Tomorrow, I plan to write a story about my experiences at the Leadville 100 this year. It will be easy to write (and it should be fun to read) because I had a great time. I met lots of old friends, made several new friends, and got some extra attention at the awards ceremony. There will be photographs of me and others. There will be charts from my GPS. I will reveal the name of the person who hypothetically had signed up for this race and was not sure whether he or she should do it.

I, for one, can hardly wait to read what I write tomorrow.

Today, though, I’m going to indulge in a self-indulgent Q&A session on what went wrong at the Leadville 100 for me.

Q. So, let’s start with the one thing everyone is at least mildly curious about. What was your finishing time?
A. Ten hours. And six minutes.

Q. What?! Aren’t you the same guy who was going on and on and on about how you thought you had a good chance at finishing in under nine hours this year?
A. Yes, that was me. Evidently, I am not anywhere near as close to as fast as I thought I was.

Q. Just for the sake of comparison, what was your finishing time last year?
A. 9:41.

Q. Wasn’t that the year where you rolled along with a voice recorder and chatted with people about how things were going, asking them why they raced, whether they were having fun, and stuff like that?
A. Yeah, that was it.

Q. And wasn’t that the year you were going on about how fat and slow you were?
A. Yes. Do you have a point to make?

Q. It just seems weird that you were 25 minutes faster last year when you were supposedly fat, slow, and chatty than this year when you were supposedly light, fast, and serious about finishing under nine hours.
A. Yeah, that’s occurred to me, too.

Q. So, would you like to make some excuses as to what went wrong?
A. I sure would.

Q. OK, let’s start with the bike, your so-called “Weapon of Choice.” Did you have a bunch of mechanical issues with this dream bike of yours?
A. Nope, the bike performed flawlessly. Racer built it and tuned it so it never had a second’s worth of problems. However, since I had only three rides’ worth of experience with the rigid fork, I was very timid on the downhills.

Q. But you’ve always been timid on the downhills.
A. Yeah, but I was even more timid than usual. I passed lots of people every climb, but got passed by even more people on every descent. I think I can say with confidence that I did not pass a single person while descending. I may have been slower going down than up. I was an embarrassment to mountain bikers everywhere.

Q. You mean more than usual?
A. Yes. Can we move on to my next excuse now, please?

Q. Sure. What about your body? You’re supposedly light and fit right now.
A. I am light. I weigh 154.2 pounds today. The thing is, I now realize I am more like Jan Ullrich than I previously thought. You know how he would always look chunky in the early season and then lose a bunch of weight just before the Tour, and people would agree that it was good he had lost the weight, but maybe it would have been better if he had lost it a while sooner and trained at that weight? That’s kind of what happened with me. Until mid-June, I was heavy and didn’t get much training in. Then, for two months, I focused and made a lot of progress. But you know what I learned on the trail last Saturday? This: Making progress isn’t the same thing as being ready.

Q. Anything else you’d like to blame?
A. Yeah. The weather. About eighty miles into the race, as I was hiking up the Powerline climb—which is unanimously understood to be the most difficult part of the whole race—it started raining. Hard. I was soaked and chilled to the bone, and could not see. If I left my glasses on, all I saw was a blurry, muddy mess. If I took my glasses off, all I could see was a blurry, muddy mess. The only reason I didn’t quit right then was because I knew I was just a couple hours away from getting my 1000 Mile award. This slowed my descending down even more, if that’s possible.

Q. So that’s why you didn’t finish in under nine hours? The weather?
A. No, I realized much earlier that I wasn’t on a sub-nine pace.

Q. No kidding. When did you realize you were going too slow to finish in under nine hours?
A. By the time I got to the second aid station, 40 miles into the race. By then I was eighteen minutes behind schedule, even though I was working hard. I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn’t have a stronger second half than first half. And I didn’t.

Q. So are you going to do this race again next year?
A. I’ve already reserved my hotel room and secured permission from my wife, who will crew for me. The lottery no longer applies to me, since I’ve done the race 10 times.

