Epic

Nancy had been wanting to do the Breck Epic for years now. The epic is a 6 day stage mountain bike race in Breckenridge Colorado. I’ve always said no since it is pretty expensive and we have plenty of opportunities to grind ourselves to paste here in the AZ desert – for free. Anyhow, this year things changed. First Nancy’s aunt generously offered up her condo in Breckenridge if we should ever want to go – hmmmm. Then my brother called up and said, "let’s go do the Breck Epic". Well shoot, since the stars were going to align, it was time to pony up.

For those who are thinking about doing this race here are some things to think about to help your decision making.

• The vibe of this race is pretty grass roots - which in my mind is a good thing. If  you are looking for ultra organized, rigid structure – don’t go. There's a roadie type "mountain bike" ride not far from Breck that might suit you better. Communication before the race was sparse. Since the course changed up to the day of the ride, there were no “official” tracks. One day the course changed between the rider’s meeting the night before and when we did the race next morning. But it was all OK. The course was well marked, the volunteers were awesome and everything went off like clockwork.They may be low key, but they know what they are doing.
• This race is hard. I thought a lot about where to place this in other tough rides we’ve done, like the Coco 250 and the AZT300. It is not really as hard as those since you only ride for 5ish hours a day (or less if you are not slow like me) and then go back to your condo, shower, feed, lay on the couch. Multi-day bikepacking, which usually involves riding 12+ hours each day and sleeping on the ground is obviously harder. However, it takes a bit of mental fortitude to get out of bed after day 2 or 3 and go out to punish your oxygen starved muscles yet again.
• The altitude. It’s a thing. Some people deal with it fine, some just suffer, some get destroyed. It is hard to know which you will be until you go. Personally, I felt nauseous every morning before the race. Not sure if it was nerves or altitude or a mix. It mostly went away during the pain of the first big climb.It definitely added to the level of difficulty.
• Colorado is frickin’ beautiful in the summer. The passes we grunted to the top of, the flower filled meadows we rode by, the forests we ripped through, are all amazing. There are BIG views and just wonderful scenes out there. I love the desert, but this area is just as awesome – in a different way.
• The weather can be interesting. Bring your rain jacket. Just do. Getting rained/hailed on while descending a mountain is really uncomfortable.
• You have to be  OK with riding some dirt roads. We rode a lot of jeep roads/dirt roads/poor excuses for jeep roads in order to do these loops from town and get to the gold. That’s just how it is. The best trails mostly take a bit of work to get to.
• Bring your Hike-A-Bike shoes. If you are a weak flatlander like me, you are going to HAB a lot. If you are a pro, you’ll still do some HAB.
• There are amazing trails out there. And they are building more. I wish we could have something like Side Door with it’s ginormous bermed switchbacks on our local trails. So fun. The crappy stuff we had to ride through was worth it to get to the good stuff. 
• I have GPS tracks from each day and will be glad to share. Though I expect the courses will be changed a little by next year to incorporate any new trail. 
• At the end of it all, I'm really glad we did this. It was tough, but we got to ride is some wonderful places. Also, Breck is a great little town. Wouldn't mind spending more time there. 

On to the pictures. Unfortunately, my camera broke the first day, so I was stuck with taking cell phone pictures. The quality is not great. Also, didn’t take a lot of pictures - because racing. I’ll try to put what pictures I did take into some sort of context.

Day 0

Nancy and I drove up on Friday and the race didn’t start until Sunday. That gave us a day to get our bearings. Glenn (my brother) and Garrett (his friend) drove down from Oregon Friday as well. John and Kara came in late Friday night as in they were in the midst of their own adventure.

So, Nancy, John, Glenn, Garrett and I got together Saturday to do a ride to stretch our legs and get a feel for the trails. Glenn picked Burro – it was close and he said that the elevation profile looked OK. And by, OK, he meant lots of climbing. The trail started by climbing and continued like that the whole way. 1000 feet in about 3.5 miles. Garrett hammered off the front on his singlespeed. Glenn was right behind on a full suspension rig. Nancy, John and I lagged behind those two huffing and puffing. So, it was going to be like that.

huffing...

