The Second Race in the Triple Crown Challenge

Insecurity, hesitation and self doubt.

It was well past 11:00, and I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed. I lay atop a Big Agnes twin blowup mattress in our truck camper because I couldn’t get over the idea of sweating every night into a foam mattress with our showering (or lack thereof) habit. I’d woken at 4:00 a.m. to make Johnny breakfast before he hiked up the mountain to start his shift and crawled back into bed once he left. It was just a week or so after I’d crossed the finish line in the Tour Divide, and I was trying to be myself again. But it wasn’t happening easily. I wasted hours in bed watching movies on my iPad.

The Colorado Trail Race was only six weeks away, and I had no clue how I was supposed to train. Was I to rest? Was I to start moving again? The weight of my finish of the Tour Divide was heavy on my shoulders. Not achieving at the level you know you can is heartbreaking. This was a time to be gentle and humble with myself, but I couldn’t do anything other than dread what had happened and what was to come.

I started out by hauling water up the hill from Johnny’s crew base camp to our camper. This led to taking walks along the Colorado Trail, and those walks eventually turned into runs. I couldn’t bear to ride my singlespeed and decided to buy a full-suspension mountain bike to reacquaint myself with bike love again. I didn’t know if it would but, but it did. I found peace in the derailleur. I found comfort in the suspension. A week after I brought the Rocky Mountain bike home, I was ready to break it in.

A few of us set out from Denver to ride back to Twin Lakes on roughly half of the Colorado Trail. I was having fun on my bike for the first time in a long while. There was ease in the gears; I’d downshift if I got too tired, and I would chill while pedaling. Which just doesn’t happen on a singlespeed. On the singlespeed you mash or deal with being spun out. I was at the point where I felt like every ride on a singlespeed was the hardest bike ride of my life.

As the Colorado Trail Race neared, I was to build up my singlespeed. I put my Chumba Yaupon away and pulled out my Chumba Sendero. I replaced almost every part of the machine. From wheels, to brake pads, to pedals, the whole thing was a new bike. I took a test run on the freshly built bike on an overnighter from Mount Shavano to Princeton Hot Springs. I almost felt strong, happy even, to be on a simple bike again. Just pedal or walk.

The next day, Johnny and I drove through Gunnison to spend the night at Cathedral Cabins before I was to start my pedaling journey to Durango. I needed some time to get my emotional state sorted. I need space to suck at bikes and find my little racer legs again. Suck I did, cry I did, and actually, I found some smiles out there too. I found some folk who shared a little bit about their adventure with me. I blasted down from Cinnamon Pass into Silverton and found my friend, Scott. He drove me up the dreaded highway to Molas Campground, and we went for a scramble-hike learning about each other’s very different upbringings. It was quite meaningful for me because, after all the years of having only communicated about Trackleaders stuff, Scott became a friend a couple of years ago. It was good to learn more about his life.

One of my best friends, Justin, decided that he was going to come out to see me (well, all of us) off at the start of the Grand Depart, so on my tour, Justin and I met up at the Golden Nugget and then headed out into the wild to camp. We caught up and talked about all the serious and not-so-serious shit happening in our lives. This guy has grown to be one of my favorite, most important, loving, teaching, asshole humans on this whole planet. He’s been there for me when no one else was and has believed in me to the contagious point of me catching on to his trust in my ability to shred bikes. We’ve laughed a lot, cried a little, and just grown to trust each other entirely in this fallacy land we call “now”. I confessed a little of my agony of the Tour Divide (he’s ridden it too) and self-doubt about the CTR. Then we decided to pedal up to Engineer Mountain the next day and give a summiting a shot. The weather rolled in, and I did not really want to keep going up, but I also would follow Justin off the edge… As the wind and rain picked up, we scrambled down the approach and just RIPPED down the sick descent. That was so fun, and I led while Justin followed. It was fun to show off a little and get chased.

It’s special to have a person like that in your life. One who believes in you more than you believe in yourself. And you trust them so much that you turn your brain off and just follow them into battle. He’s that person for me, and I’ve done some wild things way out of the bounds of my perceived ability with his invitations, and it was meaningful to set off on yet another Colorado Trail effort with him at the start. He wasn’t racing this time, but I’ve hugged him at every single one of my CTR starts and several finishes. After all, it’s in the Waterton Canyon parking lot where I first met Justin and his family, and the rest of the crew who grew to be my family.

