 These changes certainly made the bike feel more like a mountain bike and made it descend better. But there's no getting around the fact that this thing has 40 centimeter drop bars on it instead of standard mountain bike bars. And there are two significant descents on the course where that could be a major problem. Welcome back to the channel. This video is fueled by the feed. The Leadville 100 shouldn't need any introduction at this point, but I am biased because I am an off-road racer that lives in the U.S. So in case you haven't heard of it, it is the premier 100 mile mountain bike race here in the U.S. and takes place in Leadville, Colorado, which sits at an altitude of 10,000 feet. And the race course goes up as high as 12,500 feet. Needless to say, altitude is what Leadville is known for. When you're this high up, there is a serious hit to your power output. We're talking about a 20 to 30% drop. And the risk of catastrophically blowing up is ever present with this little oxygen as well. So for a race of this duration, that means that efforts need to be carefully managed. The course is an out and back and the biggest climb of the race, which is Columbine, tops out at the halfway point. There are two other major climbs on course, which are power line and seeing Kevens. But you hit these on the way back as well, meaning that there are five big climbs total on the course. The rest is flat to rolling terrain and fairly fast. All right, let's talk about the surfaces that you're riding on during Leadville. Most people think that it's the altitude that makes Leadville a unique race. And while I do certainly agree with that, I actually think that it's the terrain that you're riding on that makes it more interesting, not because it's particularly difficult or technical. In fact, it's actually the opposite. I'm just going to be honest here, calling Leadville a mountain bike race is a bit like saying that GCN makes informative training videos. After all, in the entire 105 mile course, there's only a mile and a half of single track and it's pretty tame single track at that. That being said, it's not really a gravel race either. I think that doing this thing on a gravel bike would be a recipe for disaster because although there are sections where a gravel bike would be an advantage, there are some seriously chunky spots where a gravel bike would not only be slower, but you'd have an increased risk of puncturing and you'd be wasting a lot of energy. Just like I described in my recent big horn gravel video, this is a course that falls in the gray area between mountain bike and gravel. Now, most people, including the pros, will just be on a standard cross country mountain bike for this race. Maybe they'll wrap some bar tape around the middle of their bars for a more arrow hand position, but that's about as creative as they'll get. In my opinion, the reason for this is simply because it's advertised as a mountain bike race and it's historically raced on a mountain bike and it doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not a standard cross country mountain bike is the best bike for the job. Now, there are a few people who think outside the box when it comes to their bike set up for Leadville. For example, this year, Sofia Gomez Viafane used gravel tires on her mountain bike and Lachlan Morton used this ridiculous negative stem that makes his bike look like a real life interpretation of how a preschooler would draw a bicycle from memory. As you can probably guess, if you've watched my channel before, my bike setup was unconventional as well. How much you want to bet that this guy was one of those emo kids in high school who wore all black because he thought he was being different and edgy? I'll be doing a full bike check video on this bike soon, but basically I took my Factor Lando Hardtail mountain bike and put drop bars on it. This is the same bike that I used for Big Horn and Crusher in the Tushar, which are both technically gravel races. But there are some important changes that I made for Leadville. I swapped out the 40 millimeter Fox taper cast gravel fork with the 100 millimeter Fox 32 step cast mountain bike fork and fitted the bike with a Fox transfer SL dropper post and 36 tooth chain ring instead of the 42 tooth chain ring that I had on for gravel racing. These changes certainly made the bike feel more like a mountain bike and made it descend better. But there's no getting around the fact that this thing has 40 centimeter drop bars on it instead of standard mountain bike bars. And there are two significant descents on the course where that could be a major problem. The first is the power line downhill outbound, which has really rough and rocky double track and gets very steep at the bottom. And the other is the Columbine downhill, which is also very rough at the top. While drop bars may be either faster or neutral on every other section of the course, losing too much time on these particular sections could mean losing contact with a fast group to work with on the flat sections. And then even though you are more aerodynamic, you would be going slower simply by the fact that you're riding alone. For this reason, this setup was a bit of a gamble, but I had tested this bike in training on the course and I'd gotten within five or 10 seconds of some of my fastest times from the previous year when I had used normal mountain bike bars. So I was pretty confident that I wouldn't be losing too much. However, I'd have to wait till race day to see how that actually played out. At the end of the video, I'm going to be giving my verdict on whether or not I thought this bike setup was a good call or a bad call. So be sure to stick around for that. Just like at Bighorn as well, I decided to give myself a power ceiling to stick to instead of just trying to stay with the leaders and potentially risk blowing up. I made this mistake last year and lost a lot of time in the second half of the race. In fact, at the top of Columbine at the halfway point, I was in 15th place and by the time I hit the finish line, I had dropped to 20th. So what power ceiling did I give myself? Given the duration of this race and the extremely high altitude, I chose 280 watts. At sea level, this would be an equivalent of 345 watts. And I'm going to be