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.