This is it. The whole enchilada. No amount of words can do this race justice. It was brutal, and I call myself lucky to have even finished. I also want to give a big shout out to everyone who followed along and cheered me on during the race, you all kept me going when times got tough. If you're curious about what happened before the race, check out my other blog post here. If not read on!
Day 1
The last few days leading up to the race I had spent running around Fort Collins gathering last minute food items, gear, checking out my bike and making sure every last detail was as prepared as could be. Finally, the night before the race came. Since I was staying in Fort Collins with my girlfriend it was going to be about a hour and a half drive to the start, meaning I would have to leave at about 1:30am. I settled in that night at around 8pm and promptly rolled around checking my gear in my head until at least 11:30. 1:30 am hit and I was wide awake. So much for a restful night of sleep before the big race... Oh well, 3 hours was more than I planned anyways.
As I my girlfriend, Holly, and I drove to the race, I polished off a couple bananas and a full pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream... Breakfast of champions. At this point the more calories I could get into my body, the better.
We arrived at the parking lot at 3:30, just enough time for me to run to the bathroom, brush my teeth and raise my seat a tiny bit. As I looked around at the other headlamps, bikes and vans surrounding me I couldn't help but feel a little bit overwhelmed... Can I ride with these guys? Everyone here looks so prepared... Maybe I should have just coughed up the money and got a full suspension...
With about 15 minutes to go, Holly said " Good luck!" immediately followed by " is your seat supposed to do that?"
My heart sunk as she pushed on my seat and it sunk straight down. How is this even possible?? The one thing that I didn't double check... My dropper post. After a couple tries it seemed that the pressure would hold on my dropper for about 30 seconds before my seat would slide back down. But with no time to fix it I thought to myself well, something had to go wrong…I hope it’s just this.
Before I knew it, it was 4:00 and Jefe was closing up his pre-race speech; he concluded with "don't try to win the race in the beginning". Just like that we were off, into the dark.
I didn't waste any time getting to the front of the pack. After last year when I was trapped behind a bunch of "Stop and go" traffic, I knew that I didn't want anything to do with that. Before we even hit the gravel I had started to pull away from the front of the pack. I saw the lights behind me start to group together, first in a group of 20, then 10 then 4 — the chase pack, I thought.
I never really had a strategy for how much I was going to stop, or not stop for the race. I always figured I would bike until I got too tired, then sleep for a few minutes, get up and keep going. I knew that if I was going to set the record I was going to probably break the competition on the first day, and I suppose I was optimistic that I would do that sooner rather than later. As I crossed off of the gravel road to the single-track I glanced back to see no headlights.
Perfect, I thought, they've already let me go. I couldn't have been more wrong.
After ascending the first climb, and alternating between standing (to let my dropper post reinflate) and sitting I felt good. Dang good. I hit the top and smoothly transitioned into the downhill, after cruising around a couple turns I got a little too confident on my bike and a second later found myself soaring over my front handlebars. I landed; luckily I just missed a tree and found myself skidding through a patch of gravel. After coming to a halt I saw the road rash appearing on my left forearm and shin. But those were merely "flesh-wounds" I thought. I did a quick recon to make sure that my bike was okay— it was. I got back on the bike and yelled at myself in my head to be more careful.
"Come on Will, you can't win the race on the downhills but you can definitely lose it."
I hit the first significant downhill as the sun began to peek through the mountains and I clicked off my light. As I passed through the trail I kept re-living last years race.
Upon reaching the bottom I got cheered on from a race spectator saying "You're crushing it. I know its early but you have a good lead on the competition."
Perfect, I thought.
At 7:30 I called my dad for the first time, from doing these races years previous, I learned that my dad and brother, Luke, seemed to sleep just about as much as I did during these events. They were both super into following the race and I consider their knowledge of endurance cycling and the race flow to be one of my biggest assets out there.
As I chatted with them I stopped to see if I could fix my dropper post. I had wondered if the reason that it was losing pressure is that I raised the seat and that could be pulling on the cable. I lowered the seat and boom. Dropper was fixed. Thank the goodness- that could have been much worse.
During my conversation with my dad he informed me that a 40 year old named Matt was right on my tail with a group of three trailing behind him. I was a little surprised but not too worried at this point and kept my foot on the gas to try to burn him.
I hit the road detour and quickly realized that I was burning through my granola/ candy bars much quicker than I had anticipated. Oh well, guess I‘ll just have to drink more Tailwind. As I traveled down the first part of the road detour I went by several gunshots... It seemed several people were targeting shooting out here. As I cruised around a turn I heard two pistol shots erupt next to me. What the heck people. I immediately got flashbacks to the Tour Divide in 2015 when I had a gun pulled on me in the middle of nowhere Wyoming.
The story goes, I was 17 years old and was attempting to set the record for the youngest person to race the Tour Divide (well that is until my brother, Luke, did it at 16...). It was 10am on some dirt road in Wyoming and I hadn't seen more than 3 cars all morning. A truck passed me real slow and close and as he was going the passenger rolled down the window and flashed his gun at me. He proceeded to drive another 20 feet and then stop and get out of his car. As he pointed his gun towards me, I turned around to see two other cars on the road, he got back in and drove away.
That memory still haunts me today; what if those cars weren't there? Would I have been target practice? What was he doing? I have heard of road rage shooting of cyclists but never paid much attention to it. I'll never know for sure what his intentions were but I will always have my heart skip a beat every time I get passed really slowly by a car.
A few minutes later I hit Wellington Lake office where they had a small store and a hose to refill water. I stopped in, grabbed some sunscreen and some wet-wipes to clean up my wounded leg and arm and kept going. I sprayed myself with the sunscreen and left it sitting there; I had more sunscreen but I didn't want to waste it. There were two people at the counter and one of them was more helpful than the other. The one guy was a little weirded out by my blood covered leg and unzipped bike shirt and I can't blame him... But I didn't care. I was racing.