...and puffing

Ready to race (picture by John)

Day 1

Nancy, Glenn, Garret, John, and I rolled to the starting line about 10 minutes before the start of the race. John was there to take some pics before he headed out on his own adventure. I took a few pics, then realized that I had forgotten my water. Arghhhh. Fortunately the condo was within a 5 minute ride. A great opportunity to get my heart rate up. Made it back just before they shouted "GO". That was fun.

Notice how my water bottle is missing

Rolled up a road for some good, easy climbing miles. This being a paved climb, Nancy took off and It was a long time before I saw her again. After a good amount of elevation gain we dumped into some sublime singletrack. Smooth, dowhill, flowy, bermed turns. Oh yeah, this is going to be good. Of course I have no pictures of the best trail because I was too busy railing it.

My hopes of riding perfect trails all day were interrupted by a climb up a nasty jeep road. Technically rideable, but not at that altitude, on a singlespeed, by me. So time for Hike A Bike.

HAB time. There were better and worse climbs during the week. 

In what would prove to be the pattern for the week, there was lots of climbing on suboptimal surfaces so that we could get to some great downhill singletrack.

The first aid station was at about 14 miles in. Nancy was rolling out as I rolled in. Topped up my water/food and took off on another climb.

Aid Station #1

Time to climb

Such great views

 About 1 or 2 miles from the end, on the final climb I finally saw, and caught Nancy. We chatted a bit and headed down the final section. The finish to this day was awesome. Kind of a flow track with big berms, jumps and some optional skinnies. So fun. My extra mass helped me make it to the bottom ahead of Nancy, but only by a little.

Weeeeee

I totally would have ridden the log if I wasn't racing. Totally.

Nancy setting up to get air off this jump

Look Ma!

Surprisingly, Glenn rolled in a little after that. He had had a flat in the beginning and had issues getting it fixed up. Note to racers: make sure your spare tube has a long stem if you have highly dished carbon wheels. Garret had finished about 45 minutes before us.

What are you looking at

 We rolled up to the main tent and took advantage of the bike wash (very dusty out there)/lube center. This was a really nice perk that we used every day.Got the bikes all cleaned up, lubed and ready to go again. Another great perk was the post-race recovery food tent. It was stocked with some really good stuff and we filled our tanks back up. A cooler of Coke, fig newtons with nutella, peanut butter/bacon/potato chip sandwiches - yum. Basically, they would put together any combination of the ingredients at hand to satisfy your salty/sweet/fat cravings. Apparently bacon wrapped pickles were popular.

The table of tasty treats

Back to the condo to get cleaned up and chill. As much as I enjoy bikepacking, it is nice to have a shower and a comfy couch at the end of a day of riding. That was a big advantage of having the race staged out of town.We were able to ride our bikes to the start every morning. 

Day 2

Different starting place and another sunny/cool morning. Just beautiful. There was supposed to be a chance of rain that AFTERnoon, so Nancy and I stashed our rain gear at aid station #2, which was about 30 miles in. We should get there before noon. You can guess how that turned out.

Another fine day to be out

Started climbing on the road out of town and then turned on to the obligatory dirt/mine road up into the hills. Strong folks could ride much of it, and I walked plenty. Once up top there was a downhill that we had been warned about. It was a sketchy "jeep" road with loose dirt and big rocks.

Once down that was a trail along a ditch. Apparently, this is a relic of the mining days. We'd ride in these in various places during the week. Think of a dam against water flowing down the hill. So the trail went along the top of the embankment which was like a knife edge in spots. On one side you'd fall into the ditch, on the other, down the hill. There is a section of trail just like this back in PA where I used to ride, but this was a couple of miles long. Interesting.

That eventually led us out into a valley where aid station #1 was. It was so chaotic I didn't do my usual thing - which turned out to be a mistake as I didn't get enough calories. Nancy pretty much bypassed this station and headed into some moderate climbing up the valley. It would be quite a while before I'd see her again.

Aid station #1. Are those dark clouds I see?

Heading up the mountain

The moderate climbing eventually turned into a section of super fun, downhill single track. Not steep, but enough to get some speed and really have some fun. However, all good things end. So, we headed up, out of the valley, and began climbing. This was a pretty decent single track climb, but damn it was long. And since it was singletrack I kept getting stuck behind gearies in their low, low granny gear. It is tough to roll that slow on a singlespeed.

