Leadville for me wasn't a fun race this year, and I wasn't really looking forward to SM100. Actually, during the Leadville race it had crossed my mind that just maybe my registration would get lost in the mail and I wouldn't have to do it. I was fried from too much training, tough races, and just not really having fun on the bike. SM100 was not fun for me last year, so why do it again? As the race got closer, I modified my goals a little and with that, got a little more excited for the race. My goals this year were:
1) Slow it down a bit the first half of the race so that just maybe I could enjoy the experience. In the past I work so hard right from the start that the races become such a sufferfest that none of the race is enjoyable.
2) Improve my time from last year. I don't care if it's only 5 minutes. Go out a bit easier, don't bonk, keep consistent, and I should do ok.
Well, what do you know. I enjoyed the race, AND beat last year's time by 56 minutes.
Some factors that made this a good race were:
1) I had a fully functioning front brake, unlike last year
2) Weather conditions were perfect. Cool, overcast, dry.
3) Took rests at aid station
4) Didn't overdo it early in the race, or stay above Lactic Threshold for long, and used some of the road sections to rest
5) Bagged the perfectly scientifically calculated nutrition formula in favor of skittles, m&m's, twizzlers, cola, pb&j, and Red Bull
So here's how the race went down
The Start
Unlike Leadville, SM100 is a real low-key start. The race begins at 6:30am, but people don't really start lining up until 6:15. I found a spot off to the side where I could poke in. It wasn't a great start. Maybe 300th position. But who cares. There's plenty of time to make up ground in this race. I kept with the flow, doing my thing, taking it easy at the start. Then i see a couple people forming a little draft line and skimming by the left side, whizzing by people. Hot damn. Opportunity knocking. Like an involuntary response, I become the third man in the line and before i know it im being pulled close to the front of the swarm of riders. The first hill comes, and draft lines are no good any more. Last year I was redlining hard here. This time I took it easier and kept a strong but manageable pace, which was pretty much what I maintained through the entire race.
Aid 2 - 31 miles
It took a while to get to Aid Station 2. Probably 3 hours. I didn't have pre-dropped nutrition until Aid 3. No worries. I filled up on the aid station supplied Heed, grabbed a pb&j, and was back off on my merry way. While I was at the aid station I saw Jody come and go. He was definitely on a mission, very focused, and had a terrific race. There was one thing notable coming to Aid 2. There was a somewhat long section of road and I was really surprised to see a nice group of 6 or 7 people in a draft line. I hopped on it and we all took turns taking a pull. It worked out really nice, allowed us to keep up good speed, and I hoped that I would see more of this throughout the race. Mountain Bikers often don't know what the draft line is, and don't realize that 20+% of your energy can be conserved by riding right on someone's wheel. This allows riders to take turns in front and the one behind to save energy. Overall, with this strategy, you can push your average speed much faster. I was glad to see riders have gotten smarter.
Aid 3 - 45 miles
I didn't get to Aid Station 3 until about 4.5 hours into the race. Here is where I had a drop bag containing my powerbar formula, some shot bloks, and extra S-cap electrolyte pills. I let a volunteer lube the chain and i filled my camelbak. There's now something like a 6 to 10 mile road ride, followed by a brutal climb. It's pretty critical here to form a draft line so you can keep up your speed while also being able to rest for what many people consider a very difficult climb. No such luck. I was in no man's land. There was nobody to draft. People I passed had no inclination to try to draft to conserve energy. As a result, I had to ratchet down the speed to conserve energy. There was still a long race to go and I especially needed the energy for the very difficult last 25 miles. There is a mountain climb and descent between aid 3 and aid 4 that is very tough. Actually, last year I thought this was downright brutal. The singletrack begins with a portage up a steep rock ledge. Once rideable again, the trail becomes a very thin rocky shelf along a mountain ridge, which winds steeply upwards. It becomes a real challenge to keep momentum up the steep incline, navigate the rocks, and keep from meandering off the ledge. For this reason last year most of the people I saw walked a large portion of this climb. This year i walked very little. I kept a slow steady pace, and with surgical precision sliced lines through the rocks as I slowly ascended to the top. I actually, dare I say, enjoyed, the climb. The descent similarly was a narrow shelf. It was not very rocky or steep, which gave a false sense of safety down the narrow shelf. For this reason many people unexpectedly crash on this section. About halfway down, I was going a bit faster than I should have been and was more fatigued than I realized. I hit a bump wrong and while steeply descending, began to endo forward over the handlebars and off the side of the ledge. Lots of bad things can happen here. I have enough speed and am falling far enough down the ledge that serious injury is possible. While airborn, I'm pretty sure that a large tree will break my fall. Miraculously, I fall into a web of vines. I'm about 8 feet down off the trail. My bike is above me tangled in the vines. My feet are above my head and similarly tangled. It takes me a couple minute to un-web myself and the bike, but we're both perfectly fine.
