2022 Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race - BUCKLE #15

I am turning 55 in a few weeks. Everything is starting to feel 55.  My legs. My lungs. My desire. I am enjoying traveling. I am playing a lot of golf. I am sick of solo training for a mountain-bike race. 2019 was a shitty training year for me. I was coming off the 2018 Tour Divide and I barely rode a bike for the first 5 months of that year. However, I rode a ton over a 6-week stretch from mid-June to early August and managed to throw down a respectable sub-10 hour finish in Leadville. I trained pretty hard in 2020, but the race was cancelled thanks to Covid. I trained modestly in 2021 and decided to joy-ride the race, finishing in about 10:20. Had a good time that day. 

2022 has been a joke. I didn't touch my bike until April. I took a two-week trip in May without pedaling once. I took 10-day and 3-day trips in late June and early-July and didn't pedal. I got Covid in mid-July and didn't pedal for 7 days. By race day, my total mileage for the entire year was less than 1200 miles. The Leadville 100 would account for 1/13th of my total mileage for the year. Yikes. For the first time since 2007, I actually had some subconscious doubts about finishing. I certainly had thoughts about #15 being my last race, even though I had been saying for years that I wanted to get to 20. 

On the bright side, this was my most successful Leadville fundraiser for First Descents since 2008. As of race-day, I had raised over $110,000. I have amazing friends. And Team FD Leadville (pictured above) has had our best fundraising year since our 2007 inception with over $230,000 raised as of this post.

Race-day morning was fairly mild at 44 degrees. It seems that the days of 30 degree starts are now long gone. Thanks climate change.  As always, I was hoping for a day of cloud-cover and cool temps as heat is my kryptonite. I started in the purple corral, which was the projected 9-10 hour finish group based on past two years performances. As much as I hoped that I would step up on game-day and nail a sub-10, I knew that I lacked the power and endurance for that kind of finish. 

My lack of fitness became evident fairly quickly. It wasn't so much the slow grind up St. Kevins, as you can only really go the speed of traffic anyway. Same thing with the 3 mile rolling stretch to the pavement at Carter Aid (which I hit in under an hour), and with the paved downhill on the other side. Where I really started to notice it was when I hit the dirt on Hagemann Pass Road at mile 14. I just couldn't sustain any speed and I started getting passed by A LOT of riders. I crested Sugarloaf at 1 hour and 50 minutes and knew this was going to be a long day. 

The Powerline descent was pretty uneventful. I took it fairly conservatively as there was no point getting aggressive and getting hurt to gain a few minutes. On the road around to Pipeline, I was passed by a line of riders led by my buddy Dave Gonzales. Gonzo started the race two corrals behind me and had already caught me. Jeez. I tried to get on the wheel of the last rider in the paceline and I couldn't hold their speed. So I got dropped. Good times.

I rode through Pipeline aid at 2 hours and 25 minutes and proceeded to get passed by dozens more riders in the Pipeline section. I simply let them go. The old me would have taken each pass as a personal affront. Today I just smiled and continued at my leisurely pace.

 

I  hit the First Descents aid station at Twin Lakes at about 3:20. I can't remember it ever taking 55 minutes to get from Pipeline Aid to Twin Lakes.  As always, it was great to see my wife, my great buddy Kevin Kane, and the FD crew, and I put on my best face. I was on my slowest pace since my first LT100 in 2007 and there was nothing I could do about it. I simply had no legs.

Thankfully, I have a lot of experience with this race. Despite feeling no strength, I knew I'd be fine if I just kept pedaling all the sections that needed pedaling and only focused on one section at a time. So first things first was getting through the 10 switchbacks to the A-Frame turn on upper Columbine. It took longer than usual, but I kept a steady snail's-pace and got there at about 4:55. By then I was ready for a little hiking and the inevitable leg cramps that would hit when I next tried to pedal. Of course that happened exactly as anticipated. I chomped on some S-Caps, massaged the legs, and just kept hiking. I was surprised/not surprised by the difference in hiking speeds at an 11-hour pace versus even a 10-hour pace. Everyone was climbing the conga line in hypoxic slow motion. 

A dude descending on the left crashed hard in the rocks right next to me as I ascended the steep S turns. He pretended to be ok, but embarrassment, pride and adrenalin will often mask the injury and pain in the moments right after a crash. That one was going to leave a mark.

I finally reached the top at 5 hours and 40 minutes. By comparison, this was a good hour and ten minutes slower than my sub-9 years and even a few minutes slower than my first LT100 in 2007. Since I was in no hurry, I spent a few minutes at the aid station chugging some Coke and eating some salt-laced watermelon. After thanking the volunteers, I began the ride down.

A few minutes into the descent, I passed my buddy Mike "Fitz" Fitzgerald as he was finishing his ascent. Fitz is a fraternity brother of mine from Colgate who I had goaded into doing Leadville this year. He had never done anything like this before and he took the challenge seriously by religiously following all of my training advice since December . . . advice that I obviously didn't follow myself this year. I gave him a shout of encouragement and continued the descent.

