2007 
All Skiing Adventures - 2005 Mt. Taylor Quad - 2002 Mt. Taylor Quad
Saturday, February
17, 2007
This marks the fourth time I’ve entered this race. It is extremely
well run and I always enjoy the challenge. This is a 42-mile race that starts
in downtown Grants,
My training for this race was spotty at best. I didn’t think
I was very fit and might not have registered except that I committed to it
with a great group of friends and family. My sister Kumi was doing it for
the first time and her boyfriend Russ Bollig, a 3-time top-3 finisher, was
joining her. My good friend the Loobster was teaming up with Kumi’s best friend
Julie to enter as a pair. Loobster would handle the skiing and snowshoeing
and Julie, a very experienced triathelete, would do the biking and running.
The crux of the whole weekend for me was the drive down. I was riding down to the race with Julie and all-world trail runner Lisa Goldsmith. This drive is the biggest barrier to this race. If the race was local, I’d definitely do it every year, no matter what my fitness level was. It’s an 8+ hour drive in good weather and we’ve frequently had horrible weather. Taking a drive this long while in close quarters with two attractive women put in a severe crimp in my regular bodily emanation schedule. With nary a dog to blame it on, my wife will be amazed to learn that I made the entire drive without breaking wind once. Before the race even started, I had a personal record.
At the hotel we met Brian Hunter, his wife Vicki, and their
two young daughters. Brian gave everyone a huge hug, as is his custom. After
a big embrace with the Loobster, Brian steps back and says, “Hi, I’m Brian.
Who are you?” Classic Brian behavior. He hugged me the first time I met him
as well. This guy is always super fit and has qualified for the Hawaii Ironman
Triathlon a number of times. He’s an outstanding all-around endurance athlete
and quite accomplished running, biking, skate skiing, swimming, etc. He even
did an adventure race with me 
once.
We won our division with Brian towing me behind him with surgical cord. He
is one of the most positive persons I have ever met. His wife and kids are
the same way and a complete hug-fest ensued.
A bit later Lisa’s partner Steve Ilg showed up. This guy is fit! He’s sort of a Brian Hunter clone. Super friendly, super fit, super cut…super guy. Everyone immediately became friends. I love a group like that. Steve’s a prolific author on all things fitness and I even own one of his books: The Outdoor Athlete.
In order to make up for my lack of fitness, I prepared for this race like I never have before. First and most importantly, I put aerobars on my bike. There is no drafting on the downhill bike leg and having these bars can really add to your speed. I’d never before remembered that these were legal. Next, I had shoe-expert-extraordinaire Russ custom mount a pair of running shoes on my snowshoes. Now I had no binding and no chance of losing a shoe, which I did the last time I raced down there. Lastly, I put tri-geek, quick laces on my running shoes for faster transitions. Originally I had planned to combine these tricks with superior fitness and set a personal best, but, alas, TV and Ding Dongs got in the way. What can you do?
There were near perfect conditions for the race start and
the entire day. When the gun started us, Russ bolted out in front of everyone.
I thought he was trying a breakaway already. Afterwards I learned that he
just expected everyone to bolt and he didn’t want to get left behind. As it
turned out, the bike pace was quite slow until past the prison, where the
pace picked up, but still not that great until the first real rise, where
Josiah Middaugh (the eventual winner) got things going with a strong attack.
A group of 7-8 went off, but I didn’t follow them. It was too fast for me.
Russ, however, did join the lead group.
I followed Kari Nelson (last year’s winner and this year’s eventual winner by a huge margin) for a ways, but she dropped me. I was probably 10th off the bike. The Quad was way smaller this year: only 147 Soloists, of which 27 were women. I did the bike in 55 minutes and then did the run in 48 minutes. I kept ahead of Brian Hunter all the way on the run, but he passed in the transition when the volunteers didn’t bring my skis for 30-60 seconds. That sucked. My uphill ski was pretty good and I passed 3 or 4 people and no one passed me. The snowshoe was tough and 3 guys passed me back. I made the top in 2:44 (Brian in 2:39). My goal each year is to try and beat Brian to the summit and I’m getting closer. I have no aspirations to beat him in the entire race, however. He’s way too fast on the descent. On the way up I noticed Russ in 5th overall, Kari Nelson was ahead of him! So he was in 4th of the males at the summit. Brian was 3 or 4 places in front of me.
