The author along the route of the Leadville 100 HIGH ON ENDURANCE
Riding across Wisconsin leads to Leadville, CO
and a 100-mile bike race for a 50-plus rider
By Dan Woll
You are better than you think you are. You can do more than you think you can.
– Leadville 100 Slogan One hundred miles. Twelve-hour time limit. Ten thousand feet of climbing at altitudes over 10,000 feet. It's the Leadville, Colo. 100 Mile Mountain Bike Race, "The Race Across the Sky." It is hard enough for young riders who live at this altitude, but I live in fly-over land – a 16-hour car ride to the nearest mountain.
I'm 51 years old and crazy about this race.
My obsession began three years ago during a five-day Wisconsin tour. It was a credit card trip, no tents, garbage-bag rain gear, 100 to 150 miles a day. Who would have thought such simple pleasures could lead to such a full-blown addiction?
The first day we cruised in early morning crispness down bucolic roads to the little Mississippi River town of Pepin. The first spoke broke there. No bike shops. I asked a local if there were even any bike riders in
town. He said there weren't, although he allowed that they did have a bike-a-thon once. His heart was in the right place. He drove my buddy with the spoke problem to a nearby town across the river. No bike shops there either.
There was a hardware store. The owner considered the problem, and said, "walk this way," with a Marty Feldman wink. Back and down they went, in to the bowels of the store, past cannibalized radios, TVs and
lawnmowers, until they stopped in front of a massive wooden workbench. Brushing aside cobwebs, he reached for an old dusty cigar box. "Let me check my special box." Big wink. He cracked the cover, revealing dozens of old spokes. One fit.
Meanwhile, I slept on the grass in front of a convenience store, never imaging that this dreamy interlude might be a benign foreshadowing of a desperate pit stop that would occur a year later in the middle of The
Leadville 100. Sweating and cursing in the dirt, as racers flew down the descent from 12,000 foot Columbine Mine, I remembered a quieter fix and briefly wondered where I had gone wrong.
The warning signs of bike-addiction had been there. It didn't take too long after the credit card tour was complete for the parasites of ambition and hubris to worm their way into my consciousness. "That wasn't hard. Wonder how fast we could do it? Wonder if we could get from Madison to Hudson in a day?"
And a year later we tried. Up at 4 a.m., rolling through Sauk City by sun-up, breakfast in Reedsburg, and burnout in the 90 degree heat by noon.
A greasy hamburger and a giant Coke, combined with sinfully effective Succeed electrolyte pills, put me back on the trail. By dark we had covered 225 miles. We hit Durand just in time for the tornado. Lightning was strafing the last ridge as we approached the long downhill into Durand. Rolling into town, trash cans
blew by us without touching the ground. The ride was over, but we were not home. Failure tortures the obsessed. I heard about Leadville and thought, "Redemption!"
Leadville – the highest city in America. Two miles up. Home to the Unsinkable Molly Brown and Baby Doe Tabor, refuge for Doc Holliday and the Earps, siren song for thousands of miners and the site of my first mountain bike race ever. I was proud to wear my Hudson, Wis. Bike Shop colors to the starting line. Five
hours later, I was gasping for breath at 12,000 feet while pushing my bike up a gully. I thought back again to that first summer when we had to portage our bikes across a river near Plum City where the bridge was out. Had I reached absurdity by carrying the concept of dragging a bike over rough terrain to its logical conclusion?
I made it over the three mountain climbs on the outboard course in six and a half hours. The 50 miles back
should have been doable in under six hours. The coveted silver belt buckle would be mine. Not so fast. During a long skidding descent, my cockiness was deflated as surely as the tire on my front wheel. After three on and offs, and 40 minutes, the tube stayed fixed.
The racers were gone. I rode alone. At the 75-mile aid station, I made the cutoff by five minutes. I was beat. The official, flannel shirt, tough guy race medic looked at me with the Colorado version of concern and
said, "You might as well go for it." So I did. Thirteen hours and six minutes to the finish. The course shuts down at 13 hours. Not only had I failed, I did not exist.
This was dangerous emotional territory. Twenty years earlier, I ended a reasonably successful climbing career because an ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite Park went bad on me. I walked off the mountain and sold all of my climbing gear in the parking lot. Then I got in my car and drove home to Wisconsin, never to
climb again.
Standing in the Leadville gym with all of the finishers, I wasn't selling anything but optimism. I knew I would be back. In 1999 I'd do the one-way, one-day to Hudson and I'd finish Leadville in 12 hours. (Lance Armstrong says, "You fall in love with the things that hurt you the most.")
The 1999 one-way one featured an even earlier start, a faster pace, no ice on the feet, no pain, just steady
16 mph grinding. We tried to shave distance by going through the hills of Arcadia, Wis. – bad move! – but good practice for Colorado.
