08.16.2016 | 9:51 am
If this race report is going to be fewer than fifty installments, I have to leave some things out. I just have to. And that’s too bad, because this morning I got an email from my friend Rohit, where he listed some of his favorite moments from before the race:
- The Ted King vs Fatty “buckle off”
- Witnessing a pro cyclist in remission (Ted again) eat four brats (no buns, though) and drink five beers, two days before the race
- Getting into a doping debate with Fatty and Hottie on the front lawn of the house
- Hearing Fatty’s imitation of Floyd Landis scolding a hobo
- Learning a little about how Katie Bolling turned a passion into a career
- Watching how much Chris and Shon can eat and still look like they have 2% body fat
- Witnessing the pre-race Fatty and Hammer stress-out
- Having a mere three-minute walk to the starting line
Rohit is right. I could — and who know, very well may — write a blog post about every single one of the moments Rohit bulleted out here. Every one of them could make a great stand-alone story.
But right now, I want to talk about the race itself. Or at least, the starting line.
Wrong Side of the Tracks
In the Leadville 100 race, color matters. A lot. Specifically, the color of the number on your race plate — earned either by your finish time a previous year or your finish time at a qualifying race — specifies where in the starting line (which is multiple city blocks long) you get to start your race.
My 8:12 finish in Leadville last year qualified me to be in the “silver” starting corral, right behind the pros and rocket-fast guys in the gold corral.
But that would have separated me by dozens of yards from The Hammer right from the beginning of the race (her 9:08 finish last year put her in the green corral, two corrals back from silver), and one of my critical jobs — as her domestique — was to give her a clear path right from the line.
So, when we had done packet pickup two days earlier, I had asked the race organizers to make two changes to my status:
- Change my registration to singlespeed
- Put me in the green corral
They were happy to do both those things (though they gave me a categorical “no” when I first asked them to instead move The Hammer up to the silver corral with me).
That little green sticker on my race plate became my passport to ride with my wife right from the gun.
As we arrived at the starting line area, however, we had a couple of surprises waiting for us. First, the green corral was further back than we had expected, across the street from the starting line arch.
Second, the green corral was jam-packed, and there was no way we could get in. In fact, it was overflowing, with people lined up outside the corral — just hoping to wiggle our way into the corral once they dropped the barriers and more of us could flow in as we filled up the space in the street kept free of racers until the last few minutes before the race.
The Hammer’s Turn
We got into a place outside the corral, figuring that one way or another, we’d get across the starting line once the race began. Our friend Al Iverson — a honcho with Life Time who was starting for his tenth race — was doing the same thing, so we figured this was the best option any of us had.
“I need to go use the bathroom one last time before the race begins,” The Hammer told me.
This, of course, was part of the plan, and one of the really nice things about starting together. I’d watch her bike and hold her place while she found a porta-potty, and then she’d do the same for me.
She took off to take care of her business, and I stood there, holding up two bikes and talking with Al. Happy to have a friend to chat with.
Separation Anxiety
And then the barriers dropped, and everyone surged forward. Including me and the two bikes I was walking. Swept up with the tide.
Somewhere, a couple of blocks away, I thought, The Hammer is in a porta-potty, and when she comes back, she isn’t going to know where I am…or where her bike is, for that matter.
“Five minutes ’til start!” the announcer boomed.
I worked my way over to the left side of the corral as best as I could, figuring The Hammer would be coming back on that side.
Be cool, Fatty, I told myself. Worst-case scenario, she’ll find you after the gun goes off and sees you all alone in the corral, holding a couple of bikes.
If I hadn’t been so cold — it was thirty-six degrees out, the coldest start in years — I might have laughed. I actually have a recurring dream not too dissimilar from what was happening right at that moment.
Reunited
In the end, it was the cold that helped The Hammer find me. You see, for the past few years I’ve worn a thrift-store faux-fleece coat to the starting line, as shown in this photo from last year’s report:
Thanks to this coat, The Hammer was able to spot and rejoin me.
What a relief.
“Do you need to go use the restroom?” The Hammer asked.
“No time, the race starts in just a few minutes,” I said. And also, I didn’t really need to go anymore. Really, that “pee before racing” thing is 97% nerves.
