Eric the Fox CTR Part 1: Get to Colorado
“Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.”
Magpie Gulch area, San Juan Mountains: Day 8 CTR Mile ~435
Colorado Trail Race 2024. 9 days, 3 hours, 43 minutes.
I somehow extended an already longest-to-me 526 mile race into 566 miles. This is puzzling on some levels (even looking at my GPS track I can’t figure out where ALL the miles came from) but probably not to anyone I encountered on the trail. Even on a straight road I’m bouncing between the ditches just to see whats there.
As hard as I try, I’m bad at “racing.” I get distracted seeking beauty, particularly high at altitude, much of my my gear is half-assed, heavy and old, and I’ll happily stop and chat forever with anyone that starts a conversation (though I’m paralyzed at the thought of starting one). I just don’t find outright speed or besting another rider to be a motivator. Maybe I’m just undisciplined & lazy?
I don’t really care for organized events, particularly type-A competition (I’m way-OK not being a “winner”), and I spend most every weekend on the volunteer/support side of races, so I get my share of race-day excitement. CTR is none of this, however; no formal registration, no fanfare, & absolutely no aid or support. Just a route, a time, all summed up with one simple rule: DO IT YOURSELF! And don’t be a jerk, but that’s already the #1 Rule of Life and goes without saying.
With all that, I don’t know why I signed up for CTR. My life outside of Eric the Fox & riding bikes for fun is already “not easy,” and “doing hard things” has become our daily MO to survive, and not something we need or want to seek out. What was I thinking?
From the Woods of Wisconsin
Bree & I started a small organic farm in 2011 to build a life aligning our passion for working with the land with a more meaningful purpose of caring for and sharing the outdoor spaces we love. I was working a desk job that should have been a dream job (CO2/emissions reduction for Harley-Davidson) but needed to be active during the cold, dark upper Midwest winter months, moving my body and my soul outside to fight off the insidious seasonal depression that secretly creeps in between the wet wool layers. Working in the woods, absorbing Good Energy from trees that have stood for generations, & harvesting maple sap to share via our Maple Energy has become my outlet for doing something both internally & externally positive. We live off-grid in our still-not-finished tiny house, have a growing decade long list of overdue maintenance & improvements we start in good faith, but just don’t quite have the focused resources to finish, yet still wouldn’t trade this capricious life for the certainty of the one that came before.
Every couple years since starting our farm we’ve found ourselves rebuilding from another 1000 year flood, the kind the old-timers have never seen, but can’t say won’t happen again, even in their already weathered lifetime. Recognizing this increasing uncertainty, we optimistically applied some sage advice gleaned from an early chat at our local USDA Farm Service Agency office when applying for our first farm mortgage; “value-adding provides small farms a fighting chance for survival.” Our first product was our B&E’s Trees (Bree, Eric & maple trees, not honey bees & Christmas trees) Bourbon Barrel Aged Maple Syrup, in collaboration with local Central Waters Brewing Company, getting maple syrup off the breakfast table and into culinary & cocktail spaces. The co-owner of Central Waters, Paul, is an avid ultra-runner, and we often chatted about another idea that had been sitting idle since experimenting in my early days of endurance MTB racing in the late naughties (2008ish): Maple Energy.
Fast forward to early pandemic: our Bourbon Barrel Maple sales, which we grew through in-person events and samplings had dropped off as those events were postponed, rescheduled and eventually cancelled. Folks were flocking to the outdoors, and I wanted to reconnect with the endurance community in a way that gave something back. We saved up two harvest seasons of our farm’s maple syrup, and setup a panel of endurance athletes & adventurers, foodies and chefs to develop Maple Energy varieties that worked as well as they tasted. Leveraging every resource we had available, we finally got Embark Maple Energy out of the mind’s idea pit and into the real world!
Less than one week after we launched Embark I was volunteering at a local trail day, and found my lunch was a sticky purple (Elderberry) mess. I discovered the packaging material we tested, ordered & approved was not what we received; it was missing the high strength outer layer critical to the entire “adventure maple” concept. We were left with 75,000 pouches we didn’t feel comfortable selling, knowing they could break just as easily on a remote backcountry adventure as they did in my lunchbox. This amounted to over two years of revenue (which can’t be “written off” when you’re not yet showing a profit), and was supposed to be the foundational support to keep paying our small dedicated team. This was not the game I thought I was signing up for when I moved to the woods to live simply…
“I think so long as we get you to the start line, you have a really good shot at Durango”
The Journey to the Beginning
On July 11 I entered my information into Trackleaders, the unofficial window for bikepack racing dot-watchers, and committed to the small world of ultra racing bikepackers that I was lining up for the Grand Depart one month later. There is no fee, no registration, no waivers, just a commitment to play by the rules. I’ve never done a bikepacking race before, much less a 526 mile race across the remote Rocky Mountains of Colorado. My last real MTB race was probably in 2011, and it was most likely a local-ish 9 or 12 hour event. I also did a two day, 200 mile gravel ride a couple years ago, so I’m probably good-to-go, right?
In October 2023 I experienced a twisting-turning one-footed near fall while multi-tasking tiny-house building and watching our energetic toddler Sylvan, resulting in a very painful self-diagnosed ACL/MCL injury. Up until February 2024 I could not even turn the cranks on my bike, and hobbled around with a very swollen knee and painful limp. This made working in our maple woods very difficult, and combined with the extremely warm & early spring (and busy winter ultra volunteering schedule) contributed to a less than stellar maple harvest. I felt like the middle-aged man I guess I am, as if my chances to ride something as big as CTR were fleeting, and growing regret for not having taken time for myself when I was able. With time, restraint and gentle exercise working in the maple woods, I regained motion, strength, and confidence.
