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Crew Issue 20

W

ED NOTEe’ve been riding the wave of enduro madness for the better part of a decade now and it has been fascinating observing the twists and turns. as we hurtle toward and into 2012,

strange things are happening.

first, one of the longest running 24 hour races, the 24 hours of moab, is looking down the barrel of the financial gun. first run in 1995, it looks for all money (so to speak) like the last edition has been run and won.

things aren’t much better over the border in Canada with the 24 hours of adrenalin team fighting to host the unofficial 24 hour solo world championships. as you may have heard, and can read about in the news section of this edition of enduro, CorC has thrown their helmet in the ring and, in circumstances where it was looking unlikely that there would even be a world championships in 2012, have announced that they are holding a rival solo 24 hour world championship each year for the next three years in italy, australia and the uk.

on one hand, you could say that 24 hour races (solo and teams) are struggling a little, but in reality, the problems faced by the moab and adrenalin crew are pretty much financial and a direct result of the north american economies double flatting while only carrying one tube.

whatever the case, one thing is for sure, riders are looking for challenges which offer them something different to the tried and true 24 hour format. one of the more noticeable trends is that riders are looking beyond our borders to multi-stage races. in fact, it looks like a trio of asia-pacific Grand tours have sprung up being: mongolia bike Challenge, tour de timor and the Crocodile trophy.

while you won’t see Contador or evans at these races, aussie enduro riders flocked to these three tours in relative droves. there’s no doubt that attending and racing tours like these require riders to dig deep into the money and time banks, but the rewards are high. sure, at a 24 hour race you get to race, bond and shoot the breeze in equal parts as a part of a team, but these enduro-style tours offer something else.

when you are on tour, the outside world drops away. you join a travelling circus and find yourself camping on the mongolian high plains and near a lush billabong a short while later.

if aussie enduro riders hadn’t trodden these paths before 2011, they have now. multi-day stage racing is a great addition to a range of

awesome enduro formats now available to us. and of course, if you are keen to test the water in australia, wildside, Cape to Cape, mountains to beach and terra australis are all brilliant events which can serve as launch pads to tours in our region and beyond.

while it sure is tough times for some in our enduro community, there is excitement and challenges all around us.

read on and ride on….

columnistSometimes, the only way to find out if i can do something is by throwing myself in the deep end and seeing if i

sink or swim. often it can be difficult to tell if i’m drowning or waving. mostly, i don’t even know myself. that was

certainly the case when i put my hand up to organise the 2011 single speed national Championships.

Steve Partridge || Man’o Wheel

hy i put my hand up is anyone’s guess. it wasn’t as if i wasn’t busy enough already. i was looking for a challenge i suppose, and this was

combined with a niggling feeling that i needed to give back to the mountain biking community that has given me so much over the years. mostly though, i didn’t have a clue what i was getting myself in for. if i had had any idea of the work involved in the setting-up phase i would have pedalled away as fast as i could. but in the end i am glad i didn’t do that.

seeing a hundred odd people rolling around some of my favourite trails, wearing super hero capes and silly grins plastered across their faces was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. watching some goose dressed up as superman trying to throw a bike as far as he could while the crowd roared, i simply forgot about the hours hunched in front of my computer muddling out logis-tics. seeing grown men sprint it out on kid’s bikes just for laughs; it was as if the endless placating emails to bureaucratic sorts prone to nervousness had never existed. and, the opportunity to take a bunch of good mates and single speeders out for a good long ride on my local trails and have them whooping and hollering the whole way was simply priceless. hindsight can play funny tricks on a bloke. a week before the race i was swearing (in the profane sense of the word); at the same time i was also swearing i would never try and pull such a stupid stunt ever again. a week after the race, i found myself thinking about what else i could have a crack at organising.