Q. What will you do differently?
A. Stay at the weight I’m at. Learn to downhill, either with or without suspension (I still think the rigid fork was a good idea, I just need experience with it). Train earlier and more consistently, instead of doing one big panicky training push.

Q. Those all sound like great ideas. Do you think you’ll finish under nine hours next year?
A. Absolutely not.

As one of the final steps in my annual obsession over the Leadville 100, I put together an easy-to-follow plan for my aid station crew, so as to avoid being slowed down.

Yes, I do this every year, including the ones when I’m fat and slow.

In fact, I think I may pay more attention to my transitions in my slow years than my fast years — looking for any advantage I can find, you know.

For your interest (or lack thereof), here are my instructions to my Mom for this year’s race. It will not hurt my feelings if you scan through this quickly. Unless you’re my Mom, in which case you’d better pay very strict attention. 

Be sure you read "Plan B," though. That’s where the fun part begins.

Aid Station Plan for Fatty

Fish Hatchery 1:
Skip – go straight to Twin Lakes Dam station

Twin Lakes Dam 1:
Time: ~2:45 (9:15am)

• Swap Camelbak: ½ full
• 4 packets Shot Bloks, open and folded
• New bottle of Gu:

• 5 packets
• Topped with water to about half-full bottle
• Shake well

Twin Lakes Dam 2:
Time: ~5:10 (11:40am)

• Swap Camelbak: 1/3 full
• 2 packets Shot Bloks, open and folded
• New bottle of Gu:

• 3 packets
• Topped with water to about 1/4-full bottle
• Shake well

Fish Hatchery 2:
Time: ~6:00 (12:30pm)

• Swap Camelbak: 1/2 full
• 4 packets Shot Bloks, open and folded
• New bottle of Gu:

• 5 packets
• Topped with water to about 1/2-full bottle
• Shake well

Hypothetical Plan B
Since I was feeling extra-helpful this morning, I went ahead and sent the above list to the person I know who will hypothetically be joining me at Leadville and hypothetically racing it. I let this person of non-specific gender (actually, the person’s gender is quite specific, but I am not specifying it right now. Are we clear on that?) know that s/he may want to take a look at it and modify it for her (…or his…) own use.

This is what I got back. I recommend reading it much more carefully than you read my own list, because it’s much more entertaining, and probably more useful.

Fish Hatchery 1: (four hours–10:30 am)

• Beach chair at the ready
• Breakfast of steak and eggs with chilled orange juice and mango slices lightly dusted with paprika
• Pallet cleanser
• Moist towelettes for cleanup

Twin Lakes Dam(n) 1:  (five hours–11:30 am)

• Massage table at the ready
• More mangos, please
• A minty mint julep
• More steak, with cheese fries, please

Twin Lakes Dam(n) 2–this makes it double damn, right?:  (nine hours–3:30 pm)

• I.V. epi-testosterone–fast drip
• A lovely double Reuben
• A chocolate malted
• The bike rack

Fish Hatchery 2:  (nine hours, fifteen minutes–3:45 pm–I think it should only take about 15 minutes to drive to the next aid station)

• Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility
• Carrot cake and an Italian cream soda

Finish:  (nine hours–4:00–again, it’s about a 15 minute drive to town–I can find the race course on my own once we are there–plus, with the cloak of invisibility, I should be fine)

• Pastrami with hot mustard and a 44 oz. Coke
• “Before you check the station stats, may I have my belt buckle, please?”
• “I want to thank my mother and my crew, who gave me the horsepower (more literally than you know) to finish the race ….”

I think my hypothetical friend will do just fine at this race.

Hypothetically.

PS: I’m off to Leadville now, and won’t have frequent Net access. I’ll call my wife after the race, though, and ask her to post my finishing time. Check back Saturday afternoon, around 5pm Mountain Time. I will, hypothetically, also reveal my hypothetical racing friend’s name and finishing time then.

