Nick McKey had never ridden his bicycle for so far and for so long as he did nearly three weeks ago when he and a couple of friends set out from Durango to try to conquer the famed Death Ride loop. They didn’t finish, but the challenge kept rattling around in his brain. He wanted a second chance.

The next time, his goal wasn’t only to finish the 225-mile route that boasts roughly 16,500 feet of climbing. It was to set a knew fastest-known time (FKT).

“The first time, we got stopped on Lizard Head Pass by a 40 degree torrential rain downpour,” McKey said. “We were going to come in around 13 hours. It wasn’t necessarily a relaxed pace, but I felt like I had been going really easy. I was doing the math, and I figured I could do it.

“A week later, we had a couple of drinks at Gazpacho. I said, ‘I could do that.’ It snowballed from there.”

The target time was that of former Durangoan Nick Gould. Now of Colorado Springs, Gould clocked the previous FKT of 12 hours, 13 minutes, 20 seconds during the Death Ride Challenge event June 9, 2019. He did that with four stops that totaled 35 minutes.

Originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, McKey would shatter that record July 18 with a time of 11 hours, 17 minutes, 8 seconds while riding his Specialized Allez road bike. The Fort Lewis College senior started the counter-clockwise loop at 5:03 a.m. and averaged 219 watts during the ride, 13 more watts than Gould averaged during his previous record ride. Gould had started his effort at 3 a.m.

“I knew at about the top of Lizard Head Pass that I had it,” McKey said. “But I didn’t know by how much it would come in by. When I stopped the bike computer and talked to everyone, it was nuts.”

McKey had the aid of a support car with fellow Fort Lewis College cyclist Ava Hachmann, his roommate and director of the Durango Wheel Club, as well as Dane Falberg of Mountain Bike Specialists. They left later in the day and caught up to McKey on the backside of Molas Pass.

“A lot of thanks goes to having a constant car feeding me and encouraging me,” McKey said. “That helped a lot. Being a road FKT, I didn’t feel like I was cheating having a support car. I would not have a problem doing it self-supported and hopping into gas stations along the way for food and water had we not been dealing with this COVID-19 pandemic. But I wanted to avoid that because of the virus.”

Hachmann said it was nerve-wracking to watch and support the effort.

“Definitely felt like being a race director,” Hachmann said. “He was going fast, and we were just keeping up with the math as we went along to make sure he was on pace. We realized he was way above pace, but we tried not to tell him that. It looked hard, and he looked miserable.”

McKey’s GPS tracked 16,676 feet of climbing on his route over the course of 227.67 miles. But his ride was a bit longer with a total riding time of 11 hours, 40 minutes including his ride from home to the start of the loop. Gould’s moving time without stops had been 11:38:43.

The route begins with a ride up U.S. Highway 550 over Coal Bank (10,610 feet) and Molas (10,912 feet) passes and the descent into Silverton. Red Mountain Pass (11,018 feet) awaits on the ride from Silverton to Ouray. Then it is on to Ridgway before a turn west onto State Highway 62 over the Dallas Divide (8,983 feet) to Placerville and a turn south on State Highway 145 toward Telluride. The last big climb of Lizard Head Pass (10,246 feet) awaits before a long and grueling stretch to Dolores.

The ride continues on Highway 184 to Mancos before a final return east on U.S. Highway 160.

“It was worth the 12 hours in the car for us,” Hachmann said. “Once we got to the top of Hesperus and he got to the top of the climb, it was awesome because he just had to coast back into town. After we had left Dolores, he stopped being able to say real sentences. It was one-word answers. That was really low, but he was so on pace that we knew it was going to be OK.”

McKey’s GPS tracked 16,676 feet of climbing on his route over the course of 227.67 miles. But his ride was a bit longer with a total riding time of 11 hours, 40 minutes if his ride from home to the start of the loop.

McKey and Hachmann, like many others who have attempted the Death Ride, said Dallas Divide was perhaps the toughest stretch along the route. It isn’t as high as the other climbs, but it is long and grueling and frequently produces a tough headwind. With so much of the climbing already done for the day, it also becomes a mental challenge.

There was mostly good weather for McKey’s ride, but as he descended Lizard Head, he saw a wall of black clouds. McKey and Hachmann were worried about the conditions, but he pressed forward.

“That storm created a massive headwind from Dolores into Durango. I kept running into the backside of the storm,” he said. “There was a point where it was hard to see, and I was really glad I had a great tail light for that one with the visibility so poor.”

More surprising to McKey was that he avoided any flat tires or mechanical problems with his bike all day.

“At no point did I ever mis-shift or anything. I wasn’t expecting that over the course of a 12-hour ride,” he said. “That is almost a week’s worth of riding right there. Something is bound to happen in a week. I’m really glad nothing major happened.”

The effort quickly drew praise from the cycling community, including Death Ride Challenge director Barry Sopinsky, who started the event 11 years ago as a fundraiser for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease.

Gould could not be reached for comment.

McKey is not sure what challenge he will target next, but the road racer is now intrigued by the longer efforts after his Death Ride experience.

“The first failed attempt was my longest ride by time, distance and amount of feet climbed by a long shot, so completing it is now my biggest ride,” he said. “Over 11 hours is a long time to do anything, let alone ride the bike. It was a special day on the bike, a once-a-year kind of thing, but I’m just really thankful for the experience and for Ava and Dane helping out.

“I don’t know what’s next or if this is a one-off kind of thing to say I did it, but I am getting more into the idea of just one massive ride. The ultra-endurance thing seems kind of cool.”

jlivingston@durangoherald.com