Saturday was yet another beautiful Colorado day and a great day for racing.  The Pedal Power races typically start a little later in the day which gives the day some time to warm up especially above 10,000 feet.  We arrived with plenty of time to get my gear set up in the transition area and get out for a quick warm-up on the bike.

We started with a 5k snowshoe on 75% singletrack which was very enjoyable especially on my Atlas race shoes.  I settled into my pace with Lisa Isom close behind all the way into the bike transition.  I transitioned well and got out on the bike course and quickly realized my tire pressure was not perfect.  The back end of my bike was fishtailing and often sinking into the groomed nordic trail. I was running about 10psi in some tubeless Maxxis Crossmark 2.3’s, which felt fine on my practice ride, but as soon as the groomed trail got a little chewed up during the race, they were terrible.  Lisa rode past me looking like I was standing still and continued a great ride to eventually put over three minutes on me by the time we got to T2.  I was unable to catch Lisa in the skate but I still had a great race and felt like I raced strong and definitely had a lot of fun.

Juniper, Ian and I enjoyed some sledding, sun and good food while the results were organized.  Lisa got me by about 3 minutes while Mike Kloser posted the fastest skate ski of the day to pass Travis Macy.  Stephen White made up lots of time in the bike and skate to move into 3rd.  Results are posted here with all the splits.

Mike Kloser finishing the snowshoe leg.

I wore my helmet on the run to help keep my transition onto the bike as fast as possible.

Heading out on the bike.

Finish!

Lots more photos here thanks to my great support team – Ian & Juniper!

More rando racing this weekend at the COSMIC Crested Butte race.  In the meantime, I’ll be getting out on my bike training and trying to get the tire pressure dialed to hopefully defend my title at the XTERRA Winter World Champs in March.