Picking up the Pieces

The 7th annual Crested Butte Classic covered 100 miles of mountain biking in the Colorado town famed for the sport. I was able to complete the task in 9 hours, 25 minutes on my lovely Misfit Dissent FE single speed 29er. I enjoyed this event a bit more than the Breckenridge 100 because: a) I had a better idea of what to expect and b) the scenery was much more spectacular (which helps to keep ones mind off of the pain). Speaking of the latter point, I’ll post several photos here. I can’t take credit for them as I was too busy sharpening my ax on the grindstone of pain to busy myself with photography. My wonderful wife, Colleen, took these photos as she was (much more sensibly) able to enjoy some of the single track around there without being in a race.

My goal was to finish in under 10 h0urs so I succeeded in that! This gave me a tie for 16th place overall and a 3rd place finish among the single speed crowd. I beat the 4th place single speeder only during the “coast” finish (it’s a coast on a single speed since you can’t pedal fast enough to keep up with the wheels once the bike gets going about 15 mph) down Kebler Pass. I was able to get just a tiny bit better aerodynamic position and had larger wheels (29″ vs. 26″) which seemed to help. It was cool having this race to the finish down the final 10 miles with the only thing either of us could do to try and go faster was get into a tighter tuck. I was even able to catch a geared fella at the finish line, hence the tie for 16th.

The course took us on three loops around the town of CB, each roughly 30-35 miles. There was a fair bit of road, but I found it to be a respite where I could eat and drink. The rugged single track took all one’s focus and attention so snacking and even drinking was not easy to do. The first lap went out Brush Creek to the Aspen strewn Strand Hill trail, then on up to the 20+ mile Deer Creek trail to near Gothic and back to town.

Lap two was out the Lower Loop from town, up the Slate river past Pittsburgh to a super fast DH on the 403 trail, then up to Schofield Pass and down the brakeless 401 (CB’s signature single track!) This loop was by far the hardest for me, but it also had by far the funnest riding. It was an absolute blast just totally gunning it down these classic trails that I’ve ridden many times before only at a much more mellow pace.

Each lap would pass by the check point in town at the biker friendly Brick Oven Pizzeria. Avery Brewery supplied ample post race re-hydration support here, as well.  I had been given the directive by my fellow Cloven Hoofed Shark (and ally in battle) Mark Twight to “leave nothing in the tank” at the finish, to “pick up the pieces later.” I took this to heart, especially as I started lap three. I wanted to see where I really stood and what I was worth. I gave it all I had when I left town starting the last lap.

The third and final lap went up the Wagon Trail along side Kebler Pass road. This trail is nothing to write home about, but it’s better than riding the road and by this time I was so cooked I was just looking for the simple path anyway. Atop Kebler, we headed toward Lake Irwin and hopped on the Dyke trail which winds through one of the largest aspen forests in the world. This weekend was the peak of the autumn colors as far as the aspens are concerned so you can imagine how nice it was on the Dyke trail: mind blowing! In my exhaustion induced hallucinatory state, the golden aspens were a bit lysergic in their brillance.

After pushing the Misfit to limit on the Dyke, there was a 30 minute sprint of sorts back up to the top of Kebler pass. This is where I picked up two more single speeders. I blew up with a mile to go. I found the bottom. One of them passed me and this gave me some small amount of mental drive to try for a little more. This got me up an over but I was 1/4 mile behind him by then. I pedaled a bit until the cadence was more than I could keep up with, then got into my best tuck position and tried to maintain it for the next 20 minutes down the pass. This was a difficult game of “blending and balancing pain and comfort deep within me ’till I would not want it any other way.” I can not state enough how much  it hurt to hold my body down over my front wheel after nine hours of going hard. It Fucking Killed! The pieces were being scattered now, but as I mentioned, I was able, by some stroke of aerodynamic efficiency, able to overtake the guy I was passed by for third place by a narrow margin.

The pain during this race was again pretty hard core, but I think I was much better prepared for it than the last 100 miler I did. The same things hurt, just not as bad. This is the last race I’ll do for 2010. I’m excited to do some more endurance races next year and will probably put a bit more focused attention towards training to do so, as well. I guess I was sort of testing the waters this year to see how I could do and how I would like it. I did well and I liked it! Hey, what a surprise!

For the rest of this season, I’ll just enjoy the fine riding and rock climbing around here in the Colorado Desert before succumbing to the pleasures of winter late in the year.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.