Hey folks, thanks for stopping by. This is part one of a two-part blog detailing my 2022 experience on the Colorado Trail Race. This trip was pretty nuts, from going over my handle bars in the first 10 miles to half asleep yelling nonsense at the night. I'll try my best to include as much about how I felt, as well as go into detail about as much technical stuff as I can. Hope you enjoy and you can check out part two here.
Last Year
2022 was not my first Colorado Trail Race. In 2021, I actually had the chance to race the CTR for the first time. I went into the race underprepared; I actually raced it on my brother’s borrowed bike and threw everything together basically the night before. Through some miracle (and maybe some grit too), I finished and placed second, only about 14 hours off the record. To give a quick recap:
Last year started off a little rough; a pretty serious thunderstorm took a bunch of racers out of the competition within the first 70 miles. After these storms cleared I battled with poor diet choices — my main intended meal was peanut butter, cheese, salt and Nutella all wrapped up in a tortilla. As you can imagine, this was no where near as appetizing as I hoped. I spent a good chunk of time sitting there just trying to force myself to eat something. Because of this, the first 2 days I struggled through very limited caloric intake. On top of this, I slept 3 and 2 hours, respectively. These first two days were a bit of a blur. I went back and forth with about 4 other racers and was constantly pushing to catch up and get ahead. Upon getting to Buena Vista (about halfway — 300 miles in), I got some solid food in me and threw away the burrito concoctions once and for all. At this point the race changed. I finally had energy and was able to bike faster than virtually any other biker. I also started sleeping less, with 1 hour on the third night and just a few power naps on the last night. This sleeping strategy caused some pretty significant hallucinations and at one point I completely forgot what I was doing. Fortunately, with a little sunlight my head cleared and I could keep moving to the finish. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, first place (Neil Beltchenko- current record holder) remained too far out of reach and finished a solid 6 or so hours ahead of me. Along the way I had some pretty annoying mechanical issues as well; I was riding with a broken derailleur for the last 100 miles which limited me to my middle 4 gears and I lost a screw on my bike cleat, which was responsible for about 30+ crashes.
After finishing last year I was convinced that I was never going to do this again... but after thinking back through my race I realized that I had about 15-17 hours of "blunders" from mechanical issues to dieting issues that if I could solve I would have a serious chance at setting the record. So, armed with hope and a positive attitude, I decided 6ish months before the race to throw my hat in the ring again.
About The Ride
Before I dive in to my experience with the race, let’s make sure we're on the same page.
The Colorado Trail Race is a 537 mile mountain bike race that traverses some of the most challenging terrain in Colorado, from Denver to Durango. This ride was designed as a hiking trail and is over 80% single-track trail weaving through forests, mountains and high alpine terrain. In terms of elevation this race remains entirely above 5,500 feet, and its highpoint is at 13,200 feet above sea level. If you were to add up all of the climbs in the race you would end up with over 70,000 feet of elevation gain, and to put this in perspective that is equivalent of ascending mount Everest from sea level two and a half times. So what does that mean for cyclists? A LOT of hike a bike. It is estimated that the average rider spends between 40 and 100 miles of nothing but pushing their bike. While 40 miles may not seem like a lot, keep in mind that the any time you are pushing your bike it is because the terrain is just too steep and rocky to be done on a bicycle; this then reduces your speed to about 1-2 miles a hour, meaning that those 40 miles are going to take you on average of about 30 hours to accomplish. This simple fact is what causes almost half of those who attempt this feat as a ride- not as a race - to not finish.
Elevation profiles provided by John Schilling. Support John’s effort by purchasing prints, sticks and mugs of these profiles.
The race is a different animal altogether. Since being established in 2007, the Colorado Trail Race has constantly been reared as one of the more challenging bikepacking races in the US and maybe on the planet. Every year the CTR starts at 4am at either Denver, or Durango (the race alternates directions every year) with 74 riders. Finishing the race is a challenge in and of itself; by the time the race is done, between 40-70% of riders will drop out due to injury, mechanical, or just being overwhelmed with the challenge. A "good time" for the CTR is below 7 days for men, a great time is under 6 and an amazing time is under 5 days. The male record was set by bikepacking legend, Neil Beltchenko, back in 2016 with a time of 3 days 19 hours and 44 minutes. This is the record I would be attempting to break if everything went right. You can read more about the race here.
