Saturday March, 20th 2021

Race Recap: Echo Red to Red – Echo, Oregon

First off, lets introduce the segment. I enjoy training and I really enjoy suffering. I found endurance activities by following others around as they suffered and seemed to enjoy the suffering too. That being said, this is for the rest of you idiots that enjoy putting in work in your basements, on the hills near your house, doing planks in between conference calls. The race that I’ll be recapping here was the first “B” Race on my journey to a sub-9-hour Leadville attempt in 2022.

More on my Leadville dreams to come. Too much more to come…you’ll see.

I live in Seattle, WA and Echo, OR is just shy of 5 hours away. The plan was always to camp at the venue. This plan changed a few times. We began with the hopes to sleep in OR for 3 nights, then 2 nights, then back to 3 nights and settled on one night. It is funny how having children and careers can alter the way you relax. We packed the car with food, firewood, sleeping bags. We made sure our roof top tent was secured, loaded the bikes and went to bed Thursday night. On Friday morning, we all woke up early and poured tons of coffee into a couple of thermoses and headed out.

…a few hours later…

We arrived to Echo around noon and were amongst the first to to grab our race packets. This gave me the opportunity to speak to the organizers and camp hosts about setting up for the night. Thankfully, it was an easy set up right at the trail head. Dry, dusty camping around a huge fire pit. All that was left to do on Friday was set up our roof top tent and go off on a pre-ride of some parts of the course.

This meant that any brain power I wasn’t already depleting to keep up was used to memorize any little pieces of information about the course

The Pre-Ride

I had a headache from the drive but I wanted to pedal around on the trails before race time. This is always a good idea if you have the chance. I put on an extra set of bib shorts, my USWE Hydration pack, and headed out on the trail. I was lucky to run into other racers in my category and I asked nicely if it was ok if I could roll around with them. They were real local and real fast, but I am thankful that I rode with them. I learned right away that they knew all the key sections of the course. This meant that any brain power I wasn’t already depleting to keep up was used to memorize any little pieces of information about the course. We took in some techie ups and downs together. I even took a spill trying to keep up with an Elite young woman that was with us. As with every mountain bike event I have ever been a part of, they were all very nice and welcoming.

Pre-riding a course is amongst the most important things in my preparation process for races. Whether it be a trail run or a road race, knowing the corners and the features that are designed to challenge or hang you racers up increases my confidence. It allows me to focus on getting the most out of myself the following day. We are all there to push ourselves out of our comfort zone; I’d prefer that the discomfort is in terms of effort and not just anxiety of the possible unknowns. The pre-ride also gives me the opportunity to do “openers” on the course. Specifically for mountain biking, doing your openers on the race course can serve to dial in your tire pressure. It is also helpful to get a good understanding of what your power and heart rate zones will feel like on the course conditions. You can feel what your out of the saddle climbing will feel like on the alien terrain of a different part of the country. For this race, there was a fair bit of sand and dust; the corners were washed out because of the lack of rain. I specifically worked on putting my efforts into the sandy corners. Another big factor was descending in these conditions. With all of us spending our winter not-turning on Zwift, going down foreign trails took some getting used to. If I am being honest, I didn’t get warmed up until an hour into the race.

With my tire pressure dialed, the bike set up appropriately, and all my nutrition sorted it was time to sit back, prepare dinner for the girls and I, and relax before hammering the next day. The vibe around the camp fire was awesome. There were people from all over the Northwest and all parts of life. There was a couple that was not even a part of the race but “heard the vibe was chill” and decided to camp and cheer us on. There were other parents of young children like us and some retirees looking to also get out of their comfort zone. This race would make sure to help them with that.

The Course

The fast dry conditions made sure the trails were loose and rowdy, a complete change from all the tacky trails I have been riding near Seattle. This was a welcomed change, a mental stretch, and a reminder that real summer, and real racing was coming.

The reason this race, that was 5 hours away from home, was my first “B” race leading up to Leadville 2022 was the course configuration. To my friends -and anyone that asked really- I called this “Little Leadville”. The course started with a road section that worked its way uphill towards a gravel section. The gravel was loose and exposed and more importantly, it was dusty. From watching countless videos on Youtube of the race, I knew that little groups of people would be together in this section; I didn’t have much prior knowledge of how riding in a pack over gravel would feel. This was important to me given that at Leadville, I would benefit from all the pack riding I can exploit. At the end of the gravel road, there is one sharp right-hand turn into the single track.

Trailforks.com

I registered for the Cat 1 course. It was the longest course offered and who doesn’t want to know how they match up against the fastest dads in the bunch? The difference between the categories was distance and that difference in distance would all be on single track. The trails at the Echo Red to Red race are all part of the Echo West Winery Mountain Bike Trail System. The fast, dry conditions made sure the trails were loose and rowdy, a complete change from all the tacky trails I have been riding near Seattle. This was a welcomed change, a mental stretch, and a reminder that real summer, and real racing was coming.

