A race this long almost never goes exactly to plan, but usually I end somewhere near expectation. This race was different. I actually had a stress dream the night before that foreboded the reality awaiting me. In the dream I finished a day later than planned and I could not remember why I had gone so slow. In reality I finished a little less than a day behind my goal time, but I know why I went so much slower than I anticipated. As I made my plans and researched the course, I set an ambitious time goal in the READ MORE
Category: Mountain Bike Races
Colorado Trail Race 2025
12:20pm, day 4: a stop to pee turned into a 20 minute nap when the grass nearby looked too soft to pass up. I was just ahead of the women’s record dot when I left Leadville an hour before, but the weight of my eyelids was making it too hard to stay awake even after another nap earlier that morning. I had not slept well the night before; the smoke had wrecked my lungs and sinuses again, and I spent half the night blowing snot rockets and hacking up the sticky flem that settled into the back of my throat READ MORE
The Grand Loop 2025
Photos by Greg Dunham A Few Thoughts I read about the Grand Loop for the first time last Spring after the race’s completion that year. At the time I was preparing for my first mountain bike races, a summer schedule that was designed to build up to the Colorado Trail Race. By the end of the season I had successfully completed the CTR , Vapor Trail, and a few other one day events, and I was already planning more races for 2025; I put the Grand Loop on my list. When registration opened for the event a month prior, I READ MORE
Vapor Trail 125
One of my friends had been handed an entry, and talking to him about the race, Vapor Trail 125 sounded like good fun. I was coming off a strong ride on the Colorado Trail Race, and two weeks after my winning finish, my legs were feeling surprisingly spry. The registration had been full for month’s, but the word on the street was that people were “dropping like flies.” Indeed only 98 of the 125 registered participants started. Only 58 of those finished. After learning that there were still a few entries available, I emailed the race director and asked nicely READ MORE