Vague Idea Racing: 2025 Breck Epic, in the beginning...

Firstly, the Horny Cat 69 date is October 11th. No backup date is planned because why bother planning that out. This is Charlotte. Weather is a real live cartoon character. I'll get the rest of the deets together in a week or two, but go ahead and mark those calendars with your best number two (doody not pencil).

The 2025 Breck Epic was 100% everything I needed it to be. I knew going in that there was a very strong possibility that I was going to decide that this would be my last stage race ever, but if I didn't finish due to an injury or race-ending mechanical, or if they had to cancel a day and shorten the race because of weather, or if I just left with an eerie sense that I didn't get what I was looking for... who knows?

I went into Stage One feeling pretty dialed... in a physical and material sense. I'm as fit as I'd been in years, and my Vassago Optimus Meatplow V.10 with (allow me to plug away) I9 SOLiX carbon wheels, Fox 34 SL fork and Transfer drooper, big old Maxxis meats, durable Cane Creek ball bits and plenty of other solid parts choices is the most capable bike I've ever brought out to Breckenridge. I had all the stages loaded on my Wahoo data acquisition device before I left town and a plan to stay outta the apples and live in the oranges on the HRM LEDs. My new riding glasses are the most buenos eyewear I've ever had since my '06 Lasik surgery failed. My nutrition plan was locked in with Carbo Rocket Half Evil (two scoops per bottle) and gels (which I can only bother with when I want a no-fuss "solid" food option)... but locked in only counts if you stick with the plan.

I can plug all that shit because I've ridden a 2009 rigid, high-posted, pre-boost single speed, ripped tires, dinged rims, had a failed drooper, blown apart a bottom bracket, ridden with zero data, rode in fashion Zenni glasses, and fueled with drop bag beers and bacon. All at the Breck Epic. All things I don't recommend. With my now vision corrected 20/20 hindsight

Finally having center lock rotors on Industry Nine system wheels for travel after nineteen years of want makes me warm and tingly.

All that said...

Being up for the trip to the airport at 4:00am EST on Saturday, getting to Breck at 3:00pm MST, and going to bed at 10:00pm MST wasn't the roughest part. It was the lying in bed for hours totally exhausted but unable to sleep thanks to that familiar feeling of drowning because I can't get enough oxygen to my brain, and being my age, the consuming thought of "am I dying here?"

So Stage One was four uneventful hours of memmer berry trails and the very out of body experience of feeling like I might be asleep and dreaming this whole thing. I felt less connected to the bike and more just loosely attached to it with brittle, fifty year old rubber bands.

Stage Two was not without its challenges. Although I should know the courses after all these years, I just don't. I like staring at the colored arrows on my Wahoo data acquisition device indicating the difficulty of upcoming and current climbs, and keeping myself outta the apples on the heart rate LEDs, lest I end up like Quaid gasping for air on the surface of Mars.

Although I'd loaded all the courses before I left, I found myself at the start with zero stage two maps. WTF? This is also the stage that took me out in '21 with a laundry list of injuries, so much trepidation was already built into my day, so I didn't like flying blind. I'd forgotten how much this stage required hands on the bars most of the time, and thus I ignored my body's need for calories. I would occasionally see folks much smarter than I pulled off to the side eating and drinking, but I thought I could fuel my efforts with stubbornness and rage. I wasn't wrong... but I wasn't right either. I finished, but I was properly shellacked.

Another five hours in the saddle, and the gaps in the single speed field were widely opening. We had eight signed up originally, one DNS on day zero, and then another DNS on day two. So now there are just six of us... "racing." For the most part, never seeing each other for 98% of the day.

Something I am good and bad at. I keep my food simple in terms of prep time and effort. Half a family pack of tortellini for first supper and beans and cheese for second supper. One six pack of Modus Hoperandi purchased for one beer daily consumption to minimize self-damage until Stage Seven obvs.

Stage Three. I like this day, the Circumnavigation of Mt Guyot... whatever that really means. I just know it starts with a stout climb (all the stages do tho... or so I'm told), hold my place on the narrow lumpy trail, try to not flat (yet again) on Little French Gulch, climb... hike-a-bike for some time close to forever, try to not flat (again), climb until we touch the sky... and then do my absolute favorite descent of the whole event. Then at mile twenty six, I'd just have an "easy" thirteen miles back to the finish.

That's when I went into goldfish mode, only able to remember things for about three seconds and capable of seeing about fifteen feet in front of me. I was on the struggle bus trying to push past the apathy of knowing that my favorite part of the week is over, and although there's still plenty of good in front of me, there's a lot of work to be done to get to it.

Slog, slog, slog, and...