On our way to Leadville from Moab, we stopped at the best Taco Bell we had ever been to (on the Taco Bell rating it was a 10). The food was hot, the rice was hot, but not dry, and we were totally famished. We gorged ourselves on 7 layer burritos, we must have ate half a dozen each. We pulled out of theTaco Bell and headed out on the grand highway again. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but we weren't getting very many radio stations and the ones we were picking up were really poor reception. 'Box' and I forgot our tapes except one stuffed in the back of the glove box and it got played over and over. We pull out of Taco Bell helping Elton John sing, "Rocket Man" for the 14th time on our trip ... oh need not worry, we knew every word.

We pull into Leadville, its pretty late and the problem we have is its Sunday night and not Monday, our reservations at the campground started Monday. I figure why pay 20 bones to check in an extra night early just to sleep? Well of course we did what all of you would have done ... we parked in the back of a school parking lot. It was off the beaten path, nice trees and seemed like an excellent choice, besides, it was summer nobody should be around. Next morning rolls around I woke up with an uneasy feeling, a burning sensation in my gut. So I get up and open the bathroom door to step inside and take care of business, only there is no toilette paper. So now I'm starting to panic. The 2 most important questions at this point are WHERE and HOW, because WHEN is going to take care of itself very very soon. The Taco Bell from the night before made me very very regular. I decide I have a couple minutes to see if I can find a bathroom around the school so I checkout one side of the school and nothing is there. The pressure begins to really build now and I look around, the nearest bush is across the parking lot, the trailer is also across the lot. Nobody is in the parking lot but, there is a small piece of grass ... an opportunity if you will. By now I'm almost stumbling over myself because the cramps are so bad. I didn't realize before but, the small grassy section was in front of large open classroom windows. Inside the classroom were about 20 teacher type people and, truth be known, they actually saw me first. They were eating a continental type breakfast, probably getting ready for a faculty meeting for the upcoming school year. One person saw me then everybody saw. I must have looked like a lunatic whacko, half naked and bent over due to the cramps, hurriedly walking with one hand on my crotch and one on my butt, a pained look on my face ... trying to hold a volcano from erupting is hard labor. I looked over my shoulder as I was running away from the people in the window and they were pointing! I keep half-running half-walking, now I see the truck 100 yards, 50 yards, almost there 25 yards, I make it back. A great sigh of relief comes over me as I pull open the door. I jerk the door open and I found �Box� already on the pot conducting business!!! I run back out the door and find the teachers walking toward the trailer, now they see the same half naked lunatic run out the door in an even worse condition than 45 seconds before. A couple of the male teachers begin to say "you can't camp ---" and thats when I let loose. The volcano erupted in my gray cotton shorts, the lava flowed down the mountain and burned my toes. The eruption was loud and offensive and I wish somebody had created an outdoor fan. The man that was in the middle of repremanding me said sorry and decided to turn his lynching mob around and go back to the classroom.

'Box' comes out the door and looks at me, observes the nasty mess and very calmly, relaxed, almost as if nothing happened says, "I wondered where you went."

Felt a little puny after working till midnight Saturday on my car. Started off with the singlespeeders and Jimalee Painter ... is everyone named Painter a speed demon? Talk about riding inside a dust cloud! Got off the track at the start and clumsily lurched back on but hung up on a rut. Serious fred move, hindered everyone behind me.

As we went along I just settled into a steady pace and since I didn't really warm-up, I rode along a nice moderate pace. Bob Maxwell was immediately ahead and did great job through the technical sections. As we went into the high-speed singletrack Bob graciously let me by but someone up ahead decided to stop as I was catching up and we almost piled up before the 1st lap was complete. As I came down out of the fast singletrack I noticed the guys on full suspension bikes could really make some time downhill (I found out later that the uphill gave a lot of them trouble though).

As I looked up ahead I saw a couple of the singlespeed guys and ahead of them was Jimalee. I thought, "I can't finish this far behind these folks" and pounded hard to catch them. Sat in behind Jimalee for quite awhile but all the heavy breathing behind her must have been unnerving because she kind of eased off and let me go by ... just in time for the Rim Trail (which always scares the crap out of me). As I worked my way up the trail I saw a guy do a scary looking crash and go rolling down the worst part. Fortunately, Phil Champoux from Yakima was right there and helped the guy get back on the trail. I was amazed, if I would have biffed there I would have had to stop and clean out my shorts before proceeding. Anyway, the guy that stacked got up and kept right on going, I was thoroughly paranoid and rode the rest of that section at about 2 MPH. Saw quite a few people hoofing it up the trail after the bridge crossing ... as soon as I stalled out and came unclipped I joined them.