5 minutes later I was on the road again. I biked for another 3 hours or so until I hit the pavement detour. Last year this is where things got weird. This was a section of mostly downhill - in the Durango to Denver direction - that I did mostly asleep last year. During this section I remember biking down the road, falling asleep on my bike and having a full out of body experience where I watched myself bike down the road. At this point last year I completely forgot where I was and what I was doing. All I knew was that I needed to get to Denver as fast as possible.
Fortunately this time around I was feeling a bit better...
As I hit the road I stopped to fill my water up in a nearby stream. As I dipped my
into the river a broken down old truck with a bunch of dogs in the back rolled up. A disheveled gentlemen with a curled up MAGA hat leaned out the window and yelled.
"Hey this is private property!"
I apologized and said that I was just going to be a second. I ran out of water and needed to fill up real quick.
He replied "I don't care if you're out of water. This is private property. Get off!!"
"Okay" I replied as I gathered my water bladder and walked up the bank.
He waited until I was back to the side of the road before driving off. Some people never cease to amaze me. Fortunately I had all the water I needed so I wasn't too bothered.
I hit the road a few minutes later to experience... A tailwind! In all of my biking experience that seems to never happen. Finally, my luck is turning!
As I continued up this long gradual uphill road, I continued to check back for that old pickup. I knew that if he happened to be going back this way I would get run off the road or worse. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt but this broken down redneck had already shown his true colors and I wasn't going to take any chances if he came back.
As I continued down the paved road the weather grew worse. Clouds loomed in the distance and I knew rain was coming soon. Fatigue started to really set in; I had done about 100 miles in 12 hours or so and it was starting to show. My legs were fatiguing, my back was aching and morale was sinking. I glanced back a few minutes later and saw at least one rider, maybe two behind me. Dang. I thought they would have been long gone by now. I finally turned off the pavement to the gravel road, almost done with the climbing for a little bit. Then all I had to do was Kenosha pass then down to Copper. As I continued on the gravel road a storm erupted; rain, thunder and lightning and a violent tailwind pushed me down the road. I finally hit the top of the hill and road down.
A few minutes later I hit the single-track and traveled along here until reaching the road crossing at Kenosha pass. As I crossed the highway I met a fellow CTR Racer out on a time trial and we chatted a few minutes as we both got water. At this point I refilled my Tailwind, stretched for a little and realized that I this stop marked a total of 20 minutes stopped in the first 13 hours. Dang I was hurting. My back, legs, knees and wrist did not feel good. Oh well.
Another hour or so went by and I hit the low point and started moving upward. Dang I'm hurting. My legs have some serious blood pooling in them. As soon as I hit the climb I looked back and nearly shouted. Matt was right on my tail.
"Hello," he said as he proceeded to catch me.
"I've been trying all day to catch you," he said
I responded "I've been trying all day for that not to happen"
I offered him the pass and he said, “no its fine.”
As we continued, there were several sections where I found myself hopping off the bike to push for a minute or two. It was clear that he could have ridden these no problem but was being curious to my fatigue. We chatted for about 10 minutes or so and then he reached a section where he could ride around and did. I kept up for a few minutes before letting him go again. I was hurting.
We both biked for another 45 minutes or so before I passed him again; he was stopped drinking water out of a Nalgene bottle. A Nalgene, seriously? Who brings one of these things on a bikepacking trip. But then I looked at my rig and re-evaluated my statement. From the ankle socks to the Amazon basics bike packs it was clear who the gear noob was. I was surprised to see him again but knew this small victory was going to be lost shortly as he got back on his bike. As I traveled on ahead of him I admired that he was stopping. I should do that more; at this point I had started to get the suspicion that I had gone way too hard in the beginning. Matt passed me again and soon after I stopped to take a little break to try to sleep for a few minutes.
I set my alarm for 20 minutes and propped up my legs to try and drain the fluid out. I closed my eyes for 10 minutes and found no sleep, so I paused my alarm and stood up. It was starting to get cold and as I grabbed a handful of trailmix and shoved it in my mouth I started shivering, then violently shaking. I remember this from last year- the shakes. I'm not entirely sure why this happens. My best guess is that your body has a really tough time regulating temperature because you have depleted all energy storage so it has nothing to use for heat. Either that or all your blood goes from being in your muscles to back near your organs. If you're a doctor, please chime in here.
As I hopped back on my bike I gave my dad a call. Only a few more miles to to the top of the climb then mostly downhill to Breckenridge. I can do that, I thought.
As I summited the climb the rain started again. It wasn't too bad, just enough to get the rocks nice and slippery. I forgot about the downhill section here. It was brutal. Several miles of nothing but large river boulders and loose rocks. There were several sections where I had to stop and walk my bike. On a downhill. Come on. I hit the next uphill right as nighttime set in; I was going through a dark evergreen forest and had just crossed a small stream. I stopped to sit down and eat a Clif bar and drain some of the blood out of my legs before the hill. As I dismounted, an involuntary yell left my mouth as I tried to move my back. Wow. That hurt. I'm not one to complain too much, but if my back kept up like this it was going to be a race ender for sure. I was in a lot of pain.
I rested for about 5 minutes and then the cold shakes set back in and I collected myself to start moving. I gasped several times as I moved my back, neck and legs for the first time in a few minutes.
I just blew the race, I thought as I started pushing my bike up the hill.
