Eszter Horanyi CTR Blog Post 1: Preparation

Looking back in order to look forward

The Colorado Trail:  How does one describe it?  We could go by pure numbers: 470 miles, 65,000+ ft of elevation gain with the majority of the route above 9,000 ft.  We could go with a more qualitative description: It travels from Denver to Durango including some of the best single track in the state, astounding views, miles of hike-a-bike and remoteness that rivals any bike-packing route out there.  We could describe it by the people who race it.  The brave souls who line up outside of Denver on an early August morning and embark on an adventure of a lifetime.  2010 was the race’s 4^th year in existence with 41 people toeing the line.  After a week of torrential rains during Colorado’s monsoon season, less than half would finish. Ethan Passant won the men’s race in 4 days, 13 hours, 25 minutes, and I won the women’s race in 6 days, 5 hours, and 30 minutes, which was a new woman’s record.  This was despite a last minute decision to race, which led to some…interesting gear choices.  What I didn’t have, I wasn’t going to need.

This year, I’m back for a retry, hopefully slightly more prepared and with hopefully better weather.  My goal is to chronicle my preparation for this adventure here on a weekly basis covering everything from gear, training, and the mental aspect of preparing to ride by myself for nearly 500 miles, self-supported.

Step 1 is to learn from my mistakes from last year.  When I look back on last year’s race, I end up feeling like I did more things wrong than right.  My gear list was, more or less, as follows:

-       6 L dry bag

-       Mountain Man seat post rack

-       Ergon backpack

-       Pipe insulation sleeping pad cut down to ¾ size

-       30 degree down sleeping bag

-       Adventure Medical Kit emergency bivy

-       GoLite poncho tarp

-       Exposure headlamp

-       Small headlamp

-       Basic first aid/lighter/swiss army knife

-       Smartwool ultra-light bottom and top

-       Smartwool mid-weight top

-       Rain jacket and pants

-       Warm gloves and full-finger thin gloves

-       2 Mountain Feedbags

-       2 Water bottles

-       100 oz water bladder

-       Iodine

-       2 pairs of wool socks

-       2 pairs of chamois

-       Jersey

-       Armwarmers

-       Legwarmers

The seat post rack weighed in at paper-weight status, the dry bag was meant more for lazy river rafting trips than saving weight, the emergency bivy didn’t breathe and left my down sleeping bag soaked for the duration of the trip after the first night, and iodine, after six days, tastes awful.  I managed to get both pairs of socks wet by Day 2, my rain gear was ancient, heavy, and had stopped being water-proof many summers ago.  My ‘sleeping pad’ did little more than keep water off my non-breathable bivy sack and as the little pockets of air in it popped every night, became less and less insulating.  So clearly, my gear choice this year will be different.

I also embarked on this adventure with a complete lack of a food plan besides stopping at grocery stores in Leadville, Buena Vista, and Silverton and loading my pack up with as much food as it would hold.  Coming from a endurance mountain bike racing background, I also thought it would be wise to carry a bag of Hammer Nutrition’s Perpetuem, HEED, and Recoverite to put in my bottles.  I carried said baggies of white powder from start to finish and neglected to drink any of it.  The same goes for the 3 gel flasks that I carried across the state.  Lacking sodium, I bought a salt-shaker in Buena Vista, which I carried, full of salt, the rest of the way.  This is from a girl who didn’t want to carry a real sleeping pad because of the extra weight.  I left Buena Vista, bound for Silverton 200 miles away with approximately 4,000 calories.  It takes more than 4,000 calories to pedal and push your bike 200 miles.  Clearly, I will need to think out my nutrition with slightly more care this time around.  I managed to lose enough weight during my little adventure that I couldn’t cinch the straps of my bad down tight enough on the last day. 

My mental game was my only saving grace in last years race.  My mantra: I could be at work right now, and I really don’t like work.  That’s not to say I didn’t crack at least once a day, every day, usually when it would start raining for the second time.  I pulled plenty of stupid moves like stopping at the top of Los Pinos Pass to sleep in sub-freezing temperatures simply because I was bored of pedaling while instead, I could have stayed on my bike for an extra 20 minutes, dropped at least 1,000 feet and slept in much warmer temperatures.  But I was bored of pedaling, so I stopped.  I shivered more than I slept most nights and I’d be frightened to see what my idle time was most nights because I know I never slept more than two hours at a time.  Sleep is tricky: Too little and life starts to get miserable, too much and you’re wasting time.

We’re down to eight weeks out from the start of this monster in 2011.  I’ve started collecting gear, it’s time to start testing it.  It’s time to wish for the snow to melt and start planning high-alpine adventures in preparation for lining up, once again, in a dirt parking-lot, just outside of Denver, getting ready to embark on another adventure of a lifetime.

Thanks for reading,

-E