MTB Tour
Last weekend I participated in an MTB tour up to Idaho City. For those who don’t know it’s about 40 miles north of Boise on the pavement.
We started out down town Sat. morning by dropping our camping gear at the U-Haul and then getting on our bikes and heading out. There were about ~100 other riders.
There were 3 significant climbs before lunch and 2 climbs after lunch totaling 5,700 feet and 43 miles on the first day. I was one of the first few to get to camp which felt pretty good. I thought I was going to be dragging my butt in dead tired, and when I got there I was feeling like I could turn around and do it again.
One guy got hurt before lunch, hit his leg on his handler bars and got some internal bleading. The EMTs transported him to a landing site called in life flight, he’s doing fine.
Later that day the last or the crew was running sweep and had a guy pass out. They tried CPR for 45 minutes while life flight came in, but he didn’t make it. I found out about it Sunday night, the crew couldn’t tell anyone until the family was notified. It was kinda odd, he was 35 and pretty healthy, he knew what he was doing and wasn’t in over his head, but he just passed out and died.
Sat. night in Idaho city was fun, they put on a big pasta feast and I ate a lot 
(there was also lots of beer, but I just watched people make themselves tipsy). Sun. morning we ate breakfast at a little restaurant and headed back towards home. It was about 42 degrees F when I headed out and it slowly warmed up, great temperature for climbing, a little cool for descending, but all the commuting has helped acclimate my body to colder temps, so I thought it went pretty well.
I made it to lunch somewhere near the front of the group and got my sandwich and sat at a random table. One of the guys was commenting that he would like to hit a single track on the way back to Boise for a little more fun, but his buddy probably wouldn’t go for it. I was still feeling strong, so I piped up and said I’d run it with him. He was a little stronger than me, but I got a bit of a lead on him out of lunch (straight into a 1700′ climb). He caught up near the top of the climb and then I kept up reasonably well on the downhill and most of the next 1500′ climb. Then we headed down the single track which was great fun.
We got back to Boise at about 1:50 pm and I was still feeling good, a little weak, but not near as bad as I had been expecting.
All told,
the ride time was 10:05
distance 97 miles
total ascent 12,500.