Mark Odendahl (1024) rides the Leadville race. (Photo provided by Mark Odendahl)

By DAVID BORAKS
DavidsonNews.net

Mark Odendahl has been a cyclist most of his life and raced mountain bikes in his 20s. But nothing prepared him for the challenge he took on this summer.

Last Saturday, Aug. 14, Mr. Odendahl, 43, entered the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race in Leadville, Colo. It’s a day-long, 100-mile-plus race in which cyclists battle rough terrain and altitude over a grueling course through the mountains around Leadville.

“I’ve always done shorter-length stuff. It was far different from anything I’d ever done before,” he said Friday.

Mr. Odendahl lives in the Peninsula neighborhood of Cornelius and rides 15-20 hours a week, including some mornings with the Davidson Early AM Cycling Group. He’s also sells bicycles and boats at outdoor retailer REI in Northlake Mall.

Earlier this year, he was way out of shape and looking for a challenge. He was carrying about 220 pounds on his 5-foot 7-inch frame when he saw a documentary film about the 2009 Leadville race. He resolved to enter.

Leadville entrants are chosen by lottery, because interest in the race is more than organizers can handle. Last winter, he put his name into the hat, and in February, learned that he’d hit the lottery.

His next thought: “Oh no, what do I do now?”

Mr. Odendahl knew he had to get in shape, but how? He knew he’d need to step up his riding, but he also hired coaches Sarah Matchett and Bo Butler from Cool Breeze Cyclery Training in Mooresville.

“It’s easy, when you’ve got something like this to do, to go out and ride a whole lot. But you have to be focused on what you’re doing. (The coaches) gave me structure and specific workouts to do,” he said.

For six months, training for Leadville became like a part-time job. “This pretty much took over my life for six moths outside of work,” he said. Besides the prescribed workouts, he did a lot of mountain riding in North Carolina, in Wilkesboro and along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

By last weekend’s race, he was down to 180 pounds. “I’m in the best shape I’ve probably ever been in,” he said.

The out-and-back course begins in Leadville, at 10,200 feet above sea level and climbs as high as 12,570 feet at Columbine Mine summit, then finishes back in town. (See an animated map of the course on Leadvilletrail100.com.)

The goal of most racers is to finish under 12 hours, which qualifies them for a coveted Leadville belt buckle. One-quarter or more of the starters don’t finish. Mr. Odendahl said he was shooting for 9 hours.

At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, with wife Shelli on hand as his support team, he was on the starting line with the rest of the 1,500 lottery winning entrants. Earlier this week, he described the race in an email to fellow riders in the Davidson Early AM Cycling Group:

The gun went off and the start was absolutely berserk. I wanted to hit the dirt after 6 miles toward the front and it was almost a downhill sprint out of town. Average easily 30+ mph on the pavement (with mountain bikers!). I got to the dirt and onto the first climb at around 150th place. It would be the farthest forward I’d get. The first climb at 8 miles is on a fairly steep and rocky dirt road – all it takes is 2 people off the bike and walking and everybody walks behind them. I got up the first climb of St. Kevin’s Gulch in OK position, but could tell that the altitude of over 11,000 feet was already a problem. There was absolutely nothing I could do to get my heart-rate to drop and was constantly short of breath.

For the rest of the day, I passed maybe 10 people, and got passed by about 150. The pace was insane, though I tried to settle into a rhythm of climbing just a hair over what I was comfortable with. The next climb came and went and I stayed steady. I started up the big climb to Columbine Mine at 50 miles and 12,500 feet, still riding hard and doing OK. About 1/3 of the way up Columbine, the 2 leaders came screaming past me in the other direction downhill, at 45+ mph. I kept going and managed to ride most of the steep uphill and only push the bike for about 500 yards. At the turn-around on top, my 9 hour goal wasn’t dead, but was gasping for life. The ride down for 10 miles was actually fun, bombing past the hundreds of people trudging up.

Mark Odendahl rides at Leadville. (Photo provided by Mark Odendahl)

The best part of the race was going through the Twin Lakes aid station at 40 miles and then again at 60. I’ve never been in a bike race this big and you had to travel through a tunnel of thousands of people to get to the aid station. It was almost impossible to find Shelli in the craziness, but I somehow did. People were screaming, blowing horns and banging cowbells. It was easy to ride strongly through that. They said I looked good, but I was pretty much resigned to not making 9 hours by that point. I had that feeling that I was going downhill by then (literally and figuratively).

After that, it got unbelievably hard. The flat road across the valley was torture with 30+ mph winds. I tried to get the riders around me working in an echelon, but trying to explain to mountain bikers where to ride in the wind was like teaching a doberman to juggle. I just put my head down for 15 miles and got across by myself for the final climbs. From miles 80 to 104, starting at the famous Powerline climb, I wouldn’t say I fell apart, but it was damn close. The final 24 miles were horrible. In total, I pushed the bike uphill for around 1.5 miles and even the flats were hard. All of the little uphills felt like mountains, and the two actual mountains were awful. I had to stop several times to slow my heart-rate and get back into a reasonable rhythm for climbing the hills.

I was calculating in my head that I would finish around 9:38. As we got closer to town (or so I thought), that time looked good even though I was fading fast. People were passing me and cheering me on, but there was no way I could. I just wanted to ride as steady as I could to the finish. I could see the town, but they turned us up a long, steady dirt wash-out and my goal started slipping away. Pretty soon it was 9:39, 9:43, 9:47, 9:51 – I realized I might slip over 10 hours. But I wasn’t going to let that happen! With everything I had left, I dropped the hammer to get to the end at 104 miles and sprinted standing up down Harrison Street to the finish line – which really seemed to wake up the crowd of thousands. I slowed after the line. A guy that crossed the line with me collapsed and got carried away by the medical crew. The race director, Merilee Maupin, came up and put the finisher’s medal over my helmet!

Leadville medal, keychain and belt buckle

In the end, my time was 9:57:50 – for 315th out of 908 belt-buckle finishers under 12 hours. (There were 1,022 under 13 hours for an official time. Around 400 did not finish). I have to say, it was the single hardest event that I’ve ever done. While I did not finish sub 9 hours, I can’t be unhappy since I could not have gone 1 minute faster. It was a great experience – but almost killed me. I was laying on a bench in downtown Leadville after the finish and had 2 hamstring cramps that were crippling.

I finally recovered after an hour or so and was able to walk to the car. The past 6 months has been about training and sacrifice. I haven’t even had one beer in that time, though I rectified that later Saturday night. Went to the awards ceremony Sunday morning with Shelli and picked up my belt buckle, medal, keychain and personalized sweatshirt. Happy to say, that is the final chapter in my long-distance endurance career. Been there, done that. Special thanks for Shelli and everybody else who has been incredibly supportive for the last 6 months. I could not have done this alone.

Mr. Odendahl admits that with Leadville behind him, “I almost have this letdown, after 6 months of being really focused. It’s kind of … what do I do now?”

Since he’s in such good shape, he said he’ll probably do a bit of racing this fall – maybe some mountain bike and cyclocross races, nothing more than about 45 minutes in length.

And he has this advice for anyone who’s thinking about pursuing a goal like a 100-mile mountain race: “Shoot big, but stay focused, and work towards it.”

[One last aside: Mark’s younger brother John, 41, of Georgia also completed this year’s Leadville ride. He finished 509th in 10:43:36. The race winner was Levi Leipheimer, 36, of Santa Rosa, Calif., in 6:16:37.]

RELATED LINKS

Leadville Trail 100 “Race Across the Sky” website.

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