The single track was the reason we were all here. The Cat 1 course had roughly 22 miles of single track; 22 miles of heart-pumping ups and downs, some of those ups and downs were all metaphorically painful. The first half seemed to be all uphill and the second half was all against a wall of wind that was growing with the heat of the afternoon. There would be one final climb up the gravel road before getting into one final bench cut section on the back side of the winery; this part was beautiful and challenging. There was exposure and technicality, all the things I wanted to practice in a race situation.

Race Day

The night was cold and the roof top tent was warm. The girls moved a little less than usual which made for a good nights sleep. The plan was to shovel carbs while packing up to make our way to the start/ finish line in the town of Echo. I made a crucial mistake y’all. I never programmed time into the schedule for coffee. I know, I know. Mari was great, she ran to a coffee shop and bought me a pitcher of coffee but there just wasn’t enough time. I wanted to warm up and get a feel for how the wind was effecting the road section. A hill is hard enough for a Miami Native, add wind to the mix and I wasn’t sure i would know what to do at all. While trying to warm up I ran into one of the faster guys in the Pro field, a friend I had ridden with in Seattle. This would be the second chance encounter as he had a ton of information about the race and what I could come to expect. He had raced the event a number of times before and was more than happy to share what he knew as we both warmed up on the road. He explained how the race would play out and the times he expected for the pro field and the Cat 1 field. Between the Pre ride, the night before, and this conversation I felt more confident than ever.

The pros lined up and we were all able to see what the roll out would look and feel like. Nerves and anxiety were gone now, it was time to execute on the plan and be ready to apply learning to Leadville 2022 preparation. That’s the reason we were here after all . There were 24 or so racers in my field. They all looked menacingly stronger than I felt, but that was probably more to do with my insecurity of being in a “Category I” field. I couldn’t let the imposter syndrome take any more control over my feelings than I had already allowed. The gun went off and we we were off. The road section was tame. A nice little group working together against the wind and the hills. There were a couple of guys up front that felt the need to pull into the headwind and I allowed them. Why not? Things began to really take shape when we turned into the gravel section. With the increased resistance of the loose road and the reminder that this meant we were that much closer to the race, most of the head and shoulders of the peloton started to get lower and the speed higher.

The gate was in view and the speed kept climbing as we all fought for position heading into the single track. The dust from the pro field hadn’t yet settled by the time we were working our way through the course. Up and down we went together little by little separating into the smaller groups we would stay in for the rest of the afternoon. I was falling back further and further in the group and my spirits were falling along with me. I remembered a few other races I had been in recently where keeping the pace up would pay off nicely for me the longer the race went on. This idea was wrestling with the reminder that I had self-seeded higher. I had to actively fight the imposter syndrome monster all the while encouraging my internal competitive self. I realized quickly that the best strategy was to silence them both with good ol’ fashioned hammering. Sure, I over cooked a ton of corners in the process but at least I could focus on riding hard and consistently. The wind was picking up and this worked to my favor. About halfway through the race, I started to see returns on my strategy. Perhaps the caffeine in my drink mix was kicking in too because I was now starting to pick other racers off. It took me about an hour to feel “settled in”. This is something I have to work on, that seems like entirely too long. When this happened, I felt like I was in the correct gear. I felt like I was riding the course rather than the course riding me. I was passed by two elite women that were flying and right before we reached the last real climb of the day, a couple of monsters from the single speed field made their way passed me and the small group I was pacing. The women were long gone but the single speeders gave me a nice hard pace to try and keep up with. I was also able to spot and sight the coming sections of the trail. We all made it up the long gravel climb and back down the single track before arriving on the gravel road for the finishing hill. I was able to claw back quite a few spots on this last hill.

When we arrived at the finish line, there were other racers waiting and cheering. This was perhaps my favorite part of the race; rather than it ending back at the town, the finish line was private and really only enjoyed by those who raced. We had a spot to run into others as they finished and take the slow ride back into town to discuss the heroics and failures of the morning. We also made tons of beer-drinking plans for what was left of the afternoon.

Conclusions

The race was done and I felt great. I was happy to have been there and I was happy to have taken the chances I did. I was happy I didn’t quit when a wave of people passed me and thrilled I stuck with it as I clawed my way back up that group. I finished mid-pack and I couldn’t have asked for more. It was the first race of the season and I was quite far from my comfort zone. The goals for this race were to practice nutrition, get a grip on riding XC trails at speed, and go hard for a relatively long time. I was able to do all this as well as have some fun and race my bike. The next step in my Leadville 2022 is a long self-supported ride to prepare for the Lutsen99er in June. The ride will likely take place in the capitol Forest in Washington. I am aiming for a route that will take 5 or so hours and include 5K feet of gain. If you know of such a route, please share it with me in the comments.