Aid 4 - 57 miles
I do my typical poking around the aid station. I add a bit of HEED to my camelbak, and leave with a cup of skittles. This is where the second half of the race starts. This is the part of the race where I need to make up time. I've been conserving energy at the start so that I can push it at the back end of the race. We begin the 25 mile climb. A rider next to me says, "here begins the soul crusher". I answer back to him, "actually, this is my favorite part of the race." In a few minutes he's lost in the background. This section begins a gradual 25 mile 2000+ ascent. This is what I train for. 2000' in 25 miles is easy for me. Most mountain bikers are used to short steep climbs. They don't know how to handle the burn of a climb that lasts two hours. Their brains gives them signals of pain and horror once the grade increases after an hour of climbing. The first 15 miles or more has a very small grade, so a draft line would be helpful. My speed is enough that wind resistance is a factor. I push forward, but there is nobody to draft. I pass a few people. I pass them at a pace where I would be moving too slow to draft them, but not fast enough where they cannot latch onto my wheel, gaining a few extra mph at their same effort. For 20 miles 3 people hug my wheel. I try go get them to share in the work by slowing down, but they slow with me. I slow to a near crawl, reach into my pack and start eating packets of Cliff Shot Bloks, aimlessly meandering in S's accross the road. They slow with me and follow my every move. They are zombified and desperate, and have invested fully in me. Clearly they cannot maintain my pace unaided, so they silently parasite off of me. Asking them to share in the effort would be futile. After 20 miles, the road turns right and gets steep. Have the drafters feigned weakness? Are they going to use all of this conserved energy to rocket past me on the steeps? As the road gets steeper, wind is no longer a factor. There is no longer any benefit to the draft, and the only thing propelling them forward is pure leg strength. Within only a few minutes, all of the wheel suckers drop out of sight behind me. This of course gives me great gratification. Aid 5 is farther than I thought. I'm starting to suffer a bit. There has to be some suffering, right? I get there. I take a little break. I replenish my nutrition. I fill my bottle with Red Bull to add an extra kick for the last 25 miles.