Photo by Neil Beltchenko

We rolled into Durango the day after we tried Engineer and I was nauseated with nerves I think Justin saw how weird I was acting and offered to take me to the float tanks in town. I melted in my tank. I cried. And cried. I let go of everything I’d been carrying and made a promise to myself. There were some things I wanted to admit to him, but at this point in my journey, I was still deeply embarrassed about where my thoughts were going.

Maybe the top wasn’t always mine to have. I was not any less of a bike racer if I didn’t win, and I was to spend the Colorado Trail Race really asking myself if I enjoyed the journey in the quest of crossing the finish line. Or at least this was the kind of narrative I wanted to be living in. But I honestly, couldn’t shake what it would mean to not feel like I was racing to win. I would try hard, hydrate well, try not to use the inhaler, and simply go forward without comparing myself to everyone else. (Spoiler, it didn’t unfold exactly like this, and virtuous as it was. I just was exploding in my mind with thoughts from all directions.)

I’d been texting with Katya some while pedaling on my way to Durango, and we planned to go to the girl party to mingle with the rest of the ladyfolk racers. Good thing Katya biked over to my hotel to drag me out, because I didn’t really feel like I had the capacity to socialize. I was on one and slurping Aperol Spritz in the corners of my dingy hotel room! My relationship with Katya has made a huge impact in my life. And someday, I will sort out how many beautiful things she’s brought to me. Including a deep curiosity about what lies within my athletic ability because I honestly think I have only tapped in a little, and seeing someone so strong and determined racing in a good way brought my heart so much joy. It gives me hope for the racers who will come into the community. It was strange, I almost wanted her to win just as much as I wanted to win. And for so long I wanted to be on the top because I wanted to take up as much space in bikepacking land as I could. Because I was (and often still am) disgusted by some of the direction the sport is headed.

When it came time for the race to begin, a dark sky blanketed the truths of the sky. The entire field blasted off in front of me, and I was just about the LAST person to hit the singletrack. I just slowly spun on the road and then turned on the burners. I got stuck behind loads of people on the singletrack, and in order to get a little bit of space for myself, I had to try pretty fucking hard (heart rate of 170 for like 2 hours).

The rest of that first-day kind of surprised me. I focused on nutrition, didn’t look at Trackleaders while riding at all, and made it to Silverton for sleep— the furthest I’d ever made it on day one. Other than the beginning part of basically running up the mountain, I was pretty chill, trying to keep a low heart rate and only go as fast as I could while breathing out of my nose.

The following days ensued a little similarly. I occasionally looked at Trackleaders, but much less than usual and not even looking on the last day of my race at all. I really suffered in a few sections that I historically loved. But I just wasn’t feeling super hungry in ways that I had before. It’s kinda a bummer, but I think I gave up trying to race for the win that very first night I camped. That was SO silly— but I had looked at the tracker right before I drifted to sleep that first night, and Katya was already at Stony Pass, and my memory painted that as way SO far away from town. In reality, it was only a few hours. But I was self-deprecating my ability. I also thought that sleeping low maybe would help me with breathing. I don’t actually think it made a difference. BUT I also brought a light, minimal sleep kit and it meant that I tried to sleep strategically so I would stay warm in my semi-inadequate sleep system.

I wish I hadn’t been so emotionally drained for the race because it was a full-on battle trying to remind myself that my worth wasn’t tied to the outcome. It’s been a thing I’ve been working through for a while with racing. I just always thought that my body was a shame shell, good for one thing—luring men in with the hopes they could love me. Winning races was beyond validating. What did not winning mean? What excuses would bring me peace? I’d dwell on that thought for days during the race. I was racing safely. Which I’d never really done before. I just wanted to be the bold, young, novice I had been in my twenties. But I didn’t want to risk blowing up.

The thing, at least for me, about doing extraordinary things during these ultra-endurance efforts requires the boldness to push one's limits and acceptance that one teeters on the line of complete implosion, therefore potentially throwing away a hard-earned lead to recover and start over on the journey to the finish; high risk high reward. And I wasn’t really willing to take any risks because I didn’t want to come in too far behind the winner— and that surely wasn’t going to be me.

I was a tamed, timid version of myself, and I am grateful to be able to reflect on these things now. I guess the only thing I have left to do is to try again.

I suspect, there is more to come…