The Breck Epic

6 Days of Racing, a Broken Bone, a Broken Cable and a Robbery: Adventures at the Inaugural Breck Epic

by Sharon McDowell-Larsen



All is well that ends well is an apt way to sum up this race.... but let me start at the beginning.

By all accounts we were doomed to failure well before it even started. First of all, my partner Lyn (we were entered in the women's duo category where the rules are that you have to ride each stage with your partner) was struggling with her training. Between work, school, back problems (she was bed ridden for one training weekned) and a mysterious 24hr flu bug (another missed training weekend) she was missing critical saddle time. Five-hour training weeks are not a good way to prep for a 200 mile, 6-stage mountain bike race with 30,000+ feet of climbing. My training on the other hands was going GREAT, that is until 2 weeks before the race I ingloriously tipped over while trying to ride up a rocky ledge, putting my hand down and breaking my scaphoid bone. The first words out of my mouth when the doctor announced the "you have a fracture" verdict were "can I ride my mountain bike with my cast"? "Sure" he said (little knowing that what I really meant "can i race my bike for 6 days?"), "just be careful using your thumb shifters". As soon as i got home from the doctor's office i hopped on my bike and gave it a try. I rode 30 min and it felt so awkward and uncomfortable that i had my doubts... if it feels this bad for 30 min how would i survive multiple 5hr stages? But after i made some adjustments (bar ends for one) and did some longer rides, i figured i'd survive.

July 4th
Given the less than optimal lead up to the race, we were just relieved to be in Breck ready to race, but little did we know, our bad luck was just beginning.

Day 1: the Prologue (Sun July 5)

Two hours before our start Lyn got a phone call from Ethan her husband who had just returned home to find that their house had been robbed. A couple of TVs, a laptop and some jewelery (but no bikes) had been stolen. This wouldn't have been have that bad except for one chilling detail, there was a kitchen knife laying on top of one of the beds!


All of the "what ifs" (like what if Ethan had been home) were going through Lyn's head as we towed the starting line. It was 3:10pm and it was pouring down rain. The prologue was an uphill time trial (9 miles, 3,000 ft of climbing). Given the circumstances we had had no warm up and the course went straight up. Out strategy was to take it easy (the race would not be won here) saving our selves for the long days to come. Because of the rain I had a plastic bag over my cast, making shifting difficult and turning that part of my arm into a mini sauna. Luckily the sun peeked out about half way up and i ripped that thing off as fast as i could. Seven miles up and just under an hour later we crossed the finish line (they had shortened it due to the weather). We finished 30 sec behind Team Local Girls who won the stage. We rode down as fast as we could. Lyn then got in her car and drove back to Denver to stay with her hubby. A good idea, except that being a holiday weekend, a 1 hr drive turned into 3hrs.

Day 2: The CO Trail: A Hard Day (56km, 4,600 ft of climbing)

The stage started with some steep climbs. I was feeling good, but Lyn, who had driven back to Breck that morning, was stressed (understandably) and sleep deprived (1-2 hrs at most). Needless to say, she was not feeling good. On the climbs i was just trying to keep a good rhythm and keep it easy, but Lyn was really struggling and i had to wait for her at the top of the climbs. She was nauseous and seeing double, not a good thing. When i am ahead of Lyn on the descents, i know she is really having a bad day (Lyn is a former pro downhill racer and can rock the descents like no one else i know).

One of the descents was on the Colorado Trail. Luckily i had ridden this before, so i kinda knew it. Plus it is an awesomely fun, SWEET trail and i was grinning from ear to ear. After that descent we limped up the final climb into the finish 4 hrs after the gun went off. In spite of taking it relatively slow, we still finished less than 1.5 min behind team Local Girls putting us 2 min behind them on the GC (general classification). If we could just have a good day tomorrow, we felt we could easily close the gap.


Stage 3: Pennsylvania Gulch: The Mechanical (45km, 4,000+ ft)

Lyn finally had had a good nights sleep, so she was feeling better. We were determined to gain some time today. But bad luck continued to haunt us. About 30 min into the stage, Lyn yelled for me to stop. Something was wrong. We stopped to take a look, alas the cable to the rear derailleur had broken. How it happened remains a mystery. They were brand new, this almost NEVER happens (in all my years of cycling i've broken one cable - it was old). I usually carry one in my pack, but not during a race!

