Leadville Trail 100

This past weekend Sarah and I went up to watch the Leadville Trail 100 as "One Fun Thing."  This was a race I'd been wanting to watch for a while, but Leadville isn't the easy place to shoot up to for a day.


For those interested, they made a movie about last year's race, which Lance Armstrong won, called Race Across the Sky.  The movie is worth watching.   This year, Lance Armstrong bailed out of the event roughly a week before.   We wanted to go anyway.


This race was going to be (Radio Shack professional) Levi Leipheimer's first mountain bike race.  Ever.


Staging starts VERY early.

The race allows for roughly 1500 riders, and it is quite difficult to get picked to race through their lottery system, unless of course, you are a Tour de France rider, in which case you can roll up at the last minute.

At this point of the morning, it is quite cold in Leadville, which sits at an elevation of about 10,200.  Here we are all bundled up.

The race has a "shotgun" start (literally), but it is also a neutralized start through town.  In this picture, you can see race director Ken Chlouber, with gun, hugging Colorado favorite and six-time LT100 winner Dave Wiens.  (Dave Weins was who rode with Lance at the Ride 4 Yellow event 2 weekends back).  Next to them is Leipheimer.

With a blast from the shotgun, the race was on.  For some, the race would take 12 or more hours.  For the best riders, it takes just under 7 hours.

Why did Sarah and I have so much yellow and black on?  A few days prior to the race we got an email and I saw a tweet that Livestrong needed volunteers.  Since we were going to be up there anyway, we were excited to volunteer.

Livestrong had two booths, one up near the race's Start/Finish, and one at the Rocky Mountain Bike Festival, 5 blocks into the course.  Basically, volunteers were their to share their stories, solicit donations for bands, and in general raise awareness for what the organization can do for cancer survivors as well as their loved ones.

In general, the people were very supportive and obviously, many who visited the booths had a connection to cancer.  Many already wore the bands.  Some had done Livestrong events.  A few had no idea, but in general, if you are hanging around the bicycle community in some way (such as at an event such as the LT100), you know about Livestrong.

What was neat is that many of the volunteers were the same folks Sarah and I met at the Livestrong workshop 3 weekends ago.   It was great to see them again, and there is some real energy to continue volunteering and raising money within the Colorado group.

Sarah and I ducked out about 6 hours after the race began to wander the 50 yards back over to the start/finish.   We wanted to see who would win the race.   As it turned out, Levi Leipheimer had no trouble making the adjustment from the road bike to his new custom Trek mountain bike.  Levi crushed the field, and smashed Lance Armstrong's year old course record by 12 minutes, finishing in 6 hours, 16 minutes, and obviously setting a new record.  We were there with the camera.

The Livestrong crowd was pleased to see Leipheimer sporting the infamous "28" jerseys.  Additionally, he was a class act by hanging out signing autographs for the fans and posing for pictures.   While we didn't get over in time for either of those, I did get a shot of his bike.

I really like his bike, but I prefer mountain bikes with larger wheels.  Incidentally, I picked up a great shirt at said bike fest that day to this point.  

It was a great day and Livestrong raised some money.  I'm told what we raised was approximately one quarter of what was raised last year, but that was when Lance Armstrong himself was racing, and the crowds were much bigger.  Every little bit counts and helps, though.

The next day, Sarah and I decided to do a little mountain biking of our own, since we had the hotel all day.  Basically, we slept in, relaxed, rode, and then came home in the afternoon.  Pretty good weekend.