What a fun race!!  I had a phenomenally great day out there.  Not in terms of race placement, but in terms of pure enjoyment of the day.

Out of all the races I’ve ever done of any type, that one was the most enjoyable race I’ve ever experienced.  I am being quite literal when I say that enjoyed every moment of that thing.  Even hitting the dirt coming down columbine oddly enough added to the beauty of the day for me (only because it didn’t really hurt, and I didn’t break anything, if I had it would have certainly hampered the experience, as it was it just made it a cooler memory!)

I really can’t think of any race that I can say that about other than this one.  Every other race I can recall at this point has had its euphoric endorphin highs and its mental and physical low points and times of suffering. Here’s a little video…didn’t compress very well so its not that great of quality, but oh well.

This race was 10 hours of pure high.

Not at any point in the entire 10 hour ride did I feel tired or a lack of energy.  The only part even coming close to feeling tired was only a brief moment after riding to within 100 yards of the top of the climb up Powerline at mile 80.  The entire day consisted of riding through a totally gorgeous landscape between 10 and 12,600 feet with a grin on my face absolutely enjoying myself.  When I finished the race at 104 miles I honestly wished it were longer and I was kind of bummed it was over.  I wished there were even more uphills at the end because it was so much easier to pass tons of people on the uphill parts.

This was all so much the opposite of what I expected that it made it that much cooler.

It was really encouraging to me to experience what it feels like to be full of energy throughout an all day endurance event.  I had never experienced it before and it was incredibly cool.  It changed my perspective a bit on racing and all-day riding or running.  It caused me to care even less than I already did about goal time, and more about having similar experiences to that.  Spending an entire day in the mountains with a grin enjoying the moments is SOOO much nicer than spending half a day in joy and the other half in severe pain.   Although, on the flip side, I guess I wouldn’t have the same perspective or appreciation of just how good this race felt if I hadn’t experienced first hand the extreme lows I did in my last 50K trail race. So it all has its purpose I guess.  But wow…I REALLY loved feeling solid for 10 straight hours.

Here are some of my takeaways from this race:

1. 1st Endurance products ABSOLUTELY ROCK!!!  I am their new biggest fan.  They taste good, are easy to consume, and provide calories, electrolytes and water all at the same time making it super easy to keep the proper fueling going.  I’m going to be sticking with 1st endurance products from here on out until proven otherwise. (And no, they don’t give me free stuff and they certainly don’t pay people at my low level of influence to say stuff like that.)

2. Fueling properly is key – and for me, 3-400 calories per hour minimum is what I will be doing from here on out on long races. (And getting 8 hours of sleep the night before certainly couldn’t have hurt)

3. It would seem that other than the lower back muscles, trail running and mt. biking muscles are quite interchangeable.  I have virtually been doing no bike training this year compared to running training.  And yet I just raced 104 miles on a mountain bike with literally zero soreness in my quads, calves, hamstrings, or glutes.  The only muscle soreness was in my lower back, which is already mostly gone 2 days later.  I’m pretty happy about finding that out for myself, because I was concerned that my legs would just blow up after 50-60 miles since I hadn’t done any bike rides longer than 30 miles in over a year.

Here are some stats from the race and some play by play:

The results showed 1328 Starters and 1022 Finishers.

I finished in place 311 overall.

Here is my placing through each of the aid station splits that were recorded:

Pipeline Outbound – 28.3 Miles: – 2:24:29 – 597th place

Twin Lakes Outbound – 40 Miles: – 3:21:01 – 575th place

Top of Columbine – 50 Miles: – 5:15:21 – 426th place (passed 149 people on the climb)

Twin Lakes Inbound – 60 Miles:- 5:58:27 – 448th place (Crashed coming down Columbine and got passed by 22 people while I tightened my handle bars)

Pipeline Inbound – 73.1 Miles: – 7:10:19 – 428th place

Finish – 104 miles: -9:57:06 – 311th overall (2 more significant climbs, passed 117 people in final 30 miles, probably 60 of those were on powerline)

Clearly I should have started out way closer to the front so I didn’t get stuck behind so many people.  I wasn’t riding at the same pace as anyone around me the whole day unless I was stuck behind them on a single track.  And I didn’t start putting forth much of an effort until about mile 85, when I decided I might as well ride harder to the finish since it was clear at that point that my legs were good to go and my energy would be great until the end.

