2014 Ultimate Challenge Report

Just finishing up Little Cottonwood.  I felt as good as I look. (terrible.)
Photo by Leon Huntsman

This year's ride made me nervous. I know it's a ride and not a race but the fact that you invest so much time into training, planning and logistics, etc. it puts the pressure on. Plus, I'd never climbed that much in one ride before. It made me nervous but at the same time the prospect of not finishing made it kind of exciting too. Well, it was surely hard, but I did finish and overall, it went as well as I could have hoped.  (no mechanicals, or flats.) You can see my stats here.

The great thing we decided to do this year vs. years past it that we stayed up at Snowbird for the weekend after the ride.  This made for lovely relaxation time that night after the ride and a fun filled day with the family the next day.  We will definitely do that again next time.

As for the report on how the ride went, I'll give a brief summary:  I begged Jen to drive me to the starting line early in the morning in Salt Lake.  That meant leaving our house at 5:00 a.m. in order to make the 6:00 a.m. start.  She finally agreed, which I am grateful for.  It's dark at that hour and the closer we got to Rice Eccles stadium the more cyclist we saw darting in and our of traffic.  I found the Infinite Team at the starting line and we departed together.  I thought it was going to be cold but actually found the temps to be just right.  We began climbing right off the bat up Emigration Canyon.  Just as we were starting the climb there was a serious crash right in front of our group where several riders went down hard narrowly missing us.  That was a bit scary.  No sure what happened.  I'm guessing a touch of wheels or something.

The sun rose just as we crested Big Mountain but because we were high it made for a cold decent.  I'd never descended that side of the mountain before so I took it pretty cautious.  We then rode in various packs until hitting Henefer's feed station where we all regrouped as a team.  From there we pretty much all rode as a team, up East Canyon, through Coalville, up Brown's Canyon and finally into Park City.  It made for fun, fast riding being able to stick together like that.  I had my doubts that we'd stay together that long but it worked out great.

After Park City the real climbing began and it was more every man for himself type of thing.  Guardman's Pass was crazy hard, just as I remembered it, but being the second time climbing it I found it bearable.  The long decent down Big Cottonwood was uneventful except for one corner near the top that I took way too fast and almost overcooked.  I knew I'd overdone it going in the turn and just prayed as I locked up my back wheel and barley made it around.  That was pretty stupid of me.

I actually felt pretty good all the way up to the mouth of the canyon where I was met by the Infinite Team tent.  They had cold water with ice packs.  This gave me a needed boost for the final climb up Little Cottonwood.  About halfway up I began to feel myself get hungry.  Really hungry and I didn't have much on me to eat anymore.  I also knew that I probably missed my window to eat so I just told myself to pull through to the finish.  But then my energy began to wain.  I started to hit my wall.  It was slow going the rest of way for me.  Embarrassingly slow.  Still, I made it to crest of the hill at Entrance 2 of Snowbird and that was a good feeling.

It was great seeing several of my teammates who didn't do the ride along the road cheering me on.  It really makes a difference mentally.  That, and knowing my family was at the finish counting on me to get there so they could start their weekend away at Snowbird.

As for now, I will focus on Lotoja.  I've felt pretty good the days following Ultimate Challenge and I hope to recover well from it.  I'm counting on a couple of good weeks of training and I'll be ready.  I'll be working on my nutrition plan.