Yesterday was the first full day in Monument, Colorado for the Battle in the Rockies contest this coming weekend. And the first day is always a hard one for me, after 18.5 hours of travelling and a 6 hour time difference the body clock and the altitude takes some adjustment for me. It didn’t seem to bother Mates Tucek at all (watch the Tintadome session edit that I just posted as a reference).

As forecast, the weather turned from the 79 degrees and sunshine, to freezing and snowing over one day. Welcome to Colorado, various people said to me throughout the day. We started the day with an hour trip back to Denver to the Rackhouse, the venue for the Battle in the Rockies contest that will host the AFA finals once again this year. This year the lighting is much better with some new big opening windows bringing in natural daylight and the area was cleared from what I remember last year so it’s already going to be much bigger than last year.

The venue if you are unfamiliar, is a pub and brewery. And the flatland contest goes down right by the brewery (see photo above). A unique set up for a flatland contest, smooth stone floor set up. This year the owners of the Rackhouse have some legit cleaning machines to make sure the floor is as good as possible for the riders. The event already looks massively improved from last year, excited for the weekend.

After a quick meeting at the Rackhouse it was time to travel back to Monument, and get the bikes built up at at the Tintadome. James was working on wrapping a car, I was pretty stoked to help out on wrapping one section of the car, pretty interesting to see how this works as I have never seen it done before.

Whilst James carried on working with his colleagues, myself and Mates went to Old Chicago for salad and pizza. Everything is huge in America, so we were both pretty full up. On the way back to Tint of Shade, Mates starts walking barefoot! And was telling me how he does this at home in Prague with his girlfriend, why was he working barefoot you ask? Mates is a fitness fanatic and he was talking about walking barefoot is good for your circulation. James’ face when Mates return was a picture in itself, I wish I captured it!

Once Tint of Shade shut, the session was on. And a nice old school session started the warm up with myself, James and Mates digging in the crates. As we started getting warmed up, James got a call from his wife Laura and we had to cut the sessions short, I was pretty tired and turns out dehydrated to boot as well. We went back to the house and James made pumpkins ready for Halloween with his kids.

James and Mates went back for a session at 9pm, I was done for the day so skipped the session. Check the Tintadome post below for went down, and if you are wondering… yes Mates pulled the x-ft halfpacker above! It was a good first day, note to self drink more water today!