Breck Epic 2025: Stage Five and Six and Seven?

Well, poop in my hat. 

The Wheeler Stage.  Used to be my favorite.  What was I thinking?  Who was I back in 2009 when I first fell madly in love with such self-flagellation?

Since we end up on the Burro Trail so soon after the start, we are going off in waves of ten.  They used to sort us out by our GC time after Stage Four (I think?), but this year, it's based on your time the day before.  I now regret trying so hard yesterday.  I'm lined up with people who normally finish ten, fifteen, mebbe twenty minutes ahead of me very other day.  I do the only logical thing at the start, gun for the pole position into the woods...

only to pull over and let every single one of them by as soon as we get there.  I got no business riding with them, and to be honest, not the pack behind them or the pack behind them or the...

You get it.

I finally fold into the fray with what I'd call my people for the long walk up to Wheeler Pass.  I'm not 100% or even 25% sure why I thought this was my favorite day, but I knew since this is probably going to be my last Breck Epic ever, so I'm going to take my time to enjoy the view up at the top.

I really did.  Chewed my hand up bacon and stared out at the world around me.

Then the sketchballs descent down to the next hike-a-bike up Mount Gawdammit which Mike Mac gave me credit for naming... not like I remember that.  On the way up, I stopped multiple times to gawk at the wonder that is being in this rarified air in the literal sense of having a lower concentration of oxygen and the broader sense that is a setting that is exclusive or detached from everyday life (thanks, google).  It's just so damn perfect up there.  Well, until...

Dropping in.  The conditions have been the driest and loosest I've ever seen.  Not loose over hard, but loose over more loose and just a bit more loose and then mebbe hard but probably also loose.  I'm not on my game, and on one of the technical tiny ups on the descent, I eat ass.  I hit the ground hard like a hippo jumping out of a lake, and my Wahoo data acquisition device flies off, busting the mount.  I just can't wait to get back under the tree line... that is until I am, and then nothing is what I remember it being like before.

Huh.  Miner's Creek used to be my favorite descent of the week, even back when I was doing this whole dumb thing rigid eight times previous.  Now?  I feel like I'm being tossed about and manhandled down a boulder field by a half dozen overzealous, goose-stepping ICE agents.  I even had to stop and reset my brain as my circuits began to fry from the information overload...

and then the 100mph dirt "road" at the bottom that I thought I remembered so well but had become a loose chute full of biscuits and baby heads and loaves of bread and microwaves and random ditches full of Superballs almost the whole way down to the aid station.

Now the eight mile slog mostly up back to the finish that I was going to depend on my Wahoo data acquisition device for distraction and to guide my pace. Combined senses of sads and happies as I membered the good and also the bad parts all the way to the finish.

Stage Six: Gold Dust

I got the reverso world start wave today.  I spent so much time staring at the views and brainlessly bouncing down the rocks that I was back in a much slower group than the day before.  This time, I was incentivized to take the hole shot into the woods and actually keep it.  And, you're not going to believe it, I screwed up my Wahoo data acquisition device yet again, and I spent the entire day 385 feet from the finish line.  I actually had a plan (again), but quite the opposite of the day before.  No time to take in the views, just keep pace on the trail with my geared brethren, pound up the climb to 11,500 feet, hold my own down Gold Dust, make haste to get back up to 11,500 feet, and then...

Diving back into real "trail," hope I member how to do "mountain bikes," and proceed to beat my own dick off trying to finish in under three hours... not realizing the course was longer than previous years for "reasons."  Missed it by eight and a half minutes, but more importantly, I finally finished my tenth Breck Epic.

What followed was a post-race marg and a Charlotte local beer hand up, packing up the bike, twenty minutes in a hot tub, two happy hour beers and then another and another and then the banquet and some podium action and perhaps some shirts-off moments before heading to the Gold Pan to definitely NOT dance until we were owning the floor long after everyone else from the Breck Epic had packed it in (after some not-so-popular with the bouncers breakdance fighting).

Oh, fourth place single speed and only minor injuries and a few scraped up bike parts.  I'm glad I did it.  I'm glad it's done.  Time for something different.

When I say that I'm done doing stage races, I basically mean it.  I've probably done my favorites a few too many times, thus making them a little too much "time to make the donuts" events.  I do like the more exotic, out-of-country ones, but the logistics involved, the shortness of the stages (for all the travel), the potential sleeping in tents (at my age) and living out of one duffel bag?  Mebbe I could pull one of those outta my ass, but it's usually a multi-thousand dollar trip, and I guess I'm saving for my retirement or enjoying avocado toast too much to justify the expense.  That said, I won't pass up golden ticket opportunities, and I'll also continue to do "hard things," just not Breck Epic hard... which honestly... it's sooooooo hard.  Like how did I ever take it for granted that I could just do this without dying inside a little every time?  There are just certain events I can't give up on (ahem PMBAR), so I'm still gonna head out on my stupid single speed and test fire this sack of meat that carries my thoughts and feels around every few months.  It's too important for me to keep the perspective that's gained when I've been pushing my bike up some godforsaken mountain and I think about work (yuck) and realize nothing I do Monday through Friday nine-to-five is all that challenging. 

If I've counted them all up correctly, I've finished thirty two stage races on a single speed since I did my first La Ruta de Los Conquistadores in 2004.  It's easy to forget that back when I started doing this, people were telling me it couldn't be done (we're all smarter than that now).  Obviously, a fire was lit under my ass and started me down the constant road of "what's next?" for over twenty years.  
 
And now, here I am.  

What's next?