don’t for a second, though, think that i am any good at this event organisation caper. i have about four litres of leftover tomato sauce, not to mention several packets of knives (not forks, just knives; go figure?) in my pantry to testify to that. but hey, i’d probably rather have leftovers than have run out on the day. and in this way, organising an event like this has highlighted the many parallels event organising has to 24 hour mountain bike racing. most relevantly, sometimes sheer hard work and slog can make up, to some degree, for a general lack of ability in a guy.

i found that there were more 24 hour rac-ing analogies too. i am no stranger to the gen-eral feeling of hopelessness that can overtake your mind in the wee small hours of the morn-ing during a 24 hour event. i have certainly felt like that many times in the past couple of months without ever being near a race track, having no one to turn to, and no one to lean on. sometimes you have to just slog it out by yourself, putting one foot in front of the other or by taking it one pedal revolution at a time.

but of course, in event organisation as well as in 24 hour racing, one is never truly alone. indeed, both would be impossible without the support of friends, family and colleagues. and

as always, those that mattered stepped up to the plate and confidently covered the cracks to make the event run so smoothly it looked like we weren’t even trying. you just got to love them all for that.

and i guess we got lucky too. the weather was perfect, but hey, this is (r)adelaide man! you come to expect that. and no-one got hurt, no-one got too loose (given we had a free flowing beverage sponsor, i am pretty happy things turned out that way). if anything had gone wrong, there was little doubt that it was my ass on the line. sometimes you just have to trust your buddies and they prove that the trust is not misplaced. anyway, holding a sin-glespeed nats without beer is a bit like trying to ride a bike without pedals; it just doesn’t work (or you find yourself riding a scooter or velocipede). trying to convince geared up and risk-adverse others of that fact is a different matter altogether.

so now the event is all done and dusted, and i have my life back again, the question i keep asking myself is “would i go do it all again?” Just as when i’m recovering from a 24 hour race, this is the time to ponder that question. there is little doubt of the answer. i am sure i would. we all have a need to push ourselves, to find out where our boundaries are. i don’t think i have found that boundary yet. i am not even sure what happens when you do find it? maybe that is when it is time to hang up the

boots and retire to a comfy porch to whittle sticks or something. i have got a ways to go before i get to that point though, i hope.

all that remains is for me to thank all the multitude of people who helped me out on the weekend and in the weeks before. there are far too many of them to name them all, suffice to say that without all of your help, the event simply would not have happened at all. all the sponsors (and this great mag was one of them), all the cooks, the bean counters, the ‘onion cut’ helpers, my good mate timmy; you are legends one and all.

most of all, this event would not have happened without the support of my local mountain bike club. a couple of hairy single speeders wander into a committee meeting (this is not the start of a joke) and say they want to put on a race, and yeah, we want to dress up, and yeah, we want to drink beer, and yeah, we want to do it under your banner and, to their credit, the adelaide mountain bike Club didn’t run a mile. in fact, they bent over backward to offer us all the help they could. ok, so maybe they didn’t champion the beer shortcut so much, but they gulped and stuck with us all the way.

to all of those that helped us, to all of those that dug deep and turned up, not knowing if there was even a race or not, i salute you. and thank you so very much. roll on next year’s nats.

W

photo: KURt PEtERsEN

114ENDURO 20

Enduro: Many bike companies have carbon frames which are manufactured overseas (i.e. not in America) yet Trek still manufacture carbon frames at their factory in Wisconsin. How does Trek manage this? What are the advantages/disadvantages and how does Trek ensure that its products remain competitive?

JC: we continue to make our higher end bicycles in the us because we have access to materials in the states that are not available in some other countries. these materials are considered strategic to trek and they are therefore controlled, which restricts access. we also have unique manufacturing processes to make bikes which allows us to use automa-tion tools that help us create the highest quality bikes in the most cost effective man-ner. Colocation also plays into our success — trek’s engineering staff have ready access to

the production floor in waterloo. we have the ability to drive innovation through intimate involvement with our manufacturing. we leverage this design and development work in the us by migrating much of what we have learned on to models we make overseas.

