Ok - I listened to the Podcast this evening. It’s all right at the beginning if anyone wants to go listen themselves.
TLDR - when running 1X, their recommendation is a 32t Ring. Fatty runs 34t but doesn’t recommend for most, they also don’t recommend the 30t (Efficiency, and spending more time in your 10 tooth cog because of it). Hotty said he was old school and liked 2X.
A new episode, or one of the older ones that focused on Leadville?
Thanks.
Most recent one where they interviewed DJ about Altitude
Two topics:
Virtually pre-riding the course. I see two options, a) find a GPX file and load into my garmin, and then have the garmin control the trainer. or b) maybe there’s a Road Grand Tours or some other app that has the course with video etc?
For a few reasons, I’m looking to train for Leadville 2024 (or 2025, depending on the lottery) using Zwift training plans and/or workouts on my smarttrainer ran by my Garmin 530.
a) Zwift, I was going to start with Pebble Pounder, Dirt Destroyer and Gravel Grinder. Any thoughts?
b) Workouts I can import to my Garmin and perform on the trainer. Any suggestions here? I did a running plan like that from Garmin a few years ago, and it was great. All the workouts loaded into the Garmin calendar and I could then perform them from my watch.
Thanks
I personally don’t see a lot of value in virtually pre-riding the course on the trainer that way. I’d just be doing the right workouts and right plan to get ready.
Now, if you can arrange a trip to Leadville on your own, or through the camp, and ride the course while you’re there, so you can experience the elevation, the climbs, the descents and know how your body reacts, I think that’d be tremendously valuable for a whole lot of reasons.
The pre-ride is just something I’m curious about, and given I’ve got a lot of time, I’d like to try. It’d be far more engaging with video though.
The training camp seems interesting, I was reading about that yesterday. I couldnt see prices, but would guess it’s not cheap?
Thanks,
I can’t remember the price. The cheaper option - Go to Leadville on your own sometime after the races (Late August, Early September) and ride the course on your own. Or, just do that about a month to 6 weeks out from the LT100 when you get in so you’re close to your race fitness, but rental prices for LV are expensive during the summer. You can camp out, rent a place, whatever. The camp does 2 big days of riding to cover Most (All?) of the course that way. Allows you to figure out how you react to the big climbs at Altitude.
As mentioned, the virtual pre-ride is going to be of pretty limited value, however getting out on the course at some point would be hugely valuable. It will give you a sense of what the terrain is like, help you dial bike setup, and also feel how the altitude would impact you.
The Leadville Camp is very good, especially for first timers. Along with riding and seeing the course, there are a bunch of really experienced guides who ride with you. The guides can range from elite pro’s (Rebecca Rusch and Todd Wells have both previously been part of the camp), but also super experienced riders like Todd Murray who is one of two riders to have competed in every single Leadville. They do a bunch of Q&A sessions including one focused on crewing. It’s become more expensive over the years, even without a race entry attached to it, but for someone coming in pretty green I would recommend it.
For experienced riders/racers, pre-riding on your own is totally viable. July - September should yield pretty solid conditions. In 2019, there was a lot of late snow and some of the trail at the highest points still had pretty deep snow cover July long weekend, but most years everything is clear by then.
Copper or Breck are not very far if you have a car, so are also viable spots to stay and have a lot more options that Leadville itself. Even Vail and Avon are not too bad a drive.
For someone looking to train for 2024 or 2025, I’d definitely focus on the big picture. Lots of Z2 endurance rides to build a super solid aerobic base. Slowly build up the length and number of these rides but just keep at them. The results will come. Mix in some threshold and VO2 max work, but don’t overdo the hard stuff. TRs plans will get you there as well, as will using TrainNow. But the focus should be building a big aerobic base.
Start thinking about what bike you want to ride in Leadville and spend time on it. Go out and ride some trails but also consider doing some longer road or gravel rides on it to make sure the fit is super dialed. At the same time, work on nutrition and eating on the bike.
Leadville is a blast. A great event to build towards.
Thanks for the info. For sure if I could swing a training camp I would, but I suspect it’s not in the cards for me. Bike is my current bike, as again I don’t see myself being able to buy anything better (i.e. a light full-sus) in this timeframe. I just finished building my current hardtail for a general bike, but as it turns out it’s not too dissimilar to what I’d build specifically for leadville (given my budget). I’ve got hubs sitting around to build into new wheels when I get a chance too.
I’ve got the course garmin file now, but no video to go along with it. I’m going to try to edit the file into the whole course and then also the specific climbs. The race for me is a long ways off in time and distance (and time seems very much out of my control with the need to go through the lottery for a spot).
I’ve started to map out a 100km gravel/doubletrack route near my house which can go from around 1000 ft up to 6000/6500ft, and will aim to hit that up once the base work is done, which probably means early 2024 when the snow clears.
Thanks again,
There’s a few good POV videos on YouTube from the Leadville 100 and Stage Race. You could do a half decent ride to them if you were keen.
I’m not one for Erg or Zwift so can understand if it’s not what you’re after.
I’ve done that though this year and I don’t imagine I’ll get to do Leadville this decade 
.
