Jen Hanks is currently riding in 3rd place at the inaugural Breck-Epic in Breckenridge, Colorado. Jen is an experienced endurance and cross country mountain bike racer who has completed both the Transalp and Transrockies stage races. Join us as she shares her experiences each day of the Breck-Epic.
Jen-
We are officially over the hump and as promised today was a doozie. Today had a little bit of everything. Tough as shit climbing, ripping fast descents, sweet singletrack, river crossings, rocks galore, snow, and a bit of hike-a-biking. Oh yeah, we climbed above 12,000 feet and crossed the continental divide twice!
We started at race headquarters and the neutral start for a mile was welcomed by my tired legs. Race profile indicated 4 significant climbs with the middle two being the biggest. My game plan for the day was to hold a steady pace and hopefully have something left for the end. The first climb was tough; much steeper than I anticipated. I was able to ride most of it in my granny gear. We then ripped down a super rocky descent. I like to say that at least once a week I ride like a beginner and by the way I was riding this descent I was thinking it was today. We rolled into feed number one and to be honest I don’t remember much about that part of the day. I grabbed a water bottle and two power gel flasks from my drop bag because the toughest part of the day lay ahead. We then climbed through a meadowy section, a few small creek crossings, and then to two super steep climbs that ended up being hike-a-bikes for me and the people I was racing around. My Garmin GPS peaked out at about 12070 feet.
We then crossed about 30 meters of snow pack and then a rippin’ fast and steep downhill, too many river crossings to count and then onto a dirt road climb up to Georgia pass. This climb ended up being much more mellow than I anticipated and was really the only part of the course where we were not pounded by rocks. The second feedzone was near the top of the pass and my support was there to give me a seamless camelback handoff and a banana. We then got to ride down the Colorado Trail to our final feed of the day. We had ridden a different part of the Colorado Trail during Monday’s stage and I remembered it as being fast and flowy. That was not the case for this part of the Colorado Trail. It was fast and rocky; getting even rockier toward the bottom. My triceps were killing, but at least I was not riding like a beginner anymore! At the final aide station I got another water bottle, gel flask, and banana and then headed up the final climb of the day.
This climb ended up being much longer than I expected and I passed a lot of fellows that were blown. Even though I was pretty tired at this point of the stage, I felt like I was climbing fairly strong. Before I knew it I could hear the announcer at the finish. It was actually a trick though as we twisted around for about 4 more miles! My finishing time for the stage was 5 hours 15 minutes. I believe we climbed almost 10,000 vertical feet today.
Overall, today was a fantastic stage, definitely the toughest so far. After finishing a demanding stage like today’s, I always feel like I can accomplish anything. It is in search of this feeling that I am addicted to these epic events.
My post race special food request was French fries. Now I feel like I’m going to barf!