I then broke open and ate a Bonk Breaker Almond Butter and Honey bar — my current favorite pre-race thing to eat: they’re delicious, moist (so they’re easy to get down even when you have pre-race cottonmouth), quite small, and have 200+ calories, helping you stay on top of your calorie count right from the gun.
And also, I’d be eating nothing but GU Roctane gels (and drinking 2/3-strength CR333, swapping between Grape and Lemonade flavors) for the next 103.5 miles, so it was nice to actually eat something I could chew.
I looked around, didn’t see anyone else eating. Too bad for them, it’s a valuable, practical, and easy way to push off the inevitable calorie deficit this kind of race brings.
I took off my faux-fleece coat and threw it over the corral fence. (Yes, it found its way back to me after the race.)
Then thought about it and decided to get rid of the vest, too. I knew I’d be cold for the upcoming few minutes of pavement, but I also knew I’d warm right up as we hit the St. Kevin’s climb.
St. Kevin’s, which both The Hammer and I had cause to fear. (I’ll explain why in the next installment of this story.)
It was getting light.
A photographer captured a shot of The Hammer, staring at the race clock, behind these two guys who had moved in front of me when I slow-walked our bikes in the corral and searched frantically for The Hammer:
I love this picture particularly because The Hammer’s expression looks exactly like everyone feels. Look:
It doesn’t matter how many times you do this race. On the starting line, the anxiety is intense.
The Hammer finally tossed away the thrift-store sweatshirt she was wearing, though she kept the vest on. It made sense for her to keep an extra layer; she doesn’t have the subcutaneous layer of insulating blubber I have.
The national anthem. The countdown. The shotgun blast. My twentieth start in the Leadville 100.
I have so much experience with this race. But I’ve never partnered with another racer before, and I was about to find out: I still have a lot to learn.
Which seems like a good place to pick up in the next installment.
Comments (16)
08.15.2016 | 6:37 am
A Note from Fatty About the “Choose How Fatty Rides Leadville” Fundraiser: I’m incredibly excited to announce that the “What Should Fatty’s Leadville Focus Be / Monster Vs Hammer” fundraiser was a massive success. Here’s how the results went:
So I changed my registration and rode my singlespeed as The Hammer’s domestique. When I begin the race report (tomorrow, probably — although I have a lot of day-job work to get caught up on today, so no promises), there’ll be a lot more about that.
What was more interesting was where the competition between The Monster and The Hammer wound up:
This wound up being an incredibly tight race. Although it should be known that it wasn’t an exact tie. Here’s what the chart looks like when I don’t have it round to the nearest percentage point:
With only one percentage point separating them, well, it couldn’t have been much closer.
And with a total of $4210 raised for NICA, this fundraiser won no matter how you look at the pie charts.
2016 LT100MTB Race Report, Part 1: Family Photos from Last Week
Over the next several blog posts, I’m going to tell the story of The Hammer’s and my Leadville 100 (and I’ll ask The Hammer and The Monster to write their own reports, too).
But before there was the race, there was a week of vacation. And before that, there was a week when I was in Ireland for my day job. So today, I’m just going to catch you up on some of that before jumping to the big drama at the starting line.
How will I catch you up on so much, in just one post? With a bunch of captioned photographs, of course.
The Hammer and I wanted the twins to be able to participate in some of the rides before the race, so we surprised them with new Felt Surplus 70s. Just before I took off for Ireland, we showed them off to the Twins, and then The Monster was going to take them for a ride. I showed the girls how the big volume tires could take a hit by just riding straight up a curb without lifting a wheel. One of the girls followed my lead…and immediately got a pinch flat. The thing is, we had not spare tubes and I had to go to the airport right then. So The Hammer and The Monster got to learn how to change big 27.5+ tires in a trial by fire. To their credit, they got it done and the bikes haven’t had another flat since.
A newspaper from Ireland, to prove I was there.
I didn’t read this article, but am pretty sure I would have enjoyed it.
