I’ve slept most of the day, besides the few minutes when I
was awake and eating, so I thought I’d post up my race report while it’s still
painfully fresh. Sadly, there will be no
pictures to accompany as I lost my camera somewhere on day 2. This was after
losing my sunglasses on day 1. It wasn’t until losing my knife on day 3 that I
would institute a strict, 2-part, sit-you-ass-in-one-place &
double-zipper-check break policy that would stem the tide of strewing my gear
all over southern Colorado.
Day 1:
As a rookie, I had no idea what to expect, so I took a very
conservative start. So conservative that I think I was the very last person to
enter the singletrack at Junction. I’m in decent shape, but looking at my
fellow competitors at Carver’s, it seemed like I was the fattest dude in the
race. I wanted to ride my own tortoise-like pace at the start.
For awhile nothing significant happened until I was hiking
up the talus slope on Kennebec Pass. Three day riders were descending quickly
towards me when #2 went flying OTB and his bike started tumbling 40-50 feet
down the side of the pass. I motioned for the 1st rider to stop so I
could tell him what happened to his buddy. He looked back and seemed annoyed,
then said, “we’re on a tour, he looks ok (from a 200 yard diagnosis,) the guide
is getting his bike, I’m gonna keep going.”
I’m very happy that the CTR racers I met have a higher
ethics when it comes to the well being of our fellow competitors.
OK, carried on to Indian Ridge amid some cloud-rumbling but
no big epic blasts yet. The tension was building as the rumbling grew louder so
I was moving across with urgency. Finally from the saddle between my final
ridge and relative safety I witnessed the simultaneous flash-bang of a
cloud-to-ground strike right on my last ridge before me. I threw my bike to the
ground and grabbed my warm clothes and started running off the side of the
trail. I was cliffed-out before I could reach thick forest so I hovered in some
bushes rather than the isolated patches of trees. The hail came down in
buckets. By the time it was done there was about three inches covering the
ground! With the sky still scary, but the rumblings less intense, I made a break
for it (thus losing my sunglasses) and
got back to my bike just as Mark Caminiti, Bec & Mike, and a few others
were crawling out of their hiding spots too.
So I managed to put myself right into the one huge
experience I intended to avoid during the CTR, an intense lightning experience,
just a few hours into Day 1.
It took some time to get warm and recover from that, but I
had to get some miles in so I pushed pretty late until crashing about midnight
at Celebration Lake.
Day 2:
I woke up at 6:30am
and my junk was strewn everywhere. I have no idea why I had to unpack
everything the night before, but I remember it was 8:06am before I was back to
riding on the trail. (I learned a lot to go faster IFFFFFF I ever do this
again, so…) BIG-IF LESSON #1: Have your kit organized and ready to leave right
when you wake up before sleeping.
I felt pretty crummy as I got going. This would become the
pattern as I typically had rough morning and would come around and ride stronger
in the early evening into night.
Not far out of Bolam Pass I met Bob Butrico for the first
time. He explained that he had slept the night in a rodent-infested miner’s
cabin that had looked enticing in his bleery state. I made a mental note to
avoid miner’s cabins no matter how enticing. I stopped to take some pictures
and he was gone until we would meet again late the next day.
Day 2 was teaching me how friggin’ hard this thing is. I
pushed hard over Rolling Mountain Pass to try and avoid any more lighting and
was pretty much toast until I finally reached the once mythical town called
Silverton.
I didn’t know it at the time, but something good happened to
me in Silverton. I ate tons of solid calories and started pushing towards Stony
Pass at 4pm. I put on the IPOD and motored up that thing in just over three
hours with daylight and energy to spare. I was serenaded by hundreds of
baaaahing sheep high on the mountains above me and I stopped and cooked a hot
pasta/tuna dinner and had some coffee just as dusk fell.
I put on the lights and the magic happened. I had one of the
greatest nights of my life pushing and riding across Cataract. I saw some
lights far in front of me, and after awhile I eventually caught up to Cullen
Barker who seemed stoked to talk with someone while he was cramming some kind
of food down his face. We would ride together all the way to the base of Coney
at 2am where we would finally lay down and shiver until daylight.
Day 3:
Since I had “slept” wedged on a slope against a tree I was
more than eager to get going on day 3. Cullen looked like he had found an
equally crappy place to rest so he was up and moving pretty soon too. As I got
higher up Coney, I noticed a decent little string of folks heading up. And as I
reached the singletrack segment, two of them started riding their bikes! I
thought of how fun that must be as I slogged my 50-pound sidecar to the top. So
Ffej & Dax reached the top just as I did. We would spend the next 4 days
hop-skotching each other all the way to the finish.
