The Spot Rocker belt drive was souped up with some carbon Reynolds wheels pre-race thanks to Adrenalin Cycles. 100 miles, 10,000 feet of climbing, on a single speed: Let’s go. This is the third year I’ve done the race and was my second time on the single speed. The final 40ish miles are on mostly dirt roads with some pavement thrown in. The race included 6 miles of dirt road to start followed by 50 miles of trails. Buffalo Creek is one of my favorite places to ride and I try to make the hour long commute to ride there at least once a month. It’s by far my favorite race of the year. The Bailey Hundo is a 100 mile mountain bike race in the Bailey/Buffalo Creek area of Colorado. Sorry, no individual names only team names listed. Believe it or not there were 2 duo guys ahead of Howard Grotts. Howard Grotts, Dan Hugo, Josiah Middaugh, Brian Smith, Thomas Spannring was the order 1-5. Not sure how that works but I obviously did something wrong between the two events. Passed a few spread out guys and finished with way too much left in the tank. I was standing on every hill, I road away from the guys I was with on lap one. But about a 1/4 the way through lap two I suddenly felt amazing. The rest was a flat power course on single track. The 2 lap course only had 2 techie downhills and couple of tough steep climbs per lap. I hit the single track in a good spot but still got stuck behind some guys on the first two descents. I managed to tuck in behind Greg Krause and Brian Smith which left a nice wake for me to cruze up the hill in. Morgan started us off again and same as before it was a sprint up the hill. One small group all gunning for the front. I put in a few short hard efforts only because I was worried about getting stuck behind a crowd by the first single track. 2 o'clock came and I was out the door pedaling around trying to loosen up the legs the best I could. Then we headed back to the hotel to put the legs up and read for an hour. I used every bit of fortitude I had to not eat the entire basket of sweet potato fries that came with my panini. These guys were crazy fast.Īfter the run Alexis and I took Edgar for a walk and then headed to Farrago's for lunch (so good we went back for dinner, even better for dinner!). There were 3 duo guys ahead of all top 5 solo men. Josh Merrick, Jason Donald, Josiah Middaugh, Howard Grotts, Brian Smith was the order of solo men 1-5.
Such a great time racing with 2 guys at the same level. We both put in that final kick to finish Me, Ben, Kyle only about 7 seconds between each of us.
On the final techie decent and climb Ben and I dropped Kyle until about a half mile left and we see Kyle flying through the switchbacks to run us down. Unfortunately the scenery wasn't there but I was staring at the ground for the entire 94 minutes anyways. But the course was a good mix of hills and flats. Some of the downhills were very loose and steep along with some of the uphills. We went back and forth for a while, Ben and I railing the ups and downs while Kyle would just real us back in on the flats. After about a mile I started passing a few people and after 3 or 4 settled in with 2 other solo racers, Kyle Leto and Ben Allen. I stayed back and tried to keep a steadier pace. The entire front end of the group was flying. It was like racing a 400 up the first hill. And when Morgan started us off I realized immediately that they all did. Lining up for the start of the half marathon was a small group of maybe 60 or 70 runners but 50 of them felt like they belonged in the front row.