No one passed me on the downhill snowshoe for once. I ran
the whole way in just over 11 minutes. I passed three guys on the downhill
ski, including Eric Bindner who I met after the race, and stood up the whole
way – a feat since it was really fast and I was on the ragged edge. Brian
fell. Russ fell multiple times and so did Kumi. Loobster took a couple of
falls on the descent, but did the roundtrip in a respectable1h50m. I was in
12th place at the summit and 12th at the start of the
downhill ski. I moved up to 9th overall after the ski (8th
male). I got passed by two guys on the downhill run and another closed up
right behind me at the finish. I was a minute behind the next guy in front
of me and therefore in 11th place overall (10th male).
My bike down was okay. I made the hill hurt, but I still wasn’t closing on the guy in front of me. Once we hit the flats I had a nice tailwind and was going 29mph. I started to close, but only had 5 miles left. At the turn, I was 30 seconds back and closing. At the final turn, he looked back and me and started to sprint. At 200 meters he took another look and thought he had me. I wouldn’t give up after all this effort and used my bike sprinting skills to take him by half a bike length! We were given the same finishing time. As I passed him on the line he said, “Great sprint!” What a good sportsman he was.
I finished 10th overall (9th male),
but 4th in my age group! Eric Black was 5th, Russ 6th,
Brian 7th, overall, and 1, 2,3 in my age group. My time was good:
4:25:17. Only a minute off my PR, which is shocking to me since I didn’t think
I was that fit. The first 6 miles of the bike were slow and that hurt me,
plus the ski transition, so I feel it was a PR effort. I’m surprised and happy.
Russ finished in 4:11 and Brian in 4:13. Kumi did awesome and finished
looking great in 5:45. Vicki Hunter had her best race in years – 5:20. Julie
and Loobster did very well – 5:33 and won their pair division! Lisa and Steve
Ilg easily won the pairs (no surprise) and only one team (probably all males)
beat them. Their time was right around 4 hours even. Amazing! Everyone brought
home an award save for Kumi and I. This is a humbling group to hang out with…
After recovering for a bit after the race, I rode out to see Kumi, Lisa, and Julie finish. Mostly they flew by too fast for me to get a photo, so for Julie I rode out at least a couple of miles so that I’d have time to ride with her and take some photos. After Julie finished we headed back to the hotel and hit the hot tub. We were still in there when the Loobster showed up. He had his own car and we didn’t bother waiting for him to get back down.
After showering, we headed out to a Mexican restaurant that Steve recommended. Here the service was beyond bad. After 20 minutes we didn’t even have water. We finally got some chips and were told our order, no matter what it was, would take more than hour to serve. I was starving, but we had to get to the awards. Here we did something very unusual. We ordered our dinner and requested that it be ready at 8:15 p.m. Then we left, without paying our bill, just promising to return! I was amazed they did this for us. If we didn’t return, the restaurant would have to cover the drinks, chips, guacamole and the uneaten dinners. We knew we’d return, but they didn’t. They didn’t know us. That’s the mark of small town. Sure enough, after picking up the hardware, we returned and had a delicious dinner, as the only patrons in the restaurant.
| Place | Name | Bikeup | Runup | Skiup | Shoeup | Up | Shoedown | SkiDown | RunDown | BikeDown | Down | Total |
| 6 | Russ Bolligg | 53:50 | 47:54 | 31:38 | 20:08 | 2:33:28 | 8:51 | 17:01 | 40:28 | 30:44 | 1:37:03 | 4:10:30 |
| 7 | Brian Hunter | 58:29 | 47:13 | 32:38 | 21:51 | 2:40:09 | 8:05 | 15:17 | 38:45 | 32:04 | 1:34:09 | 4:14:17 |
| 9 | Bill Wright | 55:16 | 50:59 | 34:19 | 24:12 | 2:44:45 | 10:51 | 16:31 | 42:53 | 30:18 | 1:40:32 | 4:25:17 |
| 5 | Vicki Hunter | 1:10:32 | 1:01:16 | 41:26 | 28:07 | 3:21:20 | 11:24 | 27:26 | 43:02 | 37:06 | 1:58:57 | 5:20:16 |
| 9 | Kim Wright | 1:18:17 | 1:05:07 | 44:55 | 31:13 | 3:39:30 | 14:08 | 23:56 | 49:07 | 38:59 | 2:06:08 | 5:45:38 |
| 1 | Mountain Yogis (Lisa and Steve) | 57:55 | 44:39 | 31:37 | 21:07 | 2:35:17 | 8:15 | 13:40 | 32:55 | 31:05 | 1:25:53 | 4:01:09 |
| 1 | J Loob | 1:14:07 | 1:03:53 | 40:52 | 29:27 | 3:28:18 | 15:23 | 26:38 | 45:41 | 37:21 | 2:05:01 | 5:33:18 |