Enduro: Can you give me a run down on OCLV and why it remains such an important part of Trek’s composites program so many years after its introduction?

JC: oClv (optimum Compaction low void) is all about producing great bikes by cre-ating truly outstanding composite laminates. we talk about proper fibre-to-resin ratio, which is the ‘optimum compaction’ portion. we want to make sure that we have the correct amount of fibre because that’s what is doing the real work and the correct amount of resin because that’s what holds the fibre in posi-

tion. if the proportions are wrong, you will get a weaker structure or one that has excess weight. the second part we talk about is ‘low voids’. voids create weak spots in the laminate and this can cause long-term durability issues with a product. by minimizing the voids we make a better performing laminate. as the performance expectations for bikes continues to rise and the weight expectations continue to be pushed lighter and lighter, the quality of the laminate becomes more important. there’s less material available to do the work so every portion of the laminate needs to be as close to perfect as we can make it. our higher end bikes may be made in the us, but this doesn’t diminish the quality of our bicycles made overseas. we are in the process of globalizing oClv technology by partner-ing with specific companies in asia to build carbon fibre bikes for trek. our engineers,

JIM CoLEgrovE Is sEnIor CoMposITEs ManufaCTurIng EngInEEr for TrEK BICyCLEs. HavIng WorKEd for TrEK for ovEr 20 yEars, JIM Has BEEn InsTruMEnTaL In THE dEvELopMEnT of MaJor InnovaTIons LIKE TrEK’s oCLv (opTIMuM CoMpaCTIon LoW voId) MoLdIng TECHnoLogy and Has pIonEErEd fraME dEsIgn and ManufaCTurIng TECHnIquEs THaT arE prEsEnT aCross TrEK’s EnTIrE rangE of CarBon fIBrE BIKEs — InCLudIng CLassICs LIKE THE 5500 and ‘y’ MounTaIn BIKE THrougH To THE poInTy End of ModErn pErforM-anCE BIKEs LIKE THE MadonE, spEEd ConCEpT and THE vEry nEW aLL-CarBon sEssIon 9.9. JIM Was In ausTraLIa rECEnTLy for TrEK WorLd To TaLK To dEaLErs aBouT HIs LaTEsT InnovaTIons, so I TooK THE opporTunITy To asK HIM a fEW quEsTIons.

TECH TaLK WITH TrEK’sJIM COleGROVe

WordS by alan voGt PhoToS: courtesy of trek

living in both the us and in asia work directly with these companies specifying, directing and driving all aspects of design, engineering, manufacturing and testing. we provide mate-rial recommendation/selection of the highest performance and quality carbon fibres avail-able along with layup information. we provide expertise for manufacturing and we require all of our products be tested to trek standards. to this end, we have installed test equip-ment that was designed, built and calibrated in wisconsin into our partner manufacturing facilities. by doing this we can ensure that our bikes are being tested to trek standards which means our customers can have confi-dence that they’re getting the highest quality bikes possible.

Enduro: Tell me about the types of carbon fiber.

JC: there is a large range of carbon fibres available and there are several aspects that are used to categorize the various fibres. the composites industry uses tensile modulus and tensile strength as two main properties for categorization. modulus is the term we use for how stiff something is. examples of high modulus materials are steel and carbon fibres. an example of a very low modulus ma-terial would be a rubber band. within carbon fibres there are four basic levels or ranges: standard modulus, intermediate modulus, high modulus and ultra-high modulus. tensile strength is the other property, which is simply the ultimate strength of the material. there are 50+ different carbon fibres available on the market. each one has a unique modulus and strength. you can see that just between these two properties there’s a huge range of material options. Cost is another driver because as the modulus and strength go up so does the price. most companies use a com-bination of only standard and intermediate modulus carbon fibres. because of our loca-tion in the us we have access to the full range of carbon fibre materials even those with the highest modulus and strength which would be classified as strategic. we use the full range of fibre options in our products.

