Shortly I’ll be undertaking the second mountain bike race of my life… just a little thing called the Leadville 100. You may have heard of it! Little did I realize when I accepted a spot on the Lifetime Grand Prix (LGP) tour that I would be jumping into the deep end of endurance mountain bike racing with one of the biggest in the world. Despite my rookie status, I’m actually feeling pretty prepared for this one.
Stop #2 for me on the Lifetime Grand Prix was the brutal Crusher in the Tushar, a 69.9-mile gravel race out of Beaver, Utah. A mere 112km seemed like a walk in the park compared to the 320km of Unbound 200.
Inspired by how hard my fellow competitors had to ride to finish at the top in Emporia, Kansas, I approached this race a bit differently: attack the first climb and try and stay with the front of the race for as long as I could. The risk: blow up on the second climb and limp through the relentless last few miles up to the mountain-top finish. The reward: see what kind of fitness this tiger really had…and maybe just surprise myself.
My strategy paid off. My heart rate skyrocketed for the first hour as I tried to keep the leaders in sight. After that, I settled into the grind to reach the top at the two-hour mark and start the sketchy descent. Unfortunately, I slid out on one of the hairpins as what seemed to be my ongoing “dirt nap” saga and went down. Thankfully I had just a bit of a painful, bloody elbow and knee to contend with; my bones and bike came out unscathed. I was in awe of the racers with clearly better bike handling skills who were careening down the mountain like it was no big deal. Like seriously, how the heck do they do that?!
Once on the HOT pavement leading into the next 30 miles of ascending, I gratefully got into a paceline with fellow LGP racer Melissa Rollins who warned me that the next section “sucks.” And suck it did. Temps were grazing into the high 90s, and as the pitch went up, it got bumpy, sandy, and slippery. This is where the mental toughness really…
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