Alas, some amazing riding after Coney summit! Some hideous
HAB, but I was numb to that by now. I do think they should declare that little
knob called Jarosa Mesa a Wilderness Area – I mean, where else can you find all
those gigantic stupid rocks. Big beautiful gigantic stupid rocks – Hidden Gems
for sure!
At Spring Creek Pass the construction flagman told me he
wouldn’t get water out of the creek there after what the cows had been doing to
it all day. So instead, I went down the road a mile or two and got water out of
the next cow-crap creek I could find rather than be judged by him.
I flew down the La Garita Detour hill for a few miles, but I
was in bad shape after the late night and no sleep so I found a cool spot next
to the river and took a 2-hour food and rest break. It was here that I learned
BIG-IF LESSON #2: About every 5 hours I needed to stop for an extended food and
rest break or my riding/pushing just was not productive. I was starting to
learn how to nurse my body through the race and this would pay big dividends.
I finished out the detour as dusk fell, but with little rest
from the night before I became very sleepy. Not far past Apple’s I turned down
for my longest sleep of the race: 9 hours from 9:30pm to 6:30am.
Day 4:
I wish that my big sleep had turned me into a raging bull,
but I was hurting and dragging as I started the relatively easy Cochetopa
Hills.
I passed a lady camping who had lost her sandal and she
offered to pay me if I saw it and would bring it back. I felt a tiny touch of
compassion, but I had already lost my sunglasses, camera, and knife, so the
damn sandal better be close. I did see it later just before the section ended,
but without having negotiated rates beforehand I trusted she could make due.
THE LOW POINT:
Oh the march to Sargeant’s Mesa. The Anti-flow as Stefan
terms it… or my Vaccination Point as Toby Gadd described…. Mark Caminiti said
that if I was going to finish that I would become “hardened” at some point.
Well marching towards Sargeant’s Mesa is where that happened.
While the mileage/topographical information looked easy, the
trail was so sucky as to need its own adjective. HABing downhill on easily
rideable slopes was tough. So I just kept pushing and finally it was over.
And after miles of trudging through deep forest, when I reaching Sargeants proper and the tremendous views of the Crest opened up before me, I remember to embrace the beauty. And flying down the trail with my Yeti SB-66C doing what it was born for, I had so much fun again.
Hit Tank 7 at dusk, made another warm meal of rice and tuna,
coffee, and pushed happily up some torn up moto-trail for a bivy at Marshall
Pass.
Day 5:
I was riding towards the Crest and Fooses by 5:30am, my
earliest departure of any day during the race. I could smell a good meal in
Buena Vista from 65 miles away. I got a quick shock when I rolled around a
blind corner and almost had a head-on collision with SOBO MikeD. He seemed as
surprised as I was. I mentioned my goal of reaching BV, and he said something
about damn, that is far it took me forever, and I was like yeah, but you had to
HIKE UP FOOSES.
So I’m sure I had way more fun on Fooses than Mike did.
I still wasn’t sure I could make BV though. I knew I still
had two 20-mile trail sections before getting there. From my experience so far,
20 miles = 7 hours. But lo and behold, the trail got easier at highway 50 and I
could ride my bike a lot more. My equations and expectations began to change
and 20 miles became more like 4-5 hours instead of half a day
I was talking to the trail like it was a living entity
during this section, thanking it and encouraging it to continue giving up some
miles.
By 8pm I had a shower and a warm bed right next door to the
City Market and I began to think about the finish for the first time. All
self-doubt was gone. As long as nothing catastrophic happened to my bike, I
knew I was going to finish.
Day 6:
Slept like a baby and woke up at 5am to get the bike ready.
Hit the City Market for enough goods to skip Leadville and get to Copper and
was back on the trail by 6:45am. The trail section from BV to Tennessee Pass was
the last part I had not ridden until the Platte River, but the CT was still
giving up some easy miles and for me anyways, I smoked it.
I was worried about the weather for an evening crossing of
Kokomo/Searle, so I pushed myself very hard to reach Camp Hale. I figured I
could rest in an ammunition bunker through any bad weather and do a night
crossing if necessary. It wasn’t necessary though as the weather cleared out
beautifully in the afternoon as I hiked up Kokomo.
My effort level would punish me though. I hoped to get over
with some daylight to spare, but I had to use the lights for the whole way
across to Searle and down to Copper. I had a soul-crushing descent down Searle and traverse of Copper. I’ve ridden that descent
probably about 8 other times on day rides, but I crashed a couple times on wet
roots before forcing myself into a survival mode to get down.