I got home from Ireland late at night, got some sleep, got up, and it was time to pack the truck. But since six of us were going (The Hammer, The Monster, The Programmer [formerly the IT Guy], The Twins, me) and The Hammer and I were each bringing two bikes (just to be safe), we needed to take two vehicles. Here’s my truck, loaded with about half our gear and 3/4 of our bikes. The Programmer’s truck held the balance of bikes and gear. Big families have a lot of stuff.
While walking around town in Leadville, I stopped in Melanzana, where I usually buy a beanie or hoodie. There, I saw Floyd Landis as he was leaving the building. I wanted to chase after him, but The Hammer stopped me, telling me to leave the man in peace. But I tweeted about seeing him, and he replied, telling me to swing by Periodic Brewing (Pb, get it?) and say hi. I did, and we wound up hanging out and having an incredibly interesting, heartfelt, honest, and fun conversation.
A mural on the side of a building in Leadville. I’m not 100% sure I approve of where The Hammer’s got her hand. Nor the Monster’s for that matter.
The Hammer, The Monster, and I tended to coordinate outfits when we pre-rode sections of the race course, and over the first few days, we rode about 75% of it, so The Monster had a great idea of what she’d be experiencing. And we took a lot of photos, too. Here we are at the top of the Columbine Mine turnaround point. All smiles right now.
I’ve been to Leadville twenty times now, but this is the first time I’ve ever been on the awesome hiking trail right by the Fish Hatchery. Combining the race with a family vacation was an awesome idea.
Car and Couch strike heroic poses upon a rock of considerable size.
Posing behind the fish at the Fish Hatchery. Not an actual fish.
Skipping rocks at Turquoise Lake. As it turns out, kids will skip rocks for hours if you let them. Which we did.
We got to town right as a racer in the Leadville Boom Days Burro Race was finishing. I’d explain what a burro race is, but I really have no idea. Good for him, though.
One of the things I love about getting to Leadville a week before the race is the Boom Days street fair. And street fairs mean street food, which include bacon-wrapped sausage and fried turkey legs.
We visited Frisco (close to Leadville), bringing our bikes, because there’s a beautiful bike path alongside I70. Colorado is so beautiful.
The Monster and Couch, taking a break during our ride.
We rode the Leadville train, which goes a whopping 5mph, for about eight miles. I stayed awake for the first half of the ride, but on the return trip took a little nap. It was glorious.
One of my favorite moments from the whole trip was when we rode the ziplines. Six of them, from the top of a mountain down to the highway.
Car coming in for a landing.
Leadville has a great bike path loop — the Mineral Loop, I think it’s called — that goes around the town. Our friend Rohit was nice enough to join us and act as ride photographer, and now I’m pretty sure we’ve got our Christmas Card photo nailed.
Or maybe this should be our Christmas Card photo.
Finally, of course we got a photo of us at the famous “We Love Leadville — Great Living at 10,200 Feet” sign that greets you as you enter the city.
Honestly, I believe this was the best, most relaxing family vacation I’ve ever been on.
And then the race began.
Which is where I’ll pick up in the next installment of this race report.
Comments (14)
08.5.2016 | 10:51 am
A Note from Fatty: Today is the last day you can vote in my NICA Fundraiser. And while the “What Should Fatty Focus on for His Leadville Race” contest is pretty much a settled thing (unless someone really wants to completely upend my world), the other question is still very much in play.
Will The Hammer finish the Leadville 100 more than an hour faster than The Monster? Or will The Monster be less than an hour behind The Hammer?
For the first time since the beginning of this contest, The Hammer has pulled ahead. It’s a very close race now.
So today is your last chance to vote — and literally any vote right tip the final result. So here you go. Move that needle.
And I’ll send email to winners this Saturday, from Leadville.
Free Verse Friday: Reflections Upon a Nineteenth Race
Wednesday I was in Killarney
Yesterday I was in Dublin
Today I am home
Tomorrow, in Leadville
Such a traveler am I.
Such great distances
Thousands upon thousands of miles
Followed by hundreds and hundreds
And then finally, one hundred
And four.
In times past
I often drove to Leadville
Alone
One person, one bike, one goal
A goal which I never achieved
For more than a decade
And now things are different
One man
Four women
Five bikes
All bundled together
Some racing, Some crewing
All awesome
And goals have changed
As well
Now I have many finishes
Faster than I’d thought possible
8:12 baby
You can’t take that away from me
Don’t even try.
