Fun Hurts!

This was the third year I've done this race, except that this time I opted for the longest possible distance: 113 miles (as opposed to the 70ish miles I had done previously). Here’s how it went in 2023. Last year, I wasn’t in the mood to write about it, nor am I right now in 2025. Normally, I’m trying to talk less about pacing, nutrition, and all that typical midlife-crisis bullshit. Can’t completely avoid that, especially when your biggest mistakes or best results directly depend on these boring details. But instead I’m trying to paint a picture of myself out there, which tells some story, big or small. There’s barely a story in this one, so I came up with the idea of a “rapid fire” race report. I’ll try that now because it’s something new and different, and we’ll see if it sticks.

Start. I absolutely destroyed myself in the first five minutes of the race. On the warm-up hill, iykyk. On all three of them, actually. Well… No, I think it only took the first two. On the third, I already started seeing people passing me by. Going hard from the gun to stay with the lead group made sense for me in a 70-mile race. But I shouldn't have done that with the big boys and girls. What was I thinking?

Pain. In the next thirty minutes, more than half the field passed me. I was the 100th out of 150. And I couldn’t hold any wheel rolling right by me. Can’t remember being that far back ever, except at my very first one. I kept thinking that I should turn around. I can probably get back to the hotel before the official checkout time and chill in the pool while my friend Brian finishes his race. Last year, I found myself in a similar situation, albeit to a much lesser extent. What helped then was to remember that “sometimes even if you’re having a bad day, you can put together a good race”. Nothing like that went through my head this time. I just kept rolling along on some mental inertia.

Canyon. Things were getting a little better. Thanks to the dude on a dark green Crux. We worked together. Only two of us for a while, but we were drilling. Caught a few more, which made a group of seven. Some pulled, some sat up. No one was able to keep the pace when the gradient rose by 1% from the average, making it evident that the group would not last very long.

Attack 1. Right before the aid station, the road gets steeper. I opened the gap, but they quickly closed in on me once we reached the flat, paved section.

Attack 2. Half a mile, 7% average and up to 10%, very chunky. Two of us survived. I never saw the rest of the group again.

Refill. Had two bottles waiting for me in a drop bag at mile 43 (70 km) aid station. Took me 24 seconds to swap them out. That’s pretty fast for a non-assisted stop. And that was my only one on a day.

Climbs. Here comes the grind. 45 miles (75 km) split into three climbs — nothing steep, all gradual. CR 48.8 is nasty, but dry and therefore not nearly as bad as it was in Spring 2024. I passed 21 riders on this segment. And then five more while they were taking their time at the aid station nearest to the last summit. While at it, I also smashed my PRs from 2024. In all this time, only one racer zoomed by me, but it was a lady, so as a gentleman, I let her go ahead.

Return. As glorious as I was on the climbs, I bled a shit ton of time on that false downhill back into town. Homie Jaron was only 5 minutes ahead of me at the beginning of the home stretch, and I finished a whopping 20 minutes behind him.

Almost there. At the last aid station, some dude hopped on my wheel. I don’t know if he caught me or if he popped out of the aid station. But I’m glad he happened to be there; that gave me something to race for. I did not want to let him sit, so I hammered hard on every single hill left. Luckily, we still had a few to go over.

Overall. Solid mid pack. Objectively, if that's the official result, then this is where I belong. Suck it up, buddy. But it's far below my expectations, I could've done better. Only one way to find out, but I will have to wait until next year.

PS: This was my first race with a powermeter, which I installed only four days earlier. I’m not really sure if it helped me with pacing, but I definitely learned a lot from the data collected. Weaknesses have been identified, and the remediation work has already begun.