“It was the best of times it was the worst of times.”

My last two races have been plagued with bad luck, but with all the problems I’ve had it’s still just peanuts in the grand scheme of things. I am just happy to even have the opportunity to travel around and race my bike in cool places. Throughout the years in racing my bike you I’ve learned that you have to take the good with the bad and just enjoy the ride.

My first race of the season was Syllamo’s Revenge in Arkansas, this was the 4th stop on the NUE for 2013 and I was hoping for a good result. My friend Jonathan Davis had told me of his race disaster the year before with a series of flats, which led to over an hour of running to the next aid station. He told me to make sure you run some UST tires because of the very sharp rocks on the course. I didn’t heed his advice and had almost the exact race experience as he did… I had 3 flats and ended up ripping my tire open so bad it was unfixable and had to run for 2 hours to get back to civilization. Out of tubes and with a shredded tire I was forced to drop out of the race.

The second race was the Growler 64 in Gunnison Colorado this is a super fun mountain bike race lots of great trails and strong competition. The start is definitely faster than I like, but you just have to go for it and try to hang on. After the initial grunt of the opening climb, I was at my limit as we got to the first single track section. I was happy with my position just behind the lead group. However, about halfway through the first lap disaster struck! I was behind a couple guys who had joined me the lead guy struggled on a technical section and I was in the wrong gear and tried to make a quick shift but instead my chain snapped! With no chain tool, I had to wait for someone to loan me one, finally after about 10 guys going by with no luck Kyle Stamp a Breckenridge local loaned me his chain tool.

I finally get the chain fixed but by this time about 30 something guys have gone buy so I start to make my way through the field. By the middle of the second lap I am closing in on the top 10 and then the chain breaks again! If there is any good luck it’s that this time I’m about 3 minutes from an aid station so they fixed me up in no time. I was able to finish the race and had a great time riding a supper fun course, I always want to do my best but sometimes the best you can do is to just finish.

This year I am starting my race season a little earlier in anticipation of 24 Hour Nationals in June, so when the True Grit Epic became the season opener for the NUE series, I jumped on the opportunity. Getting ready for a race by the middle of March is not the easiest thing to do when you live in the mountains of Colorado, but I did what I could and luckily made a couple trips to the desert for some much needed training.

The weather was perfect in St. George, Utah with sunny skies and temps forecasted to be in the 80′s. I wasn’t sure how my fitness would stack up with the strong group of racers I was about to do battle with. From the start I jumped to the front to see how my pace would stack up and it seemed to be fast enough for everyone because nobody made any moves around me. After a bit of pace making I pealed off and let some other guys do some work and still the pace seamed slow. I jumped back to the front and before long it was Alex Grant and myself. We rode together for a bit then he started to pull away and I realized I had better chill out because there was a long, hard race to come.

I rode most of the first lap alone before Cary Smith, who looked to be riding really strong, joined me. I stayed with Cary for the beginning of the 2nd lap where we saw a desert tortoise wandering along the course! I started to feel fatigued and Cary slowly slipped away. I still had a good 2 hours of racing left and I needed to give it my all because I had Evan Plews and Jonathan Davis coming up behind me. I ended up holding on to 3rd place which I am very happy with given the amount of riding I had done up to this point and the strength off my competitors.

The True Grit Epic was a really fun race lots of challenging trail riding and beautiful scenery, I will definitely try to make it back next year for another go!

I finally figured out my race schedule for this season, check it out!

• March 16th True Grit
• May 18th Syllamos Revenge
• May 26th Original Growler 64
• June 15-16th 24 Hour Nationals
• July 20th High Cascade 100
• August 3rd Pierre’s Hole 100
• August 31st Park City Point to Point
• September 8th Vapor Trail 125

My last race of the year would once again be the 24 hours of Moab. This was the 18^th edition of the famed race; unfortunately it was also the final edition. I have enjoyed the 24 Hours of Moab all of the times I have raced it, and was looking forward to being part of the final one.

The sandy course conditions this year were the worst that I have seen in the 6 times I have raced here. But that just evens the playing field for everyone and it’s just part of racing mountain bikes. At least the weather was looking great, with no chance of rain and temps in the 70′s during the day and 30′s at night.

After the long running start I made it to my bike behind about 10 people and was able to quickly pull back all of the fast runners. I jumped to the front of the race and never looked back, after the first lap, I already had a couple minute lead and was able to extend that lead every lap!

