Well doing a qualifier should at least increase one’s chances in the lottery. Isn’t there someone on the forum that’s entered the lottery 5 times and never gotten selected? Those are the ones I’m super bummed for.
Even just more coins at events would be an improvement.
You could argue that going to a qualifier is already increasing your chances of the lottery (ie - you get to do a “mini” lottery after the race with better odds). But yeah, I guess they could give some preference at the broader lottery as well. If I were running the show, I probably wouldn’t do that because folks would likely see it as a $ grab by Lifetime (taking away the last path of entry without having to buy other stuff first). Honestly, I think the lottery is becoming a joke with the guaranteed lifetime entry thing (which does look like a $ grab). All that said, Lifetime is free to make the rules and they are a for profit company. Just bad optics in my opinion, but they don’t “owe” any of us a spot in the race.
Yep, just have to get folks in the company to balance profit and public perception, which right now is tilted toward “Well that’s a skeezey cash grab isn’t it?”
Look at Turo…like Air BnB for cars. Renting a car at the Denver Airport can take some time logistically once you are on the ground. With Turo, the car owner may park the car in short term parking for you…easy to walk to and get on the road. Will save some time and likely not any more expensive.
Turo sounds like a good option.
Denver Airport is a bit of pain when you have a bike and are renting a car. Not impossible but you have to drag you bike onto a bus that takes you out to the rent-a-car area. A bike bag and a backback makes it a little easier, but if you have more luggage it gets pretty cumbersome.
My preference is to fly into Eagle as we often stay near Avon anyway. Eagle is a great airport and rental cars are right outside the door. Although flights may be a little more to Eagle, I’ve found at times the rental car rates are less in Eagle compared to Denver, but your mileage may vary. Dropping off the care there is super easy too as you just leave it in a lot outside the door.
I just saw a Porsche on Turo for the same price as a Corolla, I may not get a belt-buckle, but I’ll be arriving in style!
I wouldn’t even bother wasting the entire day racing bikes. Make the most out of your time on that thing! 
I’ve been trying to resist going on my usual tirade but you guys are setting it up too well, speaking of money grabs by Lifetime that go against the entire spirit of the race is this my monthly reminder that the Lifetime gym membership preferred signup is BS and I encourage everyone to make a stink about it until Lifetime changes course.
They should give a higher preference to people who have entered the lottery multiple times and not gotten in. It would be pretty easy to weight applications based on number of prior entries.
After watching the FTGU video above, I’m tempted to enter the lottery this year 
I guess I’ll have to either win the run up the sledding hill, or my age group, or both.
I was about 10th up the hill last time I raced Silver Rush, and I wasn’t very fit that year, so that’s plausible.
Do you have to finish the race to claim the coin for fist up the hill at the start? Maybe go all-in on the run at the start, running shoes, optimize your bike choice for uphill running…
One has to finish under the time limit which is 8 or 9 hours.
I’ve thought about that. It’s 100 yards up chunky hard dirt and it really seems like it’s a 100% grade. It’s a sledding hill in the winter. It’s a 90 second effort with a bike. Very few people carried their bike, but it seems like carrying might be faster. I need to experiment…
I think there might be some videos out there of the start, seem to recall the fast guys shouldering their bike cross style.
Weekly Training Recap Blog #1
I invite others to post training updates, comment on my training, or tell me that weekly posts is too much. In terms of training style, my focus is mostly on having fun with just enough structure to maximize fitness gains. I also know I am officially in Leadville 2024 with the deferred entry.
Week TSS: 398
Time: 8h 01m
FTP: 240 (method, best guess)
Weight: 177.0 lbs
Monday - Off
Tuesday - 0:45 base ride on the trainer. NP 201. Realistically this is a little higher effort than I should be doing for my base rides, plan to fix next week.
Wednesday - 1:08 base ride on trainer. NP 162
Thursday - 1:01 base ride on trainer. NP 179
Friday - 0:57 high intensity on trainer. 0:45 of which was a Zwift Cat C race where I met my only goal of finishing with the front pack. NP 227 during the race. Zwift racing is so much fun and I hope to improve a bit here as my weight drops and FTP goes up.
Saturday - 2:00 base ride on gravel with the mountain bike. NP 151
Sunday - 2:06 base ride on gravel with the mountain bike. NP 178. Felt great and was an amazing Minnesota morning with 1/2 inc of fresh snow on the trail and 25 degrees. Won’t be long before I need to transition to the fat tire bike.
What’s next - Next two weeks I plan to mostly just maintain the current volume/effort. Primary switch will be moving the high intensity to the middle of the week and Fridays will be a super easy recovery ride. First weight goal is to see 169 lbs before January 1 and my first FTP test will be in 3 weeks during a recovery week.
Good luck to all when you officially start down the training path!
I don’t have a full recap, but my training plan looks like this…
56 yo Male, 200lbs, FTP 258
TR XCM Plan through Leadville.
Events listed in the plan. All will be done on MTB. HT or FS depending on the course
10 FEB Rock Cobbler as a B
19 APR Fuego XL as an A in attempt to get out of white corral
18 MAY Stetina’s Pay Dirt as a C
29 JUN Lutsen 99er as a B, again to get out of white corral or improve placement
10 AUG Leadville as THE A.
Monday - Strength (Wukarfit minimal equipment)
Tuesday - TR Sweet Spot 1hr
Wed - Zwift or Outside Endurance 1hr
Thurs - Zwift or Outside Endurance 1hr
Friday - Strength (Wukarfit)
Saturday - TR Threshold or a 3+ Hour lap around the Fuego XL Course because I’m a 1h 5m drive from one of the entry points of Fort Ord. Course knowledge helps.
