Thank you Lawrence and Louise for the recognition. It was a great day out there. As many of you know, I center the majority of my season around this event. It is really special to me. It was a great day, and new a new PR for me in terms of my finishing time. It was NOT my best placing, but the race has gotten so much more competitive over the years. I was 15 minutes faster in 13th place overall this year, than I was when I did 7th place in 2008.
The highlight of the day for me was being able to hang with the big riders over the first major passes of the day, before it broke up and went all chaotic. When I came out of the woods over the first big set of passes, I was with Tinker Juarez, Dave Weins, and Ned Overend, and collectively we were only down 30 seconds to the group that Levi was leading with 5 or 6 major world cup level MTB racers. Eventually Dave decided to close the gap in one massive spint effort and I got popped out the back, but I was still on record pace for myself and actually enjoyed riding much of the day alone. It was a fun experience.
Congrats to Phil on a great finish as well. Phil - you had no business doing as well as you did! You should be really happy. Determination and amazing base fitness carried you through.
There is a great video on singletrack.com (velonews' mountain bike sister site) where you can see me in a few cool places. The support I received from Specialized and from Cynergy was unbelievable. Thank you to Randall and Diego who came out to support me, and to Jim who made everything happen behind the scenes. You provided full factory-pro level sponsorship.
Video here (I am in white kit with black and red specialized trim seen 2 or 3 times near the beginning) : http://singletrack.competitor.com/2010/08/features/leadville-2010-video-highlights_9824
Cool photo from the infamous "Powerline Climb" attached.
NW
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