Vacation and Pierre's Hole 100

The Monday after W101, Bryan and I flew out to Jackson, WY for 10 days of vacation, Pierre's Hole 100, and meet the parents (yikes!). Let's just say that the western mountains are a serious weakness of mine and I have zero ability to control my desire to play when I get out there. Tuesday in absolutely perfect "I just did a hundo and now I'm fresh to altitude" style did a 4hr ride up Cache/Game with Bryan. Recovery for the win. Yes, that's sarcasm. We spent the next few days doing a couple mellower rides up on the Pass, some SUPing on the Snake, and actually taking it easier before heading over to Teton Valley and Targhee on Friday for Pierre's Hole 100.

The night before the race we crashed down in Tetonia with my friend, Nan, who put together a rad lasagna dinner for a whole bunch of us who were crashing there before the race. Between the group we represented all three distance options. Bryan and I were the early risers the next morning and enjoyed some early dawn views of the Tetons driving up the canyon. We dropped our coolers for shared resupply at the feed zones, got dressed and soon enough it was 7a and we were off.

Sunset in Tetonia

Lap 1: I felt good starting off and although I could feel the altitude a little at the top of Peaked it wasn't that bad and soon enough I was headed back to a little lower elevation. I knew I was in 4th and just tried not to overdo it given it was my first time racing at altitude and knew the singletrack heavy course wouldn't give me the recovery of the fireroad-heavy courses I was used to.

Lap 2: I felt good starting the lap and then about halfway up Peaked I fell apart. My legs felt so heavy and I realized that this was about to be a VERY long day for me. At the second pass of Aid 2, I reached into the cooler to grab a refill of Infinit...only to find it had been stolen (accidentally) by a certain boy way up front of the men's pack... Oh well, I grabbed some water, some solid calories to make up for my lack of mix, and kept moving. (Note: we learned to better label our bottles to distinguish them for aid helpers next time.) I passed Nan out in Rick's Basin and although I was really starting to suffer was stoked to hear that Bryan had been in second when he passed her.

Women's Open Podium

Lap 3: Oh yeah, I'm definitely going to be way over 10 hours...probably real close to 11. I hurt. A lot. OK yup that hard Tuesday ride was dumb. Back-to-back hundos also probably dumb. Ah well. At least I was in one of my favorite places in the world with beautiful views that made the suffering better. Legs never did recover on this one and I finally crossed the finish in 11:02 in 4th. Long day. Bryan had crushed it and won in seconds over 8hrs. He was nice though and held the "I told you so" on my poor recovery behavior for about an hour....maybe 45 mins. ;)

Post-race: Turns out wildfire smoke and some dusty trails coupled with hours of exertion don't get along well with my asthma. Hadn't used my inhaler in over 2 years so I hadn't even brought it out with me. Took me a couple hours to realize that I really couldn't breathe and that was the reason I felt so bad even a while after. Thanks to the Gundersons, after some problem solving and huffing albuterol out of a cleaned out oil diffuser (no tubing for the nebulizer) and my airways relaxed.

The next few days we pretty much stayed off bikes. We hung out with my parents, Bryan played on the tractor, we hit up the hot springs (not quite at winter size but the river was juuuuust low enough for a solid pool for two), did some fishing, and checked out some alpine lakes on-foot in GTNP.