We were treated to a beautiful Colorado morning in Breckenridge for the start of the Firecracker 50 mountain bike enduro.

The race begins with a neutral roll out on main street with various categories departing around 9:30AM in 2 minute intervals. The crowd measured in the hundreds and maybe even in the thousands, all there to witness the Fourth of July parade, which we had the honor of leading out of town.

 

The course covers two fifty-two mile loops with 5500’ climbing each. As they say in the race flier, “fortunately much of the climbing is on the paved/hardpack road leading out of town”. Sounds like cheating – but trust me, it’s not! My group, which consisted of Category 1 Men, aged 19-29, 30-34 and 35-39, totaling 33 souls, wasted no time in making things happen. A couple of miles into it, I was already sitting right at my pain threshold and trying really hard not to think about the remaining 52 miles of the race! A group of eight or ten got away but I was sitting with three or four others and it was already a really long way back to the next small group by the time we hit the hard pack around mile 4. It wasn’t long before the fastest single speed guys rolled up behind us and really made us feel like wusses, but we let em go anyway. Finally, around mile 6 the course turns into some steep (uphill!) single track and you really feel like the race has begun.

 

In general I’m pretty well versed in judging my bodies response and monitoring my condition for long days in the saddle. I’ve always been slow to warm up on the bike, and therefore allow myself not to overdo it in the opening miles of a long race. Along this first section of single track I found a comfortable groove and put my focus on my race, not on the hundreds of other racers out there – easier said then done in the heat of battle. Overall, I rode the first lap reasonably conservative, especially on the descents, which tended to be loose and rocky, but with clean lines and lots of banked turns. There were quite a number of flat tires throughout the day, almost always near the bottoms of these long descents.

 

I came through the start/finish area at about 2 hours 20 minutes. Based on 2010 results, I was expecting the fastest guys in my group to finish the race at around 4:15, so I was worried that I was putting in a slow time. Come to find out later that the course this year is a good bit slower than in the past – partly because of a reroute due to snow, lengthening each lap by 2 miles. The effects of the 250% snowpack were obvious as we raced down running rivers of melting snow at some points. I’m pretty sure my wheel hubs went under water at one of the stream crossings!

 

The second time up the Boreas Pass climb my lower back really started feeling it. My power was dropping and I just could not get the pain out of my mind. I had to stop and stretch three times over the next 5 miles in an attempt to relax it.  Mentally this was the tough spot of the race. I had to fight harder than usual to get the “negative demons” to shut the hell up, as they really wanted me to quit this time. By the time I made it over to the French Gulch climb I was really crawling. Luckily, that climb is so tough that virtually everyone was walking the steepest sections the second time around. This gave my back a chance to calm down, although pushing a mountain bike up 20% grades over broken shale when you are absolutely floored is not really a recommended way to recover!

 

After getting up French Gulch the second time you can sort of breathe a sigh of relief, as the hardest parts of the course are behind you and you have more descending left than climbing. That said, the descending is no joke either, especially with four or so hours in the saddle. The brake muscles were fatiguing pretty severely near the end. By this time in a mountain bike enduro the only enemy you have is yourself and fortunately for me I had left the demons somewhere in French Gulch. I was back to having fun and just trying to make it home in one piece. The way it worked out, I was riding most of the second half of the second lap with some of the top single speeders. Man, those guys are inspiring! They are smooth too, so I was perfectly happy to rail the descents with them and power up the smaller climbs in a larger gear than I would have had the motivation to do by myself.

 

By the time it was all said and done, I come across the line at 5:03:17, 6^th place in the Cat 1 35-39 group of 17. Not too bad. I was reasonably happy with that result, although you always spend time analyzing what you could have done better. In this case, the next closest guy was about 10 minutes up, so it would have taken a fair bit to gain even one place. Well, another fun day in the saddle and good training for the Lory Park 40 in five days time, followed by the Breck68 in two weeks on some of these very same trails!