honest, that's quite an ambitious goal for a race that's going to take six to seven hours for me. Holding 345 watts on the climbs for a race this long is something that I've never done before. But I felt like my form was really good going into this race. So that's the number I went with. Again, this is also just my ceiling. So if I had to drop it down as I got higher up in altitude, I would throughout this video, I'll be giving you my power numbers, but I'll also be doing that thing where I make myself feel better by giving you the much more impressive sea level equivalent power numbers, which is the power numbers that I theoretically could have done if this effort was at sea level. All right, with the stage fully set, let's get into how the race played out. Right from the gun, the pace was pretty hot. This wasn't too much of a surprise because it was no secret that Keegan Swenson was going for the course record. And his teammate, Tobin Ortonblad, helped him out by pulling as hard as he could into the first climb of the day. That being said, this part of the course is actually a slight downhill. And by staying in the drops and using my dropper post to get extremely low and aerodynamic, I was actually able to save a lot of energy here, doing just 228 NP for 14 and a half minutes, going into the first climb, which is a sea level equivalent of 272 Watts. And then at the bottom of the first climb, I said Sayonara to the front group because I was sticking to my pacing strategy and the goal would be to catch as many people as possible who didn't pace themselves correctly, which spoiler alert is almost everyone who does this race. This of course meant that right off the bat on the first climb, I was probably sitting between 50th and 60th position, but it didn't take long for riders to start dropping back. And by the time I hit the top of this climb, I was in 44th place. Even with my very strict pacing strategy, I still got excited and went a bit too hard on this first climb, doing 286 Watts NP for 23 minutes or 342 at sea level. After a quick road descent to start the second climb up to Powerline, I found myself in a group of four, but as soon as we hit the climb, I would be off on my own again, searching for another group. And I wanna emphasize just how important it is to find a fast group to work with after Powerline. From the bottom of Powerline to the base of the Columbine climb, you can lose massive amounts of time if you find yourself riding alone. On my way up to Powerline, I passed Keri Warner, Tobin Ortonblad, and Stefano Barbieri, who I knew would be strong riders to work with on the flats, but I wanted to get a head start into the descent if possible, because chances are with their level of bike handling and superior bike setup for this section of the course, they would be moving a bit quicker. This second climb required an NP of 281 Watts for 24 minutes or a 342 Watts sea level equivalent, and then it was into the descent. Keri Warner did manage to catch me on the descent, but I actually felt like I managed the descent quite well and was able to get on his wheel at the bottom on the road. What I didn't anticipate was that former Marathon mountain bike world champion, Andrea Seawald, would suffer a flat tire, and by the time he got it fixed, he was chasing with Keri and I. This couldn't have worked out better. We had a world champion level talent in our group to help us pull on the flats, and before long, our group had swelled to five or six highly motivated riders. And by this point in the race, I was sitting in 29th place. Over the next hour, the group changed a bit as riders dropped off and we caught new ones. We managed to catch a group of three containing Australian gravel and mountain bike national champion, Brennan Johnston, Tasman Ninkervis and Jack O'Dron, which is the crew that I raced with at Bighorn. And it would be these riders along with Andrea Seawald that I would start the Columbine climb with. This flat section before Columbine lasted about an hour and required an NP of 261 watts or 307 at sea level. As we started up Columbine, Andreas dropped us almost immediately and Jack started to ride away from me too. I was fairly unconcerned by this though. I was still trying to pace myself at this point. In fact, last year, this climb really was the beginning of the end for me. I went so hard up it that I pretty much had nothing left for the second half of the race. I was not going to make that same mistake again, so I kept things in control. Even despite this controlled pace though, I still managed to catch riders that were blowing up from the front group and by the top I had moved up to 23rd place. The Columbine climb took an hour and five minutes and I did 274 watts NP or 338 at sea level. The top of this climb hits the highest point of the race at 12,500 feet and it's also one of the steepest sections of the course. Needless to say, this is one of the hardest parts of the race, not just physically but also mentally, but I felt like I was in a much better place this year than I was last year. My heart rate wasn't through the roof, my breathing was in control and I felt like I had a lot more motivation for the second half of the race instead of absolutely dreading it. As I turned back down the mountain, I still had Brennan Johnson on my wheel and I had just caught Andrew Lesbee. These are two very skilled mountain bikers but hopefully if I could keep them in contact on the descent, I would be able to work with them on the flat section that followed and that's exactly what happened. While the drop bars were a bit sketchy at the top in the chunky stuff, once you get a third of the way down, it's all smooth gravel and keeping up with the drop bars was no problem. The three of us were together on this flat section of the course but unfortunately for me, they weren't able to do a lot of the pulling. Probably because my bike setup was a bit faster than theirs but also because I had paced more conservatively in the first half of the race meaning that I had more matches than they had at this point. In fact, my power output on the way back on this flat section was actually only one watt lower than on the way out at 260 watts NP or 305 at sea level, which goes to show that at least up to this point, I had been pacing this