Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Day 41

After a Nice stay in the "downtown" area of Breckenridge we decided to get bagels at a nice cafe on main street before hitting the road for Kremlin, about 50 miles from Breckenridge.

I was feeling a lot better since yesterday but my chest still hurt a little bit. The downhill ride from 9700 ft to 7000 ft was gonna be a lot easier than the climb up Hoosier pass where my chest hurt like someone was stabbing me with an ice pick. After enjoying the roasted red pepper cream cheese, we hit the road around 11:00am. There was an awesome bike path which allowed us to bypass the heavy traffic on route 9 for the first 15 miles which was great. There were so many bikers on the trail, no wonder Colorado is the slimmest state in the union. I was feeling ok going downhill but even the slightest hill sent sharp pains through my chest and ribs and I knew any bit of moderate to heavy exertion would continue to cause great pain. After about 7 miles, I decided to get checked out at the local hospital just to make sure nothing really serious was happening. We happened to ride right past the hospital on the bike path, so we figured it was a good sign that we should stop in. The doc ran a few tests on me and everything came back normal. She told me that I had some inflammation in my chest wall and ribs, likely due to the elevation change. She advised I take it easy for a couple days off before getting back on the bike. Considering we just had 4 days off thus could not have come at a worse time. We only have ridden 70 miles in 5 days! After about 4 hrs at the hospital we rode into Frisco ( only 2 miles) where I decided to get 2 nights at the snowshoe motel. It really is a shame that we have to take a break but I really think I'll be better off versus riding through the pain. I'm really hoping that I'll be able to put some good miles in after these two days. We will be back on the road on Friday morning hopefully pain free! For now it will be pizza,ice cream, and cable tv.



Getting some good ol' O2 at 9700 ft above sea level

1 comment:

  1. Ben, I hope you recover quickly. I guess all those days off in the Springs pigging out on yogurt did you in. Di and I had a great time visiting and exploring a little bit of Colorado with you guys. Jen, it made me very happy to hug you and laugh with you again. And Ben, I've almost forgiven you for inducing me to drive up to the top of Pike's Peak -- I still haven't recovered!

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