As an endurance racer in CO as always get the same question over and over again, "have you done the Leadville 100?" I've always gotten the impression that the Leadville 100 was all fire road and the only difficulty was the high elevation. This is why famous road racers can come and dominate. I'd like to see them dominate in the Breckenridge 100 which tests your endurance AND SKILL, but that's a whole other topic. After being asked so many times if I've done the roadie-thon I finely got so tired of hearing it that decided to try out one of these Leadville races. Instead of paying $275 to enter a lottery to do the race were I'd probably lose out to someone that would DNF on the first quarter of the race just so I could attempt to do a race with thousands of people in a small town that no were near accommodates this many people, I decided to do the shorter less expensive one, the "Silver Rush 50". The race site says it's the Leadville 100 with all hard parts and none of the easy. Talking around to different people that have done both they claim the 50 is actually harder since it's on actual trail and not fire road. The route is actually completely different from the 100 and doesn't even touch the same trail. The starting line was about at 10,000 feet, and the first 10 miles was all climbing up to 11,900. About 3/4 of the trail was pretty rocky and wasn't the old mining roads described in the 100 mile version, but still nothing stood out as being overly technical. As I approached 20 miles in this out and back race the trail turned into really steep washed out downhill. Although this was extremely fun coming down, it sucked hiking up since it was in such bad shape you couldn't ride it (it was entertaining seeing all the guys you know spend more time riding the road then on a trail attempting to go down it... lots of scared faces). Hiking a mile uphill with your bike in high altitude is not a testament to how tough a race is, but rather how crappy the trail maintenance is and what a poorly made unsustainable trail looks like. It's sad to see the Leadville races pull in so much money but see none of it go back into the trail, but instead into the pockets of a greedy corporation called Lifetime Fitness who now own all the races up there. On the way back there is one last big climb that is about 1,000 feet up and peaks at 11,900. The thin air just killed my lungs as I slowly made my way up this long, long climb. The reward was pretty awesome with a 10 mile downhill that I originally climbed at the beginning. Here's all the tech info: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/100209414

The moral of the story is if you're going to race an endurance race in CO then there are whole heck of a lot better ones then any of the Leadville races that are so heaped because Lance decided to do one a couple years back. Not to mention you won't have to deal with unsustainable trail you have to hike and high elevation which isn't a testament of good training, but only that you have the time to train in high elevation. I ended up fourth in my age group on this one so it wasn't a terrible day, but I was not impressed with the race and won't be returning next year. And please, quit asking me if I've done that roadie-thon called the Leadville 100! No, and never plan to!