By 9:30 the rain started again, this time, steady and heavy. I had my spare coat on and all my raingear and continued to push up the hill, trying to fight off the rain. My attitude turned from 10% chance of quitting to 75% chance quitting and I started to make excuses in my head. I imagined telling people about my back problems, leg issues, kidney issues etc. The reasons swirled in my head as I imagined just sitting on a couch with no need to get up. I called my dad midway through this crisis as the thunder and lightning began to erupt all around me. Lightning seemed to strike just feet from me and I nearly jumped. I was surrounded by trees at this point so I wasn't too worried about getting struck. As I talked to my parents I told them about my leg, back, neck pain, I also just felt terrible. I think it was just sheer exhaustion and I had far depleted my glycogen stores. I was concerned with permanent damage. My dad assured me that I was still doing really well, only 45 minutes or so off the leader and then 45 minutes ahead of the next guy. That made me feel a little bit better so I kept pushing. They said the rain was going to quit around midnight and if I could just keep going, walk for a little bit on the big climb before Copper I would burn the guys in front of me. Just had to make it into Breck.
After getting off the phone with them I stopped one more time and tried to sleep for 20 minutes. I found a little tree and curled up underneath it as the rain came down. 15 minutes later I was up again; the water had more than soaked through my raincoat and I battled the shaking as I gathered myself together. Hypothermia was very real on my mind as it was about 47 outside and it was very clear my body wasn't regulating my temperature at all. My lungs weren't working right. I've had this happen before when it will hurt if I breathe in a full breath. I can only get in short "half breaths". I'm not sure what this condition is but I would imagine it is the bursting of my bronchial tubes from breathing hard in dry air for about 13 hours straight.
I arrived in Breck at 11:00pm. The rain had started really downpouring and instead of getting water from a nearby stream I walked over to a condo and put my water bladder right up next to a gutter. My water bladder filled in seconds- No need to filter rain water. I called my folks again and my brother informed me that there were no open food places. Dang… I was running pretty low, so I dumped a bunch of Tailwind in my water bladder and thought about curling up under someone's porch to get out of the rain. As I was deciding what to do the rain started to let up so I kept pushing. Slowly.
The climb out of Breckenridge is notoriously brutal. It is about 4,500 feet of elevation gain over 8 miles and it is a lot of hike a bike. For me it was virtually all hike a bike. It will take a fast recreational rider about 4 hours to do. I guessed it would take me 5 hours which means I would be getting into Copper at 4 am. As I started up the climb I was constantly at battle. I was too tired to ride, but every time I tried to walk I would have shooting pain coming up my legs. I just pushed through. For about 2 hours I stumbled forward yelling in pain and riding whatever I could.
At 1 am I filled my water at a little stream, put all my layers on and tried to sleep for a hour. 21 hours on the bike, I thought. Dang that hurt. By the time I had laid down I was already shaking and freezing cold. The ground was wet and cold which didn't help any. I curled in a ball and tried to sleep.
After what had to be less than 45 minutes of shaking I woke up and dragged myself up. I was at about 10,500 feet and the temperature had dropped in the upper 30's. This low of body temperature was not safe, I thought as I begun to push my bike.
I made it to about 3:30am before I had to stop again. My legs, lungs and back were really complaining and I stopped again for 20 minutes to elevate my legs and try to sleep a little bit. About 10 minutes in I was awaken by bike lights. What the heck, I thought, did Matt just catch me?
"How's it going,” I exclaimed, half asleep
"doing alright," the mystery person said.
"I'm alright, just taking a little rest. What's your name?," I asked the biker
"Sounds good, its Kevin," he replied
"Nice to meet you" I said while drifting off to sleep.
10 minutes later I was back off and riding - or rather… pushing.
Miles: 159.5
Cumulative Time Slept: 1 hour 20 minutes
Day 2
I made it to the top at about 5:15 after seeing Kevin's headlamp fade out of view 45 minutes or so previously. I walked over a boulder field that was the trail for a few minutes and cursed the trail makers. Come on, just throw a little gravel down, I complained in my head.
Next up was the VERY steep downhill. I proceeded with caution-ish. As I rolled down the hill I really started to gather speed. I was probably doing between 15 and 25 the whole way down. It was still dark as I maneuvered the rocky trail. About 80% of the way down to my surprised, I caught Kevin. Wow, I must really be cruising. I think I remember that he had 100mm of travel in the front, so maybe that is why. People would later ask me if I was an enduro racer after that downhill performance. I am not. I just like going fast. I finished the downhill feeling good about myself and stopped to check the gas station hours - it opened at 7am. Despite being very tempted by some gas station food, I decided to push on. Kevin decided to wait.
I stopped at a small stream to refill my water. Dang, my filter was running SLOW. After waiting for 15 minutes or so, I got up with a half full water bladder and figured that would do for now. I wasn't drinking much water at all so far- it was a little concerning but was quite nice to not have to stop as much. A few minutes later I ran into another biker- Patrick? CJ? He cheered me on and we chatted for a while. He said that he had started from Denver on Thursday night. I started on Sunday and he was quite impressed. I took a 10 minute nap and felt a little better. My legs were finally not aching as bad and it seemed that the blood pooling issue would be a thing of the past. I caught up to my new friend right around the top of the fist section of Elk Creek ridge. We both stopped, him to admire the view and me to take my shoes off for the first time. My feet had been wet since rain on the first day. They were very wrinkled and I could already see several blisters developing. I changed my socks and made a mental note to try and take my shoes off when stopping — it never happened. All in all, my feet were some of the least of my concerns- ultimately I knew that foot pain was something that I could push through.
My biker pal kept commenting how beautiful it was. I looked around, nodded and kept going. At this point, I wasn't impressed at all with the scenery; I had one focus, bike.
As we summitted the ridge I got an update that Matt had spent the night in Butte in a hotel, which must have been nice. He was also less than a mile behind me. I couldn't help but think that I made a mistake by pushing through last night when even a few hours of rest in a hotel would have rejuvenated me and allowed me to bike a lot faster. Oh well.
My new friend and I cruised down Elk Creek. He had a beefy full suspension, I was able to hold my own with his pace more or less. I passed him at the bottom, and that was the last time that I would see him. I had one more climb before I started the gradual downhill/flat section to Leadville. At this point, the only thing holding me together was the idea of a Subway sandwich and some pickles in Leadville.