Enduro: At the Trek media function Ted Alsop (one of Trek’s suspension engineers) was talking about Trek’s seriously light DH bike — the Trek Session 9.9. A quick Google informed me that it ticked all the improvement boxes when compared to the aluminium Session 88 in terms of weight, stiffness and strength. How have you achieved all this and what has the reaction been from riders?

JC: like many of our products the ses-sion 9.9 started out as a prototype being de-signed and developed by trek’s advanced Con-cept Group (aCG) of which i am a part. aCG works well out in front of production projects (sometimes in the order of 3 to 5 years). we explored geometry, suspension methodology and manufacturing processes. i worked on the development of intension material and the processing to make it work in this new bike. i also developed a (patent-pending) micro truss flush cable tie system that allows for a clean look when using internal cable routing and a very low profile external cable attach-ment method. we did a lot of the analysis with fea (finite element analysis) software and also built many prototypes to test which al-lowed us to dial in strength, stiffness and ride

performance. remember the carbon bike is very close to 2 lb (900g) lighter than its alloy brother. our riders love the lighter weight and nimble feel of the new bike and through the use of oClv mtn technology along with Car-bon armor we have made the bike as strong and durable as its aluminum counterpart.

Enduro: What is InTension?

JC: intension is a proprietary material that we developed to improve flexural strength and stiffness of our session dh frame and yet reduce added weight by half. typically we use carbon fibre in specific areas to build up sec-tions to strengthen and stiffen the structure. putting extra carbon fibre in these areas adds considerable weight but through the use of intension, we can get the frame perform-ance we want at significantly lower weight. (see images showing where we use intension).

Enduro: What is OCLV MTN technology?

JC: oClv mtn focuses on material choices, layup, fibre angles, and thickness in the com-posite laminate in critical areas on the frame. we target the areas that have the highest incidence of impact, rock kick ups, etc. then we apply the appropriate combination of enhanced laminate to reinforce the frame and exterior protection (Carbon armor) to further protect the frame and quieten the noise from the impacting objects. we use an in house test that simulates the impact from a large sharp rock to impact these critical areas. we can then subject these damaged frames to fa-tigue and ultimate strength tests. this allows us to adjust laminate and exterior protection options to get the best combination for each frame platform and the level of use and abuse they see. in essence we are working to use the right material, in the right places, to the right level, on each bike.

ENDURO 2041

Enduro: I overheard you talking about ‘sticky paper’ earlier, which I guessed was your pet name for carbon fibre. What is it about composites that fascinate you?

JC: sticky paper is my way of describing the feel and handling characteristics of prepreg carbon fibre to someone who has not had the opportunity to touch this unique material. Carbon fibre composites fascinate me for a couple of reasons. the material itself is in-credible — extremely strong, very lightweight and it can be made into very complex shapes. add to this our ability to manipulate fibre angle, fibre type, areal weight, number of plys or wall thickness and ply drop off or thick-ness transitions. you can see with all these variables we have incredible ability to control the finished product performance and weight. this is this is more true today than it was 20 plus years ago when we made the first 5500 all carbon fibre bicycle.

Enduro: After nearly 30 years of working with composites, one would think you would have it all dialled in by now, or is this a case of the more you know, the more you know there is to learn? What does the future hold for carbon bikes in say the next 5 years?

JC: one could make an assumption that after many years working with compos-ites and bicycles that we would have things all dialled in and that there’s really nothing new to do, this couldn’t be further from the truth. we still have many opportunities to explore with composite in bicycles and we’re always working to develop new techniques to use the material more effectively. we’re also looking at new and emerging technologies and materials to continually improve the products we build for our customers. i can’t divulge things that we are working on for the future but i can tell you this, i think that what you will see in the next few years will be as incredible and game changing as the innovations we’re showing today.

Enduro: The pace at which new models are released these days must present some large challenges for Trek. What technologies do Trek use to keep ahead of the game?

