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ROAD TO LEADVILLE Part 11: GUNSIGHT PASS
Dave Wiens gives his thoughts and tips leading to this years Leadville 100 MTB Race.
Saturday July 24, 2010 – This morning I did a skills clinic up at Crested Butte Resort that was a blast. It was a great group and I hope I had a nugget or two to offer the riders. After the clinic, I horked down a Caesar burrito left over from last night as I drove from the ski mountain down to Crested Butte proper. I parked there and headed out the Lower Loop to a nasty ‘ol climb called Gunsight Pass. Gunsight is about as much vertical as we can get around here in one shot at 3,000 plus.
I hadn’t done it for years and it was everything I remembered and then some. “Did I used to have to push this section?” I muttered to myself time and again. It’s an old mining road and it’s pure, blasted rock; loose and steep. It was dry, which was why I was having trouble staying on my bike, or so I told myself. I was not feeling so great. Susan and I have this descriptive when we ride that we call feeling like Margon. I don’t know where we got it but we’ve been saying it for years: “Man, I felt stronger than Margon out there today.” I think we have always assumed that Margon was some sort of Greek god of strength or something. I just googled it and came up mainly with restaurants in NYC. Oh well, today I did not feel like Margon.
I didn’t wear my HR monitor, got 3,500 on my altimeter and was out for about 2.5 hours. That puts me at about 10 hours this week with tomorrow yet to be written. I kind of want to just take it off but the weekdays are harder for me to get away for a longer, quality ride. I’m planning to head out Highway 149 toward Lake City in the morning on my road bike and take it as is comes. It might be an hour easy spin or I might go all the way over to the Lake Fork and ply the four 1,000 footers (more or less) that go along with that route. You just never know.
I’m also starting to get my race bike for Leadville ready. That means getting out the gram scale and weighing stuff. Tonight I weighed multi-tools and the winner was the Topeak Mini 20 Pro which came in at 110 grams without the chaintool, which I’ll have in one of the Topeak ProPacks and hope to never see during the race.
