Day 1 in Colorado- Denver, Golden and Boulder

Melinda and I arrived in Denver at 7:30 am, picked up are bike case and bags. Mike and Karen Kozel (friends from TN) arrived a few minutes after us. The airline dropped a few bags and bike case on top of my Rocket Science Sports back pack and I had a jug on Hammer Gel inside the bag, :-( yes the jug opened and it made a mess. Oh well, we cleaned it!

We then drove to Golden, CO were we picked up the bike rack from Rack Attack and Melinda and I assembled our bikes. It was a great deal, $30 installation and $5 per day!

It's lunch time now, so we went to Wild Oaks. For those of you that follow the John Mackey (Whole Foods founder and CEO) internet scandal, this is the Natural Food Store chain that he wants to buy, however on the Yahoo finance site he posted messages using an encrypted name (his wife's name backwards!) saying that Whole Food stocks were a better buy than Wild Oaks. Now SEC is investigating. Oh well, I still love Whole Foods!

After that we drove to pick up Mike's bike at Golden Bike Shop, really cool town. It's were Coors Brewery is located. No, we didn't drink any beers. We have plenty time for that after the race this weekend (Saturday and Sunday).

Finally we drove to Boulder, there we are staying at a Residence Inn. Free wireless... I'm set :-). We plan on going to Target and Whole Foods to get a cooler for ice, drinks and some snacks for the road.

No running today, tomorrow I plan on running 5 miles easy with some pick-ups, just to get used to the altitude (~5,000 ft above sea level) and probably an easy bike ride with Melinda and Mike. Pikes Peak will start at 6,000 ft and it will go up to 14,000 with a avg. grade of 12 percent.

************Post nap************

We went to REI to get some final items for the trip. Following REI we meet Melinda's Stepmom who was attending a Conference in CO (now this is coincidence!). We all went to a great Italian restaurant in Boulder called Radda Tratoria. The food was just fantastic and cheap. Read more about the restaurant here.

More photos and news tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.