JC: innovation and technology along with speed to market are key in our industry. to help us, we’re using great analytical tools like computational fluid dynamics Cfd and finite element analysis fea. these tools allow us to build bikes in the virtual world and test them prior to making a first part. our ability to change many different properties of the bike with these tools allows us to iterate and try many different things very quickly. an-other tool we are using his rapid prototyping. we can make samples of different parts or entire bike to analyse function and visualize the product in three dimensions in very short periods of time.

Enduro: You clearly employ a great deal of technology, engineering and materials expertise in the development of your bicycles but I imagine the drive to create beautiful bikes is equally as strong. This can create conflict (‘No, it has to be this way... look at the numbers!’ ‘No, it has to be this way... look at how sexy that shape is’). How do Trek strike a balance between the aesthetically pleasing form and the well-engineered solution?

JC: you are correct; these two goals often seem to compete with one another. at trek, we have a unique relationship between engineers and industrial designers because the product requires it. unlike many other consumer products that receive a cosmetic “skin” if you will, in the case of a bicycle, the structure is what the customer sees in the end. this fact creates some unique challenges and because of this demanding constraint, our engineering and design groups have grown very close. so close that we actually sit in the same room next to one another, this allows us to truly work in collaboration. although there is always some back and forth ‘conflict’ about the aesthetic or structural impact of changes to the product, we (engineering and design) take the product development journey together. the design group definitely appreci-ates the beauty of a purely and precisely en-gineered form just as the engineering group understands that regardless of performance, a truly ugly bike will never sell. we’ve built some models where we put more emphasis on the design and appearance side. in these cases, we work the engineering to provide the cus-tomer with a high performance product but we want the design to be more of the driver. because the performance expectations of

our customers continue to go up, we are cur-rently undertaking a project with an extremely high engineering to design content ratio. “engineering driven and design refined” is the project mantra coined by one of our industrial designers for this project. with this approach we are able to deliver highly-engineered, light weight, high performance bikes that are also very beautiful.

Enduro: I read that Trek recently implemented a recycling program for carbon fibre. Tell me about this program.

JC: at trek we believe that recycling of carbon fibre is important for our environ-ment. we’ve partnered with the company that specializes in reclamation of carbon fibre. we are sending them through different types of carbon scrap to be recycled. these include carbon prepreg trimmings and drops from our preform cutting process, non-compliant molded parts that do not pass our quality inspection and full frames that have been run through engineering testing along with warranty return frames and components. all of these are sent to our recycling partner so that the carbon fibre can be extracted for reuse. at this point in time trek is paying to recycle this material so this is not a profit center for us, but we firmly believe it’s the right thing to do. trek has made the commit-ment to recycle carbon fibre and our hope is that others in the bicycle and composites industry will follow our lead.

Thanks for your time Jim and keep the rubber side down*.

*i would have liked to go for a ride with Jim at the trek world demo day but stromlo had other plans for him — plans that saw him sprawled in the dirt and then on his way to hospital to fix a bung shoulder. he’s on the mend of course, but i do wonder if they used any trek composites to get a bet-ter result. when pressed Jim simply said he would neither confirm nor deny the rumours. ‘Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. we have the technology...’

alan vogt

ENDURO 20 42

Andreas Hestler riding his trusty steed above the settlement L’Anse aux Meadows, storied to be Leif Ericson’s first contact with North America 5 centuries before Columbus.

The Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race is the highest 100 mile mountain bike race in the US, with not a metre of the course dipping below an altitude of 3,000 metres. Past winners include Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer, with mountain bike legend Dave Weins holding the record for the most wins at six. The highest point in the race is 3,840 metres, and the total elevation gain is 4,300 metres. To put that into perspective, the highest point of continental Australia is Mt Kosciuszko which reaches a meagre 2,228 metres.