race really well but the steepest climb on the course was yet to come going up power line and of course there was another climb after that. This is an absolutely brutal part of the race and riders can easily blow up here. So I would soon find out whether this pace I chose was in fact too ambitious or just right. Coming into power line, I had dropped Brendan and Lesbie and managed to catch a few more. So I was now sitting in 19th and I was still feeling good and determined to see how many more riders I could pick off. Going up power line was a big effort though. The steepest part is right at the bottom with grades hitting nearly 20% and I kind of just had to throw pacing out the window at this point which wasn't a huge deal because we are coming down to the end of the race here. I managed 293 watts NP for just under nine minutes which is 350 at sea level. A quick descent in the middle of the climb gave me some recovery and I managed to do the entire climb in just under 30 minutes with an NP of 270 or 329 at sea level. At the top I caught Ryan Standish and the two of us rode into the last paved climb together but it didn't take long before I was able to shake him from my wheel. This climb being so late in the race required all of my concentration and effort. There was no pacing at this point. It was simply time to put my head down and crank out as many watts as I could and that meant 270 watts for 18 minutes which again was 329 watts at sea level. By the time I got to the top of this climb I had Pete Stetna just barely in sight and it was also at this time that I checked my race time to see how I was doing. I was shocked to see that I was cresting this final climb in just under the six hour mark which meant that this time was going to be a huge PR for me. After the final descent is a bit of a false flat road and gravel section until you hit the finishing chute. It didn't take long for me to catch and pass Pete and then in the last three miles of the race I caught Logan Owen. I tried to make a move on Logan when I passed him but he still had enough juice in his legs to get on my wheel. Being that we were so close to the finish Logan was unwilling to help with the pulling and I don't blame him. This left me with a decision. Either ride tactically and try to beat Logan in the sprint which would also give Pete an opportunity to potentially catch us back or just keep my head down and keep riding as hard as I could into the finish line to get the fastest time possible. Sure Logan would beat me in the sprint if I did that but fast times are highly coveted at Leadville and I knew that I was on an absolute heater so I went with the latter. Sure enough Logan did beat me in the sprint and you can see here that he barely looks like he's trying as he comes around me while I look like I'm about to have an aneurysm. I crossed the line in 17th place in a time of six hours, 26 minutes and 45 seconds. And in hindsight I probably should have been a bit more tactical about my sprint because it just so happens that Logan Owen is the rider who's one place ahead of me in the lifetime Grand Prix standings which I'm now currently sitting in 16th place with three races to go. You live and you learn I guess. In the final section leading into the finish I did 275 watts for 24 minutes or 323 watts at sea level. The fact that I was still able to put out this kind of power this late into the race really tells me that I paced this thing right. It was an ambitious number that I chose but it seems like it was the right one. For the entire race I had an NP of 259 and an average power of 228 which is 309 and 272 at sea level respectively. This entire effort also required over 5,000 kilojoules and 422 TSS with an average speed of 16.3 miles per hour. These numbers are huge for me. Not only are they a big improvement on last year's Leadville but they're the highest numbers that I've seen for this duration and altitude period. To put this effort into perspective I went 20 minutes faster this year than I did last year and 19 of those 20 minutes was made up in the second half of the race which goes to show how much better I paced it this time. This was also the fastest year ever in the history of Leadville. Of course there was the absolutely insane time by Keegan Swenson of five hours and 43 minutes but the entire profiled has clearly stepped it up a notch. To put it into context the time that I got this year would have gotten me seventh place last year and on the podium in many previous editions just a couple years back. Huh, would have been faster in the past. Cool, I'm adding that to my list of excuses. Finally, let's talk about these drop bars. After doing the race on this unique setup what is my conclusion? Worth it or just another dumb idea that I had that you know I probably just did to get attention? After all I am a YouTuber. The honest answer is that I am convinced now more than ever that Leadville is a drop bar course and let me prove it to you. At the top of the video I said that there were two downhill sections that I was worried about. The power line descent and the column line descent. Well on race day according to Strava I actually ended up getting my fastest time ever on the power line descent and a time that was faster than last year's race day effort on the column line descent and to boot apparently I was fourth place out of all riders ever on the one and only single track section of the entire course. Dude, is this actually happening? You're finally talking about something that actually matters on this channel. Strava segments, still didn't get to KLM though so. Take out those three sections and this race is basically a gravel race and the drop bars helped tremendously with getting in a more aerodynamic position. I think that pretty much cements it. Now I will say that it did take a lot of time riding this particular bike setup for me to get this fast descending with drop bars so they probably wouldn't be the move if you weren't used to it but for me I can't see myself lining up at Leadville without drop bars at this point. Thanks for watching. If you wanna follow my racing closer be sure to check me out on Instagram. If you enjoyed this video be sure to give it a like, subscribe and share it with your cycling friends. See you in the next one.