And here’s some of the detailed play by play:

The night before the race I ate 2 HUGE helpings of spaghetti, salad, rolls, cake, and lemonade.  And I met a really nice dude Sean Kute who I found out was doing the 100 miler this weekend and the 100 mile run next weekend as his first 100 mile run!   Go sean!  Good luck in the hundred this coming weekend.  I really enjoyed eating dinner with him and chatting for a couple hours.

In the morning before the start I ate a nice breakfast of oatmeal, Orange juice and pastries at the hotel. Then 30 minutes before the race I ate 1 vespa pouch and 2 FRS energy chews that were in the race packet.  HUGE thanks to my bud Eric by the way, for hooking me up with an entrance to this race, a sweet bike to ride, and even a hotel with breakfast!  What a stud!!!

My plan was to take a vespa every 2.5 hours, and to take in 350-400 calories per hour of 1st endurance products, which include in them about 1500 mg of electrolytes per serving.  I was set up to fill my water bottle with 1st endurance optigen, and ultragen, and switch off.  I also used the 1st endurance EFS liquid shots which are awesome.

I started out about 500 people back from the start in a huge horde of cyclists.  TONS of energy in the crowd, and really cool to be out there with so many people psyched to be out for a day of riding through the mountains.  It was cool to be there and be a part of such a fun event.  The horn went off, and we were going…but after 1/2 mile down the road, I was FREEZING!  I made the mistake of removing my jacket at the start, because it wasn’t that cold.  But I had to stop and put it back on.  That was when about 800 people passed me in the 45 seconds it took to put my jacket on.  That was kind of lame of me, because all the way through to about mile 65 of this race there are tons of sections where getting behind slower paced people REALLY slows you down because there is no way to pass for a long time.  Oh well.

Did I mention it was friggin’ COLD!  It was about 4-5 miles of down hill in really cold early morning high mountain temps and my hands were really numb and I was shivering.  But it passed soon enough as soon as we started the first climb.

Tons of people were pushing their bikes and the first climb was really slow.  I worked past people as best I could.  I was probably around 1000 people back from the lead at this point.  By the time I got to the pipeline aid station I had passed 3 or 400 people and was in 597th place.  I stopped for 3-4 minutes to get my drop bag and re-fill my bottles.  It was about mile 30 and I was feeling totally fresh and just getting warmed up.

At mile 40 was the Twin lakes aid station, and because of the huge crowds everywhere I missed the drop bag zone.  Fortunately I had enough in my camelback to stop and fill my water bottle at a small volunteer station a few miles later.  At about mile 42, I saw Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski and Levi Leipheimer coming toward me.  They were now at about mile 58.  And they were flying!  And they already had a sizeable gap on the 3rd-5th place riders.   Some minutes later though, more riders came through.  Dave Wiens was in 5th at that point.  Levi crushed the course record and Lance’s time from last year and did it in 6:16 which is incredibly fast.  Dave Wiens ended up 4th in about 6:33, his fastest time on the course.  The conditions were much better this year though.  It was perfect weather, whereas last year it was snowing at the beginning, and pretty much rotten weather all day.   (I was shooting photos last year, very glad I got good weather this year for the ride).

Columbine Climb

I was now climbing the 10 mile climb up to Columbine, which is a 3000 foot ascent up to 12,550 feet.  It’s pretty gradual, but sustained.  I ended up passing 149 people going up this climb.  And yet, my heart rate was only around 140 for the entire climb.  I was keeping it SUPER conservative because I knew I still had a lot of riding ahead and multiple 1000 foot climbs at the end of the race.  Usually when I am racing I push between 155-165 on my heart rate, and I can sustain that for a long time.  But I was being more conservative here, because I didn’t know how my legs would hold up and I REALLY did not want to experience a bonk or anything like that today.  So it was pretty encouraging to be passing by tons of people while staying in a very comfortable easy pace.

Toward the top of the climb it got steeper and narrower and most people started walking.  I was able to ride around them until about the last 1/2 to 1 mile from the top when it got too narrow, and there were tons of riders coming down.  Even though I could have comfortably ridden up those sections, I had to walk a bunch because there was just no way to pass without someone getting hurt.  Oh well, I just got more recovery time in I guess.

I made it to the top in 5:14 and left the aid station at 5:17, then bombed the down hill.  Which was really, really fun of course.

