Park City Point to Point

Jake Whipple

September 3rd

For my last endurance race of the year, I had high hopes of a strong finish at the Park City Point to Point.  I had heard that it was a tough race on many fronts, three prominent aspects being altitude, lots of technical riding, and almost all single track.  I was most worried about the altitude because the opportunities to train for elevation in the Methow are fairly limited; as for the technical single track, well that just makes for a more fun and challenging race, right?

For the second race in a row, the early morning start saw everyone shivering in crisp 33 degree temps.  I was in the third wave of starters trying to patiently wait my turn...  Once off, the sun started to rise, the trail turned up, and things got nice in a hurry.  Save for the low angle of the sun making the trail difficult at times, the first ten miles or so flowed fun and fast around Round Valley.  Coming through the start/finish again I tossed aside the jacket I was wearing and started to warm up looking forward to more climbing.  Once the trail started climbing in earnest I started passing quite a few folks and was feeling great.  I kept wondering why the race director said quite a few times that he thought the race was a “Camelback race.”  Once I was racing for a bit, I quickly discovered why: the trials were pretty unrelenting.  Not crazy technical, but fast enough and difficult enough that you really needed both hands on the wheel at all times.  Trying to find a stretch where I could grab a bottle would be a recurring difficulty throughout the day!  Hmmm, maybe my aversion to Camelbacks could be overlooked next year?  Topping out at about 9075 ft I suddenly realized that I felt fabulous!  The elevation wasn’t turning out to be a big deal which was great news.  I could definitely feel it, but it wasn’t weighing me down like I thought it might.  With that question out of the way I started to ride a bit harder, trying to pick off as many people as I could.  The race continued great for most of the day.  I was lucky and had no remarkable mishaps again, and slid across the line good enough for 9th out of single speeders.  I was pretty psyched about that result because of the competitiveness of the field.  I got a little strung out towards the end, but that’s been the norm for me each race this year; it’s been hard to keep slamming fluids at the end of each race as it’s felt like my gut has started to shut down.  

As a whole the Park City Point to Point was great event.  I will definitely try to be back next year as it’s one of only two stops in the west for the NUE series which I will try to be focussing on more next year.