WordS by JEREMy wiNfiElD PhoToS: DaviD DaRbyshiRE

100, miles that is

he first edition of this race, held 18 years ago, drew a start list of 45 riders, it now draws in excess of 1,900. Part of the reason for this could be that although the course is long and high, it isn’t technical, being mostly run over fast bitumen sections, smooth single track and rocky fire trails.

I’m a roadie and live at sea level in Melbourne. Beach Road is my training ground. I first raced the Leadville 100 in 2010 and as far as I know, I was the only Aussie to race that year. In preparation for that edition, I entered my first mountain bike race; the infamous 2010 Australian Marathon Championships held at Avoca. With its spirit crushing hills and sketchy fire road descents this race was the first of many wake up calls. But Avoca is hardly at altitude.

At 3,800 metres there is only 65% of the oxygen available at sea level and when I left Melbourne for Colorado in 2010, I was aiming to finish in under 9 hours. In hindsight, this was a little ambitious. Ultimately, I finished in 10 hours and 45 minutes, just 4 and a half hours behind Levi. At the finish line, I couldn’t even bend over to take my shoes off and was emotionally and mentally destroyed. In fact, about the only thing I could do was utter the words “there’s no way I’ll do that again”. Of course, a few weeks later I had gone back on my word and had decided to race the 2011 edition.

This year, inspired by my tales of pain, suffering and sense of achievement, I managed to rope a work buddy, Lynden, into entering the 2011 Leadville 100. This was a big call for a guy who had only started riding 12 months earlier. But he embraced it and in typical Aussie fashion. To lighten the mood, we took the piss out of ourselves and had our own kit and team shirts made up.

Despite being unified in our outfits, Lynden and I took different approaches in our preparation. I rode long and hard kilometres whereas Lynden preferred shorter rides and hit the indoor trainer with an altitude simulator a few days a week. If his secret weapon was the altitude simulator, mine was a Cannondale 29er hard tail; lighter and faster than last year’s bike with the big wheels to handle the rough rocky fire trail and roll over the flatter sealed sections.

With the preparation all but done, we arrived in Colorado nine days prior to the race day. To acclimatise, we clocked up approximately 400 kilometres on the local trails. The time flew by and before we knew it, we were at the race briefing the day before the race. Apart from the usual information and pep talk, we were introduced to fellow racers including a former Congressional Medal of Honour winner and a team of US Navy SEALs. It’s at times like this that it sinks in that the Leadville 100 is not a race for the fainthearted. The briefing ended with us being told that it’s OK to quit…once you see one of the SEALs quit. This instruction was met with the obligatory whooping and cheering in a patriotic way that only the Americans know how to execute.

Race day started at 4 am with a short drive into town from our accommodation in Frisco. This year, to cater for the 1,900 entrants, and to avoid people dropping their bikes off as early as 4 am, race organisers had sectioned-off the start area according to previous finishing times. This was good news for me, as I was allocated a position only about 50 metres from the front row. Unfortunately for Lynden, he was 1,200 riders behind me with all the other first-timers, so any plans of us riding together were put to rest.

The mass start commenced with a crack of a shotgun at a very cold 6:30 am. Despite the race being neutralised within the city limits to minimise (and hopefully avoid) accidents, some people just got too excited and I saw the first DNF of the day within the first 500 metres of the 100 mile race.

The first hour took us over very dusty unsealed roads to the first of

the five climbs for the day. Cold hands on brakes and people jostling for position and bumping elbows and shoulders ensured that nerves stayed high. These nerves were hardly settled by the fine cloud of dust which engulfed us all, having been churned up by the leading riders. The dust mixed with sweat and saliva seeped past glasses into eyes. Riders soon started looking like the warriors of Paris-Roubaix, but the climbs of the Leadville 100 are a long way from the cobbles of Trouee d’Arenberg.