Until I ate dirt coming around a corner too fast!  That kind of shook me up, but not bad.  I just scraped up my right elbow and knee, but it really didn’t hurt bad at all and I was able to jump back on and keep going.  But then I had to stop to tighten my handle bars which got shaken loose I guess.  That took me a few minutes of fishing through my bag for the tool.  So I was passed by 22 people between the top of columbine and the next aid station.

When I made it back to twin lakes I found my drop bag.  Got a new water bottle because I lost my other one in the crash when my cage broke. I grabbed some watermelon and kept going.

I was doing fantastic on my fueling up to this point, and I maintained that the whole day.  And that was the number 1 key to my enjoyment of the day I believe.  The number 2 contributor was my pace, but an even pace, with no fuel, certainly would have not worked out.

At about mile 68 there is a short 100 yard climb that I saw about 30 people walking up and nobody was riding.  It was super steep, but short.  I rode up the whole thing and passed everyone walking it.  And it pretty easy…running up super steep mountains is definitely paying off.

Powerline Climb

By the time I got to the powerline climb at about mile 80, I was still feeling completely fresh and ready to rock and roll.  In fact, I felt like I was just perfectly warmed up and ready to crush the ascent.  As I pulled up and saw the huge climb looming in front of me, I could see about 80 racers strung out all the way to the top pushing their bikes, and both sides of the climb were lined with spectators.  I didn’t see one other person riding it.  That is the coolest part of the course to be a spectator.  And it was really cool riding through that section with so many people cheering, because they were really motivating me to try to ride to the top.  They were all saying I was the first person they had seen riding in a long time.

I rode past everybody walking the climb.  And at one hard section in the middle one of the fans pushed me from behind for like 30-40 feet which WAS AWESOME!!  I LOVED THAT!  THANK YOU WHOEVER YOU WERE!  I really wanted to make it all the way to the top riding, but I couldn’t quite hold on to it once I got about 100 yards away.  I got going too slow and fell off and so I pushed for about 80 yards, and then jumped back on and finished off the last 20-30 yards riding.  I wish I could have ridden it all, but I felt pretty good about having gone up as much as I did.  And between this climb and the next one I passed another 117 people before the finish line.

On the final descent, I was still feeling totally fresh, but I lost my water bottle due to my broken cage on the rocky decent.  I had put it in my pocket thinking that was safer, but it fell out, and I didn’t want to stop for it on the fast descent.

Thankfully, another totally awesome dude who I was passing at the bottom had an extra bottle.  THANK YOU RANDOM DUDE!  I wish I knew who you were, that was totally cool of you.  That water was really nice to have the last 30 minutes of pushing hard to the finish.  I tried to help pull him along the flat for a while, but he quickly dropped off the back and couldn’t hold the pace.  And at this point I saw that I could probably ride it in under 10 hours so I figured I may as well push hard and finish strong to the end, since I hadn’t really pushed hard all day other than the climb up power line.

I passed another 15 or 20 people on the flat and slightly up hill portion to the finish, and when I finished, I felt still fresh and ready to go.

I fueled up at the finish aid station on soup and sandwiches and was surprised at all the carnage around me.  So many people were in so much pain, and relief to be done.  I found myself getting cups of water and food for one dude from Utah because he could barely get up.  And I could relate to him OH SO WELL from previous race experiences.

But this time, I felt zero pain, virtually no tiredness.  In fact I was really itching to go for a run because I only got 11 puny running miles in that week and I was kind of bummed about that.  So I was glad I still felt fresh, because I wanted to get some more running miles in for the week to prepare for the Kings peak marathon this next weekend.  But my desire to get some dinner and then get home to Nan prevailed…10 hours of working out was sufficient for the day and I really didn’t need to be spending more time away from home.

I was on an endorphin high the rest of the night (just ask Eric or Nan, Eric kept telling me I was going to come down at some point and crash).  It was interesting.  I just felt so great.

Then when I got to bed that night I was definitely crashed and slept well.

Conclusion

One of my favorite parts of this ride was encouraging and chatting with other riders along the way and helping pull them along.  It was fun to be in a position to help, rather than being lost in the misery of my own pain.  I was also really grateful for the helpful things others did for me along the way.

Loved the day, can’t say enough good about it. Really looking forward to the kings peak marathon this weekend where I plan to implement the same fueling strategy and see how good I can feel on a mountain marathon, that I have actually been training for.  I feel recovered already from this race and I’m getting excited for this weekend.