We got to the top and headed down some amazing, fast singletrack. I rolled with a small group for a while having a great time. Then it began to rain a little - even a little hail. I slowed my pace a bit concerned about wet roots, but the trail still headed down.

The trail headed out of the trees into some beautiful meadow. The trail was still fast and fun and the little bit of rain had stopped.

This was great at high speed

Smiling because she doesn't know what is coming. 

Then the rain started again and became a full on downpour. And since that was not enough it hailed HARD for about 5 minutes. This made the rest of what should have been a spectacular downhill just an endurance test. Since we were nowhere near aid station #2 (where our rain gear was) we got soaked to the bone. My fingers were cramping because of the cold and we were essentially riding down a stream, getting colder and colder.

The downhill eventually turned into a section with some nice up and down single track. I was happy for the climbs since they added warmth. At this point the rain stopped and the sun was starting to peek out. This section was actually pretty fun.

Finally rolled into aid station #2, where it wasn't raining. Got some food and drink. Nancy rolled in while I was trying to thaw out.

We got our stuff together and headed out down a paved road for about a mile and turned up into some climbing next to a golf course. Of course, this is where Nancy left me. We had a little bit of up and down and then some climbing on dirt roads until we eventually reached the final singletrack downhill. Of course the rain had come back a little bit during the climb, but I had a jacket by then and it was no problem. I knew Nancy had gapped me pretty good on the climb, but I made an attempt on the downhill singletrack to catch her. No luck, she beat me.

Snack time

The trail went on top of those tailings. Lots of mining up here.

After this ride, I was at my low point for the week. I felt beat up and did not love the whole getting soaked to the bone thing. What was supposed to be one of the great sections of the week turned out to be miserable due to my poor planning. Can't believe I have 4 more days of this.

Day 3

As usual, the day started with perfect weather. I knew we had 2 climbs up to the Continental Divide today. Given how I felt (mentally and physically) I was not very excited. To add to that, my brother called before the race. He was having major issues with the altitude and decided to bail. Bummer. I was really hoping to be able to spend more time with him during the week.  

As soon as we hit dirt, things ground to a standstill since we were on singletrack and there were a lot of people trying to filter in. I took the opportunity to snap a few pics.

Conga line

Breckenridge in the distance

Once we got through that we went up a trail called Side Door, which had these huge bermed switchbacks that made them fun to climb. This was way more fun that a crummy jeep road. Things are looking up.  Headed up into singletrack climbing where the views started getting really good.

Another descent down to aid station #1 where I topped off water and headed the long climb up to French Pass. It starts out gradual on a road then turns to rocky/wet singletrack. Not really steep, but difficult to keep your momentum on. And the altitude begins to be an issue. After one turn you could see a big climb with people walking up. So, this is the HAB we heard about. After walking up that and cresting the top, there was a groan of disappointment from just about every newbie when they saw that there was another, higher hill to HAB up. Hopefully that was the top of the pass?

The climb to French Pass begins

That is the top of the pass up there, right?

Assume the position

Oh, no, now we have to climb that?

After grinding up the second big climb it was apparent that we were there. My GPS read 12030 feet above sea level. Nancy was up there already so we got a picture of the two of us. This was a pretty spectacular place to be.

Finally! Oh, but we have one more climb like this to do.

All that climbing led to some excellent descending. The initial part of the descent was smooth, fast, flowy, beautiful. Really got me pumped up. At this point my mood had shifted completely from the morning. The incredibly beautiful views and super fun single track had totally turned me around. This was so much fun! Aid station #2 was at the bottom of that very long descent. From there we climbed up to Georgia Pass and once again passed over the Continental Divide. This climb was on a dirt road and was actually pretty decent on the single speed - I walked much less than a lot of the earlier climbs. 

Again, the views from the top were outstanding. 

It is too bad that pictures can't capture how grand this scene was

From here we headed down on a trail that had a split personality. At the top is was fast, flowy, amazing. Roots and rocks started to show as we went down. Near the bottom it turned into a crazy downhill rock garden. This is one of the few times I would have paid to be on a full suspension bike. It had to be at least a mile long and was a total beat down.

Finally, it relented and we rolled to aid station #3. After this was a copious amount of climbing on dirt roads. Lots of steep pitches to keep me walking. This seemed to be a really long section. Finally, we were backtracking and the trail turned onto the Side Door trail with the amazingly fun switchback berms. Wow, so great.  