And let’s not even talk about the most pointless set of
switchbacks through the south end of Copper Mountain. Whoever thought that
turning a half-mile crow fly into 3 miles of climb over a golf course and lift
tower needs to have their head examined.
Cursed my way down to Conoco and slept right outside and
dreamed of crushing donuts when they opened in the morning.
Day 7:
Yay, I’m awake, how bout I hike over the Tenmile Range!
I’ve done it several ill-advised times before and it sucks
every time, but it still sucked the most this time. The only positive was that
I was happy to be doing it in the morning. And I knew it was the only insanely
hideous thing left on the course, so just getting it over with gave me a
positive attitude.
By now racers were spaced out so far that every random hiker
I encountered had to quiz me on just what the hell I was doing carrying my bike
with all that gear. I got better with my punchline delivery, “well, we started
this thing called the CTR in Durango on Sunday” and it was funny to watch their
jaw drop when their brain began to process it. Then I would tell them that I
was a mid-pack schmuck and there were people chilling on their couch that
finished a couple days ago already. They didn’t appreciate the amazement of
that as much as I did, and it kindof depressed me, so later I just let them
think I was winning or whatever they wanted.
Clouds were building and the rain began falling as I was
climbing Westridge. I kept fighting because I wanted over Georgia Pass with
daylight to spare for the descent. I crossed over about 7:00pm and it was
pouring buckets. I couldn’t have cared less. I was seizing the remaining
daylight to get as far as I could to Kenosha. At the bottom of the big descent
I had to put on the lights, but I kept going as my only strategy to stay warm.
Finally I reached Kenosha Pass about 9pm and I knew I would be staying there that night. I had hoped I’d find a huge CDOT backhoe or something to sleep under, but instead I settled for the dry awning aside the Men’s Room.
Day 8:
It continued to pour rain all night.
I awoke when an older fellow needed to take a crap.
I apologized for my current state, but he kindly told me not
to worry and he understood that I needed to be dry. Once he came back out he
asked how far I had to go and when I said “Denver,” he replied that the weather
forecast was rough, but that it wasn’t too far so I should be ok.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him or myself about the
Tarryall detour.
I knew the math: 118 miles from Kenosha to the FINISH. It
seemed oddly close and far at the same time. There was this road thing, with a
lot of downhill, but also a ton of disturbing seismic eruptions to the
elevation profile towards the end. So like every other day, I just started
pedaling and would let the details sort themselves out later.
I ran into the Pat, Ffej, and Dax at the Stagestop Saloon,
and thanked my lucky stars for coffee, warm food, companionship, hospitality,
and the ability to dry my socks and gloves in the dryer. Pat deserves some kind
of official trail angel status. I walked in the store expecting him to follow
me in and track my devouring, but instead he just told me to go in and get
whatever I needed and we would settle up at the end. Dude wanted to chill on
the porch. That’s the first time I’ve ever bought tons of stuff at a store and
then had to point at the trashcan and fifteen empty wrappers to show the clerk
all the other stuff I had to pay for.
I didn’t hate the Tarryall Detour. I did go through it on
Sunday so I didn’t have to deal with any penalty-box issues like others did
though. I voted for it and I probably would again. It rained on me through the
burn area, and that wasn’t great, but I suspect a searing sun would be worse.
The finish was pulling me in like a magnet.
Ffej and Dax through down the mojo and once I saw them
crossing a ridgeline high above me I knew I’d seen them for the last time.
Finally I was down to 40 miles of singletrack. It was 7:15pm
when I was crossing through Buffalo Creek. After an initial blissful descent, I
found myself walking much more than I would have liked. The finish kept me positive
though.
I reached section 2 and my spirits took another positive
leap forward. 28 miles left with a huge net descent and a clean flowing trail.
11:00 pm and I hit the Platte.
For this final section, I was ready to embrace the hike. It
just seemed a fitting end to such a trek. My drivetrain sounded suspicious
anyways so I didn’t want to break something so close to the end, so I started
out just hiking.
As every mile passed my energy and spirits increased. Even
after 100+ miles on the day I was starting to charge up slopes that I would
have never considered a few days before.
One final HAB over Lenny’s rest stop and then it happened… BAM!
I was on a road. It was gonna be over.
2:15am and there was not a soul at the finish, but that
seemed appropriate for some reason. I gave myself a big fist-pump, got out my
sleeping bag and went to bed.
7 days, 22 hours, and 15 minutes.
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