More Breck until you puke

photo ripped not so surreptitiously from cyclingdirt.org

So racing at altitude is way harder than I woulda imagined. Sure, I went into it just slightly better than anemic and with a 40.7 hematocrit, but I had convinced myself I would just flick a switch in my head, and it would be all better. It didn't work. Yes, early on (before I got to Colorado) I was toying with the notion of getting into the top three in the single speed GC, or at least standing on the podium for a stage (even though I despise podiums). I was amazed at just what happened when I pushed my body to the limit, and how long it took to recover. If I put a lot of effort into making a technical section of trail I would pay for it for a long time, unable to catch my breath and feeling like my heart was racing at 210BPM's. Serious shit.

That said, the Breck Epic was a serious challenge, which is truly what I was looking for when I signed up. Very few people enter a race of this nature with podium dreams. What we really want are incredible trails, great organization, and a challenge that actually makes us hurt by the end of the week. I got all that in spades.

The worst parts about stage racing....

Lugging over fifty pounds of gear all over the place. This is down from the 80+ pounds of gear I needed years ago, but I still ended up with a ton of shit I never used.

Not getting mad props for a killer trackstand while waiting for my TT Prologue start (I know this is why I locked myself into a fabulous eighth place finish). Bilz paid in full with awesome skilz.

So many beers, so little time...

Too many friends.... Jake Kirkpatrick (at left) is explaining to my contact at MOOTS (Jon, at right) why he needed to throw a miniature hay bail at my head during our important business meeting. "See, we were in the middle of this all-out cross table war..." Beer makes it all go away.

And the good stuff...

Having once in a lifetime experiences with new people. Here Rob and Matty from MOOTS show me where they plan on placing the MOOTSYWOOD sign on the mountain in the distance. "Yeah, Steamboat is our town".

All photos have been borrowed without permission from Pete-unh's Flickr page. Go over there and see what Pete-unh was busy doing while the rest of us (except for Mike Ferrentino) were racing.

Ferrentino's "race"?

I think he spent most of his time regretting the fact that they didn't engineer a cupholder into the carbon Santa Cruz Blur.