By the halfway point in the race I had a sizable lead and started to slow my pace and take it easy enjoying the final laps ever at the 24 hours of Moab. At 7:45 am I had completed my 14th lap and was about 4 hours ahead of second, so I decided to take a long break and see how things would shape up. I was hoping to be able to stop at that point but 2nd place was riding steady and it turned out that I would have to do one more lap. With the sun shinning I went out for my last lap to secure the win! After a long chilly night it was nice to finish up in the warmth of the day.

I feel very lucky to have won this race 4 times; my Santa Cruz Blur XC has carried me to every victory at this race and is the perfect tool for this course. In 6 years of racing in Moab I had zero flats on Maxxis tires, and my Niterider lights make it possible to ride just as fast at night as I would in the day time. I also want to thank Shimano for providing me with hands down the best components available and Infinit Nutrition for keeping me fueled through the long race. Of course Stan’s NoTubes makes the most ridiculously light race wheels, Smith Optics is the beast eyewear on earth and Hydrapak provides the great packs that carry everything I need.

I also have to give a huge thanks to my crew from Avalanche Sports they are the best! It’s been a great season with a ton of fun racing and I’m looking forward to a little down time and hopefully some great skiing, I will be back next year for another great season of racing!

See you in 2013,
Josh

When the 24 hour Solo World Championships in Canada were canceled recently, I seized the opportunity to once again race in the Vapor Trail 125. The last time I did this race was 2009 and it had been shortened that year because of weather. I had wanted to do this event again for some time but every year something always conflicted.

The Vapor Trail is a one of a kind bike race you start at 10 pm and ride through the night climbing and descending some of the coolest riding in Colorado! The descents are so technical that I decided to run a Santa Cruz Blur XC with a 120mm fork and seat dropper a bit heavier than my usual race bike but the added comfort would be a big bonus throughout the race. The weather this year was looking to be perfect and the group of about 60 bad-asses started off down Main Street, Salida cheered on by a large number of spectators. There was a slow neutral start for about an hour before the racing really got going. Once the neutral start ended we started the dirt road climb to the Colorado Trail. After about 15 minutes I couldn’t see any lights behind and continued my pace up to the CT.

After a long dry summer, the Colorado Trail was a bit dry and dicey and I was making all kinds of mistakes, blowing through corners and almost sliding off the trail a couple times. Descending off the CT down to the cascade campground was the start off the long climb up to and over the alpine tunnel. This climb was about an hour and a half, followed by a good 15 minute hike a bike over the tunnel then the first of many rocky descents. After the next 20 minute downhill, I began the climb up to Tomichi pass and the 45 minute hike bike up to Granite Peak at over 12,000 feet. The hike a bike was extremely hard but beautiful and very peaceful, the night was perfect not to cold and even at the high altitude it was dead calm making it a really cool experience. When I reached the summit I knew that I had about an hour of incredible downhill on the Canyon Creek trail which is one of my favorite downhills and riding it at night makes it even better. I reached the Snow Blind aid station at about 4:30am and rolled through what I thought was the aid but no one was awake then I saw a head poke out of a tent and was greeted by Dave Wiens. I was out of water so they helped fill my bottle and I grabbed a bar and rolled off to the hour climb up Old Monarch Pass.

When I reached the top of Monarch Pass the aid was just getting set up. I was glad that they had my drop bag, I was able to drop one of my lights but kept my helmet mounted MiNewt Pro 750 on because it was only 6am and still dark. From the top of Monarch Pass is the start of the Monarch Crest Trail, one of the coolest and also one of the most well traveled trails in Colorado. Watching the sun come up on the Crest Trail is my favorite part of this race, it is really just amazing.

Coming off the Crest Trail I reached the Marshall Pass aid station where I was hoping to get some food but no one was there so I continued on to the Starvation Creek trail, which is a super fun downhill to the Poncha Creek road climb back to the Marshall Pass aid. This was the low point of my race, I felt like I couldn’t get out of my own way and it seemed like the climb was taking forever. When I finally got back to the Marshall Aid, they were there and all set up, I pulled up and started grabbing any food in arms reach! I had a cookie in one hand and bacon in the other and I was alternating shoving each one into my mouth, I was just glad to be eating something.

The final section of the race is Silver Creek and the Rainbow Trail really gave me the energy I needed to finish strong, especially the rainbow trail another classic Colorado single track, super fun up and down, flowy, buff trail. I hit Highway 285 at about 10:15 am I was hoping to finish before 11:00 and I had plenty of time to hit my goal! When I finally rolled back into Salida and the finish it was 10:42 and I had broke the course record by an hour! The Vapor Trail is definitely a one of a kind event and a tough race.