Sunday - 2 HR Endurance/Social ride
So all in all it’s about putting in the work and testing the results at various points on the calendar.
Just a heads up… Sea Otter XL is on Friday, April 19th.
Also… last year’s xc course rides up 50 South. Don’t know why they do that but the “local” way is to climb 49 and descend on 50. Yes, trails are two way and yes, downhill should control speed and yield… but I personally wouldn’t risk it. I know someone who was involved in a head on crash and many other close calls. Just my opinion, but it is not worth the risk (especially on a weekend) and would climb up barloy canyon rd. parallel to 50 and then cut up the steep barloy spur trail to lookout. Heck, last year came across people coming down it during race week, even though it was marked as the race course 
Sea Otter is it’s own thing, so making a Sea Otter 2024 thread here…
My training approach will be similar to last year, but plan to try a little more volume.
Unbound (Early June) is my A race, then I will take a couple easy weeks and do a 2nd build/specialty running into Leadville. The prep for Unbound is pretty ideal setup for Leadville, very similar demands except you don’t need as much intensity for Leadville.
My high level approach -
A few months of base where I’m primarily focused on Z2 volume, but some intensity worked in. I will not bury myself in intervals during this time and like to keep it fun, I save that motivation for the last few months (build/specialty). I include a good bit of tempo/sweet spot, but I enjoy that and don’t find it mentally taxing. Base starts next week (Dec. 4)
Moving into build (~ March)-
Tues/Thurs focused intervals (sweet spot, v02, threshold) sandwiched with z2 (~.7 IF) work. Working those rides up to about 4 hours (outside). These are really my only interval days.
Saturday is long ride with less structure, mainly trying to push as many Kj’s through the legs as possible. Early in the season, this means incorporating team group rides into the middle of the ride, but eventually switching to solo for the last ~month with a bunch of hill work. Always trying to get at least an hour at threshold or higher, NP ~.75 IF, 300+ TSS. Peaking at 7+ hours and 400+ tss. This is my weekly “money” ride. Besides the big training stress, it’s also the time to dial in nutrition and just get the mind and body prepared to push hard on the bike for big hours. I’ll mix in some saturday “C” races where I can, focus on long gravel events.
The rest of the week is recovery and Z2 filler. I almost always take off both Sunday and Monday to recover from the big Saturday and I’ll do weight training on Sun and core work Monday. Might do an easy spin or MTB ride with the wife on Sunday and/or Friday. Wed. is 1-2 hour Z2 ride. I use 6 week average TSS as a sanity check. Last year, I was around 700tss 6 week average running into both events. I’m going to try to push closer to 800 this year and see how it feels.
I only do about a month of “specialty”, which is really just the same as build with a reduction in volume as the event approaches.
I’ll do all my training on my gravel bike leading into Unbound, including the group rides. I run Eagle 1x, so it’s good to get a feel for the bigger gear jumps. Once Unbound is done, I switch to my MTB on the road (with 45mm tires and a big chainring), including group rides. I’ll spend very little time doing any real mountain biking until I get to leadville 2 weeks prior.
So, my approach is to concentrate most of my training stress on Tues/Thurs/Sat and take it pretty easy on the other days to recover. For what it’s worth, I’m a masters athlete (55). I’ve done leadville 3 times and have squeaked in under 9 hours in 2 of my attempts. I generally hate climbing and I’m much more suited to gravel racing on flatter terrain, but that’s what makes Leadville a good challenge for me. It’s the only race I do all year that I’m just shooting for a time and don’t really care where I finish (I’ll never sniff a podium or top 10 there).
Leadville will be my A event again. My B event will be Lutsen at the end of June where I try to improve corral position to green (or higher?) - I’m in Purple now. I’ll probably race the Wilmington Whiteface 100K in the beginning of June as a B/C practice event as it’s not too far away for me and some of the terrain is pretty similar to Leadville.
My guess is that my training will be similar to last year but starting a little earlier. I’m in offseason Base right now, doing 10-14 hours most weeks, almost all Endurance, Tempo, and Sweet Spot, current CTL should hit high 60’s by the end of this week with recovery week next week. I’m working with @kurt.braeckel again, but he hasn’t wanted to start crushing me too early because I’m targeting August as the real peak. Right now, my volume and fitness is significantly higher than last year at this time, and it feels to me that I haven’t lost anything on my FTP from this summer, potentially even gaining a little with the Base Volume although I haven’t tested that.
Last year, we started with a VO2 Block (Middle of Feb), Followed by a threshold Block (3rd week of March), followed by SST / Tempo / Endurance starting up after a vacation in May and heading through the summer into Leadville. I think my last “Test” type workout was in May last year, and after that it was all about extending endurance and TTE. I was doing 2-3 hours of tempo in the heat followed by another 2-3 hours of endurance most Saturdays with a Sunday ride too. Last year my volume peaked at 18 hours and ~80CTL, and I went one stretch where I was on the bike 24 days in a row (Yes, there were days with a super easy 30-60 minute recovery ride in there)
Now through April might be almost 100% on the trainer, as I get back into the riding season here in the Northeast I’ll be trying to mix in enough outdoor rides to get me back in bike shape.
In a weird way, I’m looking forward to some winter suffering 
Doing my own personal, midlife crisis-inspired FTGU. Secured a MTB, now just have to learn to ride it for many hours. And climb for many feet. And descend those many feet.
