2019 Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race

This was my Leadville Bar Mitzvah. Number 13. At the finish line, maybe I would party like it was 1980 and I would be rewarded with a pencil-sharpener, a cheap bracelet, a set of acrylic bookends with my engraved initials, and a $25 gift-certificate to a Peaches record store. Or not. This past year on the bike was very different from my previous 12 years, mostly because I was not on the bike very much. Coming off the 2018 combo of the Tour Divide and Leadville, I had minimal motivation to train. I gained 20 pounds. I battled lingering injuries. I enjoyed more frequent adult beverages than usual. I lounged. I had fun. Fall turned to winter, winter turned to spring, spring approached summer and I barely rode a bike. A road crash in early May sidelined me for most of a month. On June 20, I reviewed Strava and was alarmed to see that I had ridden less than 500 miles since January 1st and 250 of those miles came on a slow bike-tour with Lisa in Israel in April. For the first time in my Leadville career, I was going to test the "there are no shortcuts" theory and cram for 6 weeks to get my ass in shape. It would be an interesting experiment. At 51 years old, how much could I rely on the endurance base I had built over 12 years to get me through 103.5 miles in Leadville without total suffering . . . or total breakdown?

So the cramming officially began with our arrival in Colorado at the end of June. I didn't have time to start slowly, so I began pounding out big road miles to start. I muddled through an 80-mile Copper Triangle loop the last week of June, I grinded out a big hilly loop near Boulder the first week of July, and slogged through the Triple Bypass on July 13. I continued with a bunch of 30-50 mile gravel rides on my mountain-bike and tossed in a few hour-long sessions of short hill-repeats.  I didn’t get to Leadville for a single training ride this summer. First time ever. The fitness came back quickly, but unfortunately all of my metrics were way off as I found myself doing local climbs 10%-15% slower than prior years. Extrapolating this 10%-15% decline to Leadville, I figured I’d be lucky to break 10 and a half hours.

On the bright side, as of race day, I had raised nearly $85,000 for First Descents. So no matter what happened in the race, it was another successful and impactful year and there would be zero shame from a slower than usual effort.

I started the race in the Purple corral consisting of those who finished 2018 in the 9-10 hour range. Joining me was my buddy Mike “Leadman” McHargue. Mike threw down a really fast time in the Silver Rush 50 in early July and I figured he would probably shoot out ahead and I wouldn’t see him again. My plan was to just stick with him as long as I could and if we happened to be riding at a similar pace, we could stay together for much of the day.

We had a really balmy start compared to prior years. The temperature at 6:30am when the gun went off was 46 degrees. This was actually the warmest start in 13 years. We also had heavy cloud cover that was predicted to stick around for most of the day, keeping things mild, but not hot. My kind of race weather.

I did not head out too fast from the gun. Mike passed me on the descent out of town, but I kept him in my vision all the way to the base of St. Kevins. The St. Kevins climb was a bit slow, but there were no big clogs and I kept a very moderate pace through the three miles of rollers to Carter Aid Station, hitting the timer at around 59 minutes. This was a good 7-9 minutes off my faster years.

I hit the pavement about 20 seconds in front of Mike and used the downhill to chug some fluids and stretch the shoulders. In past years, I would go pretty hard on the first part of the Sugarloaf climb, but I chose to lay back this year as I saw no point in burning matches this early when I still had doubts about my endurance later on. Mike passed me on the final rocky section of the Sugarloaf climb, but I stayed on his wheel as we summited and followed closely behind him the entire Powerline descent. We stayed together through Pipeline Aid Station, arriving at about 2 hours and 19 minutes.

The Pipeline section was fairly relaxed. Mike and I yo-yo'd the entire time, never separating by more than a few seconds, and we both arrived at the First Descents aid station area at Twin Lakes at a recreationally respectable 3 hours and 10 minutes. This was some 15-20 minutes slower than each of my last 5 years, but I didn’t care. I was really enjoying the ride and it was fun to have a buddy riding essentially the same speed. It was also fun to have Lisa back at the aid station this year after she missed 2018. There is nothing like cruising into Twin Lakes at Mile 40 and getting a big hug from your wife.

After 5 minutes at the aid station, we were off and pedaling again. We crossed the dam and entered the vortex of crowd madness and then began the climb up the ridge. I stopped to satisfy the call of nature and Mike continued on. I took it really easy up to the first switchback on the Columbine climb as that section actually contains some of the steepest pitches of the first 8 miles of the climb. In my 13 years, the number of racers who pass me on this stretch only to be passed by me a few miles later is in the hundreds. It is an easy and needless spot to kill the legs.

