The divide race has been going on for a week now, and I am just barely recovering from the week+ leading up to it. When your arms are aching and your eyes can barely focus, you know you’ve been spending too much time at the computer. All worth it though — the divide race is such an amazing event, and people really get fired up about it and the tracking. Tracking link is: http://trackleaders.com/tourdivide.
Still, it was a lot of work to get Trackleaders V2 all set and ready for tens of thousands of pageviews a day. V2 is a total rewrite of the SPOT crunching and web code in the old version of the site. This time I pulled the guts out of TopoFusion, got it to compile in linux and the result is a nice framework to work in. I’m really happy with it, but Tour Divide was a big event to debut it for, and I was chasing bugs and corner cases that were impossible to predict right up to and after the start of the race. It was a bit of a gamble, but it paid off.
Oh yeah, we were also tracking a 300 mile paddling race, Jay Petervary’s self supported RAAM ride, and a 4 day catamaran stage race in Texas. V2 got put through the wringer, and so did we (Matthew Lee and I).
The craziness behind the week leading up to the divide race was hard to believe at times. I can’t even tell you how many questions I answered about loading the GPX track, or how to deal with the snow detours. With 90 or so racers there were bound to be issues, but we didn’t expect things like SPOTs getting lost on Greyhound buses, people signing up for the race (and tracking) out of the blue at 10pm the night before the grand depart, crazy locals holding pre-race meetings, people jumping the gun and starting early, and the domain name trackleaders.com expiring the day the race started!
I woke up uncharacteristically early the morning of the race, I think having dreamed (in the few hours I was asleep) that all my code barfed and completely crashed. With eyes half open I pulled up “trackleaders.com/tourdivide” and got a “This domain is for sale” page from godaddy.com. Oops. We hadn’t got any notifications, and simply could not believe the timing — that it would expire on the day Tour Divide started! Some calls and credit card numbers got it back, just in the nick of time for race start.
Matthew and I really struggled to keep our heads on straight for a while there, but it all worked out beautifully in the end. It’s a good thing we love this race so much, and the idea of tracking events such as this.
I managed to get out every day, because spending all day at a computer screen is simply not healthy, and not possible (for me). There were some amazing rides, but no time for proper digestion and reflection before/after. They felt a little rushed, perhaps. One was certainly “rushed” as I did 30 second sprints at 8000 feet. Those left a mark, but were big fun.
One day my brain completely turned to mush, and significant time outside was the only cure I could think of. Craig and I pushed through almost two hours of headwind and climbing to get to the western terminus of the Rainbow Trail (at Silver Creek).
At that point there was nowhere to go but on singletrack, and some of the best anywhere.
It was indescribable to finally ride this section of the Rainbow trail with fresh legs and an unloaded bike. Previously I’d only ridden it at the end of a 5 day bikepacking trip and during the Vapor Trail. While I felt energetic and light footed, there are other kinds of energy that lead to incredible moments on the trail and in the mountains. Though I might have previously dragged along with camping gear, or with 100 mile frozen legs, those epics had their own flow and energy that made details like dead or frozen legs pretty meaningless.
Put differently, Rainbow trail rocks, no matter how you slice it.
I discovered my super duper recovery ride. With almost no planning I traced a small circle from ‘home’ through the most quiet and relaxing rural roads you could possibly imagine. This ride really surprised me as perhaps one of the best I have yet done in Colorado. It might have been the dynamic evening light, the coolness of the irrigation spraying H2O into the air, or the rush of the river. Or maybe just the freedom from the computer after some frustrating moments. But can road riding really be this good?
Answer: yes.
I took a fast paced solo ride on Bear Creek, Rainbow and Guts. By the end I was ready to throw my Behemoth in the Arkansas River — the creaking headset, diving fork and slowly flatting front tire normally wouldn’t have gotten in the way, especially when the trails and weather were so good. But my frustration tolerance was beyond seasonal lows after all the computer craziness, so stuff that shouldn’t have got to me did. Coming down Lost trail at the end I finally just stuffed both earbuds in and cranked up the volume to piercing levels. At least I didn’t have to hear the headset any more!
eszter giving a nice smile, teeth and all
Eszter and crew arrived and crashed upstairs. They wanted to see Guts, so we rolled out early to repeat the same ride I had done the day before. I was pretty sure I had fixes for all the things that drove me crazy, so I was anxious to give the ride another shot.
The pace was quick up the 2000′ Bear Creek climb. By the time we hit singletrack I was pretty amped up, so we really hit the singletrack with gusto. It’s a brilliant trail to rally at speed, bike was running smoothly and with Chris right on my wheel the focus was high. It was awesome.
Good group, very evenly matched, all great riders.
Helmet cam of the ride by Chris Miller.
Guts trail is awesome in places, and kind of stupid in others. At the top it’s pretty much a fall line dive off the mountain, not the best way to lose elevation or the most safe. Eszter rolled up (pic above) and calmly declared she had knocked her teeth hard, and that we should get down, now.
So we did just that, down a very long descent with almost no stops, and straight to the ER. It was a bit of a fun ride, though we were all worried about Eszter throughout. The whole time she never complained or even had a negative thing to say, which was really impressive. I’ve seen “tougher” people break down for far less. She even declared what a cool trail it was (Guts), even as the blood was still dripping from her mouth. She was just bummed she had crashed on it. She’s a tough one alright.
The people of Salida came out to get her fixed up (finding a dentist to open shop on a Sunday afternoon is not so easy). Her blog post about it is here: Salida Angels. There are some really awesome people in this community, for certain.
Right after that my winter training buddy, Krista Park stopped in Salida after racing in Denver. It was great to catch up with her after all her many travels and solid races. She’s been having quite the year and is ranked #5 in the US national series (ProXCT). Check her blog for photos and stories from South Africa, the UK, Germany and many places in the US.
Intervals were on her training schedule, which is what I was looking for anyway (mainly I was looking for a break from the computer!), but we managed to hit quite a few trails for warmup/cool down, too. We skipped the Guts trail when we got to it, though, riding right on by and instead descending CR108, which was happily full of drainage lips to pop off of. This week has been a pretty solid block of “training” and I needed it. It’s nice to be tired from riding, not computing.
Paula finally arrives in Colorado tomorrow! She is done with school and free for the summer. It’s about time. Just like I did when I arrived in Salida, she’ll be racing right when she gets here. Fibark 10k trail race on Sunday morning, followed by the MTB race! Let the summer begin!
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