Aid 5 - 75 miles
Leaving Aid 5 was where the bonk started last year. The next 800 feet of climbing was a nasty energy sapping muddy slog. I mistakenly thought the last 25 miles was easy street. I was sorely mistaken. This year I knew better and tamed my expectations for the rest of the course. I had no goal to rocketh through this next section or anything. Just to stay on the bike and keep it steady and consistent. I was able to handle that. No problem
Aid 6 - 88 miles
There is about 2000 feet of rocky descent coming down to Aid 6. You kind of come down a ridge and then turn right to come off the mountain. It's real rocky, with some surprise sections of short very steep climbs. On my carbon fiber hardtail i get bounced around real hard. My super light carbon brakes don't work very well on this extreme of terrain either. They stop, but my wrists are definitely burning from pumping the brake handles, and that 'stop on a dime hydraulic brake action' isn't exactly what I get. It just means that descending requires a good deal of effort. I come out to the road and to Aid 6. Supposedly the leaders can do this section in an hour. If I can do it in under an hour and a half I can beat 10 hours. Wow, this is an unexpected and pleasant realization. My goal was to beat my last year's time of 10:47. At the beginning of this race I completely ruled out trying to shave off 47 minutes, for the sake of having a 'fun' race. Well, at Aid 6, I am feeling EXACTLY as I hoped I would feel. Strong. Relatively speaking of course. I mean.. come on, I've been riding for 88 hard miles and 8.5 hours. That leaves 12 miles to go. There is one short road climb and a pretty long fire road climb. Last year at this time I was battered and praying for an end.. soon. This time I felt that the benefit of taking a more modest pace throughout the race was that I'll have energy at the end to push it hard to the finish. With only a little over an hour left, suffering is the name of the game. I crank up the pace and I'm off. Every rider I see in front of me quickly vanishes out of sight behind me and I motor along like a tank up the climbs. I rip down the descents as fast as I can while still maintaining control. I've only done this race once before and I can't remember exactly when the final descent to the finish begins. I keep hoping it's right around the corner, but my watch keeps telling me I have a little ways to go. I get to a jeep road that winds gently up and down hills. I forget whether this road is long or not. I'm ten minutes from sub-10. I don't want to lose out by lolligagging here. So I drive forward on this section with an out-of-the-seat effort. Soon I see the arrows pointing towards nicely groomed single track. It's like the gateway to the heavens. I know that in just a short moment i'm going to hear cheering and see the first tents of the campground that marks the finish line.
The Finish
The finish of this race is awe inspiring. Once you see the first tent, yellow tape guides you through the campground. It is an unbelievable feeling as I reach civilization and hear people cheering. All of the sudden I'm in the grass field, still catapulting forward from the momentum of the downhill that I just came off of, and I'm inside the yellow tape in a victory lap to the finish. During this 15 second moment, I'm trying to absorb my surroundings, and the whirl of emotion that surrounds getting to this point. I stomp on the pedals to finish strong, but I wish I can do it again, only slower, so I can enjoy the moment for longer. This final 15 seconds is really the most amazing part of the race, and you'll never understand it unless you do it. All 100 miles of it.
1) Slow it down a bit the first half of the race so that just maybe I could enjoy the experience. In the past I work so hard right from the start that the races become such a sufferfest that none of the race is enjoyable.
2) Improve my time from last year. I don't care if it's only 5 minutes. Go out a bit easier, don't bonk, keep consistent, and I should do ok.
Well, what do you know. I enjoyed the race, AND beat last year's time by 56 minutes.
Some factors that made this a good race were:
1) I had a fully functioning front brake, unlike last year
2) Weather conditions were perfect. Cool, overcast, dry.
3) Took rests at aid station
4) Didn't overdo it early in the race, or stay above Lactic Threshold for long, and used some of the road sections to rest
5) Bagged the perfectly scientifically calculated nutrition formula in favor of skittles, m&m's, twizzlers, cola, pb&j, and Red Bull
So here's how the race went down
The Start
Unlike Leadville, SM100 is a real low-key start. The race begins at 6:30am, but people don't really start lining up until 6:15. I found a spot off to the side where I could poke in. It wasn't a great start. Maybe 300th position. But who cares. There's plenty of time to make up ground in this race. I kept with the flow, doing my thing, taking it easy at the start. Then i see a couple people forming a little draft line and skimming by the left side, whizzing by people. Hot damn. Opportunity knocking. Like an involuntary response, I become the third man in the line and before i know it im being pulled close to the front of the swarm of riders. The first hill comes, and draft lines are no good any more. Last year I was redlining hard here. This time I took it easier and kept a strong but manageable pace, which was pretty much what I maintained through the entire race.
