I raced his very first 48mile ore to shore. I tookk 109th place overall and 2nd in my agegroup had no problems and the course was very dry. Hitting speeds of 35 miles per hour at the start as soon as they hit the first part the trail it was a wall of red dust. The trail was sandy with a few tecnical climbs. The most technical was a hill that was all loose rocks called misory hill that was un climable. Overall I felt real good the entire time, until the last mile where I had a few cramps. I ignored them and charged to the finish for 109th overall and 2nd in the Juniors. Can't wait until WORS Border Battle!
Just a little dirty.....
As you'd guess Zach's report is a bit meatier as a lot happens in nine hours!
I lined up for the Leadville 100 earllllyyyy at about 5 AM to try to get a decent spot in the "first timers" coral that they threw us all into. I ended up lining up about halfway back in the first timers group which was at the back of the 2000 person field.
The first climb up St. Kevins is fairly steep but short. It was frustrating being at the back of the field going up that because I couldn't go my pace and had to come to a complete stop and track stand multiple times going up the climb due to how bottlenecked it got. I took every chance I could to move up and ended up sliding up a couple hundred places by the top of the climb.
My legs felt really good and I was pacing myself possibly a little too much all the way until the 50 mile point at the top of the columbine mine climb, which is the signature climb in leadville (and it is a beast). Columbine goes up from about 9000 ft and tops out at roughly 13000 ft. I hit that climb hard and moved up a lotttt more places. It felt really good to basically be constantly passing people for the hour and 40 minutes I was climbing.
I descended columbine a little slower than I would have wanted due to all the traffic and headed back for the last 40 miles. There was a pretty decent headwind coming back from twin lakes to the bottom of the pipeline but I still negatively split my time out by about 20 minutes. I had saved a lot of energy for the 2nd 50 miles knowing how much harder they are than the first 50.
I ended up flying through the last 20 miles of the race. I was incredibly motivated because I knew I was right on the edge of going sub nine, and I had paced myself very well (probably too much) and slacking even a little bit on the last 2 climbs in the race would put me a few minutes over 9 hours. with 5 miles to go and about 20 minutes left before nine hours I just put my head down and suffered all the way to the finish and ended up finishing in 8:55.
I was super pumped to go under 9 and completely out of gas. That race is the sort of hard that you really can't understand until you do it. I have never done anything like it, but the feeling from finishing under my goal of 9 hours made it all worth it.
The first climb up St. Kevins is fairly steep but short. It was frustrating being at the back of the field going up that because I couldn't go my pace and had to come to a complete stop and track stand multiple times going up the climb due to how bottlenecked it got. I took every chance I could to move up and ended up sliding up a couple hundred places by the top of the climb.
My legs felt really good and I was pacing myself possibly a little too much all the way until the 50 mile point at the top of the columbine mine climb, which is the signature climb in leadville (and it is a beast). Columbine goes up from about 9000 ft and tops out at roughly 13000 ft. I hit that climb hard and moved up a lotttt more places. It felt really good to basically be constantly passing people for the hour and 40 minutes I was climbing.
I descended columbine a little slower than I would have wanted due to all the traffic and headed back for the last 40 miles. There was a pretty decent headwind coming back from twin lakes to the bottom of the pipeline but I still negatively split my time out by about 20 minutes. I had saved a lot of energy for the 2nd 50 miles knowing how much harder they are than the first 50.
I ended up flying through the last 20 miles of the race. I was incredibly motivated because I knew I was right on the edge of going sub nine, and I had paced myself very well (probably too much) and slacking even a little bit on the last 2 climbs in the race would put me a few minutes over 9 hours. with 5 miles to go and about 20 minutes left before nine hours I just put my head down and suffered all the way to the finish and ended up finishing in 8:55.
I was super pumped to go under 9 and completely out of gas. That race is the sort of hard that you really can't understand until you do it. I have never done anything like it, but the feeling from finishing under my goal of 9 hours made it all worth it.
Awesome Job Zach! Next year I may have to join in the suffering!
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