Leadville Winter Race #1

I always get the pictures in reverse order. I went to this race not knowing what to expect at all. The CTR was my first and only mtb race in Colorado. It never occured to me how much snow there would be at this race. I've been to Leadville many times too so I should know better. I think 30 racers showed for this. Even after warming up, I guess I figured there'd be some hardpack singletrack. Not so much. I must say, this was probably the most fun I've had riding a bike. I couldn't stop laughing. The snow was very deep but everyone said it was better than last year. It was like riding in 6" of sand for 8 miles (we probably spent 4 miles on the snowy roads). Some of the course was snow covered roads and the rest was snowmobile trails. If you got outta the rut for a split second, you were over the bars and in feet of snow. The altitude was killer. I think we climbed 1500' or so and I felt it. Even the flat snowmobile trails were tough to ride because it just took so much to keep everything together. We finally hit a road section that wasn't a climb and I let er rip. I was making up killer time until I saw a volunteer flagging racers to make a hard left back onto a snowmobile trail. I saw him with probably 30 yards to go and knew there was no way I was getting things shut down in time. Everyone I passed caught up by the time I got turned around. We all laughed. We rode past some killer old mines throughout the course. With about 4 miles to go, I took a fall. I took many falls during the race but they were such soft landings it was no big deal . This time, I hit a rock with my left hand and knew it was trouble. I took my glove off and thought for sure I had broken something. I sat there for a bit before starting again. We skipped the awards/beer ceremony so that I could get back to Woodland and get some x rays done. Luckily they were fine. My hand is huge and throbbing. Doc says it's just real bad soft tissue damage but I can't even zip a coat. Thanks to Cycles of Life for putting on such a fun race. I guess when you live in Leadville and want to ride, you ride in snow. Some of those guys sure were fast and a lot of them sure had some wide rimes/tires. Congrats to Chris Plesko who showed up fashionably late and put in a strong ride on his Surly Pugsley for the win. The things got like 4" wide tires. I'm pretty sure I eeked out a top 10 but we'll see once the rsults get posted.

Finished.


This was a few hundred yards into the race. I had 3rd wheel but bobbled up a short little climb and had to dismount and lost 3 palces.

The scenery was amazing. Hopefully, my hand will be ok for the next race which is at night.