After cresting the first climb, we lost our elevation-advantage quickly with a fast descent on a sealed road as we headed around Turquoise Lake toward the second climb. The second climb of Sugarloaf Pass allowed riders to settle and spread out in time for the most technical section of the course known as the Powerline. This is the section notorious for breaking bikes and riders. It is a narrow, unmaintained 4WD track full of water bars, wash-outs, ruts and erosion. There is only one line down the 6 kilometre descent and passing was going to be tricky, and bordering on suicidal. Strangely enough, this is where most spectators were gathered.

The road out to the third climb and turning point of the race at Columbine Mine, was a mix of mostly flat and sealed, or dirt road. Roadie tactics inevitably came into play here with riders grouping together in bunches. It was a strange contrast to the previous technical section, but a welcome relief as we approached the middle section of the race.

The bottom of the climb up to Columbine Mine was also the main feed zone and the first of the cut off points for riders. Anyone not through the feed zone within three hours was to be pulled from the course. Thankfully I was in no danger of getting pulled, but knowing my time through here from last year, I saw that the 29er had done its job–I was 15 minutes up on my previous time already. The support crew ‘Team Australia’ helped me out with a quick top-up of water and carbs and I stripped off my arm and knee warmers now that the day was starting to warm up.

The climb from the feed zone rose 1,240 metres over 16 kilometres, and this is where the altitude started to take effect. The climb started on smooth unsealed roads, but once it moved above the tree-line it became a narrow, loose surfaced fire trail. Climbing was made more difficult by the lead riders bombing down the same path on their return leg. As a result, overtaking slower riders on the ascent had to be perfectly-timed and quickly-executed to avoid head on collisions. I’m not ashamed to say that some of this section was ‘hike a bike’ in the interests of self preservation.

The return descent was as hairy as the overtaking manoeuvres on the way up with the loose, rocky surface and the occasional near-miss head-on collision. While the 29er had put me in a good position, having no rear suspension meant that the legs had taken a bit of a pounding at this point. Half way down, I saw Lynden powering up the hill like a diesel. He was doing really well considering his starting position and was only about 40 minutes behind me at this point.

The return visit to the feed zone took me to the 6 hour and 100 kilometre mark. With 60 kilometres to go, I was starting to feel the pinch and it didn’t help to know that the toughest part of the ride lay ahead. At this point I was still a good 20 minutes up on last year, but I was in survival mode, taking on gels at a rapid rate in an attempt to fight the dreaded bonk. But as most riders know, there are only so many gels you can stomach and by this point I was close to my limit.

The return ascent of the Powerline was tough and only the pros and gun bike handlers could ride the whole thing. It took me an hour to negotiate the 6 kilometre-long climb which took us up another 500 metres. Again, a lot of this was walking material, and I didn’t mind that so much as it gave my brutalised butt a brief rest.

After some soul searching and a few more hours of pain, I was riding up the final straight to finish the 2011 Leadville 100. I felt a mixture of relief, complete exhaustion and pain. As I crossed the finishing line my name and country were called out over the PA, the crowd cheered loudly and I was overcome with a feeling of pride and achievement. It’s something that brings most finishers to tears and I was no exception.

I maintained my advantage over my 2010 time and finished in 10:25. Lynden reckons he made sure he got his money’s worth and did it in 11:50, ten minutes shy of the cut off–a ballsy effort considering he’d been cramping from the 7 hour mark.

After the race this year, I didn’t have the same experience as in 2010. I didn’t vow to myself that I would never do the race again. In fact, the opposite happened. I vowed that I would be back for 2012.

See you in 12 months Leadville!

T

For the perfect trail ride.

Refined for maximum control.

Grippy TrailStar triple compound.

SnakeSkin. Tubeless ready. 26 x 2.35

Enjoy the Flow.

Anz_Hans Dampf_210x297_without adress_BOH_GB_RZ.indd 1 14.06.2011 16:54:32 Uhr

BB

O997-FP

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BBO977 Enduro Hans FP FA.indd 1 6/12/11 11:04 30AM