Well, things went ok after that until I hit a loose downhill section and grabbed a handful of front brake. Yep, you guessed it, over the bars and a few rolls through the sagebrush. No real damage so away we go (got kinda dirty, as long as I don't get hurt I don't mind, makes me feel like I was tearing it up). So anyway, I started feeling a little better and set my sights on a guy up ahead. I kept catching him on the rocks and uphills and he kept walking away on the downhill, until just before the Rim trail the 2nd time around he let me go by (I really wanted to pass that rascal while he was hammering, but what the hell). The remainder of the 2nd lap was pretty uneventful. My doggoned rear tire kept losing air until right at the end I could feel the rim banging on rocks and the rear felt like it was sliding around. Oh well, 15th out of 30, better than last time so I'll take it (A single speeder won the sport race, I feel even older and slower now).

Had 3 or 4 collage teams riding, pretty cool. Hot dogs and raffle at the end. Course was decently marked but could use some maintenance, something to think about-widening/shoring up the Rim trail just a bit.

After my little run we decided to take the truck and trailer down to the campground where we had reservations. We checked in and received our space number. I pulled the truck and trailer up to the space and 'Box' gets out to help me guide our huge, monstrous, mammoth, trailer (18 ft) into the spot. Its my first time backing this thing up but, I think that I can do it. So let the fun begin. I start out by almost parking in our neighbors spot (which was already occupied) than I pull out and try to park our huge trailer (actually it was by far the smallest trailer in the area) over our fire pit, but it was better than on top of our neighbors. Third time is a charm you say? No, not really, the third time I tried to jack knife the darn thing. I'll tell you the first 3 times were really bad but the 4th try now the 4th try, well, it was terrible too, but, the 5th try was a charm. So of course 'Box' walks up and says, "Whew that was an epic battle, the only thing that would have made it better is a bag of popcorn." Now really what can you say to a guy that slams you like that?

So we unload the trailer and set up our camp and decide to go for a ride. This would be our first actual bit of exercise in Leadville, I didn't consider my little run earlier in the morning exercise, just a lack of intestine fortitude. So we break the bikes out and throw a little lube on (which so happens to be my wife's favorite part but, she wasn't here so I just had to tell her about it) and head out on our first ride. We decide to ride up to town and check everything out, really a neat little town chalked full of history and other fun filled facts. Here is a tidbit did you know that the highest airport in the U.S. is in Leadville? Its really a useless bit of information that I thought I would share with you. We asked around for some trails and about the course and how to get on it to check it out. We rode maybe 20 miles of the course this day trying to figure where time can be made and where to take it easy at. The first hill isn't too bad, but, it is somewhat steep in places.

We rode back to the campground and we're both starving and craving spaghetti. Our problem was this, how do you make spaghetti with only one pan? We had one pan for the sauce but, nothing for the pasta. We sat down at the table all bummed out trying to figure out how to make spaghetti with only one pan. Than it hit us we'll make the sauce and when its done we'll put it back in the jar it came from. and use the same pan to cook the spaghetti. Dinner was actually pretty good or maybe we were pretty hungry either way it felt kind of weird passing a jar of Ragu.

On our second day of riding our goal was to ride the 20 mile section of Columbine Mine (a climb from 9000 to 12,600) this section of the race is the 40-60 mile section.Its actually a pretty mellow climb that switches back and forth for the first 8 miles or so. The last 2 miles are pretty steep and most people do some walking here. It was a good ride that ended in town with us picking up our race registration packets and checking out all of the merchandise.

'Box' and I are sitting around our camp fire talking about maybe we bit off more than we can chew with this race. We were discussing just how clueless and ignorant we were about the effects of 12 hours of heavy exertion at an average altitude of 10,500 feet does to the body. We really didn't know how it would effect us, if we would fall apart or if we would make the 12 hour cut off. 'Box' had brought up and said, "We just have to focus on one day at a time and keep our training light and conservative before the race. I mean I would hate to go into the race with tired legs or injured." With that being said by 'Box' lets move to the next paragraph.

