actually did get to Left Hand.

We were pretty late getting to the actual festival, but we had a blast on the ride up there and made the most of the time we had at the beerfest.  Even saw my old arch-nemesis.

Neither of us do much of anything anymore, so whenever we get together all we talk about is how good we used to be.

One more brewery on the way to the hotel after the festival.  300 Suns Brewing.  My 119th Colorado brewery.

There was even more debauchery after that, but my mind gets kind of fuzzy.  I know I ended up at Oskar Blues at some point.  And on Sunday we went back to Left Hand and then to the Tasty Weasel before catching a ride back to the Springs.

Awesome weekend of drinking beers and riding bikes.  70 miles the first day, 50 miles the second day.  Thinking of adding a ride up to the annual IPA fest at Avery this year, this kind of trip is way too much fun not to take advantage of that opportunity.

Tour de Left Hand

Marc and I will be riding up to Schlongmont once again this year to partake in the Hops & Handrails festivities at Left Hand Brewing.

Marc was director of navigation last year, and needless to say he won't have that position this year.  The prelude will start on March 27th at Fossil Brewing with a time trial over to Red Leg Brewing.  From there the peloton will head north, stopping at Pikes Peak Brewing and any other brewery or bar along the way.  The stage will end at a hotel I read about on The Oatmeal.  Day one mileage is approximately 70 miles.

Day two goes from the Best Western to Left Hand Brewing, roughly another 50 miles.  Still working on the best bike friendly way to do that. 

The Tour officially ends later that evening at The Tasty Weasel.

I will post more about the route and breweries we will be stopping at as the tour approaches.  Hopefully we will see some familiar faces out there.

February

Good month.  Lots of hours doing stuff, ticking off the days before we head off on the Colorado Trail.  We are already worried about the lurking fire danger this summer.

Biking - 176 miles, 18 hours
Running - 146 miles, 28.5 hours
Hiking - 60 miles, 21.5 hours
CityRock - 14 trips
Accolade - 6 trips

Signed up for the JFK 50.  Other than Pikes, I hope it's the last big race I sign up for.  Besides some smaller local races, here's the rest of the year:

March 4 - Pueblo Ten Miler
March 10 - Salida Marathon
May 20 - Colfax Marathon
June 2/3 - Elephant Rock
Aug 18/19 - Pikes
Sep 22 - Royal 50
Nov 17 - JFK 50

Another trip is shaping up for March as we will be bringing back the Tour de Left Hand.  Leaving from Red Leg Brewing on Friday, March 23, we will ride up to Golden, crash for the night, then finish the trek to Left Hand's Hops & Handrails early on Saturday.  Of course there will be lots of breweries along the way.

Tuesday

Wisconsin's run to the championship game, and the ensuing boozing that went with it, have set me back in the running and blogging game.  I'd hate to see how much of a mess I'd be if Pitt ever won a championship (we'll get to find out in football and hoops in 2016!).  I swear I'll get pics of the Tour de Left Hand up someday.

Not a bad view on the dog walk through Rock Ledge Ranch this morning.

Monday

Easy 10K on the Garden roads this morning.  Sore as hell from back-to-back long rides and trying my best to drink all the beer in Colorado.

Will get to a write up of the Tour de Left Hand soon.  Until then, yunz can go read this front page Gazette article about where I work.

March

Run - 133 miles
Ride - 219 miles
Hike - 79 miles
CityRock - 19 trips
Accolade - 5 trips

Finished the month on 18 run commutes and 15 bike commutes.

March included the Salida Marathon, a sub 18 5k, and the Tour de Left Hand, pretty awesome month.

Tour de Left Hand

Schlongmont or bust!