Park City 50

The finial item on our agenda for this trip was a bike race (surprise!!!!)  It was with the Utah State Championship Series and called the Park City 50.   50 miles in the mountains above Park City with 10,000 feet of climbing and ended at The Canyons Resort.   I will now turn the computer over to Brad so he can post all about it.....

Ready to Go

Brandon, Brad and Justin ready to go....



ready, set, go

I went into the PC50 bike race with a bit of of nervousness, having the last 50 mile race in Big Bear California kind of kicking my butt. This race had about 8,000 feet of climbing as well as being held at 7,000 to 9,000 feet in elevation so that always is something to respect.
But like with all my endurance events it is the difficulty that is it's allure to participate in the event, and again to help me prepare for P2P race coming up in September.
We headed up the mountain at 7:00am sharp, 300 hundred of us. I just started to use a heart rate monitor in my events to help myself pace my effort throughout the day. My target rate was 155 and my goal was to keep it under 160 through the first half of the race...it's a tough thing to do as other riders are riding away from you in the first part of the event, but I stuck to my plan.
There were 6,000 feet of climbing in the first half of the race so I knew if I could get through that and feel okay I would turn it up a bit for the second half.
So that is what I did, probably for the first time, I stayed with the plan and watched the computer on the bike and rode within the target numbers and can I say it went fantastic.
When I got to the aid station at the top of the mountain at mile 23 I really was feeling pretty darn good and then I thought this is where I turn it up but we kept climbing and climbing, and just when I was hitting a wall a bit we started the long downhill to connect to Mid-Mountain trail and over to the canyon resort where we finished the race, this is a trail that I'm very familiar with...but again I was feeling good and I was trying to keep my pace as strong as possible knowing we had about 20 miles left along with a tough section called the re-route. I got with a guy I think his name was Rich, he was wearing a Bike Fix kit and we rode the next 10 miles or so together and I was grateful for the companionship and the pace he kept, we parted ways at the mile 40 aid station. He stopped a drink a coke and I just wanted to get finished...so I rode the last 10 miles basically by myself, I was grateful that Bob let us go on down the canyon with out any nasty uphill surprises like they did to us in the P2P race...So I came down the canyon seeing the finish line and of course my faithful wife Lolly who volunteered at the event, my time was 5:43 and 7th place in my class...But the main thing I took away from this event is that I love Park City trails and that pacing yourself with a heart rate monitor helps in these long endurance events..It was a wonderful week with friends and family to in Utah! Missed my David...

Brad at finish line