Several years ago, Mike Mac, the director of the infamous Breck Epic stage race in Breckinridge, Colorado, took it upon himself to find a way to increase the female participation at his event, and created the Women’s Tour. In short, the Women’s Tour provides fully comped entries to the Breck Epic for pro women. Year one, there were 63 pro women. That’s mind boggling and incredible.

Unfortunately, though Mike had generously accepted me into the Women’s Tour each year, I had not been able to make it fit within my race schedule and larger goals for each season. Racing at elevation for six days was a demand on the system that I was afraid would compromise other target races that always seemed to fall in short succession after Breck Epic. So this year, I committed to Breck Epic, excited to be a part of the Women’s Tour and to experience the legendary backcountry trails that the race is all about.

When August finally rolled around, the two weeks leading up to Breck Epic were complete chaos. Work had snowballed into an all-new level of nightmarish, and somehow my January self thought that racing enduro in Maryland on Sunday, working a full week, and driving to Colorado by Friday was perfectly reasonable. It’s not. So when I rolled in to Breckenridge on Saturday morning, I was equal parts excited for the race and exhausted from life. Oh, and completely unprepared to race.

As someone who is very used to car camping, my original plan was to car camp at the Ice Rink, and, at registration, had paid for a camping spot there, which would include shower and toilet access. I had previously car camped during BCBR and TSE, so knew that doing so during a stage race was definitely do-able, but this would be the first attempt at doing so with no dining options–meaning, I’d be fully reliant on cooking my own meals by JetBoil. My plan was eggs, bagels, and LOTS of pre-cooked rice packets with tuna.

It’s probably for the best that I didn’t have to find out how successful that would be on this go. At check-in, I ran into some friends who offered me the spare room in their condo–transforming my anticipated solo camping situation into a fun, social week in a shared condo. Honestly, I’ve never been so spoiled during a bike race: shared meal prep (of which I did very little), detailed course intel from racers who had raced Breck Epic numerous times previously, my bike washed for me after the race each day, and even RC cars to race instead of obsessing over work or the next day’s stage.

The first stage was a major shock to the system. Admittedly, I hadn’t ridden my XC bike since Nationals, nearly a month earlier, and my training has been generously sprinkled with bike park laps in the interim, but still, I found stage 1 to be incredibly difficult. I set a pretty conservative heart rate “cap” for the day, and even with that, felt like I couldn’t breathe and with about ten miles left to go, was hitting a wall. When I got back to the condo, my race recap was simply: “Holy shit. I’m so cracked. I don’t know if I can do six days of this.” Oof.

Surprisingly, after a relatively poor night of sleep (my Garmin watch struggled to adapt to the elevation and seemed to think I didn’t sleep at all the first few nights; I’d argue that I slept, but not necessarily well. lol.), stage two felt better than the first day. I stuck to my heart rate cap, kept it pretty easy, and felt like I could hold a steady pace…until the last climb. Looking back, I was probably a bit underfueled, as I was struggling to get my carb mix down for the last half of the day. Still, I finished stage two and was a bit more positive about my capability to finish the week. Stage two also included some sweet trail descents, which boosted my mood significantly.

As perhaps an indication of how cracked I was after just two days of racing, I found myself typing “5×100” into my phone calculator after dinner on the second day….and promptly face-palmed. Wow. I also discovered that, due to my chaotic week and lack of real planning for this race, I only brought half of the necessary carb mix with me, which prompted a hurried overnight order from Carborocket to make sure that I had enough fuel for the second half of the week. Face-palm again.

By stage 3, I felt like I had found my rhythm, with the exception of the very beginning of the hike-a-bike section up to French Pass. I still wasn’t able to put down any kind of power without my heart rate spiking up, and as a result, found myself walking way earlier than I thought I should be–and was frustrated by it. As I put it afterwards, “I wanted to sit down and cry, but I didn’t.” lol. It was beautiful though, and reminded me of the Gran Raid course in Switzerland last year, which also had a long alpine hike-a-bike. One of the stage 3 descents was a section of the Colorado Trail (and I think I passed close to 20 people on that single descent?!) and it was SUHWEET, and in general, the stage had more singletrack descending, which I enjoyed–even if the last climb still broke me a little.

Day four was when everything finally felt like it came together. I was deep enough into the week that I discarded my heart rate cap, and just rode by feel. Despite feeling awful at the start, once I settled in, I felt like I could start to breathe more normally, and actually felt like I was producing some power when pedaling, not just surviving. It probably also helped that the climbs on Stage 4 were “tall girl climbs,” less steep than some of the earlier stages. Early in the stage, I did eject myself into a juniper tree, which resulted in a still-healing scratch extending from my forearm all the way to my arm pit. That’s what I get for following the rider in front of me too closely and being impatient for a pass. Just as I was getting ready to start the Colorado Trail descent (again, SUHWEEET!), it starting raining/storming, so I was extra eager to get down (thunderstorms when you’re up over 11,000 feet are scary!), and was grateful for the rain and clouds to cool things off a bit, plus, who doesn’t love some wet roots and rocks?! (Apparently, a LOT of Colorado riders, lol). It was also near the top third of that descent where I flatted (I heard it, and felt the sealant), but then it felt fine, so kept riding on it–all the way to the finish, nearly 12 miles later. Only to find out that I had indeed flatted, and had been riding on ~12 psi. Oops—thank goodness for Cush Core!

Stage five was supposed to be the infamous Wheeler day, which involves two climbs up over 12k, a significant amount of hike-a-bike, and, apparently, a fairly rowdy descent. Unfortunately, thunderstorms all day meant that the stage was canceled. Though I’m disappointed (because I did want to ride Wheeler and think it would have been a good day for me), I do support the decision that was made (because I don’t want to be above tree line in a thunderstorm, nor did I really want to ride Wheeler while wet and cold…or be struck by lightening!). So we did some RC car racing, did an easy spin into town for breakfast burritos, and generally just rested all day.

The final day of the week was stage 6, which was also the shortest day. In typical fashion, I probably felt the best of all week on day 6. Even so, I did go out a bit hard to start and blew up before the top of the first climb, forcing me to dial it back in. But I recovered on the first descent and pushed a more steady pace up the long climb back up… then held ‘er open on the next descent (and got myself a QOM for my efforts) and pushed hard for the finish.

In the end, my results were very average, even if I did manage to move up a GC spot every day. (I finished 17/25), but I honestly consider finishing relatively unscathed (bike and body!) to be a success. In reality, with my knee and the elevation, I knew that this race was not going to be about results–it was all about the experience, and essentially a high-altitude training camp for events yet to come. I am curious how I could do if healthy and even slightly acclimated to the elevation though…and I do want to ride Wheeler sometime, so who knows, maybe I’ll be back?