TRANSROCKIES RUN Pre-Race Denver

On August 17th Jackie and I started our journey to Colorado for the TRANSROCKIES RUN.  We had been looking forward to this race since February.  However before we were to race we had to fly into Denver Airport and then take a 30+ minute trip to get to our hotel in downtown Denver.  We were to stay in Denver for two nights and we had two goals while we were there.  1.) Start acclimating to the higher elevation and 2.)  Visit many brewpubs.

Upon arriving at our hotel we checked in and headed down Denver's 16th Street Mall and hit the Rock Bottom Brewery.  Rock Bottom is a chain, but they brew a lot of different beers and had some pretty damn good food.  I would say this was my favorite of the three brewpubs we hit in Denver.

Rock Bottom beer list

A few hours after eating at Rock Bottom and sampling the Mad Cow Milk Stout and the Whiskey Aged Raspberry Porter, Jackie and I went out for a short run through Denver.  We were a bit tired from the day of traveling and the 95+ degree heat, but overall we had a good first run at a mile high.

Wynkoop Brewing Company

After resting in our hotel room for some time we ventured out for dinner.  We walked the short stretch to the 16th Street Mall and jumped on the free mall bus that would bring us about a mile downtown and then walked the next 1/2 mile to get to the Wynkoop Brewing Company.  A very cool brewpub that claims to be Colorado's FIRST.  I ordered the Cowtown Milk Stout while Jackie went with the St. Charles ESB, which happened to be on cask!  Both were tasty brews and the food was good as well, I however didn't like part of my meal but it had nothing to do with the quality of the food.


August 18th brought much of the same with the addition of a trip to the Denver Zoo.  We woke up went for a 40 minute run, changed up, scarfed down some free breakfast at the hotel then took a bus to the zoo.  It was a nice way to pass a couple hours during the day while being outside instead of stuck in our hotel room.  We got back from the Zoo and headed back to the Rock Bottom Brewery for lunch which was the closest to our hotel room and they had other beers on the menu that I wanted to try out.  We grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered two different meals and shared them in order to try out as much food as we could.  We had a vegetarian pizza and a chicken quesadilla, both were super tasty.  On the beer front I had the Chocolate Rye Porter and Jackie the Belgian Style White.  Both great brews.  We went to pay the bill and had to wait maybe 3 minutes because the computers shut down...the bartender thought that was long enough to give us both another 12 oz beer for our troubles, and that was OK with us.

Before dinner we headed over to the largest REI store I have ever seen in my life.  This place is huge.  We didn't even bother climbing the three flights of stairs because just looking at them made us tired.  This place has a rock climbing wall in the center of the store and a mountain bike test trail outside.  We just needed some GU's and some camping pillows, so there was no testing out rock walls or mountain bikes on this trip.

For dinner we headed to the Breckenridge Brewery near Coors Field.  This brewery recently started distributing in RI so I was familiar with their beers.  I went with the Thunder Stout which is a nitro tap version of their Oatmeal Stout and Jackie went with the Vanilla Porter.  Both beers were much better then the bottle versions.  The food was uneventful; I don't even remember what I ordered, but it was good enough to scarf down with a beer.  We grabbed two brownies on the way out, one made with the Vanilla Porter and one made with the Oatmeal Stout.

Finally it was the night before we were to jump on a bus to Buena Vista, where we would be staying for two nights prior to the official race start on August 21st.  Buena Vista is over 8000 ft, so it was another step in acclimation to the higher altitude.

August 19th we woke up headed down stairs for some more free breakfast, packed up our things and at noon started the half mile walk to the bus station where we would jump on a mini bus to take the almost 3 hour trip to Buena Vista.  Upon arrival at said bus station we noticed that bus stations are full of 'interesting' people, people that I wouldn't want to share a bus with and we were stuck there for about an hour.  Fortunately for us most of these interesting people were not on our bus, they were waiting for a bus to California!

Some Denver scenery

Finally our bus arrived; we jumped on and met one other couple that would be racing at TRANSROCKIES, all the other people were staying on the bus past our destination to another small town in Colorado.  The long trip was uneventful, we saw some beautiful countryside, stopped at some small ass towns to see if there was anyone to pick-up (there never was) and finally arrived at our destination in Buena Vista, actually we still had to walk over a mile to our hotel...but we will get to that in Part 2 of the story Pre-Race Buena Vista. Stay Tuned...