Aid 2 - 31 miles
It took a while to get to Aid Station 2. Probably 3 hours. I didn't have pre-dropped nutrition until Aid 3. No worries. I filled up on the aid station supplied Heed, grabbed a pb&j, and was back off on my merry way. While I was at the aid station I saw Jody come and go. He was definitely on a mission, very focused, and had a terrific race. There was one thing notable coming to Aid 2. There was a somewhat long section of road and I was really surprised to see a nice group of 6 or 7 people in a draft line. I hopped on it and we all took turns taking a pull. It worked out really nice, allowed us to keep up good speed, and I hoped that I would see more of this throughout the race. Mountain Bikers often don't know what the draft line is, and don't realize that 20+% of your energy can be conserved by riding right on someone's wheel. This allows riders to take turns in front and the one behind to save energy. Overall, with this strategy, you can push your average speed much faster. I was glad to see riders have gotten smarter.
Aid 3 - 45 miles
I didn't get to Aid Station 3 until about 4.5 hours into the race. Here is where I had a drop bag containing my powerbar formula, some shot bloks, and extra S-cap electrolyte pills. I let a volunteer lube the chain and i filled my camelbak. There's now something like a 6 to 10 mile road ride, followed by a brutal climb. It's pretty critical here to form a draft line so you can keep up your speed while also being able to rest for what many people consider a very difficult climb. No such luck. I was in no man's land. There was nobody to draft. People I passed had no inclination to try to draft to conserve energy. As a result, I had to ratchet down the speed to conserve energy. There was still a long race to go and I especially needed the energy for the very difficult last 25 miles. There is a mountain climb and descent between aid 3 and aid 4 that is very tough. Actually, last year I thought this was downright brutal. The singletrack begins with a portage up a steep rock ledge. Once rideable again, the trail becomes a very thin rocky shelf along a mountain ridge, which winds steeply upwards. It becomes a real challenge to keep momentum up the steep incline, navigate the rocks, and keep from meandering off the ledge. For this reason last year most of the people I saw walked a large portion of this climb. This year i walked very little. I kept a slow steady pace, and with surgical precision sliced lines through the rocks as I slowly ascended to the top. I actually, dare I say, enjoyed, the climb. The descent similarly was a narrow shelf. It was not very rocky or steep, which gave a false sense of safety down the narrow shelf. For this reason many people unexpectedly crash on this section. About halfway down, I was going a bit faster than I should have been and was more fatigued than I realized. I hit a bump wrong and while steeply descending, began to endo forward over the handlebars and off the side of the ledge. Lots of bad things can happen here. I have enough speed and am falling far enough down the ledge that serious injury is possible. While airborn, I'm pretty sure that a large tree will break my fall. Miraculously, I fall into a web of vines. I'm about 8 feet down off the trail. My bike is above me tangled in the vines. My feet are above my head and similarly tangled. It takes me a couple minute to un-web myself and the bike, but we're both perfectly fine.
Aid 4 - 57 miles
I do my typical poking around the aid station. I add a bit of HEED to my camelbak, and leave with a cup of skittles. This is where the second half of the race starts. This is the part of the race where I need to make up time. I've been conserving energy at the start so that I can push it at the back end of the race. We begin the 25 mile climb. A rider next to me says, "here begins the soul crusher". I answer back to him, "actually, this is my favorite part of the race." In a few minutes he's lost in the background. This section begins a gradual 25 mile 2000+ ascent. This is what I train for. 2000' in 25 miles is easy for me. Most mountain bikers are used to short steep climbs. They don't know how to handle the burn of a climb that lasts two hours. Their brains gives them signals of pain and horror once the grade increases after an hour of climbing. The first 15 miles or more has a very small grade, so a draft line would be helpful. My speed is enough that wind resistance is a factor. I push forward, but there is nobody to draft. I pass a few people. I pass them at a pace where I would be moving too slow to draft them, but not fast enough where they cannot latch onto my wheel, gaining a few extra mph at their same effort. For 20 miles 3 people hug my wheel. I try go get them to share in the work by slowing down, but they slow with me. I slow to a near crawl, reach into my pack and start eating packets of Cliff Shot Bloks, aimlessly meandering in S's accross the road. They slow with me and follow my every move. They are zombified and desperate, and have invested fully in me. Clearly they cannot maintain my pace unaided, so they silently parasite off of me. Asking them to share in the effort would be futile. After 20 miles, the road turns right and gets steep. Have the drafters feigned weakness? Are they going to use all of this conserved energy to rocket past me on the steeps? As the road gets steeper, wind is no longer a factor. There is no longer any benefit to the draft, and the only thing propelling them forward is pure leg strength. Within only a few minutes, all of the wheel suckers drop out of sight behind me. This of course gives me great gratification. Aid 5 is farther than I thought. I'm starting to suffer a bit. There has to be some suffering, right? I get there. I take a little break. I replenish my nutrition. I fill my bottle with Red Bull to add an extra kick for the last 25 miles.