Waking up to pouring rain and lightning at 5 am is usually not a good thing especially when you are up to race an 80-mile mostly single-track mountain bike race. With the rain poring down, I went through the motions of getting ready for the Park City Point to Point. When we got to the starting area, we where informed that the race was postponed an hour to see what the weather would do. The rain was starting to let up and in true sportsmen way, we took a vote to decide if we should race or push it to Sunday. With the consensus being to race as planned on Saturday, the first leg of the race was eliminated because of the clay-based dirt in that section.

The first hour of the race was a bit sloppy & dicey with small sections of pavement slick from rain and with muddy tires, there were numerous crashes for those that did not heed caution. I was able to stay clear of any crashes or problems. After about an hour, a front group of Alex Grant, Ben Sonntag, and Nick Truitt had put about a minute on the rest of the field. I was in the chase group with Cary Smith and Drew Edsall. After the first aid at mile 28 Cary and myself had dropped the other chasers. I wasn’t feeling great for the first hour or so I was starting to feel good and put a bit of an attack on Cary. I was able to get a gap and kept pushing hard, after another 30 minutes I started to see Nick and quickly reeled him in.

By the top of the ski area I was feeling great and had a good gap on Cary and Nick, I started the super fun decent down to the bottom of Park City and aid station two. About half way down I was just having so much fun that I missed a turn and headed down a super steep service road… A minute later, I thought to myself: “you just missed a turn” but I kept going down… When I got to a lift at the bottom of the road there were no markings so I quickly turned around and started back up the road. What a dumb move, but now I had to get back up and hopefully could make that time up. When I got back to the course Nick and Cary where just going by! I had blown about a 5-minute lead on those guys and would really have to race hard the last 20 something miles.

We all hit the bottom of the ski area together and started the hard climb up to The Canyons, I was still feeling good so I went hard and put a gap on the other two. I knew I was going to have to push hard the whole way because both Nick and Cary are super strong guys so you can’t let up on either of them. I could see Nick below me on some of the switch backs on the climb and could tell he was pushing hard so I really dug deep and gave it all I had till the end. When I did cross the line Nick was having chain issues and was no wear to be found. Cary came in behind me followed by Nick who was pushing and running with his bike for the last couple miles.

After 6 plus hours of racing I had finished in 3rd place, which I was very happy with considering all of the talented riders in the race this year! Alex got his 4 peat and Ben finished in a strong second. The PCPP is one of my favorite races; just the amount of trails in this area is amazing. I will definitely be back next year.

This year the Breck Epic attracted a really deep field of great mountain bikers, it’s cool how this race has become a must do for folks that love to ride epic single track. Myself being one of those folks who loves the skinny trails makes this race even cooler that it’s in my backyard.

From the start of Day 1, I could tell it was going to be a tough week! Day 2 was marred with mechanical problems suffering 2 flats, but other than that everything went really smooth. I was pretty consistent through the 6 days of racing, usually finishing in 4th or 5th place each day. Every year I forget how hard this race is but by the last day I remembered why this race is called “epic”. It was a complete joy to race with everyone this week and I was glad to finish the week off with a 4th place overall. Someone asked me before the race who was coming to race, I honestly didn’t know any names but I did know that It was going to be a bunch of fast guy’s and it was. I’m glad I had a chance to be involved in another year of the Breck Epic and even If I don’t race it next year I will definitely be involved in some way.

This was my 3rd year racing at the High Cascade 100 in Bend OR, and every year has been super fun. I really look forward to this race because of all the great trail riding and Bend is a really cool town to hang out in. This year the race start was from town, which made for a bit warmer temps for the 5:30am start, the earliest of all the NUE races!

The start is up paved road towards Mt Bachelor and was a good warm-up ride, of course once we hit the dirt the race was on with a bit of jockeying for position. After a good fire road climb we entered the first section of single track and made our way to the first aid station at 18 miles. After we passed the aid station the front group had formed with Barry Wicks, Evan Plews, Cary Smith, Kris Sneddon, Christian Tanguy, Ben Melt Swanepoel, Michael Tobin, Drew Edsall and myself. The number of strong riders in this race was amazing and made the task at hand even more daunting, but there was lots of fun trail riding to look forward to.

By the time we hit the base of Bachelor the group had dwindled to Barry, Cary, and myself. Barry had gapped us by about 30 seconds so when we hit the trail around Bachelor I was pushing hard trying to catch back up and in the process dropped Cary and was able to get back on Barry’s wheel quickly. At the mile 70 aid station, we hit a crazy steep climb and Barry started to pull away from me, at this point I had to let him go and try to regroup to make a push closer to the finish.

