park city point 2 point.

What can be said about an event of such magnitude? Not much other than an epic beatdown.

75 miles and 14,000 ft of climbing. The best part of it all and what really made the race epic was that it was held exclusively on single track. Well, I take that back 74.2 (give or take .2 of a mile) was held on single track, the other was on small intermittent sections of pave.

The race started north of Deer Valley resort in an area called Round Valley, headed south into Deer Valley, west into Park City Mountain Resort and then heading west and north into The Canyons ski resort where the finish was located. Point to Point.

With no warmup and cool temps we were off. Bart and Alex of Monavie lead the charge and I was glued to there wheel for the first hour and a half alternating between 3rd and 5th. Out of Round Valley climbing began in earnest and I was happy that I was still in the lead group.

Dark clouds loomed and eventually dropped what was expected. Rain. It was at this point on a fast rocky downhill I felt it. That soft squishy feeling that every racer dreads. Keep descending slower and slower as there's no good place to stop until the bottom on a small section of road. Pull off the hydration pack and rip out the CO2. Fumbling, twisting, banging and all around pissed as the thing won't work. Was it clogged? Who know's. The second Co2's sitting in my cooler at the first feed zone so out comes the pump and after what felt like months I get a bit of air in the tyre. Back on the bike and climbing. The tyre still was leaking and I had to stop once more to pump it up, geez, at that point I new it might be a long day. For the next hour I climbed halfway up Deer Valley on super low rear tyre, like bouncing off the rim over every bump low rear tyre. With feed zone one at Silver Lake Lodge finally reached a kind soul was able to fill my tyre to the proper amount of air with a real sized pump. A bit of food in me and I'm off, climbing now to the top of Deer Valley.

With this getting long winded I'll speed it up a minute. Basically just when you thought you couldn't climb any more you went up. And that continued on 8 hours. From the top of Deer Valley we rode around the back of the mountain on Bowhunter, then to one of my favorites, the Flagstaff Loop and from there a long descent back to feed number 2 which was also located again at Silver Lake Lodge. From there, the epic Mid Mountain trail took us over and up Tour de Sud to the top of Park City and down in TG 1 and TG 2. While TG 1 was decent TG 2 was hated. Rough (even for a mtb race) and overgrown, probably the least fun in my opinion. Back onto Mid Mountain and more descending down trails that felt like ripping in Wisco. Then the brute. The climb up to Shadow Lake nearly did me in. What felt like 2 hours of climbing up in my smallest gear (more on that later) in the sun I was broke. The radness level of the trail couldn't even bring me liking that hard of a climb. So with a weave only a grandmother could procure I made my way up only with thoughts of the descending to food and the last checkpoint at the base of Park City Resort.

It was great to see the last checkpoint but hard knowing there were 2 more long steep climbs ahead. To again make this long story shorter, I said it once but I'll say it again, just when you thought there was no more climbing you continued up and then up more only to come down what seemed like very little.

So recap. Awesome. Ended up 9th but know that with this one under my belt the next will be better and faster. Better fueling, less time messing with flats, better gearing (the granny gear was removed due to poor shifting, a 26x26 low gear broke my legs) and an all around better HAMMER attitude will make that 9th more into a top 5.