{"id":53759,"date":"2020-05-24T20:51:02","date_gmt":"2020-05-25T02:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cyclists-keep-their-distance-from-durango-to-silverton\/"},"modified":"2020-05-25T02:51:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T02:51:02","slug":"cyclists-keep-their-distance-from-durango-to-silverton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cyclists-keep-their-distance-from-durango-to-silverton\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyclists keep their distance from Durango to Silverton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Aidan
Aidan Rhodes, a 19-year-old of Flagstaff, rides over Molas Pass on Saturday before he later turned around in Ouray and riding back to Durango.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The dirt called on a day when the asphalt typically rules the cycling world in Durango and Silverton.<\/p>\n

With the 49th edition of the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>, there was no road race or Citizen\u2019s Tour ride from Durango to Silverton on Saturday morning. But, on a perfect spring day in Southwest Colorado, the love of two-wheel thrills had mountain bike trails bustling.<\/p>\n

Still, dozens made the annual ascent of U.S. Highway 550 out of Durango toward Silverton. By noon Saturday, roughly 50 well-spaced cyclists were on the road, a manageable number and the kind of scene Colorado State Patrol and the San Juan County Sheriff was hopeful to see.<\/a><\/p>\n

Many cyclists took the opportunity to start from further up the highway near Purgatory Resort. Others started in Durango and completed only a traditional Quarter Horse ride that finished at Purgatory. Others, such as 19-year-old Aidan Rhodes of Flagstaff, Arizona, continued their ride from Durango all the way to Ouray and back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely beautiful,\u201d Rhodes said. \u201cThis would have been my second Iron Horse. I raced it last year with some of my teammates. It\u2019s too bad not to be doing it this year. But I saw some of Durango\u2019s local pros like Payson McElveen, who did a ride to Ouray and back a few weeks ago, so I figured I\u2019d attempt the same feat today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rhodes was one of a handful or riders from Arizona who had come up for a road ride. Most were local to Durango.<\/p>\n

Rhodes is a junior mountain biker and has spent the last few weeks in Durango for a training block. He left Durango at 8 a.m., the typical start time for the Citizen\u2019s Tour, and didn\u2019t run into many others as he climbed Coal Bank and Molas passes.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were staying pretty far apart,\u201d he said of cyclists\u2019 social distancing practices. \u201cI only saw about four riders since hitting 550, and that\u2019s about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the mountain passes remained open to motorist traffic \u2013 they are usually closed from Purgatory to Silverton during the IHBC \u2013 the traffic was noticeably light for a holiday weekend, making it easier for motorists and cyclists to share the road. No groups of more than two cyclists were spotted riding together.<\/p>\n

As for McElveen, the 2016 IHBC road race champion, he was busy on his mountain bike seeking an \u201cEveresting\u201d challenge on the Jones Creek singletrack climb outside of Durango as part of Rebecca Rusch\u2019s \u201cGiddy Up for Good\u201d benefit for COVID-19 relief. The goal was to ride the same amount of elevation gain as the height of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet. Each lap of his climb was roughly 1,500 feet.<\/p>\n

Durango pro road cyclist Quinn Simmons had pedaled out of Durango on Friday on what he has called the \u201cRona Escape Tour,\u201d a bike packing trip across Colorado. His first \u201cstage\u201d took him from Durango to Norwood. On Saturday, he continued to Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

Many other pros resorted to lesser known mountain roads as a way to get out and avoid any potentially overcrowded areas.<\/p>\n

Those were a few of the ways cyclists found a way to and challenge themselves on a weekend typically full of excitement in Durango and Silverton around the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic.<\/p>\n

jlivingston@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

trip on canceled Iron Horse Bicycle Classic weekend, most stick to dirt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,657,2111,29,2180],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-cycling","tag-iron-horse-bicycle-classic","tag-newsletter","tag-road-cycling"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53759"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}