Reminds me of back in the CompuTrainer days they offered “Real Course” videos of Ironman courses sync’d to the trainer resistance. I thought they were going to be the key to my Ironman success and boy was I wrong. I could never stomach them for more than an hour due to boredom.
I know everyone else has already piled on but the only 2 unique things about the Leadville course are long sustained climbs and altitude. And really it’s the long sustained climb at altitude that is really unique. I don’t think riding the key climbs virtually not at altitude would give you any real impression to what they’re like, but actually I have found riding Ven-top on Zwift to be a pretty good approximation of Columbine. On paper, Ven-top is appreciably longer and has more vert, but in practice my times correlate relatively closely between Ven-top and Columbine for similar RPE. Intentionally saying RPE not power, because your power vs RPE on Columbine is completely detached from any other riding you’re going to do that isn’t at 11,000 ft after a 3 hour “warm up”.
As I don’t have the opportunity to pre-ride, the video + controlled smart trainer would just be to start to get an impression. I guess I’m a little surprised that one of the apps that plays live video whilst controlling your trainer to match, hasn’t done it for Leadville.
I’ll have the climbs simulated through my Garmin soon, and will see how that works.
Thanks,
These might help you on the video side: 2022 Leadville Stage Race - YouTube
I put these up primarily for course recon as I was in a similar boat a couple of years ago as I tried to understand the course. Most of the video that was out cut out “the boring parts” or were just bare video with no contextual data (speed, grade, etc). When I raced in 2021 hitting the course for the first time, I was struck by just how much of that boring stuff was between the marquee parts we all talk about. This was even after I had had a chance to pre-ride St. Kevins and Columbine.
I did speed up some of the boring stuff (Turquoise Lake road and Hagermans climb outbound, road between Powerline and Pipeline, Turquoise Lake road climb inbound and maybe a few others) but left them in so that people could at least see it.
Hi all, purposely not posting this in the Leadville thread as I think that the reach of this is much more broad than Leadville.
I am racing the Leadville 100 this August and this will be my first attempt racing with power. Ignoring the impacts of altitude (which i’ll adjust for on my own), how should I determine ideal power targets to maximize pace over the length of the race without hitting a wall. I know that Jonathan has talked about this in previous podcasts, but frankly there are too many Leadville podcasts for me to find the info I’m looking for.
I will be in Leadville a couple times before the race with the mission to test out power targets and determine what is sustainable for me. Would love to have some help on finding this baseline.
I’d start with this. It’s helped me a bunch. Then if you have some more specific questions, post them?
There are some existing Leadville threads, so may be good for @mcneese.chad to merge this into the Leadville 2023 thread.
Lots of factors go into pacing including your history with long events like this and whether you are shooting for just finishing, a specific time, or a specific placing.
@Jonathan approached it by setting an upper ceiling for watts and following a pacing plan. He finished really well, breaking 9 hours, but had a “comfortable” day and didn’t push himself to the limit. I suspect if he ever returns and wants to improve his placing, he might put in some more focused efforts in certain sections.
If you are confident in your endurance and that you can handle a long day like Leadville, another approach is to break the course down into segments and figure out where you want to try and be more aggressive and try and take some time back on the course. The major climbs are the targets here. Sugar Loaf, Columbine outbound, Powerline inbound. But can’t stress enough the importance of knowing what you can handle because Powerline on the way back is a bear and if you hit it already overextended, it can create a lot of problems.
I merged this as suggested by @Kuttermax, since there is good discussion to review and we try to keep related discussions grouped for shared access.
Tough discussion without the context of target time and/or current w/kg and absolute FTP at a given altitude. That said, your pre-race trips to leadville are really the best way to figure it out. I can’t think of it without the adjustments for altitude, so here’s what I’ve got - Climbing power is the top priority to figure out and it seems to be very dependent on how folks respond to altitude. I set climbing target at .72-.75% of my sea level FTP and that feels almost like threshold at sea level (but is sustainable despite the discomfort). Some adjustment needed depending where you are on course (ie - I’m not doing .72if at the top of columbine). On flatter sections, I’ll try to maintain 62-65% of sea level FTP and my NP for the day will be around that (the climbing and descending seem to cancel each other out). Also, I do a bunch of long hilly training rides on the road leading into leadville to test/build my all day power, nutrition, etc… Once I know what I can do on a hot day for 7-8 hours at sea level, I’ve found my leadville NP on race day to be about 17% less at altitude.
Thanks, that is helpful information. I live around 5000 feet and seem to handle the altitude adjustment to 10-12k pretty well. I have raced Leadville twice, but 100% on RPE - didn’t even have heart rate.
This year I hope to get a little more scientific with power and see if I can find the pace to go sub 8 hours on my low-volume plan. At my first two races, I didn’t save enough for the Powerline to the finish and would love to avoid that this year to have a faster finish while keeping a sustainable pace for the first 60% of the race. I’m going to start with trying out 75% of my 5000’ FTP on Kevins and back up Powerline to see how that feels. I’m hoping that this ~3 hour test ride will be enough for me to dial in race day targets.
Is your 72-75% FTP power sustainable through the end of the race? particularly thinking about the second half of Powerline and Turquoise lake climbs.
… RGT Magic Roads will work as well.