The day started off sitting on the line behind Lance watching the weather roll in. Not 30sec after the start Bryan Bunch of Herring Gas crashed, going over the handlebars after running into another rider.  The neutral was even fast this year, one of Lance’s buddies had a Trek Mountain bike with road bars and components, if he had had trispokes I would have mistaken him for RW. As soon as the neutral went off Lance and his boys just blew apart the lead pack, anyone who tried to stay with them were just blown off, I’m talking mile 1 of the race. I saw this going on and decided to just ride my own race and baby my bike as much as possible.  On the first dirt decent, Power Line (the same place I destroyed my front tire last year), it was raining, and the decent was extremely dangerous and very cold. I took it very easy and did not care about all the guys that were passing me. Even as slow as I was going I still don’t know how I did not crash a couple of times. But I soon got it in my head that this was going to be a very tough day, but my kind of day.

I got no help on the flats people would get on my wheel for a while, say “thanks for the pull”, and then fall off. I was feeling OK but not outstanding, the weather had abated some what and on the way up to Columbine ( the half way point) the sun even came out. I saw Lance in the lead just killin’ it with the Helicopter filming while the weather was good. While he descended Columbine in the sun, I got to the top just in time for the sleet, which which turned to rain on the way down. By the time I got to the 60mi check point it look like I had thrown my bike and myself into a pigsty. I should have stopped at the 60mi checkpoint because my chain was choked with mud and grit (sounded awful), but I had plenty of fluid at the time and I was just starting to warm up and I did not want to stop and get cold. This was a mistake in hindsight, after the 60 mi checkpoint, on the first ascent my chain would suck and lock up the drive-train if I was in anything but the big ring. I asked anyone I saw for water to pour on  my chain, which helped some. I should have stopped at the 60mi checkpoint and gotten some chain lube or WD40.  I kept getting bottles of water handed to me and i got my dad’s bandanna at the 76 mile checkpoint to wipe the chain, but for some reason I did not ask him for any lube??? Must have been the altitude!  As I tried to climb Power line my chain kept locking up and forcing me off the bike, very frustrating. I was also starting to worry about breaking the chain, it sounded so bad. I was asking anyone and everyone for lube or at least water while I trotted or rode my bike when it was not too steep. I lost at least 3 positions on Power line to my chain problem.  While I descended the back of Power line I found a race official with some lube which curred the chain suck problem. By this point I finally could feel my fingers for the first time in the race and I could shift with them instead of my palms. I finished the race in just over 8hrs on a course that was lengthened by at least 3mi (104mi total), and it was a good thing my chain did not break because my saddle bag came apart during the day tossing my mutil tool and chain tool!

In the end I lost 10mins to just stops related to my chain alone, don’t know how much time I lost due to lost rhythm and not being able to ride as hard as I wanted to at times. At the same time I feel lucking to finish with out crashing or having any real bad problems.  This was definitely the most challenging conditions I have faced at Leadville, but I embraced the conditions, knowing it would be an Epic challenging day, and just had fun riding in the slop ( it is mountain biking).

So did I finish in the time I wanted too? Nope

Did place as well as I could?  No

Have I ridden the whole course? Not yet

Did I have fun? Yep, I still learned a couple of lessons, and I earned another Gold Buckle!

So I guess I still have to come back…

By |September 2nd, 2009|Uncategorized|0 Comments

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