After Crusher in the Tushar was canceled over two weeks ago because of forest fires, it left a big gap between the second and third races in the Life Time Grand Prix series. Unbound Gravel was on June 1 and the third round will be the Leadville Trail 100 on Aug. 10.
To help get prepared for the Leadville Trail 100 in two weeks, multiple Durango riders competed in the Life Time Leadville Stage Race last weekend.
The course is the exact same between the two races. The only difference is last weekend’s race was a stage race over three days. On the first day, riders rode 40 miles. The second day the riders did 20 miles. The final day was 40 miles.
Durango’s Payson McElveen had the most success of any of the Durango riders by winning the men’s race. He finished the 100 miles over three days with a time of 5 hours, 59 minutes and 27 seconds.
“We saw it as an opportunity to do some really good specific prep for Leadville,” McElveen said. “So it was three hard days on the same course we'll be tackling for the 100 in a couple of weeks. It’s something that I used to do when I first started racing Leadville. My race schedule has gotten more packed and complicated since then, so we got away from it. But after Crusher got canceled a couple of weeks ago, it made a little more sense to take another race in there. It’s also just a good opportunity to do some bike setup, testing and refinement on the same course.”
McElveen said he was pretty happy with his bike setup and he’s going to size up on tires for a wider tread pattern.
The 31-year-old said a race like Leadville with long climbs at a super high elevation is something he’s had to work on over his career. McElveen said one of the reasons he moved to Durango from Texas was to be better equipped to do longer climbs. His taller frame doesn’t help him be a mountain specialist like some of the smaller guys.
McElveen took control from the beginning and led after all three stages en route to a win by over six minutes to Durango’s Jack Odron who finished in second.
While the assumption is the racers would be able to go faster doing the 100 miles over three days compared to one, McElveen said the race is only marginally faster since there’s so little oxygen up there. So there’s a low ceiling on what the body can do over three days or one day.
“It’s definitely what I would call an old-school mountain bike course, but kind of like a supersized one,” McElveen said. “It's a solid mix of rustic double track, old mining roads, some smooth, fast gravel, even some pavement thrown in there and a little bit of single track … Definitely deceptively rocky, rough and bumpy, and especially because the speeds are so high. All the bumps out there feel extra bumpy and there's certainly some technical parts.”
McElveen said the biggest defining factor of Leadville is the 12,000 feet of climbing with an average elevation of 11,000 feet. At that elevation, the body is always starved of oxygen, according to McElveen.
Sofia Waite finished second in the women’s race with a time of 7:00:50.
Waite was second after the first stage and finished fourth in the second stage. She was fourth overall after the first two stages. Waite finished second in the third stage and that was good enough to get her second overall.
Ellen Campbell was close behind in third with a 7:01:03.
“I'm really happy,” Campbell said. “I'm really excited with how I felt and how I performed. My main goal with doing the Leadville stage race was mostly to shake out the feelings and the vibes. I wanted to see where things were at with the fitness, my equipment and to get a little test event under my belt before the big Leadville 100 two weekends from now.”
A lot of people take unique setups to Leadville in part because the racing is so close. So everyone’s trying to be creative to have better aerodynamics and marginal gains, according to Campbell.
She wanted to test some skinnier tires which was scary for her and she said she came close to flatting them a few times. Campbell said there was a point during the first day when a few girls got by here because she wasn’t used to defending on skinny tires.
Despite the different choice of tires, Campbell did well on the first day and won the opening stage. She said she surprised herself with the win since she came into the stage race with low expectations. Campbell was open-minded since she didn’t know who was going to show up. She wasn’t focused on winning and she wanted to find her limit.
Campbell finished third on the second day and was third overall going into the final day. She finished third on the final day and that put her third overall.
“I'm very happy with third because I feel like each day was like a proper battle,” Campbell said. “The first day was really neck and neck, and then the second day was also really neck and neck. After day two, the first place was up on second place by like three seconds and then I was in third by like 10 seconds. So it was just really tight racing which made it really exciting.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