After summiting I recalled an annoying little section of single-track weaving in and around as it paralleled the highway. Its always a little annoying to get off the highway and bike right next to it on single-track, especially because we we had to take the highway eventually anyways. Oh well. As I weaved through the trees I looked up to see a small bull moose on the trail ahead. "Moose!” I yelled, somewhat startling myself. After spending so much time in your head, when you finally hear yourself say something it can be a little weird. I chased the moose down the trail for a little bit before he finally turned off the trail. I suppose I should have been more frightened, but it seemed pretty clear that I wasn't stopping, and I think he got the hint.
Shortly after that Matt caught up to me. I was a little surprised that it took him so long. We rode together and chatted for a bit, he was super friendly and interesting to talk to. It was also clear that he had way more in the tank than I did and I was giving it everything I had to keep up. We were in a section with a bunch of different trails, and as I followed him off the trail for about 30 seconds I noticed his GPS emit a beeping noise. Wow! That would be a nice feature I thought. I was using an old Etrex20 that did not have that kind of capability. As we continued to ride he introduced that he is a nurse anesthetist and while his bio said he was 40 he didn't look a day over 33. I told him I was an engineer and he commented " that must be nice knowing how to fix everything on your bike.”
"I don't know about that," I replied as I tried to shift and my derailleur made a loud crunching noise as my chain jumped several gears. Truth be told, I had been having some problems with my derailleur since my crash the first day. I had been playing with my barrel adjuster and it seemed that no matter what direction I turned it the shifting got worse. My best guess was I bent something with my derailleur or my derailleur hanger. I had no problem shifting into my top two and bottom two gears but most of my middle gears just weren't working. The bike would work for a little bit and then jump into another gear unprompted. Matt passed me shortly after that.
I arrived to Leadville and stopped at the first gas station I saw. They had a good selection of food but NO PICKLES. I was really craving the salt from those. I filled my arms with candy bars, granola bars, 3 giant frozen bean burritos and one 5 hour energy. I also grabbed some toothpaste and a toothbrush. Last year I developed some serious mouth sores and lost a lot of the taste buds on my mouth. It is super painful and really discourages you from eating anything. You can imagine the feeling something like pouring hand sanitizer into a cut. Not fun. I was hoping that with some better teeth brushing I could avoid that, but I was doubtful... As I loaded up my bike I looked across the street to see a supermarket. Seriously!? Shoulda done that better...
I headed down the route to get to a Subway, I ordered two subs and sat down and ate one in the restaurant. Subway has this magical power of revival that no amount of candy bars can compete with. I stored my second Subway sandwich in my pocket and continued on to my next task— to buy a cheap sweatshirt. Last night was scary cold, and with all the rain I didn't want to get into another situation in which I was without a warm dry layer. I ended up with a cotton green tourist sweatshirt with a hood. It wasn't the best, but it would do. At this point the magical power of the Subway Sandwich started to kick in. I had energy! for the first time in hours I felt slightly better than terrible, it was amazing.
Before getting to Leadville there is a bypass that saves you a couple miles. To be honest I'm not sure why its in the race. Matt and Kevin took the detour and I know they made a decent amount of ground on me somewhere north of an hour. A few minutes later there were Facebook posts, "Wow, surprised to see Will take the longer route into Leadville and let Matt get ahead. I wonder what he was thinking" said last years race winner.
“I needed Subway, sir.” I responded in my head.
Kevin caught me just outside of Twin Lakes. I rode for a few miles behind him. Not as chatty of a fellow as Matt. Approximately 30 seconds later I shifted gears and SNAP! My pedals spun with no resistance. I looked down to see my chain laying on the ground. Fortunately, I had a spare link, and began pulling out all my gear to get to my spare link. It took about 30 minutes to repair the chain; my cold hands were fumbling a bit as I threaded the chain through the derailleur. I flipped my bike over and tried once again to adjust my shifting with no luck. After 5 minutes I gave up and said that I would mess with it on the road detour to BV.
I finished my second Subway sandwich and pushed through the rain. The rain cleared as I passed through the last single track section before the road detour and wouldn't you know it- a tailwind! Amazing. The second one of the route. I thought it must be because of all the Tailwind drink mix that I had brought.
As I continued on the downhill I pulled out my phone to listen to some music. After going through my playlist I asked Siri to tell me a story. She told me the story of Hansel and Grettle. Then I asked for another; next up was the big bad wolf. I did this for 30 minutes or so before Siri started repeating stories. Well, it was good while it lasted.
I finally rolled up into BV and called my dad/ brother. They informed me that Matt was stopped in a hotel in BV. He had gotten there a couple hours before me, and Kevin's location was at the grocery store. My dad told me that the rain was letting up and didn't look too bad that night. They inspired me to stop at the store, get some food and keep going.
I walked around the grocery in a daze for a while grabbing random items of food that looked appetizing. I got some very strange looks in the store, I was wearing full raingear with a large plastic rain poncho over the top, an ultra hydration vest and my helmet. I half laughed at what people must be thinking upon seeing me. I had no food-specific planning as to how much I needed to get me to Silverton and maybe beyond, but figured if I just got a lot of stuff I would be fine. I ended up with potato salad, yogurt, a Caesar salad kit, half dozen hard boiled eggs, granola bars, bananas, and a large block of cheddar cheese. Oh, and olive oil.
When I fixed my broken chain I noticed that my chain lube had leaked and I was flat out. I wondered if my lack of lubing it is what caused it to break in the first place so I bought some olive oil as a substitute. This would come in handy later.
