Time again for my hometown race the Breckenridge 100. Arguably the hardest 100 mile race in the NUE series if not the country. The 4am wake up call was very early, by the start of the race at 6am the sun was starting to show on the climb to come.
The pace was hard from the start and I began trading pulls with Jeff Schalk, Joey Thompson and one other rider who was in tow. By the time we hit the first single track after 50 minutes of climbing Jeff had about 10 seconds on me and Joey was behind by about the same. After cresting the ridge of the Ten Mile range we started the long decent down to Copper Mountain. Then around the corner Jeff was off his bike I asked if he was OK and he said he had a flat so I continued on alone.
I came in off the first lap with a good lead on now second place rider Joey Thompson and started in on lap two I was feeling really good at this point and was really pushing, about half way through the lap on an old mining flume I got a huge nail through my tire, with a gaping hole in my tire I had to stop a throw a tube in loosing about 3 or 4 minutes. I figured Jeff would catch me now that we had both had flats but what I didn’t realize was he had 2 flats and had lost about 20 minutes and it was Joey that was in chase.
At the end of the Colorado Trail section of the course I got a good view behind me and could see a rider about 2 minutes behind, it turned out to be Joey but I new I had to push hard into the third lap because of the time I had lost. By the middle of lap three I had about 6 minutes on Joey and was pushing hard just in case something happened. I came in with a time of 8:23 and the win making it 6 in a row, I really can’t believe I have won this race 6 times I feel really lucky and blessed to have stayed healthy for this long and I will keep at it for as long as I can!