We tried to come up with a solution; change the stops on the rear derailleur, cut the chain to make it a single speed. I am not a good mechanic and Lyn is a worse one. With my cast i can't use a can opener much less a chain tool. A very nice guy stopped to try and help. Lyn limped on for awhile, but it wasn't working. Some riders who were not in the race stopped to try to help, that didn't work either. We limped on to the start of the steep climb for the day and stopped to have one of the race volunteers (one of the moto guys) help. He found some chicken wire and tried to jerry rig the derailleur. By this time we had lost about 45 min and every single rider had passed us, in fact they were getting ready to sweep the course. The chicken wire lasted a few yards. We were out of options, so Lyn headed back to town and i headed up the climb afraid i was going to get pulled for not making the time cut off. Luckily I passed a few riders and crossed the finish line losing 30 min to team Local Girls. I informed the officials that Lyn would not finish the stage. "Will she race tomorrow?" they asked, "yes" i said, "if she is allowed to". She can, they said but we will have to assess a 30 min time penalty for not finishing together. This was fine by us, but we were now an insurmountable 1 hr and 4 min behind first place. But at this point just glad to still be in the race.

Stage 4: The Queen of the Stages: The Melt Down (69km, 6,600 ft)



The best we could now hope for was a stage win. I was hoping that after Lyn had had a "rest" day the she would be feeling better. We started out strong, well ahead of the Local Girls at least, that is until the melt-down. But before the melt-down there was the crash. It happened on a rocky descent, i was leading and Lyn was on my tail. I got to the aid station at the bottom, grabbed my bottle and turned to look for her. She was not there. "Had she gone through the aid station?" i wondered. Then i heard her yelling for me to stop. She had gone down hard on the descent and her knee was bleeding, swollen and hurting. "Do you want to stop and get that looked at?" i asked. No she said, let's just keep riding, not much they can do." So we started the climb that would take us over the first of 2 passes that were over 11,000 feet in elevation. The air is thin up there let me tell you. There was a line of bikers ahead, pushing their bikes. It was actually easier for me to ride in my easiest gear than to push my bike with my cast, so i took it slow and was able to ride most of it, but poor Lyn was hiking it. We could also see the local girls catching up to us but there was not much we could do. There were some good, technical descents ahead, so maybe we could grab some time. On the second big climb of the day, Lyn was struggling but still turning the pedals. I was feeling pretty good, so i let her grab hold of my camel back on parts of the climb just to give her a boost. We made it to the top, the local girls were not in sight. Lyn took the lead on the descent. It was single track, long and rocky, just what she loves and is really good at. It was all i could do to stay on her wheel. My wrist was screaming at me, but there was no way i was going to slow up as i knew we were gaining time.

A stage win was all but in the bag. We made it to the botte\om and the third aid station in one piece. But alas, when we looked at what was ahead and it went up, way up. "How much elevation gain is there on this climb?" i asked, "oh, about 900 ft or so" was the response. Oops, we hadn't studied the profile well enough and had forgotten about this last climb. The sun was beating down and the higher we climbed the hotter we got. The cast and my wrist were not happy and i was sweating to beat the band. Every time we thought we were at the top, up it went again. Time seemed to stop, it was all we could do to turn the pedals. The higher it got the steeper it got (or so it seemed). Finally Lyn pulled up and said she couldn't pedal any more. In fact she could barely walk. All the stress, lack of training, and the hours of hard riding had all caught up with her. I grabbed her bike and started pushing both bikes up the climb, while Lyn was just trying to put one foot in front of the other. Just about that time, the Local Girls passed us looking disgustingly strong. "Oh well, we did our best" we said. Once at the top, the course seemed to roll on forever. There were more short steep climbs thrown in just to add insult to injury. Lyn told me to go on, but I didn't want to leave her, especially given her state. Both of us have done longer days on a bike, but the 5hrs and 40 min it took us to finish felt about the longest ride of any we have done.