PPS:  While I’m away, be sure to stay up-to-date with the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah over at the race site! You’ll especially want to track the biggy: Stage 6, this Saturday!

PPPS: A few folks have mentioned they’d like a Fat Cyclist decal like the one I’ve put on the Weapon of Choice. In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that this is currently not a decal at all, but my logo printed from my home color laser printer (did you know a nice color laser printer costs around $300 now?) onto overhead projector plastic, then stuck on with clear packing tape. That said, if you’d like one or two of these "decals," send your address to fatty@fatcyclist.com, and I’ll mail you one. No charge, since I’ve already got the plastic and am willing to absorb the cost of an envelope and stamp. I’ll use interest in these to gauge whether I should create other stuff, like jerseys and whatnot.

Once upon a time, Utah was going to have its own annual official Ironman. Furthermore, it was going to be right in Utah County, where I happened to live.

And you know, the idea of doing an Ironman without having to travel appealed to me. You know: Sleep in my own bed, get up, go do the big race, and then go home. What could be nicer than crashing at your own house after a big race like that?

That was a rhetorical question, by the way. You don’t have to answer.

The only reason I didn’t sign up for that Ironman, in fact, was because my wife was pregnant with twins. I was pushing it to train for the Leadville 100; training for an Ironman was right out.

Turns out, not being allowed to race that event was a good thing.

Crazy Weather
Since I couldn’t race the Ironman, I volunteered at an aid station on the bike leg. I was looking forward to handing drinks off to guys as they blew by.

And then, the night before the race, the weather completely discombobulated.

Wind started gusting to about 20,000 miles per hour (I’m exaggerating). Trees blew over (I’m not exaggerating). Utah lake, where the swim leg would be, developed surfable waves (I’m not exaggerating). The course buoys broke free from their tethers (still not exaggerating).

On the morning of the race, the wind was still ugly beyond all reason, but the race started anyway.

Well, it sort of started.

After a few people got blown across the lake (not exaggerating), clear out of the water, and into nearby trees (exaggerating), race officials ended the swim leg early and announced they were changing the race to a duathlon. With less mileage.

It was the right call to make, but racers were still disappointed. If you train all summer for an event, you kind of want to do the whole event, right?

The head honchos that make up Ironman, Inc. (or whatever it’s called) were not pleased with Utah’s willfully obnoxious weather and moved the Ironman to Idaho.

Which Brings Us to Monday
So this week, we’re hosting the Tour of Utah, right here in Utah. So of course the practical joker who for some reason both hates big-name bike races and has the ability to bring on mighty windstorms has got his dander up.

Monday, the wind was so brutal I didn’t even consider riding my bike to work. Of course, the pro cyclists had to deal with it anyway. What fun it must have been to be in a fast-moving peloton…in the middle of a duststorm that effectively blinded you. While you dodged debris.

Yikes.

Congratulations, by the way, to Uzbekistan National Champion, Sergey Lagutin of Team Navigators, who won the sprint on that stage, taking the yellow jersey (and sprinters jersey, and best young rider jersey) for the first stage.

And Yesterday?
More wind. Sheesh. And it was hot—more than 100 degrees, for pity’s sake. I tell you what: I’d develop “tendonitis” under these circumstances. But these pros, they’re tough guys.

US National Road Champ Chris Wherry (Toyota-United) took the sprint in yesterday’s stage (moving him to second overall), less than a bike length ahead of local hero Jeff Louder (Healthnet-Maxxis), who is now in third overall. Lagutin finished third, continuing to hog the yellow, sprint, and young rider jerseys.

It’ll be interesting to see what today’s short (~8mi) time trial does to these rankings.

Want more info on the way the race unfolded? Visit my good friends at the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah site.

Oh, and by the way, it’s not too late sign up to win that awesome Cervelo Soloist Team. That bike will be given away this Saturday, though, so time’s running out. Go sign up now!