Leading Up
Remember when I said that I decided to do the race 6 months beforehand? Well, planning for the race didn't start until just about a month before... Aside from being a cyclist, I am also the founder & CEO of Spoke Sound a startup company that transforms canvas photographs into wireless speakers. Looking back on my training, in terms of volume, it was pretty limited. My strategy had been to get out 45min to 1.5 hours a day and run or ride as hard as I could. This was something born out of necessity more than anything else and in a perfect world I would have instead had all the time in the world to train. Leading up to the race I had participated in one other bike race; it was a road bike race called the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic in which I bet my younger brother that I could beat him (He is a CSU D1 runner). The punishment for losing would have to eat 3,000 calories of pure canned beans before eating anything else. Needless to say, I did not have to eat the beans and I actually ended up winning the race. I had injured my wrist about 2 months before the race and was forced to stay off the mountain bike for most of my training. Because of this, the longest mountain bike ride I had been on was 16 miles since the 2021 CTR. This didn't bode super well for my back, neck and knees… but I suppose that is the way it is.
Putting my gear together was the next challenge. I ended up buying my bike - a 2014 Kona Rajiin Hardtail - just over a month before the race. I probably paid too much for this bike, but I was getting desperate and it had most all of the features I was looking for (120mm fox factory shock, 1x11 derailleur, Titanium frame, enduro race wheels etc.). Since my race in 2021 I had been toying with the idea of leaving my sleeping bag, Bivvy and any sleeping gear behind. I figured that when you're only getting about a hour of sleep a night packing a bunch of sleeping equipment is just silly. I don't regret not bringing the sleeping bag, but the bivy sack would have been nice to have. In other gear I brought a REI ultra running hydration vest with 2.5L of water, a tarp for emergencies and a Katataydn water filter, (which hopefully works better than the iodine tablets last year — I got giardia). My packs consisted of a Rogue Panda Designs frame pack (which I have mixed reviews on) and two cheap frame tube bags I bought off Amazon- which worked amazingly.
My nutrition was planned to consist about 50/50 of Tailwind drink mixyou've never tried it, is a high calorie drink powder which contains all essential amino acids and tastes amazing. The other half of my diet was grab and go foods, granola bars, snickers, candy bars and, as always, a plain block of cheese. Gotta keep true to my Wisconsin roots. Last year I had some real problems getting any food down, many people don't realize this but one of the most challenging parts of any ultra endurance race is eating. Oftentimes during the first part of these races your body enters into a "fight or flight" mode where it doesn't want to spend any energy digesting food and puts everything towards your muscles. For most Ultra endurance running events, literature claims that if you can eat about 250 calories in carbs an hour you can "survive". You'll still be burning more than your consuming but it at least there is an offset. While there isn't much research on 4-5 day ultra endurance events, my experience is that if you can eat 300-350 calories per hour you can pretty much stay ahead of the crash. For me, my goal was to eat one 250 calorie candy/ granola bar plus drinking 100 calories of Tailwind a hour. On paper, this worked perfectly, in reality... it didn't.
What are the risks of pushing yourself to the extreme? When your body is in a calorie deficit a couple things start to happen, the first, is you start slowing down, in my experience when I'm getting close to "bonking" (super low blood sugar due to lack of energy) my speed drops 20-30%, I start to get frustrated, irritated and begin to question why the heck I'm out there. Physiologically, after you deplete your energy storage (called glycogen and stored in your liver) your body begins to transition from burning carbs, to burning fats then to burning/ breaking down muscle. When your body starts using your muscles as fuel is when things start to get dangerous. When a muscle breaks down it releases toxins which are challenging and damaging for your kidneys to process. If you body can't keep up with all the toxins you develop a condition called rhabdomyolysis which can lead to kidney failure in extreme cases. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, your body will resort to burning muscles, the hope is that you can handle it. The second danger of pushing yourself to this extremes is called Hyponatremia a condition where your body is short on electrolytes causing your cells to swell up with excess water. Usually this just leads to fatigue, confusion and tiredness but in extreme cases can lead to seizure and death.
Closing Post 1
This is a 10,000 mile view of my preparation for the 2022 CTR. I can go into detail for hours about the bike, repair kit, and training, but I'll save that for another post. Read the next blog post to hear the good, bad and ugly of my experience with the CTR.
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