Then when we hit the road there was an extra section of a mile or so on the other side of the road before the finish line. 

Nancy rolling into the finish

Day 4

Once again, I started the day with low level nausea. Not sure if it was nerves or elevation or both. However, it was another beautiful CO morning and I was ready to do some riding. The start was essentially the same as the previous two days, but we headed off the road onto a different dirt road. Climbed and climbed and climbed. Then we hit some singletrack going down. This stuff was gold. They really know how to make fun singletrack out here. We hit a little bit more of the "ditch" type trail that we did the other day and ended up at aid station #1. Only 10 miles in so Nancy bypassed and I got a little food and topped off water.

Headed out on the Colorado Trail, for some moderate singletrack climbing. This went for a while and then turned into some beautiful downhill singletrack. This eventually led us to a really cool switchback section overlooking Keystone. We went about half way down that and then over to Vomit hill - which lived up to it's name. Some awful HAB ensued. And then more climbing. Once we got over that bit it was more singletrack down to the valley that Keystone is in. We road some up and down and flat trails on the hills above Keystone and eventually got to aid station #2.

Finally catching Nancy

Nice little place in the country

Keystone Ski Resort

We shared the trail with a horseback riding business for a little bit

From here we climbed on a dirt road for a while. We knew we had to get to about 11000 feet, so I expected some steep, awful stuff. But the dirt road was totally SSable. Then we hit some ATV trail which switchbacked up the mountain and was still very rideable. This was a surprisingly good big climb. Maybe it was just cause I had Nancy's company to help the time go by. Got to the top and down the other side. We had climbed this section a couple days before. I liked going down it much better. Down, down, down and on to aid station #3. 

Rippin it

I knew from here there was a bit of climbing before the final descent, but I had the impression that it would be fairly moderate. Wrong. It was a steep road that went on FOREVER. Most people HABed it, and with singlespeeds riding was out of the question. Nancy was getting quite impatient with the amount of HAB on this section. We just wanted to ride. All bad things eventually come to an end, and we finally made it out of that mess. A bit more dirt road, some up and down and we were at the top of the Side Door trail. This was the third day in a row we finished on this, and I was glad to do it again. Down to Minnie Mine and the road. We crossed the road and did another mile or so on the other side which brought us to the finish. 

She may be smiling, but she isn't loving this HAB

This ended up being the longest day, but we escaped rain and got finished in decent time. 

Only 2 to go... 

Day 5

Today was a little different. We had heard about the climb up Wheeler and knew it would be big. However, the route had changed from previous years. This changed ended up making the course harder and caused quite a bit of griping among folks I talked to at the end. But let's start from the beginning. 

Since the race started up the Burro trail singletrack (which we rode on our preride), not on pavement, it was done in waves of about 10 riders - based on overall time so far. This turned out to work really well. For the climb up Burro I didn't get stuck in a conga line like every other morning and was able to climb at my own pace. So, climb I did. The climb to the first aid station was about 4 miles and 1200 feet. Some tough sections, but mostly doable. I got a gel and topped off water - Nancy rolled by. Continued up to where it started getting real. Then it turned into a HAB fest. From aid station 1 to the first peak of Wheeler was about 2 miles and 1600 feet of elevation - and much of it was walking. 

We are headed to that little patch of snow up there.

So much HAB

and continuing up

Getting close to the top

Just a little more

 Finally made it to the top and marveled at the view.

There wasn't much bacon left when us slow guys got to the top

360 view from Wheeler

Heading off wheeler, into the bowl

Next we went into a huge bowl so it was down, across and climb back up the other side. Then we headed down again. The trails were occasionally nice, but mostly rocky and often wet from snow melt. The trail down from Wheeler to the other side of the mountain was steep and sometimes sketchy and sometimes narrow with a VERY steep drop. You wanted to focus on this stuff. We all knew that we needed to be on the ridgeline at some point, so why were we going down? Eventually the trail turned to the right and we headed up, and up, and up. There were so many sections where it looked like you were nearing the top only to see another HAB section, that I just lost count. A couple more miles of mostly HAB got us to the top at 12500 feet above sea level.

