I’ve decided to do more volunteering and less racing this summer. With the marathon a month behind me and no real big races to train for, the less pressure to ride and run has been exciting.

This weekend we volunteered for The Dead Dog Classic, a road bike stage race here in Laramie.

Stage 1 was up in the Snowy Range west of town. The 52 or 68 mile course took riders up 2,000 feet in elevation gain. We handed out water at the first aid station. Approximately 30 miles up.  The best part of this was wearing the orange vest, similar to what a bus monitor wears, which is what I wanted to be when I grew (grow) up. I aim high.

I asked if I could take this home, but WYDOT told me it was taxpayer money.

After handing out waters we decided that since we were already up in the mountains, that a bike ride was inevitable. We hit the Little Laramie trails for an hour of stream crossing, technical climbing, and fun windy descents.

Unfortunately that was only a taste of riding, and we were jonesing for some more. We decided on a sunset ride from our house into the mountains. We were hoping for some sunset photos of the plume of smoke from the wild fire 30 miles south of us. We got that and more in our 2.5 hours of riding. An adventurous way to end the day.

Those “clouds” are actually smoke plumes.

Sunset

Sunday brought a bright and early wake up call to head over into downtown for the criterium-stage two of the race. Racers ride a .8 mile loop around downtown in a fast Peleton. As a spectator type sport, they have Prime loops where people can win money or prizes, like a case of beer, for winning that one lap. There is a lot more strategy involved and as we watched the racers lap past our traffic control post, we discussed what we thought they were doing.

We didn’t volunteer for the time trial, which was the third stage of the race. It was in the mountains east of town, and by that point we had enough. JWail took pictures of the pro men and women and I read a book at home. Once the afternoon rolled around, we met at the train depot for a BBQ and beers. The beauty of volunteering is that you usually get taken care of. We were given lunch for two days, pizza for dinner,  beer to take  home, a couple of gift cards for downtown, and today we will head back for an hour of cleanup and another lunch. Who wants to race when you can volunteer and eat?

Have you volunteered for races before? Did you get anything cool in return?

Tell me about your adventures this weekend!