After witnessing the crash on my hike up, I decided to play the descent safe and picked my way down the top section at a moderate speed. However, clouds were amassing above and I started to feel a few raindrops, so I put on the afterburners once I hit the smoother gravel as I wanted to get off this mountain before the heavens opened.

I arrived back at Twin Lakes at 6:25 and rolled into the First Descents aid station without much urgency. Ray Shedd was blasting some great tunes, Lisa and Kevin attended to my nutrition and hydration needs, and I enjoyed just hanging still for a few minutes before starting the arduous trek home. My legs were dead weights, but I had enough experience to know that I could just muddle through the last 45 miles at granny pace in about 4 and half hours (as long as I didn't stop). 

Nothing much to say about the return through Pipeline. Was glad to not have to do the singletrack and the hike up "Little Stinker" thanks to a 2021 course change. Was also glad that we had some cloud-cover instead of the usual baking heat that hits this section in the afternoon. 

I arrived at Pipeline Aid at about 7:40 and indulged in more Coke and watermelon. I don't usually stop at this aid station, but what the hell. 

By now the winds had picked up and we had the usual howling gale from Pipeline Aid to the base of Powerline. As an experiment, I actually put aero-bars on my bike for this year's race, primarily for this section of wind. I was pretty happy with this decision as it was nice to be able to put the forearms down to plow a bit more comfortably through the breeze. At this point I was spinning in my easiest gear at a laughably low speed without any thought or care as to finish time. Then . . .

About a mile before Fish Hatchery, a line of riders passed me and among the riders was Fitz. Wow. As slow as I was going, I was still a bit surprised that he had caught me. For the first time the entire day, my competitive juices and foolish pride were activated and I picked up the pace and caught him. Also for the first time all day, I made a finish calculation and determined that a sub-11 hour finish was doable. 

Fitz and I started up Powerline together and hiked up the Powerline Wall side by side. I was pretty excited to see my buddy Matt Delaney about halfway up the hike as he was acting as race cheerleader for all of the hurting racers. I give him a quick fist-bump and he escorted us up about 100 feet.

The rest of Powerline consisted of a combination of riding and hiking. Unfortunately, each steep incline triggered leg cramps . . . and I had to jump off the bike and push. Regardless, we never stopped moving and we crested the summit at 9 hours and 10 minutes. At this point, I turned to Fitz and said "I'm going to get you in with a 10 next to your name, so just stay with me." Fitz said "don't worry about me, go on ahead." I said "fuck that, STAY WITH ME!"

We bombed down Sugarloaf, Hagerman's and the pavement and started up the St Kevin's pavement climb at 9:25. We passed a handful of racers on the way up and were also met with a minor rain shower that felt great. I pushed ahead a few times, but Fitz stuck with me and we hit Carter Aid Station at 9:50.

More Cokes, more watermelon, a little bit of stalling, and then we were off for the homestretch. More cramps forced me off the bike on a couple of the last steep punchy climbs and then we enjoyed a last fast descent down St Kevins and a pleasant jaunt through the valley, arriving at Leadville Junction at 10:25.  From here, I knew it was 22-25 minutes to the finish and that we would comfortably come in under 11 hours.

The Boulevard seemed to go on forever, but we finally made the last right turn onto 6th street at 10:45, where Fitz moved ahead a bit up "Fuck You Hill," the final pitch. I caught him at the top and we rode the final mile side by side, crossing the finish line together at 10:49 (Fitz actually started 5 minutes behind me, so his chip time was 10:44). Got the big hug from Merilee, a finishing medal was dropped over my head, and my 15th buckle was handed to me in a little white box.

All in all, the race went exactly as I expected. I realistically pegged a 10:45 finish during the week leading up to the race as I knew I really wasn't in shape to go any faster. The one thing that occurred to me over the last 40 miles was that I ultimately made a pretty cagey trade. My normal training for the year would have required an additional 100+ hours in the saddle and the result would have been a Leadville time that was 45-60 minutes faster. So my only penalty for not riding those extra 100+ hours was an extra hour of cramp-filled suffering on race-day. Totally worth it. I now know that if 2023 comes along and I have the same lack of motivation to train as I had this year, I can pretty much mail it in and still get a buckle. Then again, maybe I'll rediscover the fire and get faster at 55. 

What is really hard to believe is that I have now done 15 of these things. I really thought I was one and done back in 2007.  What an addiction. I had many moments during the race when I thought about all those people that made an impact on this 15-year run. It obviously starts with Allan Goldberg. If he didn't challenge me to do this in 2006, I never would have contemplated it. Then there is my wife Lisa and my daughters, who have all been so supportive and encouraging through the years. I thought several times during the race about my friend and unofficial mentor, Art Fleming. During training rides for my first LT100 in 2007, it was Art who not only gave me endless advice, but also instilled me with confidence that I could succeed at this race. Finally, I thought of all my buddies who had taken the bait and joined me in this race over the years - Dean Gregory, John Wontrobski, Kevin Kane, Gary Morris, David Flyer, Neil Markus, Dave Gonzales, Ben Teller, Mike Fitzgerald, Brad Ludden, Ryan O'Donoghue, Matt Hayne and Kelly Hoffman. The march to 2000 miles continues.