And all of those fast finishes
Happened after I started training
With this woman, The Hammer
So It seems only fair
—not to mention fun—
To ride for her this once
But I wouldn’t have done it
Until now
Because that’s not my way
Or at least it wasn’t my way
But now it is
And I am pretty sure
This will be
The.
Best.
Leadville.
Race.
Ever.
Thank you.
Comments (22)
08.3.2016 | 11:19 pm
A “Last Chance to Donate” and Win Note from Fatty: This Friday I’ll be ending donations and doing the drawing for my NICA contest / fundraiser. (If you’re new to this fundraiser, click here for a description.) As a reminder, you can win any of these awesome prizes if you’re randomly drawn:
- A Full-Blown Cycling Wardrobe from DNA Cycling. All the cycling clothes you need for your kind of riding in your area. The CEO of DNA, Joe Sepulveda, will personally see to it that you are the best-dressed cyclist in town.
- A Year’s Worth of GU Energy Gel / Roctane Energy Gel: Twelve boxes of GU gels, in whatever flavor combination you like. That’s a double gross, and it’s enough for a year for just about anyone.
- A $200 Certificate to The Feed. I love The Feed. So many options for so many kinds of energy foods and snacks. $200 will get you a lot of whatever you like…or you can try one of a lot of different things.
- A Box of GU Stroopwafels: We’ll be giving away four of these boxes, one box each to four winners. Pretty dang cool if you ask me. And so delicious.
It’s a pretty amazing suite of prizes if I do say so myself. And the cause, well…creating a generation of inclusive, polite, trail-safe mountain bikers who love to race is pretty near and dear to my heart.
So: there are two contests going on for people to vote in. Let’s check in and see how they’re doing one last time.
In “The Monster Vs The Hammer” contest, where you vote whether you think The Hammer will be more than an hour faster than The Monster, or if the Monster will be less than an hour slower than The Hammer…well, that vote is tightening in the final stretch, with the two of them just a few percentage points away from each other.
It’s anyone’s guess who will finish when in the Leadville race itself, but one generous donation could make this either sway the other direction…or be a blowout.
Now’s the time. Make your vote and donation count:
Meanwhile, there’s not a lot of motion on “What Should Fatty Ride” front. Which is not to say there haven’t been donations, because there have. It’s just that the donations have been remarkably consistent.
Let’s just say that in the absence of some truly big-dollar donations in the other direction, I’ll be riding a single speed as The Hammer’s domestique on August 13.
Which is not me saying I don’t want you to vote in this contest. Because I do. At this point I’m fully in the mindspace of riding with and for The Hammer, but I will do whatever the final vote dictates. Both my single speed and my geared bike are Leadville-ready.
So you decide:
New FattyCast: An Evening With Ted King
Once in a while, you get lucky with your timing. That’s what happened a couple weeks ago when I sent semi-retired pro cyclist Ted King a DM over Twitter: “Hey, I’d love to get you on the FattyCast. Think you can find an hour for me sometime soon?”
But that’s not where the good timing came into play. The good timing came into play when Ted said that, sure, he’d be happy to be on The FattyCast, but he was unavailable because he was going to be in Ogden for a Cannonade event during the week, and then in Park City for the weekend.
“Well, as it so happens, I live about one hour from Park City,” I replied. “How about we get together there, I’ll bring my gear, and we can record it in person instead of over the Internet.”
Ted was cool with that.
Pre-Podcast
Of course, my one true superpower is to ask for things, and to keep on asking even after people say yes.
So I said, “Hey, your girlfriend’s coming along, right?
Ted was put on guard by this question, but allowed that it was true.
“Well how about we get together for sushi with some friends before the podcast?”
Ted was cool with that. In fact, it turns out that Ted is just plain cool. He’s not only a very relaxed and nice guy, he’s smart. And funny. And totally has his act together in such a way that I started feeling a little bit bad about my own non-togetherness.
This was not Ted’s fault.
