Well, that was pretty amazing, and equally hard.

The cliff notes. Foul weather rolled in early morning, 2am. Sounded like the Gods were angry.

6:30am our crew was drinking coffee and listening to it rain. The weather said it was 46 but felt like 38. Our group busied themselves adding extra dry socks and kit into the aid bags that would be available at mile 11 and 25.

Then, Mother Nature relented. The 50mi system, would blow thru by ~9:00am. The community of Breckenridge cherishes their trail system and they made the right decision, to delay the start by 2 hours and in doing so, cut the route in half. *note: this was a monumental decision by the community to do what would be best for everyone, most importantly, to protect the trails.

We didn’t mind.

I had some more bacon.

The new route was now 17miles, rollout was at 10am, sharp. Sweet! LOL

Our group made it to the start line coral and lined-up waiting for our wave call-up. The Pros went out. Jeremiah Bishop looked amped at the front (not a spoiler: he won).

The Sun came out. We took one last photo of today’s group before the duo-co-ed and 50/50 groups went off.

{A quick side note. Jena and I have been blessed with some amazing friends. We’re fortunate to share our adventures in this crazy life, with this tribe. This week we’re surrounded by close friends and their families who we love very much….and there’s not question we’ll lean on each other as the week’s miles and elevation add up and weigh on  our spirits. }

Back to the race start. And then we were off….

And now, for the #BreckEpic Day 1 race report, which kind of goes like this:

Ow. {cuss words}

:Elevation punched ‘ol Tank Ass in the Soul. Otherwise, I Survived, and more importantly, Jena did great (and we’re still talking). 

The above photo was my view for the day. Jena was flying up the single track ramps, which in many places were in the high teens for incline. Meanwhile, yours truly felt like he was breathing thru a wet sock and sounded like I had smoked a carton of Newports before today’s ride.

I’m fairly certain my HR was >170 for the first 90minutes, then my HR strap started acting wonky and just stopped….that or the ticker just quit, which wouldn’t surprise me.

Jena rode masterfully up all the “grunty” single track. She made it look like it was easy. Tank Ass here rode the struggle bus and eventually did some hike-a-bike to try and keep my heart from exploding.

We made the aid station at mile 14. I realized I hadn’t eaten. That probably didn’t help.

I ate some waffles and took some fluids. Then I ate a few more, just for good measure, and off we went.

I felt  human again and we hit the final descent of the day. Jena was kind and let me take the lead. 3 miles from the finish, with a nice twisty stretch of glorious single track and gravel road to finish.

Afterwards, our crew met up at the city center, to soak our tired legs in the creek and enjoy a beer.

We survived day one, an abbreviated version of day one at that. Tomorrow will be quite a bit harder. We hit the Colorado Trail with 42 miles and 6500′ of climbing.

But for now, sleep.

#BreckEpic18 #DonateLife #BeTheGift #TeamTransplant#TeamSweetPigQueenofthePotRoasts #HattieBsRacing #LittleHarpethBrewing #MathenyEndurance #571wordcount