I went over to the deli to get a spoon for my yogurt and asked the lady back there for one. She said, "Hold on, I got gunk on my hands" She was cleaning up the sink. She looked up, smiled at my appearance and said "Oh you're wearing a Helmet! Come on back here and get one yourself" I laughed. I like that rule I thought, if you're wearing a helmet you should get special privileges.
I saw Kevin in the store and he asked if I was going to keep going.
"Yeah, I'm feeling good right now I figure I'll keep pushing, you?" I replied
"No. I am not feeling good, I've got a hotel here and I'm going to stay in it. You're welcome to join and split it" Tempting, I thought, but turned it down.
I sat on the floor outside and packed up my gear up and shoved as much food as I could in my mouth. I also took another look at my barrel adjuster. Wait! it was completely unscrewed. So when I was twisting it it was doing nothing. Wow, how did I overlook that. Note to self, spending extra time to go over your bike when its not working is always worth it. 30 minutes later I was back on the road. It started raining again and I stopped to put on my rain gear and ate one of my hard boiled eggs. Dang that was delicious, I thought.
As I biked up the road, the sleep demons started coming back. I was getting really tired. I started swerving back and forth on the road. It's hard to explain what this feeling is like, the closest I can imagine is when you first wake up in the morning and you're just half awake. Like you know if you closed your eyes for even a second you would enter into dream world. Often when I get to this state I find myself closing my eyes for a second, falling asleep, swerving, waking up and then shaking my head and going "Buhurhufheh" to try and keep my eyes open. I always find the road detours the most challenging to do in the night because you have very limited stimulation to keep you awake. I call this Stage 2 of sleep deprivation.
After what seemed like an eternity, I made it off the gravel and turned on to the single track. I thought I remembered an outhouse and I was hoping I could stop in one and get out of the rain and get some sleep for 20 minutes or so. After riding for another 30 minutes and seeing no outhouse, it was 11:30 and I needed sleep so I put on my layers and laid down on the wet ground. 20 minutes later I awoke shaking. Time to keep moving.
The next section of the trail was another climb then a nice downhill into Mount Princeton Hot Springs. I remember the trail getting worse after this point, YAY! I alternated between hiking and biking as I maneuvered this rocky climb. I was certainly tired and figured that any motion forward was good motion.
I made it to Mount Princeton Hot Springs just before 3am. It was raining again and I was looking for a dry place out of the rain for a 30 minute nap. I rode around for a while looking for a bathroom with a porch, after finding nothing I settled on the back of the gift shop, curled up underneath an overhang built for housing an air conditioner compressor. I slept half on concrete and half on the ground. I would imagine that most people would not think that anyone could sleep here, but it was better than falling asleep on my bike which is what I had been doing.
Miles: 303.1
Cumulative Time Slept: 2 hour 35 minutes
Day 3
I slept for just over 35 minutes before getting up. I woke up shaking. My knee hurt again. Time to keep going. I checked trackleaders.com and saw that both Kevin and Matt were still in Buena Vista, and was surprised. I ate two hard boiled eggs and kept going. For the record, hard boiled eggs slap when you’re bikepacking. I started to formulate a theory that while candy bars and granola bars were high in calories and easy to eat, they lead to a quick energy crash, whereas eggs sustained you for longer.
I called my dad as the sun rose and chatted for a bit and he informed me that Kevin just started moving. Matt had been stopped for 11 hours and people were starting to think he dropped out. Wow that one came out of left field. He also said that Kevin was a good 6 hours behind me and was biking really fast. He thought he was never going to be able to maintain that pace.
"You are tougher than anyone else out there"
My dad said.
I didn't really believe it, but it kept me going. As the Facebook watchers woke up, they began posting. The first one was from a guy named Mark. He had raced it last year and was my biggest fan out there.
His post said, "Matt and Kevin let Will go last night. Hes going to play it from the front like a champ. Good job Will."
The comments poured in,
"He hasn't stopped! There is no way he can keep that up" someone else said.
Mark responded, "Yes he can. He is a machine."
"Even machines need time to cool off a little," they replied.
I didn't know the answer, it was an experiment, I thought. We'll see. I know I can keep going now.
I saw another moose and yelled "Moose!"
Around 8:30 I started to hear music up ahead of me. I started to think I was losing it, but as I rounded the bend and there was a speaker and someone jumped up to cheer me on. I smiled and I pulled over to chat for a few minutes. He said "Congrats Will! You're such an inspiration! I'm so stoked to see you." I felt famous. Moments like these are what kept me going when things get rough.
Here is where my memory started to go fuzzy. I climbed up and down passes. I pushed my bike. I ate burritos and took bites out of my block of cheese. I kept telling myself to bike harder. I hit Monarch Pass climb at 10am-ish. I knew that this thing was a beast, lots of hike a bike. Monarch climb was around 4000 feet of elevation gain over about 8 miles. It was steep, rocky and overall a slow and frustrating time. My goal was to make it up and over before the afternoon thunderstorms came down. I pushed as hard as I could, but ultimately I walked a lot.
I called my dad with a mile and a half to go to the top, he informed me that Kevin made up some serious ground, instead of being 40 miles behind me he as 7 which I estimated was about 3 hours. The founder of Trackleaders.com posted on the Facebook group a picture of my trajectory vs Kevin's, he said that Kevin was catching and that his sleep paid off. I was nervous; I tried to go faster but I was doing literally everything in my power. It was demoralizing… what if I did the wrong thing? Maybe I should have stopped in BV? These thoughts circled as I pushed my bike up the hill.
After what felt like an eternity, I finally summited around 1pm. There were some light rain showers but not enough to warrant a rain coat. As I was heading off the decent of Monarch Pass I felt like my hands were going through a lot more abuse then they should be. I stopped to push on my front fork. I pushed down and it stuck. 3 seconds later it started to rise again. I had absolutely no rebound. I adjusted the rebound dial on my fork, nothing. I am now riding a ridged, going into one of the most rocky sections of the trail, just my luck. I was about to begin what is know as Sergeants Mesa. It is a 20-ish mile section of football-sized loose rocks covering the trail. In terms of elevation gain it wasn't much, but there was a lot of the flat or even downhill that you find yourself walking because riding is just not a possibility.