Rounding the first switchback, I could see the back of Mike's jersey several hundred yards in front of me, but I wasn’t sure that I would ever catch him again. However, I chose this time to test the legs a little and pick up the pace. I turned up the volume of the tunes on my JBL speaker and started passing other racers. By the 3rd switchback, Mike was only about 100 yards ahead. By the 5th switchback, his gap was down to 50 yards. I finally caught him between the 9th switchback and the start of the goat trail and actually put my own gap on him in the first quarter mile of the loose and rocky goat-trail as I was able to find a line to ride while he joined the other hike-a-bikers. My continued riding didn’t last long as it simply became too dangerous to try to pass people with inbound riders barreling down the left side of the trail. As I dismounted, I was suddenly felled by sharp leg-cramps and had to pull off to the side. I bit into two S-Caps (salt tabs) and massaged my thighs and calves. After about 30 seconds, the cramps dissipated and I continued on my way. Mike was now ahead of me again, but I slowly reeled him in before reaching the top.

We hit the Columbine turnaround at 5 hours and 15 minutes. Mike stopped for a quick drink. I continued. He passed me just after the bottom of the goat trail, but we rejoined on the final descent into Twin Lakes and rolled back into the First Descents aid station together at 5 hours and 58 minutes. Once again, we were happily greeted by each of our lovely wives. It was actually kind of nice to be in no hurry as compared to my sub-9 years where I crazily blew through the aid station in under 45 seconds. Lisa said she enjoyed the "relaxed me."

The funny thing about the race so far was that neither Mike, nor I ever discussed riding the race together and we had no implicit understanding that we would stay together. We were just truly riding our races at a nearly identical pace.

Brent and Mike Leaving Pipeline Aid Station

We covered the Pipeline in about an hour and were still together at the Pipeline Aid Station where I stopped quickly to chug a few cups of Coke. I was definitely feeling pretty sore and tired, but was way less miserable at this point than I expected. It helped that up until now, the weather had been perfect with temps in the 60s and enough clouds to keep the sun from heating up the course.

Usually the section from Pipeline Aid to the base of Powerline runs directly into a stiff breeze that makes the section a depressing suckfest . . . especially with Powerline looming on the horizon. For the first time in years, we actually had a slight tailwind on this section. As we approached Powerline, I looked at my watch, did some quick calculations and determined that a sub-10 hour finish was still in play. I explained the timing to Mike, but he seemed a bit ambivalent about the time. He also said that he was running low on fluids and would be meeting Laurel briefly at May Queen. I figured I would make a final evaluation at the top of Powerline and either hang back or go for it.

The Powerline climb was its usual hellish self, especially with the sun coming out early in the climb and slightly baking the air. I was definitely spent, but managed to keep pedaling nearly the entire climb after the initial wall of hike-a-bike. I reached the top at 8 hours and 22 minutes. I had not seen Mike since the hike-a-bike section, but figured that he couldn't be too far behind. I slow-pedaled along the top ridge for about 60 seconds and when he still didn't appear behind me, I made the decision to take off as I knew he would probably stop to see Laurel and was concerned that any stop would likely kill the prospects for a sub-10 finish.

From the top of Powerline, I needed to get to Carter Aid Station in about 40 minutes if I wanted a sub-10 finish. That gave me 15 minutes to descend to the base of the St. Kevins climb and 25 minutes to get up the climb. In my sub-9 years of 2013 and 2016, I did the St Kevins climb in about 20 minutes. I didn't have those legs today, but thought I could split the difference somewhere in the middle. Sure enough, I hit the nail right on the head with a 22.5 minute ascent, arriving at Carter Aid at 9 hours. This gave me a few minutes cushion to down a few more cokes and indulge in a chocolate-chip cookie and a few slices of salted watermelon.

I took off at 9:03 and knew from experience that I could easily cover the last 11 miles in about 52-53 minutes. At this point, the skies were darkening and this gave me added incentive to push it before the impending rain. With no issues on the St. Kevins rollers and descent, followed by a smooth ride up the Boulevard and “Fuck You Hill,” I crossed the finish line in 9 hours and 55 minutes, collecting my 13th hug and medal from Merilee.

In retrospect, I did not give myself enough credit and rode more conservatively than necessary. So maybe I could have been 10-15 minutes faster. But that 15 minutes would have likely been the difference to feeling pretty good at the end versus feeling like turd at the end. Frankly, I just wasn’t in the mood to feel like turd. Not when my finish time was going to start with a 9 or 10 regardless. That being said, I was satisfied that I was able to summon enough foolish pride to pick it up over the last 25 miles to get in under 10 hours.

Already looking forward to coming back for number 14 in 2020. Also ready to end my non-training sabbatical and get back on a regimen this coming year. Still harboring a hope that my best Leadville time is in front of me and not behind me.