We were still on track to finish by midnight when we headed out of Durand. It was about 8 p.m. Two hours later I had us lost in the dark, in the rain, on some pissant dirt road. Al fell over in the sand. Remember the guy on the tricycle in the "Laugh-In" show? That was Al, but this was no laugh-in. Then I rode off the road
and down into a ditch. I was not laughing either. Much consternation. How could an important-sounding road like "Dunn-St. Croix Road" be ungraded dirt? Weren't all county line roads paved? File that question with, "Can flatlanders climb mountains?" A little past midnight we rolled in to my driveway. Our computers said 275 miles. A big day, but a failed day. The midnight deadline had eluded us.
August rolled around and the two-mile-high city beckoned. I promised my wife that I would never do it again. This was to be my last chance. I was ready. Sort of. My training had been cut short because I broke my frame JRA (Just Riding Along). Art, the bike guy, got the company to stand behind it. That was good because the new frame was a lighter aluminum job. It was bad because I had to ride my road bike for three
weeks while waiting for the new frame. When it did come, I had one week to ride it. I took it over to Afton Alps Ski Area. On my first trip down an off-camber single track section, I broke a poplar tree. Enough technical practice. I could stand breaking an occasional tree, but the poison ivy on the side of the trail was too much.
I did have a secret weapon for the ultimate Leadville try. I invented a new kind of bike jersey. Ever since
my discovery of the Succeed pills, I had been cramp-proof. I wanted to make sure I could get at them easily. I reasoned that pockets in the front of my vest would enable me to get at them quickly and safely. I bought a cheap, lime green, sleeveless vest and had a tailor customize it according to my specifications.
The race started. We went down the long hill and up a small mountain, across a stretch of blacktop road,
pushed our bikes up a half mile of boulder-strewn, expert single-track, and on to the first big climb – the AT&T hill. It goes for miles. Not as long as the Columbine Mine climb, which is eight miles long, but plenty long for a flatlander. I was doing fine. Then the big descent. I am not a great descender. I'm not terrible, but I'm no Sean Yates. People passed me. I rode into a pine tree, got back on and went over bumps and off
drops and around corners. Finally I was down. I went through the creek. Whew! Time to relax. Ease up a little bit and chew on some Succeed pills. I reached in to my pocket and every single one had bounced out on the downhill.
I had only water, no salt or electrolytes. Call it psychosomatic if you want, but I felt the first twinges right there. By the time I hit the 50-mile turnaround at the top of the Columbine Mine, I was so quartzed that
even my arms were cramped. I ate three bowls of Ramen soup and poured in a whole salt shaker. I soft-pedaled for hours. Finally, I made a comeback in time for the lightning storm on top of 10,000 foot AT&T Ridge. The rain and adrenaline speeded me up. I thought I was going to make it.
I didn't. A little over 12 hours and they gave me a medal, but no belt buckle. Failure.
Epilogue
The good thing about bike riding, compared to climbing, is that it is easier to give yourself another "one more time." I did. The Park Rapids (MN) 100. A road ride. Never mind that I had gotten toasted on a previous week's training ride. I attributed it to overtraining. I was keyed. I even bought a Camelbak. The
field was conspicuous by its decided lack of weenies. Hard core. Riders from places like Lincoln, Neb. Guys who looked strong enough to rip the cranks off their bikes. I could do it. I'm Leadville Dan. Two-hundred seventy-five-a-day Dan. The race started. I went anaerobic. The pack dropped me. But wait. Here comes a tandem. I hopped behind them and they pulled me back. My breathing leveled out. My
chain came off. The pack left. I started after them again. Along came Rick, another 50-plus rider, just in time to join me in a two-man time trial. We worked hard. Never let it drop under 20. Don't stop. Push the flats. We'd pick up people but ususally they were too shattered to be any good. Toward the end we passed a shattered man in an Ironman Triathlon jersey. He sucked in behind us, too tired to take a pull. I wouldn't
have done it to Rick, but we had to lose the hitchhiker. Sprint to the finish as the clock flashes up 4:40. The judge said, "Rick by a wheel." I said "me." It does not matter. It's one great course and on it I found – redemption!
Later, I talked to my friend Rhino and said that I needed one more crack at Leadville. He said, "How old were you when you did Leadville the first time?"
"Forty-nine."
"How old were you this year?"
"Fifty."
"How old will you be next year?"
"Fifty-one."
"Dan, it's not going to get any easier. Are you sure you're OK?"
I've got my health, I've got a good old steel bike, a big motor, and the roads of Wisconsin to train on in the summer. If I was doing any better, I'd have to be twins just to stand it.
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