If you're not following my title reference, follow this link. Store that in your memory banks.
Overall, the course was a great mix of alpine access road and classic Rocky Mountain singletrack, starting and finishing in town, while climbing to above treeline (topping out at over 11,500 feet) in between. Creek crossings, roots, rocks, mud, snow, pine straw, waterbar jumps...you name it, this course had it. The area received better than an inch of snow overnight above treeline, which kept the course soft and damp throughout the race.Tim Mt. Pleasant took off from the start, going out hot, but quickly coming back. Got into the lead group at the start of the singletrack, and Les and I, along with a 15-18 racer, took off and opened up a gap on the climb up to Sally Barber Mine.
Once we hit Sally Barber Mine (the summit of the previous day's hill climb), we took a turn and headed further up on a steep, rocky, rooty singletrack. Further extended our lead up this climb. This trail eventually merged onto a long, silky trail that followed the contour of the mountain for what had to be three miles - so much fun it shouldn't have been allowed. XC racing isn't supposed to be fun, is it? Hit a feed zone at the end of this trail, where we turned up again on Boreas Pass Road. By this time, we had dropped the 15-18 racer, Les had opened up about 30 seconds on me, and three or four other 30-39 guys were closing in on me. We packed up and did some paceline work up the road for quite a while. Up and over Boreas Pass (on the Continental Divide), and started heading down, in our paceline, heading out at easily over 30mph. Trail was marked with pink ribbons, so we kept following pink ribbons tied to trees along the road. After going down for a while, one of the 30-39 guys sat up..."We're at 17 miles...isn't this race only 18 and a half?" We all stopped and looked around. Asked someone in an SUV passing by if they'd seen any race markings or marshals in front of us...nope. The town of Como was at the bottom of the descent, and Fairplay was seen off in the distance. We were officially no longer in Summit County, but Park County. Out of all of us, we had one working computer. Great. Looking back up at where we'd come from - there were no drainages heading back toward Breckenridge. OH $#!T. We're not even close.
We all turned around and started heading back up to Boreas Pass again, kinda plodding along. We were 5 miles past the top of the pass, and roughly 1800 feet below it. When we finally made it back up and over the pass, we were met by a course marshal, who told us the turn off of the road was another half mile in front of us...in other words, we rode a mile and 400ft vertical past the turn just to get to Boreas Pass, let alone the extra "group ride" we put in on the other side.
At this point, we finally made it back on course, where lo and behold, there were the arrows indicating the turn. Started heading down the descent, which was full of waterbar whoopty-doos, creek crossings, and zooming in and out of trees. Lots of fun, but I was crushed from the extra riding and lack of fluid (I brought drink for an hour and a half, not two and a half hours), and was starting to cramp. Honestly though, I didn't enjoy the downhill as much as I should have, because I was so pissed off about being sent an hour out of my way and losing the overall stage race because of it. I was literally thinking to myself who I was going to blow up on, and exactly how I was going to do it. It's one thing to pay $50 for a mountain bike race - it's entirely another to pay that and not have the course properly marked with no lead marshal, and lose because of it.
So we get to the bottom, I've got a few choice words for my wife and parents as I ride through the finish chute. Got my finish on video, but due to the R-rating of the dialogue, I chose not to post. Anyways, I come through the finish, and the race organizer comes up to me and explains that there was a case of "course sabotage", where someone went up and stole the arrows overnight, and no one caught it until about 15 of us had made it past there. Many were stopped and turned around before they got to the top of Boreas Pass, but the seven or eight of us weren't so lucky. Ultimately, the organizer ("Westy", or Jeff Westcott, of Maverick Promotions), was extremely understanding, remorseful/sympathetic/apologetic of the situation, and we all got things squared away. Jeff is a class act, who just wants the people participating in his events enjoy their experience to the fullest extent possible. For those of you who participate in other races in the area, he is also the mastermind behind the Firecracker 50 and the Summit Mountain Challenge mountain bike races.
Basically, within each group, the racers were brought together to come to a consensus of how things "likely" would have worked out. Since Tim and I were the only two contesting for the stage race GC in 19-29, it was a pretty easy discussion, since I had 16 minutes on him at the start, and had put in what was in the neighborhood of another 10-15 minutes by the time we hit Boreas Pass Road. He conceded that I would have won the XC race by a good margin; so the "official" results show a stage victory by 10 minutes, and an overall victory by 26 minutes.
Props to the medical team from Howard Head Sports Medicine; as soon as I got off the bike, my right quad and hamstring cramped simultaneously, putting me in a spot where all I could do was yell in agony - stretching one cramped the other even further, so I was just standing there getting a massage from one medic while the other was shuttling me Gatorade a quart at a time. If either of you ladies end up reading this - thanks a ton!So, things finished up pretty well, I still enjoyed myself greatly, and I didn't have to go Serena on anyone. Jeff managed to mitigate that issue before it really came to a head. Jeff - thanks for putting on a great race series, I'll be back again.