Every time I do this section I spend most of my mental energy cursing the maker of this trail. This time was no different. The rain came down again. It poured for a good 2.5 hours from the evening into the night. As I went down, the trail quickly turned into a small river and the water sprayed onto my back. This certainly did not make things any easier.
After descending one of many rocky hills I began my last big uphill push before the road detour. I was so tired. It was still light out but I couldn't seem to keep my eyes awake. This hill was mostly a hike a bike section and any time I would stop my eyes would close and I would immediately fall asleep for a second- keep in mind I was standing up. I would start to fall over (because I was asleep) and then wake up and stumble for a bit. I stopped to eat a snickers bar half way up. I think that I was running out of energy and it was causing low blood sugar and hence why I was getting so sleepy. Eating the snickers bar was a painful experience. My mouth was on fire. Every bite felt like someone was pouring hand sanitizer into a cut on my tongue. I winced as I tried to swallow every bite. Eventually I made it through.
The evening turned into night and my fork rebound seemed to come back a little. It wasn't perfect, but at least better than it was. I clicked on my main bike light, nothing. Weird, I thought, I must have accidentally left it on today. I changed the batteries and tried again, a flicker then nothing. I tried another set of batteries- NADA. I took the light apart, put it back together, reversed the batteries and came up without a light. I still had one on my headlamp, but it was 350 lumens at max brightness, and I had no where near the amount of AAA batteries to run it on max brightness.
If you've never biked with just a headlamp, it is quite the experience. You get a weird sense of tunnel vision and the shadows on either side of you seem to jump out at you. The limited lighting casts weird shadows on every tree, bush, and rock making it seem like there is a bear sitting right around the corner. Your downhill speed is also cut in half with each rock, root and turn seeming to pop up milliseconds before you hit it. If you want to try it out for yourself I would equate the experience to going for a trail run at night with nothing but a keychain flashlight.
At 9:15pm I stopped to sleep for a few minutes. I found a dry patch under a tree, put on my down jacket and set my alarm for 20 minutes. I woke up a hour later, confused and unsure how I slept so long. and what happened to my alarm. I was mad at myself. I thought Kevin was right on my tail. How could I allow myself to sleep that long? I quickly packed up and started riding with twice the ferocity of before. I had to make up this time. I called my dad at 10:40 and he informed me that Kevin was still 3 hours behind me and was stopped for the past hour, Phew! I thought I was toast.
At 11pm I ran into... Trail MAGIC! My first of trip. Someone had left a bunch of soda, and some dried tuna and water. Couldn't have been more thankful, I crushed two sodas and kept going. They tasted AMAZING and gave me a huge energy boost. The first time since the beginning of the race I was actually biking fast on the uphills! It was amazing, I probably thanked the person who put those out there a hundred times in my head.
By midnight I arrived at the start of the big road detour. This was perfect timing because my headlamp situation was really not working great and gravel road riding didn't require much light.
Midnight turned into 1AM and the sleep demons set in. I started closing my eyes for a second Buhuwaghfa waking up and trying to stay focused. I stopped to eat a candy bar and decided to have my first caffeine of the trip- half of a 5 hour energy. That certainly helped and carried me for a good 2 hours.
Unfortunately by the time that 3am hit the sleep demons were back and in masses.
I entered what I call stage 4 of sleep deprivation. It’s hard to describe exactly what this is like; I would imagine it is what entering your subconscious would be like. I would find myself answering conversations out loud. It would go something like this, I would be biking along then I would hear myself say something like "Yes that's very interesting Noah, I've never considered using a fishing pole for that". Usually after this I would get startled for a bit and go quiet and try to shake myself awake. I imagine that if there was anyone around they would think there was two people having a conversation, that is, until they listened closely to what was being said and realized that it was complete gibberish. Unfortunately, there are more stages of sleep deprivation.
Miles: 397.6
Day 4
At around 4 am I entered stage 5 of sleep deprivation.
Stage 5 is a gradual increase from stage 4. Your thoughts shift from being gibberish, to be focused one one thing. How much pain you're in. As the gibberish dies off you become quiet for a while, then start yelling. "WHY!!" "What am I doing" ARGHH. You cant stop though. You continuously yell into the night. I think the easiest way to explain it is to imagine living a nightmare. While you're in it, you're convinced that it is real and the only way out is to just go through whatever your dream is. For me, I was convinced that I needed to keep biking, I couldn't stop and I continued to suffer through it. Another thing that happens is clouds of smoke seem to appear out of thin air right in front of you. They are quite startling and I find myself jumping every time I go through one. They're not real, obviously, just a pigment of your imagination.
I got to Los Pinos pass at sunrise. I stopped for the first time in two hours and it seemed like the sleep demons left me. I finally had service and I called my dad to get an update on the current position of the riders- seems like Kevin had stopped for a while so I had a good 6-8 hours on him. Phew, I thought, I could relax. With that I promptly laid down, off to the side of the gravel road and slept for just under a hour. When I awoke I felt like everything that happened last night was just a dream. But it wasn't. Well maybe it was and I was just awake for it.
As I proceeded to go down the road I ran into someone on a gravel bike. I don't recall his name but he turned around to ride with me and said that they had put out some trail magic for me. I was a little leery to take it (as you are not supposed to get any support not available to everyone), but then he said that they were going to have something out for all the riders and it wasn't specific for me. I chatted with his wife, filled my water, and ate some apple sauce. Grabbing a couple granola bars, I hit the road and the gravel biker guy said he would ride with me. He was a doctor, and so I told him some of the symptoms from my lungs from my violent shivering episodes. He said I should be okay, its just temporary and due to biking nonstop for 4 days straight.
