Leadville 100 – Peter Kelsey Reflects on the Experience
29 August 2014
‘I am now back from racing the Leadville 100 in Colorado.
I am happy to report that of nearly 2,000 riders that lined up at the start I was one of the 1,216 who finished within the 12 hour limit to receive the (among mountain bikers) legendary Leadville Belt Buckle – finishing in 9 hrs 12 minutes (37th in the over 50s and first British male of any age group). Initially I was a bit disappointed, as I had hoped and trained to finish in under 9 hours, but in part I had not fully grasped the challenge of such a tough high altitude race, especially when starting towards the back of such a large field of athletes.
At the briefing the afternoon before the race Ken Chlouber, who was the original founder of the Leadville races, gave a lengthy pre-race speech about guts, grit and determination. To the many experienced athletes in the room the speech would have been as easy to ignore as the safety video that few of us bother to watch on modern flights, but seven hours into the race his lines were ringing in my ears as I faced the all too common challenge of a long endurance event – ‘the bonk’.
I was half way up the steepest climb on the return (Powerline) when I ran low on blood sugar. Luck can play a part in any event, and as luck would have it I was passing (very slowly I might add) a local man in his 70s as my race so nearly fell apart. He was handing out cans of Coke and Mountain Dew – as was typical of Leadville he was not on anyone’s payroll, just a kind-hearted local who wanted to be involved. I chugged two Cokes and bounced back within minutes, akin to a small child who has been fed too many sweets.
Sadly I will never meet him again to thank him, but he saved me from the very real risk of not making the finish line!
At that point Ken’s words drove me on:
‘All of you will feel like quitting at some point tomorrow’.
‘If I see you after the race, just don’t look me in the eye and tell me that you quit’
And
‘You can do more than you think you can’.
The race doctor had also given a speech saying most of you will bonk at some point in the race, but you can recover if you take on enough nutrition and remain calm and patient.
The depths of a bonk in an endurance event are pretty grim, but the doctor was right. If you remain calm and take on enough nutrition you can recover – no matter how unlikely that might seem as your mind (starved of sugar and now highly irrational) struggles to face down what feels in the moment like an impossible task.
In my mind I had also dedicated my race to Margot and the girls as they had to put up with so much of our leisure time being focused on cycling, so that too meant quitting after all that time and effort was not an option, even when every step (I was now down to walking up a very steep hill) was a huge effort.
In the post-race ceremony and speeches even the winner Todd Wells (a US Pro rider and national champion from Specialized) explained he felt like quitting and was struggling to reach the finish as others chased him down. Incredibly having settled for 2nd place Todd only took the lead when the leading pro, Kristian Hynek bonked quite late on despite seemingly having an unassailable lead – Todd came across Kristian, weaving all over the course, as he tried to take on enough nutrition to recover and eventually finish in 3rd place. Whilst I will never know how Todd felt to win the event, I do at least know how Kristian was feeling in those dark minutes before the sugar did its job!
The message?
Well there are several, and they don’t just relate to sport, far from it:
Even professionals and experts suffer setbacks, despite meticulous planning, support and preparation;
In life very few things go perfectly to plan. You will face challenges and setbacks, but accept them, deal with them, and be prepared to re-set your sights (some goals are perhaps very optimistic in the first place so a degree of compromise is likely – be prepared for that);
If you really want something enough then plan for how you might best achieve it, and ideally seek expert advice where you need help;
If you do seek advice from experts then listen to it, and don’t deviate from your plans. My coach Jay created a fantastic programme. I just did my best to do what I was told;
Revisit and review your plans regularly to check they remain realistic, and adjust them as required; and
Don’t quit. Others are also hurting, and sometimes in life the winners are those who cling on the longest – as was illustrated by Todd catching Kristian for the win when it seemed that second was his best hope by that late stage in the race.
Overall I had a fantastic time in Leadville. It is a small town that pulls together to support the race series, which in turn has helped them recover from being an ex-mining town with the highest unemployment rate in the US to one where the Leadville Race Series has created growing prosperity and a common goal. It all stems the vision of one man, Ken Chlouber (with me in the photo below), back in 1983, when faced with appalling economic prospects as mining dwindled he proposed a seemingly unlikely strategy that has since seen the town prosper – in part because the local population all pull together so well as such an effective team and focus on a common goal. They also tapped into unused natural resources that had previously been ignored – stunning unspoilt scenery, previously unused for such fantastic and now legendary endurance races that are heavily over-subscribed every year.
I was very lucky to get to live my dream 50th birthday celebration and ‘Race Across The Sky’. This seemed ‘highly optimistic’ in late 2011 while watching the 2009 race on DVD whilst in rehab (post-surgery not alcohol or drugs!). I was taking warfarin and heparin from the added complications of post-surgery DVT and on crutches and just learning to walk again in a swimming pool – I could only dream of ride this challenging. All this stemmed from having had surgery to re-attach my hamstrings, an operation that was made more challenging after serious delays due to initial medical negligence where a radiologist somehow missed on his MRI scan the very clear and apparent injuries I had asked him to check for!
The point I am trying to make to anyone who reads this?
‘you can do more than you think you can’
Onwards to the next challenge….’
As raced an reporred by Peter Kelsey
