I usually get a profile of a rider after I have come down from the mountain. Fortunately I did not do that this morning. The big clue was when Brian Elander was changing from his road bike to his mountain bike. It was only 9:30 in the morning on the shortest day of the year and he had already ridden four laps up Lookout. Time to switch…two more trail laps to ride.

I had been pre-schooled about Brian by another rider a few weeks ago. That rider had told me that Brian had already ridden more than a million vertical feet this year. The only other rider’s effort that I was aware of that could compare to this figure was the year that Ray Bolton had ridden Lookout 860 times in 329 days of riding. Brain will probably hit Ray’s mark for vertical feet with 1.1 million vertical feet of climbing this year. And…as it turns out….this is Brian’s 20th birthday- two days after what would have been Ray’s 80th birthday. (Ray was in his sixties when he rode his 1.1 million vertical, so Brian still has that challenge to match a long way down the road.)

Brian has been riding all of, oh, five years and has already finished 12th overall at the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race. (I am not sure how much he weighs, but he is already a cycling heavyweight.) His PR on the Lookout road climb is 18:30. If I got all this right, he graduated from Dakota Ridge High School, he works at Base Camp Cyclery and he wants to turn pro. He finished the Everest challenge (about 23 laps on Lookout) in one push last year.

Good on you, my Man. Keep up the excellent effort.

Start Tuesday, 12/21/21, 9:30 AM, 44 degrees
Finish 10:40 AM, 47 degrees
Cyclists on descent 16
Vehicles on descent 8
Ratio of cyclists to vehicles 2 to 1

Chuck H.

Consecutive LOM days 6
LOM laps 2021 250
LOM laps lifetime 3251 (still third behind Ray Bolton- 7915 and Rick Brune- 4000+)