We probably rode together for a hour or so, he left me at the top of the pass with a selfie and a "good luck". I was not feeling good. Being able to talk to someone definitely kept me awake, but my face was really hot and my throat was sore. My whole body was just shot riding up that and I think that the one thing keeping me together was our conversation.
On my way down from the Lake City detour we had a 10 minute downhill on pavement. I took my shoes and socks off and rode down with my bare feet out in the air. I hadn't mentioned it yet, but my feet hadn't been dry since day one and they were really starting to hurt. The feeling I can best describe it as is like having pins and needles in the bottom of your feet, constantly. As I sit here writing this over 10 days later, my feet are still numb, swollen and have pins and needles in many areas. I imagine that I had Trench Foot- a condition soldiers WWI were infamous for getting as their feet wouldn't dry out for weeks at a time. In most cases it was just very uncomfortable. In some cases infections would develop so that they had to amputate their foot. I don't imagine I was anywhere near that point.
I began the climb up to the highpoint (13,200ft) at 10 am. This section of the trail was basically just one giant mud puddle as this year has been well above average rainfall. I stopped to refill my water in one of these muddy puddles and called my dad. At this point I believe that I had developed some sort of fever; when you're at this level of exhaustion, your body has basically no means to fight off any infections. I felt absolutely terrible, and while I knew I was so close to the finish I couldn't ignore the fact that my body was taking a toll. My dad told me to take some Ibuprofen- I hadn't taken any yet this trip and so I tried it. It saved me. I finally felt so much better. My goal was to to get to Silverton before 9pm (when everything closed) and about 50 miles of all above treeline trail to get there. I did the math and thought I should arrive by 7-8 pm no problem. The weather was calling for scattered thunderstorms and I just hoped I could dodge the lightning for the duration.
As I began the summit to the highpoint a cloud set in, from what I could tell there was no lightning coming from it- just rain. It started raining lightly, then harder as I alternated between walking and riding my bike. I saw no one on the trail but several people camped out on the side awaiting better weather. Must be nice, I thought.
I summitted what I thought was the top at noon, that wasn't too bad, only 40 so miles to go. Unfortunately, I was wrong that was far from the top , I proceeded to think I was at the top 3 more times until I finally got there at 2pm. It hit me I had over 40 miles left and worst case scenario 7 hours to do it. I had some seriously rough and exposed terrain ahead of me and knew that if I was going to make it I would have to bike faster. A lot faster. So I did, I biked EVERYthing I could. I hauled on the downhill and pushed hard on the uphill. The closer I got, my estimation went from a 7pm arrival, to 8 to 8:30. My memory kept deceiving me. I kept thinking I was farther than I was and would realize I was behind and start going harder. I wasn't stopping to eat either; at this point I had no idea what was fueling my body other than pure determination to get to Silverton before 9 pm.
I arrived to the top of stony pass at 8:15 at this point it was all downhill to Silverton. Phew. I was going to make it just in the nick of time. My fork had gotten worse again and my headlight was dim, but that didn't stop me from flying down the rocky Stony Pass road. Just over halfway down the road I crossed a river. " I don't remember that " I thought. I looked down at my GPS and slammed on my brakes. WRONG WAY. I yelled "WHY" grabbed my bike and started pushing it up the hill. 30 minutes later I was back on route.
I arrived at downtown Silverton at 9:22pm. Everything was closed. I was out of luck. I would have been more disappointed but as soon as I got in several people came out to see me. They cheered me on and talked to me for a few minutes as I tried to answer their questions in a daze. One guy said that his hotel had a hiker box there that I could grab some food out of. I really intended to do that but forgot the name of the hotel by the time he left. A short recon of food showed that I had a couple of granola bars, 3/4 block of cheese, 2000 calories in tailwind and 4 candy bars. I had enough food to make it I thought. I spent about a half hour or so talking and trying to figure out what to do.
I ultimately decided to start biking again and made it up to Little Molas Lake outhouse by 1am. I was going SLOW. I hadn't been drinking much water that day, but coming up to the top of Molas I started chugging water. I finally was thirsty- which I thought was a good thing. My camp for the night was the concrete slab behind the Little Molas Lake outhouse. Comfy. It was about 42 degrees outside and when I finally settled in and as soon as I stopped the shakes set in. I put on all my layers and set my alarm for 1.5 hours. One More Day I thought.
Miles: 471.4
Cumulative Time Slept: 4 hour 15 minutes
Day 5
I woke up just before 4am. What? I overslept for a hour. What happened. I stood up and about fell over. I tried to straighten my knees but it felt like someone hit me with a crowbar. My wrists felt the same. It took me about 10 minutes of slowly bending and straightening my knees to even stand straight. I took two ibuprofen and got on my bike. I let out involuntary gasps of pain as I tried to move my legs for the first 15 minutes of the ride. All of the water I had drank yesterday had gone straight to swelling and I noticed that my hands, wrists and legs were quite a bit larger than yesterday.
My light was dimming, I was on my last set of batteries but had no choice. I continued to push through the single-track and reached the first downhill. I was pretty out of it as I started on the downhill, about halfway through I realized what I was doing and yelled "Slowdown" It was too late. A rock appeared out of nowhere and I was soaring over my handlebars once again. This time my right shoe stayed lodged in my cleat. I hit the gravel and my GPS flew off I skidded for a half second and came to a stop. I just laid there, this is nice, I thought. I closed my eyes, bike half on top of me in the middle of the trail. I shook myself awake a couple minutes later. I made myself get up and asses the damage. I was okay. My bike was okay. That was lucky.
"Take it easy until sunrise" I told myself.