A little bit of exposure there

Heading back up to the top

almost there

Top of the world

View from the top of the world

From there the only place to go was down. Right away it was a rocky mess. So downhill HAB. The trail was "mostly" rideable here, with big sections of rock/rubble that you just had to walk. Down, down, we went - back into the treeline. The descent was steep and often dangerous. Lots of rocks and roots. After a long time we finally got to aid station #2. I was glad to be done with the bulk of the ascent/descent. Even coming down that was a lot of work.

And back down again

A bit of rubble

This is another one of those areas that was so grand in person, but not much in a pic

From here the trail rolled through the woods. Some up, some down. This was quite fun. This went for about 5 miles and then we were directed to a dirt road which went up and up and up? At this point I was wondering what the heck was going on. Supposedly we had like 3 miles to go and we were climbing? Eventually that relented and we were directed to a trail that took us down to the finish. This one was the shortest mileage of the week so far, but arguably the biggest effort. Glad to have that behind me.

I knew the extremely technical nature of this would slow Nancy down, so I settled in to wait for her at the end. After a while I saw some folks that she usually rode with and asked if they had seen her. They said that they heard she crashed after Wheeler and another guy came up and said he saw it and helped her. Apparently she fell and her bike went off the trail down the hill a little. Her shoe even came off. Word was that her ribs hurt but she had continued to the 2nd aid station. I knew there was much tech between Wheeler and Aid 2, so I was concerned about whether she was able to make it. The longer I waited, the more concerned I got. Went back to the condo, got the car and drove to the race finish (it was a way's up a dirt road). As I was walking to the finish to ask if the organizers could tell me if she got to aid station#2, she came rolling through - smiling - of course. What a relief. 

Day 6

So, this was to be the "easy" day. The dessert that we get for eating all our vegetables. The mileage was short and the climbing much less than the rest of the week.

The day started out sunny and coolish - like most every other day. We went of in big waves today - Nancy took off one or two before me and the rest of the slow people.

Up the road a bit and then began climbing on the very first singletrack section we did this week. Of course on day one we got to go down it instead of up. It was a decent climb, but wayyyy more fun going down. That eventually ended and we jumped onto another trail that was a bit more steep and rocky. This is starting to hurt. Somewhere along this section was a guy in a tux t-shirt playing banjo in front of an old building. So, that was cool. Continued to climb for a while then dumped out onto a dirt road that was a nice, moderate climb up to the pass. 

'cause why not

Aid station

At the pass was the aid station. Looked around a bit at the big views and then headed down the dirt road. We turned off the road into some steepish, rocky, wet downhill. I was taking it easy here - didn't want to wreck on my last day. But there were guys flying by me - no fear. This went on for a while then we hit a flat section in one of the mining ditches that we had been riding on at various times this week. Usually, the trail went along the top of the berm of the ditch, but this time it was down in. This trail was nice and smooth and fun. About this time I caught up to Nancy. We descended out of the ditch trail and headed out to a dirt road. This road brought us to the furthest point and then headed back. We would end up taking this road all the way back up to the pass. Again, it was a pretty shallow grade that was just about perfect for my cadence/gearing. Nancy and I road together for a while, but apparently the grade suited me better than her - a rare occurrence. 

Finally, I reached the top, where the aid station was. From here it was pretty much all downhill to the end. I didn't stop at the aid station but got a beer hand-up from a girl who looked to be about 8. That is probably not legal, but this is Colorado. Gulped it down and headed down the dirt road back toward the finish. This was my last chance (at least from the perspective of being on a bike) to soak in the views of the Breckenridge mountains  and I made the best of it.

A mile or so down we dumped back into some old jeep track type trail. There was some rocky/wet stuff and some smooth fun. It was pretty steep for a while. From here there was a mixture of really great and not so great trail. Some sections were super fun and some were sketchy - all downhill. There was one section that went down a stream for like 50 feet. That just made me laugh, because it was so ludicrous. When we started getting close to town there was some pavement and some more singletrack and the obligatory late climb to make you feel that burn again.

Over the finish line and done. Finally. Dumped my bike, went back to the trail and waited for Nancy to finish for the final trail picture.

Nancy ended up 4th in the SS women class.

Finishers got a belt buckle. Not sure what I'd wear that with.