Stage 4: Another Epic Day and Cooking Rice (62km, 6,000+ft)

This promised to be another epic day - the Wheeler Trail day. I had heard nasty rumors about this trail and i was kinda dreading it. Given Lyn's spectacular meltdown the day before, we had doubts about her finishing this stage. As we started out, we were chatting with the third place team, Heather and Mary. Mary had also had a really bad day the day before (also crashing badly) so it was questionable if she could finish as well. Heather thought it would be fun to switch partners. Mary and Lyn could ride together and me and her could ride together. She was rearing to go, as was i, so we agreed. This is not really part of the rules, but we would both get time penalties for not staying with our partners (so the standings wouldn't change). We were both so far behind on the GC, that it didn't really matter at this point. So off we took - Heather like a bat out of hell. I was on the rivet as they say and tried to sneak a look at my heart rate. It was closer to race pace than it had been all week. I was afraid if i kept this up i would have a "Lyn" experience. Finally she eased up at the top and i took the lead on the descent.

We then headed up the Burro trail passed through the first aid station and headed up to Wheeler. Wheeler is steep and long and is not rideable for the most part. it is also above tree-line, so took us above 12,000ft. Between the thin air and the steepness, it wasn't long before we were hiking our bikes. We looked up, and high above us were a line of mountain bikers like ants crawling up the pass. But it was a beautiful day, the views and scenery were stunning and life was good.

About half way up i looked back and i saw Lyn a few switchbacks behind us, she had rallied! Heather and i waved and hollered. Lyn waved back then yelled something that sounded like "did you turn off the lights?" Neither Heather or i had a clue what she was talking about, so we shrugged our shoulders and continued on. At the first false summit, we stopped to take in the views and wait for Lyn. Within a few minutes she appeared, rolled up to us and blurted out "Did you turn off the rice?" That morning we had put some rice on to cook for dinner. I had turned it off before we left (without telling Lyn). At some point Lyn had started stressing about it being left on. She started having visions about the condo burning to the ground! No doubt this had served to spur her on to catch me! For the next few days, all one of us had to say was "did you turn off the rice?" and we would be all start laughing... ok you had to be there, but we thought it was pretty darn funny.

The good news was that Lyn was feeling better. We gave her the lead on the descent into Copper and as usual it was all i could do to hang on. We sorta left poor Heather in the dust, so i dropped and dragged her and tried my best to hang on to a renewed Lyn to the finish. The stage took us 10 min less than the previous day. Many said it was the hardest day, but for us it felt a lot shorter and easier then the previous days stage. Finally a day without bad luck and we had both felt good. We beat the local girls by 20 min but lost the stage because we had racked up another 30 min time penalty for not going through the first time check together. Honestly, we didn't really care, we were just glad we had had a good day.

Stage 6: Short and Fast: The Final One

Lyn had pre-ridden this stage so she knew what to expect. We at least hoped to get the stage win and salvage some of our pride. We both felt decent, given the week we had been through. I let Lyn lead and set the pace for most of the ride, and she was back to her old self, hammering the single track and the descents. The stage took us a little over 3hrs. There were no crashes, mechanicals, melt downs or time penalties, yahoo. We didn't set any speed records, but it was fast enough to take the stage win. We ended up 2nd on the GC, but were mostly just happy to have survived. As a good friend once said, "it doesn't matter in what place you are in when you cross the finish line, what counts is how far you had to travel to get there." I think we had traveled further than most.

Thanks to Lyn for hanging tough. To Mary and Frank for letting us use their condo for a week. And to Matt and Ethan, our hubbies for listening to our daily woes and being supportive.

A word about the race....
This was the first epic mountain bike stage race to come to the US. I think it will fast become a classic. Mike McCormack and his team did a phenomenal job. The course was fantastic, a mountain bikers dream. Every rider was made to feel important. I can't say enough about what a well put on race this was, and yes, i hope to be back next year (and i am pretty sure Lyn does to). Go to http://www.breckepic/ if you want to get the low down.

Cheers and thanks for reading