So, after a lot of Sushi, for which I did not pay, I brought in a crate of recording gear and computers and set up so we were all ready to talk. Or possibly play Strategy, judging by appearances:
Ted spoke with clarity, and gesticulated as if he were on TV. (Also, you can see here that when I point out that he’s on his fourth beer and is eating a plate of cheese while recording this podcast, I am not even a little bit joking.)
Ted is, as you can see, is tall, thin, young and good-looking. I, as you can see, am none of those things:
Oh, also I am somewhere between balding and bald.
And Now for the Actual Podcast Part
After recording this episode, I found myself wishing all my podcasts could be in-person. They’re just awesome that way. Like a real life conversation, except you have a couple of big ol’ microphones between you. Which isn’t weird at all.
In addition to wishing all my podcasts could be in-person, I also found myself wishing all my podcasts could be with Ted King. Because he’s interesting and nice and all of those other things I said about him.
Although it might get kind of weird if I never did anything on my podcast but interview Ted King over and over.
But for this once, at least, it was super duper. But don’t take my word for it, listen for yourself, either by picking it up on iTunes, downloading it directly, Stitcher-ing it, getting my RSS feed, or just pressing the play button below:
Links
Of course, after listening to this podcast, you’ll want to stay up-to-date with every single thing Ted King does. Here’s how you can:
PS: On Friday, I will have a special “Heading to Leadville” edition of Free Verse Friday. Because I KNOW you’ve missed Free Verse Friday.
PPS: I’m going to have new podcast news in the near future. I am very excited.
Comments (6)
08.3.2016 | 12:52 am
We had done it. We had won the Rockwell Relay, again. And by “we,” I mean of course “my team, in spite of me.” This year, I had been — by far — the weakest link: much slower than I had been the previous year, as well as the one responsible for pretty much all of our tactical errors.
I didn’t care, though. We had won. Beaten the trio of Z5R teams by more than forty minutes, and the Beauties and the Beast team by two hours.
And as we stood there on the podium, ready to accept our awards, I was just so amazed at my good fortune. This is such a good event. The competition is so strong — and, when we needed it, helpful. My team is so amazing.
The race director started handing out awards and announcing third place (one of the Z5R teams) and second place (another one of the Z5R teams).
Then he handed us our trophies…at which point there was the sound of a crash and breaking glass off to our left, in the swag tent.
Everything stopped. Someone caught a photo of our team looking off to our left toward the sound:
Someone was having a seizure.
The race director ran toward the commotion and started helping. Everyone else gathered around, either wanting to help or watch. Probably ten people called 911, and the ambulance arrived quickly.
“You’re a nurse, do you want to go help?” I asked The Hammer.
“That poor woman is getting WAY more help than she wants,” The Hammer replied.
So we waited, and eventually things returned to normal. But some members of the Z5R teams — having received their plaques — had lost interest in the ceremony and had left.
So we never got the coveted hands-in-the-air podium picture with everyone from all of the teams. But we did get this one, which is a good substitute:
The Phone Call
I get the same sensation every time: it’s so weird for that race to be over. It completely consumes me as I’m in it, to the extent that everything else in the world becomes very faded and indistinct. It’s just me, a few friends (or family members this time) and the intensity of the moment.
And then it’s done and you’re back in the world, exhausted, with a lot of very bad-smelling laundry.
And in my case, there was a chore I had to take care of. A phone call I needed to make to Cory, who had loaned me his van.
We got to the house we were staying at in St George, then I found a quiet room, sat on a bed and called Cory.
Of course, he immediately wanted details on the race itself, and I gave him a brief accounting of how we had done.
Then, deep breath.
“Cory, I need to tell you about an accident I had with the van.”
I told him the whole thing, doing my best to not trivialize it, but also trying not to draw the whole thing out so he could yell at me.
“But it continued to work all day?” He asked, after I finished.
“Yeah,” I said. “Except for the scratches in the wrap on the bottom right front, it doesn’t seem to have taken any damage at all.”
“Don’t worry about it, then.”
I am lucky to have such good friends, such a great family, and…an event I love enough to write a sixteen-part story about.
Next
On the drive home, we started planning out our race for next year. We’ll make a few changes, but I’ll leave it to our competition to guess what those changes are.
But I will tell you this: We’ll be back.
Obviously.
— The End —
Comments (18)
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