Around mile 75 is when disaster struck for me! On the first downhill section after the big climb, I broke a spoke and it must have got tangled in my derailleur, which had snapped in half. I pulled over and looked at the broken derailleur in disbelief but I got it together and started to run and coast with bike towards the next aid station. 30 minutes later I finally made it to the aid and immediately one of the volunteers offered up the derailleur right off of his bike! Because the race is so well put on there was a mechanic on hand to put swap the derailleurs. 10 minutes later I was back on my bike and figured that I should at least hammer to the finish, so I put my head down and finished strong.

Every year I come here, this race has tests me mentally with mechanical problems. It is still one of my favorite races, in some ways because of the problems, you have no choice but to work through it and never give up. It’s not always winning that makes you feel good about yourself sometimes it’s just about finishing!

Another Breckenridge 100 is in the books and this makes 8 years I have been doing this race, like they say time files when you’re having fun and the last 8 years have been great! I feel tons of pressure to do well at this race that I don’t get at other races, being my home town, everyone thinks you’re automatically going to win, especially after I have won so many times. I think many of those wins have come as a result of luck and a big part of racing is having good luck. A lot can and do go wrong in 100 miles of racing a mountain bike and I’ve been very fortunate to be on the good luck side of things at this race!

The start of this years race was one of the best I’ve seen, the weather was great and it was actually fairly warm for 6am at 9,600 feet. As soon as we started on our way up the first climb I knew it was going to be a long day, the legs just didn’t want to go. I am usually a slow starter so I figured I would find my legs latter in the race and settled in to a pace.

By the end of the first lap I found myself in second place with Cameron Chambers in tow, on the second lap I was still in slow motion but I just put my head down and kept at it. Every time I thought I had Cameron gapped, he reeled me back in on his insanely huge geared single speed. All day it was back and forth, I would gap him on the downhill and flat sections then on the climbs he would reel me back in.

On the last lap we were really close together all the way to Como and I knew that the flatter railroad grade climb back to the top of Boreas pass was the perfect place to drop Cameron, I would have to push a bigger gear than he had and he had a big one, so I hit the climb hard and was able to hold him off all the way to the top. Once at the top I had a huge advantage on the downhill because it wasn’t steep enough for Cameron to coast as fast as I could ride and so I put even more time on him to the end.

This was probably the hardest of my 8 Breck 100’s, sometimes you just don’t have it and it takes a lot of determination to just keep going. But it is even more rewarding when you are able to finish, because it feels like you have overcome your own weakness.

For 2012 I decided to make the trip to Michigan for the Lumberjack 100. I have only done this race one other time it was a rough one, so I needed some redemption. The course is 90 percent single track with some fire road sections to mix it up and lots of sand. There is a good amount of climbing and it is always punchy up and down with no rest, you are working hard the entire race!

Coming into this race I knew that it was a super stacked field and would be a tough day! Along with the competition, the weather report was calling for temps near 90°, for me this is the hardest part of racing on the east coast, the heat and humidity really take a toll on me.

The start of the race was a bit dicey with a two-mile pavement sprint for hole-shot onto the trail. It seemed to be going smoothly and I was near the front of the pack in about 6th position, when two guys ahead of me collided and hit the ground hard, luckily I slammed on the brakes and my XTR discs did their job and I was able to avoid the carnage! The lead group formed early with Barry Wicks, Kevin Carter, Christan Tanguy, Michael Simonson, and myself. The two guys who crashed; Drew Edsall and Robert Spreng were able to catch back up about halfway through the first lap.

The second lap continues in the same manner with the fast lead group, the pace is high but I was feeling great and try to push the pace at the front as much as possible. Near the end of the second lap I caught a stick in my spokes and had to pull over to get it out. This costs me a good amount of time and I have to sprint back! Unfortunately at this point in the race that effort is too much, I was able to get back to the group but I quickly fall of the pace and go backwards for about an hour.

Into the third lap I start to get my legs back but the heat is really noticeable now and I’m just pushing to get done and not lose any spots, then near the end of the race I see Simonson and push by him to finish in 5th place.

The Lumberjack is the polar opposite off the riding I do at home but It’s a great test, you have to get out of your comfort zone to really find what your made of! I had a lot of fun at the Lumberjack and it’s a great trail riding 100-mile race, I will definitely come back again!