The 2012 edition of the Ring the Peak 100(ish)k concluded on a VERY cold and wintery day in Colorado Springs. Riders lined up at 6:45am for the start at America the Beautiful. Once everyone was nice and chilled, they started and headed west toward Manitou Springs. The early morning temperatures were hovering right around freezing, and the sun was nowhere to be seen initially. A dense, low cloud cover kept the moisture level high and chilled many riders right back down Ute Pass early on. About half of the riders pushed on and were rewarded with sun and a break in the clouds after reaching the outskirts of Woodland Park around 8,500 – the town once again lived up to its name as “The City Above the Clouds.”
Riders encountered frost-covered trees and brush after pedaling into the high country. RTP finisher, Rob Lucas, posted some beautiful photos from today’s ride on Facebook. You can view them on his page here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151101915461094.443605.528491093&type=1
Preliminary results show that Patrick Coady repeated his tie/win from 2011 with a solo win for 2012, coming in at 7 hours and 28 minutes. A bit frozen, he was not deterred from enjoying the post-ride food and drink at McCabe’s Tavern.
Full results will be posted soon. Thanks again to everyone who showed up and gutted it out on a very challenging day. The results will not show “DNF” for those riders who pulled out of the RTP early today – I need to come up with a better name for what it should be called. But even for starting the ride on a day like this, nobody deserves a “DNF” after stepping up like that. Great work riders!
Thanks to the RTP sponsors for pulling this together, and according to my wife, for attempting to round up some of us stragglers (I’ll proudly accept a DNF). I was on target for coming in at around 12 hours, then broke the bead on my front tire about a hundred yards or so down from the turn onto 668. ‘Turned out my emergency tube would have worked well on a 700 x 19, but not so much on a MTB. The battery in my cellphone had frozen, there was four feet of visibility through the ice fog, and a comedy other mishaps like slipping off an ice glazed boulder into Cheyenne Creek on the 5-hour hike out only enhanced the experience. After thawing out the phone, I called my wife for a ride at 9:03 near the dog run at Bear Creek Park. See ya’ll next year! John S