It was cold when I woke up this morning at 8 am.  And Leadville had already been going on for nearly 1 1/2 hours at 1500 ft. higher elevation.  I’m not sure what the temperature was this morning for the start, but it had to be in the 30’s I’d guess.

Today’s Leadville race is going to be interesting.  To spectate.  I am pretty happy that my interest in riding today is minimal.  If someone would have called me a couple days ago and said they had a slot for me to race, I might have said yes, but that would have been just for the life experience.  I’m not fit enough to go fast enough for my liking, so it would have been just for fun.  I might have beaten my last’s year time, but I was pitiful there last year, so that would be that hard of a thing to do.

There are some road pros coming here this year.  Joe Dombrowski, specifically ,is interesting.  He won the Tour of Utah last year and is a competent MTB racer.   He is an incredible climber. I’d be very surprised if he won the race today, though.  The Ergon Team has too many cards to play.

Here’s an interview with Jeremiah Bishop talking about the extents that he is going to try to go faster.  Aero bars, taping up the helmets, bending numbers to act as a fairing.  I’m not really sure any of those things would help me much, but I guess every second counts, somewhat.

They are interested in lowering the under 6 hour mark.  There aren’t any prizes here, so it is just bragging rights.  I don’t think that there really should be course records for MTB races.  The course conditions are always so variable, sometimes not even the same course, so winning the race is the goal, not trying to one-up someone from year’s past.

I have a few friends riding today, so am heading over to Leadville.  I won’t be there for the first guys finishing, which should be around 12:30, which is 6 hours.  I’ll be there closer to 8 hours when my guys should be starting to roll in.  I am probably just going to ride there.   It is around 40 miles from Silverthorne to Leadville, through Copper Mountain, then over Fremont Pass.  It is a nice ride.

Jeremiah Bishop leading the field out last year. You can just see my helmet, but my team mate Brian Jensen is in full view on the left.

Pre-riding Leadville some yesterday with the Eriksen’s and Vincent.

Tucker and Trudi this morning.

Yesterday I rode over to the finish of Leadville, mostly on trails.  It seemed like when I was over 11,000 feet, really over 12K, I wasn’t so good.  There wasn’t much difference between race pace and stay-on-your-bike pace.  When I started descending, I wasn’t close to being in control. I was dizzy.    I was off-balance and kept hitting the edge of the trail.  When I got a couple thousand feet lower, I was much better. If you want to get a little dizzy, watch some of the video I made of the descent off Kokomo Pass I made yesterday.  I was using my Shimano camera mounted on a BarFly Garmin mount.   I wouldn’t watch the whole thing, there is no reason to.  I’d start around 6 minutes in, it starts getting a little more rocky there.   It looks super fast speed, but in reality it is just regular speed.  It was much, much steeper than the video shows.

The front of my bike looks pretty busy with all the cables.

How about this save at the Olympic Games by Laurine Van Riessen, of the Netherlands. Pretty good stuff. Article here.

Here is a video from a couple days ago of Vincent and Lisa on a tandem riding the Peaks Trail from Breckenridge to Frisco.  Skip the start, it gets good about 1 minute in.  They were hauling ass on a tandem.  I could follow them pretty easily, but you couldn’t have paid me enough to be on the back of it.  Lisa doesn’t really ride, so she is too green to understand the danger.  I think I had the fps set too fast, so the quality isn’t that great.

Tucker exploring around outside of Leadville.