A couple of days before the race we decide to just ride maybe an hour and keep everything very slow so we decide to check out the power line section. We get up to the whoop-ta-doo section (popular for big air). Conservative 'Box' says, "Hey, why don't we take some pictures of us jumping?" I was thinking to myself, "Who is this guy, has an alien abducted the real Harry Box?" I said O.K. We each do some jumps every jump we hit felt like 6-8 feet of air even though the pictures only reflect 1 foot of air. 'Box' says just one more then I'm gonna call it the day. So I position myself laying down trying to get an upward/side angle of Harry's last jump. Harry comes screaming down the hill and I think to myself Harry Box is gonna hit a massive jump on this one. He launches, comes down handlebars all crossed up the bike slides out from underneath him and his body continues sliding and tumbling down the steep hill. Fortunately Harry Box was only scraped and bleeding a little, bruised as if someone had really pounded poor 'Box'.

Training with 'Box' for this event was one of the most fun times in my life and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. I haven't typed anything about the actual race because, for us, it was the adventure of getting to the race.

Sunday morning dawned a bit cloudy, warm and no wind ... unlike the previous night when winds were gusting to 20+ mph. Today would be my first race on my single speed bike. I needed to be ready to go by 10:30am so I got up a couple hours early. I had to change the tires on the bike and get something to eat. Two hours ought to be plenty of time to do that ... wrong.

The early morning quickly fled by as I struggled with changing the tires. I have an old set of Mavic rims and it is very hard to get some wire-beaded tires mounted on the rims. I have a set of WTB Tyranno-Raptors that I wanted to use for the race. Got the front tire mounted after a bit and set to work on the rear. It's only a tire change ... I've done it a million times. In the end, I think it took me over an hour to get the dang thing done. The tire was a really tight fit (brand new tires) and when I finally got the tire mounted, I put a pinch flat in my tube. That started a frantic search for a new tube. Finally found one and put the Slime in (have to run some sort of flat protection). This time, I tore a hole in the tube right at the stem. More frantic digging turned up another tube. Got the WTB tire on okay this time but when I put the wheel on the bike the tire was rubbing on the frame. By this time it's getting really close to 10:00am and I haven't eaten anything yet. I'm now ready to put any tire on that will fit. Pulled a Smoke Lite out of the tire quiver and started frantically, yet fearfully, putting it on. Looks kind of strange, like a dragster in reverse, but the tubes are holding air and that's the only thing that matters to me at this point.

My ride pulled up about 10:40am and we headed out. I've ridden out at the race site many times but I missed the last race so I not exactly sure where the course goes. Oh well, I pays my fees and tries to have fun today.

At noon, the sport class, 30 riders strong including 5 single speed racers, roll to the start line and charge off into the desert in a gigantic cloud of dust. I feel strangely unwilling to choke down dust and so hang off the back. I know that this will doom me to a low placing but I'm just out for fun anyway. The course is generally flat in the beginning section as it twists and turns through the sagebrush. This is fun! Sagebrush singletrack slalom riding at its best. The second half of the course is when the climbing begins. There's two short steepish climbs up to the rim traverse where you generally wind your way uphill to the last steep climb up to the canyon rim. I make the first couple of steep climbs, those 180 cranks make a big difference, but have no juice left in the legs for much else. I keep chanting "Momentum is your friend, momentum is your friend" but there's no go in the legs to get any mo. I'm hanging on cause I have to come up this thing one more time.

Of course, I finally made it back to the finish line and took my hard earned 26th place. The other single speed riders did much better. We ended up 9th, 18th, and 20th. What about the fifth single speed racer, you ask? HE WON THE WHOLE FREAKING RACE! WOOHOO!

Final race stats:
Time: 1:34:00
Miles: 14.4
Only had the chain come off once but I still want to get a proper single speed chain tensioner.

This is Kevin "JRA" Axt, wastin� away again in SingleSpeederville. Hope you had as good a weekend as I did. See you at the trailhead.

10) You got a pinchflat in your shorts.
9) Your clavicle now works like a quick-release.
8) You must ask your riding buddy to pre-chew your Powerbar.
7) You're retracing your path down the mountain to reclaim enough material for a skin graft.
6) You wake up not knowing your name, but you do know what a Blue Spruce tastes like.
5) You discover your knee pads were torn off, then you realize you weren't wearing knee pads.
4) You can't find your mini-pump, but your chamois now whistles when you walk.
3) You've accidentally reset your trip computer with your teeth.
2) You start thinking; "A cellular phone is actually a handy accessory for a mountain bike."

And the Number One reason You Know That Last Crash Was Painful is ...

You say, "Forget those $90.00 rims. I've just tacoed my Oakleys!!"

Check out back issues of the Mudnews newsletter in the Mudnews Archives. See you all out in the mud! - GrrRiz