I had full intentions of formal-ish training; long rides, intense intervals, distance running, overnights, a couple races, gear testing/packing/repacking, etc. Due to my schedule of being on the road 3 days a week supporting runs & rides, my injury, and then doing my dangest to keep our fledgling small business moving forward, this did not happen. From April through July I typically fit in one medium ride a week while traveling (~30-40 miles), and beginning in June started attending group runs at new running store partners while introducing Embark. This led to hour long runs once or twice a week, often as part of working in our beautifully rugged maple woods. I focused on elevation gain, technical riding/running, and just time spent moving my body as much as I could, and not really miles nor structured workouts. During the week I would try to commute whenever possible; living rurally in Driftless region of Wisconsin means 30ish miles and 3000 feet of ascent on lightly traveled paved roads. Living off-grid and on the road has a lot of discomfort built in, and I have some backcountry experience, so I wasn’t as worried about those “skills.” As the Grand Depart creeped closer I became increasingly more comfortable with the fact that I would be jumping into CTR with whatever fitness I had from my “normal life.”
Most of my adventure gear is from an era when I had a paying job, and before starting the farm; ie 2008-2010. My tent, sleeping bags, stuff sacks, homemade (by friend Kris) frame-bag, rain gear, dry bags, water filter, and everything else has seen many typeB adventures resulting in well-lived but mostly used-up lifespans. I am not in a position to buy new gear for race, so I had to ask for help. Friends answered with gusto and lent me thousands of dollars of gear I simply could not afford: Corey (Salsa Fargo fork, Redshift Shockstop stem, PNW pedals, bike assembly, advice & inspiration), Brett (OR Helium Bivy, Alpine Luddites Seat Bag, advice & inspiration), Andy (Revelate Designs Harness, advice & inspiration), Brandie (Garmin InReach Mini2, Sawyer Squeeze water filter, CT guidebook, advice & inspiration) and more I’m overthinking. Thank you.
Doing maintenance on my bike about two weeks before the race I noticed a pair of mirrored cracks in the heat-affected zone where the seat stays join the seat tube. There was a unanimous opinion among experienced friends: DO NOT TRUST IT FOR CTR! I heed their call, and asked everyone I knew to help find a used XL singlespeed frame. Tim from Esker, whom I had met/worked with at bike events a few times prior, immediately called and offered to sell me his personal XL Esker Hayduke Ti frame, including a partial trade for Embark. WWHHHAAATTT!!??? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and felt things were actually coming together for CTR. A mutual acquaintance was attending the same Wausau 24 bike race I would be volunteering at the following day (the race that introduced me to the endurance community), and Tim lined up delivery of the frame directly to me. After returning home from W24 Bree & I did some some last minute maple syrup bottling in our commercial kitchen, I hastily packed the van and drove a West.
Corey Kronser helped me disassemble my old Kona Unit, and build up the new-to-me Hayduke at Bicycle World in Dubuque, IA. Shop owner Dave Hartig lists “empowering cyclists of all ages and abilities” as his secret skill on the shop website, and watching him greet and personally serve everyone that walked through the door proved that. I can not thank Dave enough for offering use of his shop, tools, offering support, and even buying Corey & I breakfast burritos and tea while assembling my bike; a bike I didn’t even buy from him. He is an absolute gem.
It just so happened the week leading up to CTR was also the week leading up to the Leadville 100 MTB race. The entire Arkansas Valley was swarming with riders previewing the course, acclimating to altitude, and doing final preparations. This also meant a captive audience for introducing Embark Maple Energy! The year prior we signed up for the LT100 MTB Expo, however a last minute “sampling permit snafu” left us unable to sample Embark, and thus couldn’t attend the expo. Since when does Leadville have laws??.. Embark is on the shelves at Leadvelo Bicicasa, so Rafa opened his shop to us, and we busked Embark on the street. This year we just planned to busk from the start, and I was able to earn my lunch money for the trip. Literally. The Embark sold on the streets of Leadville was my entire food allowance for the race. Thank you Rafa!
I spent final days before the race split between slinging Embark, shakedown rides, and refining my gear. My first ride all loaded up was to find a bathroom, which I did 6 miles away from my dispersed campsite. The Hayduke handled fantastic, but I still desperately needed a couple pieces of gear, mainly a rain jacket. I stopped into Leadville Outdoors, another fine purveyor of Embark, to see if they needed a resupply ahead of the busy race week. They were out of stock, and wanted to move some summer inventory, specifically rain jackets! We easily worked out a trade we were both happy with, and I embarked on CTR with a little more confidence in dealing with the elements.
I setup camp in the Collegiates for opportunity to acclimate to both the altitude and the new bike. I rode Alpine Tunnel Loop, starting late one afternoon to “test my lights” which highlighted big issues with the bar mount of my Fenix BC26R. The light works well (good beam pattern, battery life, overall construction, etc) however the bar mount is garbage, with gravity rotating the entire light assembly towards earth, even while fully tightened. Even more of an issue, however, was that my hands were going numb after only a few miles. While chatting Vapor Trail with Mike at Absolute Bikes in Salida (newest Embark Emporium!), I mentioned my ergonomics issue. Shop owner Shawn jumped right in, and asked me to bring my bike in to see what he could do. Over the course of an afternoon, Shawn made subtle tweeks to the bars, grips, and saddle, including test riding three different saddles better fit to my sit bones. I was amazed at not just the transformation of comfort on the bike (spoiler, I had NO issues during CTR!), but the amount of time dedicated to me when I could see other customers looking at new e-bikes that cost more than the van I drove in with. I ended up buying a saddle, but left feeling even more support.
Before CTR even began, I had already asked for and accepted help, aid & support from an entire community. “Do It Yourself” was starting to get blurry even before I lined up for the start.
