Breck Epic Day 1 (64km, 1,700m of climbing)
The Breck Epic is a clover leaf MTB stage race based in Breckenridge, Colorado. With Breckenridge at 2,700m above sea level you are in for vain popping altitude riding over all 6 stages. There was no time to speak of to acclimatise to the altitude as we flew into Denver on the Friday night leaving me with Saturday to drink as much water (supposedly that helps for the altitude) before the first stage on Sunday. Apart from drinking water we did drive over to Leadville to watch part of the Leadville 100. Atmosphere and the support was great – definitely a race I would like to do one day.
Back to the Breck Epic. Sunday morning and the weather looked good for a bike race. Bit of cloud cover but no need for gilet or arm warmers. Quickly dropped my supplement bag off at the race start at 7:00 and then it was time for some last minute bike tinkering before rolling over to the start. 8:10 and off we went. Great uphill start and 2 minutes into the race I knew the altitude was going to be a killer. Felt like I was doing a sprint for the finish line of a crit race but in actual fact I was just trying to keep up with the 3 or 4 group on the road climb.
I’d made the decision to ride within myself to try and get used to the altitude and kept on catching and dropping of a group of 4 riders consisting of a team and 2 solo riders one of which was a very strong single speeder. Some of the gravel trails are a bit different from what I’m used to being very loose and rocking. Running around 40 psi was clearly not the right tyre pressure as I came down hard on one of the decents. Somehow being mad at myself spurred me on and I managed to catch my little group and pass them. Of course they caught me again at a short hike a bike section but now I was setting the pace. After one really rocky decent the single speeder laughed as he said it looked like I was going to wrap my bike around a tree a few times.
Just after feed 2 I tried to shift down into my smaller chainring but the jocky wheels were running against the cassette. I tried to bend the gearhanger but gave up after a while and was stuck with my 42T chainring and some of the gears at the back. (Turned out I somehow broke the b tension screw on my rear derailleur.) Luckily there were only two more climbs left and I only had to walk up some sections. Final decent down to finish was a great fun singletrack with some nice fast berms towards the end. This helped to put a smile back on my face. There were quite a few categories resulting in a relatively small field in each category. 30+ male solo category is for instance around 20 strong. Managed to finish 2nd for the day.