Meet Paul Glynn and Michael Moriarty

The Green Peak Pedallers are an international combination of 12 cyclists from Ireland and California, everyone an RTR virgin. Whether we are 12 wise virgins or 12 foolish virgins remains to be seen ….hopefully everyone will reach each stage finish so that the rest won’t be borrowing oil for their lamps to go searching for the lost ones on some remote Rocky mountainside.
The link between the Irish and US members is Dublin based Paul “Titus” Glynn who has cycled with his California friends in recent years in the Levi Leiphemer Gran Fondo in Santa Rosa CA . The other common factor among many of the Irish group is that they all suffer from chronic middle age crises for which cycling provides some alleviation of symptoms while a longer term cure (or eternity) is awaited.
Whose big idea was this anyway?
While riding in the 2018 Levi Leiphemer and Paul Glynn met some cyclists who had participated in the Ride the Rockies event which prompted him to bring it to our attention on his return to Ireland. Not surprisingly , the idea of a week cycling in sunshine in the mountains of Colorado seemed a great idea as we approached the shorter duller days of the Irish winter and since it was a few months off, we were prepared to optimistically assume that we could train sufficiently to cope with altitudes that few of us have ever experienced never mind ridden through.
For reference, the highest “mountain” in Ireland is just over 3400 feet above sea level and you can’t cycle to the top so, even in our “mountains”, we cycle at very low altitudes. As for distances, the RTR distance of 450 miles is equivalent to the Mizen to Malin route in Ireland which is the full length of the country at its longest point from the south west tip at Mizen Head in Co Cork to Malin Head in Co Donegal in the North West. A number of the team completed a Mizen to Malin cycle in 4 days a few years ago but, needless to say, neither the altitude nor the climbing bear any comparison to RTR.
Anyway, with great encouragement from Deirdre Moynihan at The Denver Post Community Foundation and invaluable assistance from Zach Ostrander at Summit Cycle Solutions, we signed up for RTR 2019 and we have little option now but to see it through!