I walked my bike for 30 minutes until the sun rose. I was so close. 70 miles. Around 9am I descended the first big-ish decent of the day, it was truly beautiful. I got to the bottom and there was this spring that was flowing through the trees, everything was so beautiful. I got weirdly emotional, everything was so alive and had its own purpose I thought. I was completely in awe with the surroundings and felt such a strong connection with every living thing. I almost teared up, this was a special place I thought. I stared at it for 10 minutes at least. I imagine that this is what it is like to be on drugs.
As I pushed on, things got more painful and less beautiful. I stopped again at 10:30 to eat my last granola bar. After eating I knew I needed to sleep for a second. If I sat or laid down there was no chance I was getting up. So I leaned up against a tree (while standing) and fell asleep. Two minutes later "BOO!" some hiker yelled a couple feet from me. I nearly jumped, I was awake now. But seriously WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE. He later introduced himself as patch or some weird name like that. 'Why did you yell at me?" I asked. "Oh I was bored, and you looked like you needed to be woken up" he replied. "Don't yell at people," I said. I kept biking.
Somewhere near Blackhawk pass (around 1pm) I had a weird experience. The voice in my head left. It's hard to explain exactly what happened but that little voice in your head that is constantly talking, having arguments and, well what makes you feel like ‘you’, just seemed to leave. I could feel it, like it left and hovered right over my shoulder. Goodbye, I thought, I hope you come back sometime.
For the rest of the day, the lights were on, I knew I was biking, I knew I had to go. But no one was home. I found myself stopping and just staring off into space. Getting motivated to keep going was incredibly hard; I felt like I was having to to herd myself to keep going. At one pace I treated standing up like the launch of the space ship, with command centers, thrusters, countdowns etc.
As the day progressed, my projection from when I would arrive went from 3pm to 5pm to 6pm to 9pm. The trail seemed to drag on and I found myself constantly calling Holly to ask how far I had left. It was always farther than I thought. By 5pm I noticed something weird with my ankles, they stopped working. I could no longer dig the toe of my shoe into the ground for traction, the only way I could walk was by turning my toes outward and duckwalking up the hill. There was already significant swelling in my feet and I imagined that was why, this just slowed my progress further. My food situation was very tight. I had two candy bars, a half a block of cheese and some olive oil (that I was using as chain lube). The amount of pain that was caused by eating a candy bar was not worth it for me. I chose to eat cheese and drink the olive oil. I had to take small sips to avoid throwing up, but ultimately it kept me going.
To get to the top of Kennebec took forever. Like really forever. I knew this, but still wanted to get there sooner. After the top of Kennebec I had basically 20 miles of downhill and 4 of uphill to the finish. I was so close!! I wanted to let the throttle loose and rip these last downhills but I made myself proceed slowly. "All you have to do is not fall and you're going to make it." I told myself.
I arrived at the bottom of 4 mile climb with some daylight left. 4 mile climb is the literal last climb on the Colorado Trail, its 1000 feet, which isn't much but it seems to stretch on forever because it goes in and out of a ton of small river gullies on the side of a mountain. SO CLOSE. I finally summited around 8:45, from riding here in the past it usually takes me 45 minutes to get back from here. That was not the case today. My headlamp was nearly dead, I changed batteries to some other old used batteries that had a little life left in them. Or so I hoped, as I did this thunder crackled overhead, I put on my raingear, and hoped that it was just for show. It was not. The rain started first lightly, then downpouring. Lightning struck on all sides of me. The rain plus my dim headlight nearly blinded me and I found myself progressing at 5 miles a hour or less so to avoid crashing. A bolt of lightning struck 50 or so feet from me. I needed to get down from here but literally couldn't go any faster. I yelled at the sky, WHY!! Of course this had to happen. So fitting I thought.
I pushed on. The rain stopped. I made it. I MADE IT! I reached the Colorado Trail Trailhead. No one was there. I stopped and took a picture of my bike. I was expecting my brother to be there at least. Then I remembered the official ending was down the junction creek trail and kept going. I rounded the corner and cheers erupted. 15 or so people stood with headlamps, fires and Champaign. I crossed the finish line. 4 days 18hours and 36 minutes. That was hard.
Miles: 537
Cumulative Time Slept: 6 hour 45 minutes
The Aftermath
As soon as I finished I was greeted with some soup, watermelon and grilled cheese from my neighbor… YUM. A reporter stole me for an interview immediately after and I tried to pull myself together for answers. I stumbled around, chatting with the people there, answering their questions and being very glad to be done.
I got back to my parents’ house covered in mud. I could hardly walk and I sat down to eat some pizza that my brother bought. I got through two pieces before my mouth hurt too bad. I went to the shower and spent a good 30 minutes scrubbing. I weighed myself — 166 lbs. Pretty normal weight, I thought. I stayed up till midnight and greeted my parents as they got back from dropping my sister off at college. I went to sleep to awaken with some very swollen legs. I weighed myself 2 days later and was shocked to see 178. I had gained over 10lbs of pure inflammation. I was concerned; I think something wasn't working right with my heart or lungs or kidneys. It gradually got better, I'm not really sure what was the culprit. Could have just been inflammation.
For the next week I ate 6-7000 calories a day. At one point I found myself eating a full pound of pasta with alfredo sauce for dinner and a pint of Ben and Jerry's for dessert. I slept for 14 hours a night, and when I wasn't eating or sleeping I headed over to cheer on some of the other racers as they finished. It was so great to hear their stories and meet some of the names I had been trying so hard to stay ahead of.
Now for the question that is on everyone's mind... Will I be back? I spent most of the race thinking I would never ever do this race again. I certainly don't have any plans to, but I don't have any plans not to either... I do hope to get involved in some other ultra endurance races over the coming months and years and if anything interesting happens I'll be sure to update.
This is my first blog post, but I like it. I think I'll continue posting on here when I do interesting things. If you're interested in staying tuned, please enter your email on my main site here to get on the list!
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