2015 Leadville 100 Race Report, Part 5: Perception and Reality

08.25.2015 | 8:33 am

A “Quick Links to Previous Installments” Note from Fatty: Here’s where you’ll find the parts to this story:

• Part 1: Pre-Race Jitters
• Part 2: Starting Line Surprise
• Part 3: Return of the Son of Joyful Warrior
• Part 4: Conflict and Questions
• Part 5: Perception and Reality
• Part 6: New Objective
• Part 7: To the Finish Line and Beyond

A wise man once said, “Perception is everything.”

Or was it a wise woman? 

Or did s/he say, “perception is nothing.”

Let’s just agree that a wise person once said, “perception is…mumblemumble.“

My point is that what you perceive and the way things can be objectively measured, can be radically different than each other. 

I have an example.

The Long Way Down

Every year since the beginning of time (or at least since I’ve started doing this race), I’ve stopped at the Columbine aid station, just for a quick drink or bite to eat. 

Many years, there’s been cantaloupe, and that is the best. There is nothing in the world quite so wonderful as cantaloupe at 12,600 feet in the middle of the race.

Other years, there’s been watermelon, and that’s a close second best, wonderfulness-wise.

This year, however, I wasn’t looking for mid-race refreshment. I was looking to shave every possible second off my time. So I didn’t stop. I just went around the cones and began what has to be the cruelest, least-known joke in the Leadville 100:

The first thing you do in the big descent from Columbine Mine is…climb.

Sure, it’s just for a quarter mile, maybe less, but it still seems just a little unkind. A little unfair.

Waaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

After that, though, it’s all downhill, for seven and a half miles. But you gotta be careful, because it’s a doubletrack-width trail, and other racers are going the other direction.

And in my case, several racers who were going slower than I was on the way up were finding the new gravity situation much more to their liking and wanted to get by me.

So, lotsa people, lotsa effort, very little oxygen. It’s amazing, really, that most of us get up and down that section of trail without hurting each other. (I’m aware of a couple people who crashed out on Columbine, but don’t really know their stories.)

I do know that I was nearly brought to tears — and I am not exaggerating here — by the fact that so many people called out “Go Fatty!” to me as I rode down. Ben. The Hammer. Dave Thompson. Lindsey.

And then I passed Ken again. This time, he didn’t heckle me, but yelled, “Good job! You’re my hero.”

The man knows how to motivate people, what kind of motivation to use, and when to use it.

I breathed a sigh of relief: passing Ken here meant that I had made it past the technical 2.5 miles of the descent. 

The rest would be easy.

“I had no cramps, no cramps!” I said aloud, happy I had made it through this big climb and descent without this common problem.

Later, after the race, someone would approach me and say, “Why did you say, ‘No cramps, no cramps’ as you crossed paths with me during the race.

It would not be easy to explain.

Dizzy

Friends kept yelling my name as I worked my way down the trail. Sometimes I’d recognize them in time to yell back, but more often I wouldn’t. I’d still yell, but it would be have to be something more generic, like:

“YEEEEEHAAAWWW!”

That said, I did recognize and yell to (not necessarily in this order) Rocky (whose story I shall not recount, out of respect), Dave Houston (whose story I shall not recount, because he’s currently about 18 months late on his writeup of the trip to Italy with WBR he promised me), Cory (who was eating a slab of bacon), the other Cory (I can’t believe there were two Cory’s staying at the house I rented), the other Dave (there were a total of three Daves staying at the house I rented, but that seems less amazing than two Cory’s, somehow), and DJ (I wish I had gotten a cool nickname like “DJ,” but no; I got “Fatty.”). 

All of them making their way up, all of them doing their best.

I, meanwhile, was feeling…kinda weird. 

And I don’t mean “weird” as in the kind of weird I usually feel. No, this was a lightheaded, disconnected weird.

I slowed down, recognizing that if I felt this way my reflexes were probably not at their best. And then I self-assessed.

Was I lightheaded because of altitude? Maybe, but I was lower now than I had been half an hour ago, and I felt fine then.

Was I lightheaded because of lack of food? I didn’t think so. I had been absolutely fastidious about my eating regimen. If I was riding hungry, this wouldn’t be the first symptom; this would come after grumbling stomach, a drop in power, and then an inability to get food down. I had none of those symptoms.

I chose to ignore it (with the exception of being a smidgen more cautious than I already was on the descent) and hope it would go away.

This, as it turned out, was a workable solution, in my case. I was never aware of the moment when I no longer felt dizzy, but eventually — before I got to the bottom of the Columbine descent — I was not.

Still, I felt like I had been taking it slow, like I had come to an almost complete stop at the hairpin corners (which also seemed very loose and dusty that day).

I felt like, as I carefully eased my way down what was in fact the least technical descent of the day, the sub-eight dream was slipping away from me.

Admiration

Through the years, the Leadville 100 mountain bike race has grown and evolved. I have fun looking back to the early days of the race (400 riders, total, with me somewhere in the middle of the pack), but I also really love the current incarnation (1600+ riders, with me being one of the lead 100 or so). 

One of the things I loved best this year was that with so many riders, so spread out, I got to witness people racing and chasing their goals, for the entirety of the descent down Columbine.

So many people, working so hard to show themselves what they can do. To test themselves. It’s inspiring.

I hit the bottom of the descent, stuck out my hand for Yuri Hauswald — DK200 winner and awesome GU guy — to give me a quick five, and charged forward.

In my mind, the rest of the race would be “easy.”

Perception and Reality

I felt like I had fouled this segment of the race up by descending so cautiously, and vowed to make time up from Twin Lakes to the Pipeline.

The strange thing, though, is my perception doesn’t match reality. 

In truth, I had just done the descent from Columbine to Twin Lakes the second fastest I have ever done it. Just a minute and a half slower than my best, and 2.5 minutes faster than in 2011, the year I had my fastest time at Leadville.

I didn’t have the data in front of me to let me know I shouldn’t be beating myself up, though. All I had was urgency.

I needed, somehow, to step my race up.