Mt Taylor Quadrathalon

I did the Mt Taylor again yesterday. It was an adventure. I wanted to do it to prove that I was still alive.



I love the prerace energy and adrenaline.

There were so many fun people to talk to. While we were pumping up tires and gearing up our bikes I talked to the people who parked next to me. One was a tectonic Geology Professor from Virginia. This is his research year. The couple who parked on the other side were from South Dakota. Imagine driving two days to do a race. This event is one of kind. There are plenty of triathlons, but I don't know of any other winter mulitsport events. I met a builder from Pagosa Springs in Southern Colorado. He just finished building a house for a cardiac surgeon. This builder is a crazy man. He does endurance mountain bike races. He told me about a 60 mile mountain bike race that has 14,000 feet of climbing. He did not win the lottery for another race down by Tucson, so this was his backup race. I met quite a few Coloradoans. One of the Denverites moved from England 30 years ago. It was fun to hear the accent. Everybody had such interesting stories.

Well my time was only slightly faster than last year, 7 hours 5 min. (Last year was 7:13.) I finished 107 out of 127 male soloists. In my age group (30-34), I was 24th of 26. The winner's time was 3:49. There were a bunch of people in the 5 and 6 hours. There were two soloists that finished just over 9 hours.

The following is a direct result of my nerdiness. So in 7 hours of exercise I burned 5,600 calories. I loved the homemade Reeses peanut butter cups. (see previous post) My average heart rate was 143.

Two of my attendings were there as well. Adam Delu finished 104th with a time of 7 hours. He would have finished faster. He was passing me on the uphill snowshoe and slowed down to talk. We ran 2-3 miles of the downhill run together. I got tired of running and told him to go ahead. I walked the rest of the run. Kevin Williams, another interventionalist, beat half of the other soloists, 62th, with a time of 5:56.

Mt Taylor is 11,300 feet. It was an amazing vista. (View not microsoft operating system.) You could see hundreds of miles away including Albuquerque and Sandia Peak. I stopped and looked around for a while.

The bike portion was a little over 13 miles, you climb 1,800 feet and took 1:16. Last year my bike had a triple chainring (lower gearing). My new bike is a double and I missed those three lowest gears. I had to get out of the saddle (stand up on the peddles) for much of the last mile or two. This might be part of the reason I am sore today.

The run is 5 miles and climbs 1,200 feet. I did the run in 1:20. The run felt a lot better this year.

I climbed another 1,200 feet in 55:10 on the uphill cross country ski.

I climbed 600 feet of uphill snowshoe climb in 40:25.

Total time for the climb was 4:12.

Downhill snowshoe: 19:32

Downhill ski: 39:53 It was funny watching people with very little skiing experience crashing all over the place. You know those lightweight fiberglass fencepost that they push into the snow at ski hills. I saw one poor fellow take out a couple of those. I was passed by two people with Randonnee (alpine touring) skis. They use regular hard alpine ski boots but the bindings pivot like telemark skis. For the downhill they lock the bindings down for better control.

I was feeling better this year. After 2-3 miles I really started to feel it, so I said thanks to Delu for the company and started walking. I finished the downhill run in 1:11. This should be called the down hill walk.

Downhill bike: 41 minutes. I passed a couple of racer once I got down to the valley.

Here is a link to the Mt Taylor Quadrathalon site. They say 42 miles. My GPS says nearly 45 miles.

http://www.mttaylorquad.org/

If you are interested, here is a link to my report from last years race.

http://superstegelmeier.blogspot.com/2009/02/mount-taylor-quadrathlon.html