As part of my training for the 2021 Trans Rockies Classic (a 7-day mountain bike stage race. From Fernie to Panorama), I wanted to experience what it was like to spend all day climbing on a mountain bike. Enter the Wilmington Whiteface 100km, my second race. This was a perfect mountain bike race for my novice level of experience, with more than 2700m total elevation gain mostly on gravel or paved roads, and a few short sections of not too technical single track.
Getting ready in the early morning before the race. We camped at Wilmington Notch campground not more than a 3 minute ride from the start line. I went to bed at 8pm the night before. Will had a beer with some fishermen camping near by.
About Wilmington Whiteface
Wilmington is a qualifier for the legendary Leadville 100, a 100-mile race in the high altitude of Leadville, Colorado. The belt buckle you get for finishing the race is a coveted prize for riders of all disciplines. It’s a lottery entry, but if you complete a qualifier race and finish under the designated time cap, you have a higher probability of winning a lottery entry. Wilmington is the qualifying race that is most similar to Leadville, but neither race should be approached lightly, and both attract some serious athletes. I only truly appreciated this watching a parking lot full of riders warm up on portable trainers they had hauled with them to the start line. (I didn’t sacrifice any extra sleep or energy warming up for this 100km journey, a likely rookie mistake).
Ready to go!
The Race
Lining up for the mass start was an interesting experience in rider diversity, including everything from gravel bikes, fat bikes, soft tails, hard tails and TANDEMS!, reiterating the wide range of riders this race attracts. The race starts with 10km of flat highway riding, allowing for drafting and people to work together. I stayed on the rear tire of a gentlemen obviously riding at a deliberate pace. He was clearly familiar with the race, and I was clearly going to exploit that familiarity and not work overly hard on the first section. 10km down no problem! 90 to go…
Then the climbing started (needless to say my free ride quickly dropped me). I can confirm I got the experience I was looking for because it felt like we never really stopped climbing. We climbed all day. 2700m of elevation is A LOT. And a few critical errors made this worse. First, I turned my Garmin GPS off in an attempt to save the battery. However, I neglected to consider that this would turn off my distance and elevation tracking, and none of the aid station volunteers knew where they were positioned along the course. Thus, I rode all day not knowing where I was on the course, or how much I had left to ride. I was unprepared for this mental challenge, as distance became an ambiguous measurement against time. The race was going to be over when it was over and that’s all I had to work with. I found some comfort in repeating a mantra cleverly coined by Doree in Finding Nemo ‘Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming, what do we do we swim…”.
Made obvious by the smile, this was taken at the finish line.
Onto the second big mistake and arguably the better lesson, race nutrition. My ride was fuelled by a combination of Gatorade and energy chews. I had previously consulted a sports nutritionist to establish a system, drink a big gulp of Gatorade every 15 minutes and a chew every 30 minutes. The target was 60-90g of cabs per hour, and as recommended, I practiced this system prior to race day. However, since I lacked race experience, I didn’t want to deviate from it at all. So rather than use any fuel supplied at the aid stations, I carried all my own fuel. In theory this seemed like the best option as the extra weight was negligible compared to the risk of experimenting with unknown fuel sources. I had pre-portioned Gatorade into single water bottle packages, which seemed logical. However, I didn’t often arrive at an aide station with empty bottles, so rather than dump the reminder of my drink and start fresh to ensure the ideal sports-drink concentration, I would add most of all of my pre-portioned packages to the existing fluid, often overly-concentrating the drink. This seemed harmless enough, after all, that could only improve my carb intake, right? WRONG! What I didn’t realize is the concentrations are established not only for taste, but for tolerance. Turns out overly concentrated energy drinks on an empty stomach functioning sub-optimally due to prolonged physical activity can give you INTENSE gut rot, which I experienced the entire last half of the race and the entire remainder of the day and night. It prevented me from being able to eat much of anything after the race or later that night for supper, and remained intense enough to keep me up at night (It finally stopped when I got out of bed to take two TUMS). As I lay awake that night in pain, thinking I’ll have to get this sorted out because I will need both a good post-race refuel system and quality sleep to complete a stage race, it didn’t occur to me it might be the energy drink concentration that was responsible for my agony. A colleague of mine tipped me off to this likelihood a few days later. Though I can say the nutrition plan was good in theory, I didn’t run out of gas or cramp, and I never felt like I was out of energy. I could barely convince myself to drink the Gatorade for the last part of the race as it was causing quite a bit of pain, and I probably should have just stopped drinking it. Lessons learned from this, for future races I will contact the race coordinators and see what food and nutritional supplements they will be providing at the aide stations and train using those. Then I don’t have the carry everything for a long race, and all sports drinks will be properly mixed. As a final nutrition lesson, at times I wanted water so badly, just straight forward water, and I was carrying only sports drink. For future races I would make sure to have at least one bottle with fresh water.
Despite all these challenges, I was happy enough with how the climbing went, and my extremely limited early season mountain biking experience was actually enough for me to be better than most of the people I was riding with. This race really is full of road racers (meaning I was quickly dropped once we left the single track). Although I would have considered myself to have a good general fitness going into this race, it was nowhere comparable to the years of riding in the legs of these athletes. Bike legs are a real thing and I need some serious time in a saddle to build them (for the sake of the upcoming Trans Rockies Classic, hopefully three years is reasonable).
I can say for anyone interested in racing Wilmington, a full suspension mountain bike is not necessary, and the extra weight definitely slows you down, however, a gravel bike would likely slow you down on some of the precarious decent. I have no idea how people were navigating the single track on a tandem. It would have been pretty interesting to watch.
I did manage to cross the finish line well before the time cap for the Leadville lottery, though with no intention of entering it at this point in time. For the most part I really enjoyed the day. There was a uplifting network of locals out cheering on the riders. Considering it was a 100km course, it was surprising to see how much ground they covered. The town obviously loves this event and in general it was very well run.
That evening it crossed my mind that I have no idea how I could ride another six consecutive days of that. But the next day I woke up and thought, yes, I could ride again today. Though that has yet to be proven, at least my brain thinks it’s possible. The Trans Rockies Classic is still in the crosshairs.
What’s Up Next
This winter I am focusing on learning bike maintenance, as my fabulous bike mechanic has just quit to pursue a new career as a barber, and he has graciously agreed to teach me the trade. I also plan on sorting out what I am going to do for altitude training, resume off season strength and high intensity interval training, and start meditation to develop focus. Will and I also plan on doing our first mountain bike packing trip on the Old Ghost Road in New Zealand (stay tuned for a post ride report on this new type of adventure :).