Aid 5 - 75 miles
Leaving Aid 5 was where the bonk started last year. The next 800 feet of climbing was a nasty energy sapping muddy slog. I mistakenly thought the last 25 miles was easy street. I was sorely mistaken. This year I knew better and tamed my expectations for the rest of the course. I had no goal to rocketh through this next section or anything. Just to stay on the bike and keep it steady and consistent. I was able to handle that. No problem
Aid 6 - 88 miles
There is about 2000 feet of rocky descent coming down to Aid 6. You kind of come down a ridge and then turn right to come off the mountain. It's real rocky, with some surprise sections of short very steep climbs. On my carbon fiber hardtail i get bounced around real hard. My super light carbon brakes don't work very well on this extreme of terrain either. They stop, but my wrists are definitely burning from pumping the brake handles, and that 'stop on a dime hydraulic brake action' isn't exactly what I get. It just means that descending requires a good deal of effort. I come out to the road and to Aid 6. Supposedly the leaders can do this section in an hour. If I can do it in under an hour and a half I can beat 10 hours. Wow, this is an unexpected and pleasant realization. My goal was to beat my last year's time of 10:47. At the beginning of this race I completely ruled out trying to shave off 47 minutes, for the sake of having a 'fun' race. Well, at Aid 6, I am feeling EXACTLY as I hoped I would feel. Strong. Relatively speaking of course. I mean.. come on, I've been riding for 88 hard miles and 8.5 hours. That leaves 12 miles to go. There is one short road climb and a pretty long fire road climb. Last year at this time I was battered and praying for an end.. soon. This time I felt that the benefit of taking a more modest pace throughout the race was that I'll have energy at the end to push it hard to the finish. With only a little over an hour left, suffering is the name of the game. I crank up the pace and I'm off. Every rider I see in front of me quickly vanishes out of sight behind me and I motor along like a tank up the climbs. I rip down the descents as fast as I can while still maintaining control. I've only done this race once before and I can't remember exactly when the final descent to the finish begins. I keep hoping it's right around the corner, but my watch keeps telling me I have a little ways to go. I get to a jeep road that winds gently up and down hills. I forget whether this road is long or not. I'm ten minutes from sub-10. I don't want to lose out by lolligagging here. So I drive forward on this section with an out-of-the-seat effort. Soon I see the arrows pointing towards nicely groomed single track. It's like the gateway to the heavens. I know that in just a short moment i'm going to hear cheering and see the first tents of the campground that marks the finish line.
The Finish
The finish of this race is awe inspiring. Once you see the first tent, yellow tape guides you through the campground. It is an unbelievable feeling as I reach civilization and hear people cheering. All of the sudden I'm in the grass field, still catapulting forward from the momentum of the downhill that I just came off of, and I'm inside the yellow tape in a victory lap to the finish. During this 15 second moment, I'm trying to absorb my surroundings, and the whirl of emotion that surrounds getting to this point. I stomp on the pedals to finish strong, but I wish I can do it again, only slower, so I can enjoy the moment for longer. This final 15 seconds is really the most amazing part of the race, and you'll never understand it unless you do it. All 100 miles of it.
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