Montezuma – Alyson Riley wants her “broccoli jacket.”
The 29-year-old Summit County local is splattered in mud. Her heavy-lidded eyes are glazed and she’s wobbling. She’s guzzling honey from a plastic bear and mashing a banana into her mouth. Her slurred words are nonsensical.
Drunk? Sort of. Riley has just spent 24 hours pedaling her mountain bike more than 110 miles, climbing more than 20,000 vertical feet, crisscrossing the Continental Divide nine times as a contender – more like a survivor – in what is billed as the hardest mountain-bike race on the planet. And Riley added to the challenge by racing Montezuma’s Revenge on a single-speed bike, eschewing gears in a race that has left her as addled as a boozehound on a bender.
Twenty-nine racers started pedaling Friday at 4 p.m. and 19 still were pedaling 24 hours later. The winner, Josh Tostado, 29, of Breckenridge, rode more than 150 miles and climbed more than 31,000 vertical feet. Tostado, who also won the race in 2004, is the first racer in the 19-year history of Montezuma’s Revenge to start the 11th lap. No one has completed the race’s 12 laps.
“There are many reasons why I want to quit right now. I’m really, really tired,” he said at 2:57 p.m. Saturday as he shakily refilled his Camelbak in preparation for the 11th lap and his 24th hour on a bike. “But there are many more reasons to keep going. I have to. Sometimes when you’re up there, you can lose faith in yourself and you wonder why. But I know why I’m doing this and I just keep pedaling.”
The crux of the race was found in the darkest hours of early Saturday. The third loop, a 56-mile grind under a nearly full moon was followed by a climb up 14,270-foot Grays Peak with bikes tied to backpacks.
“I thought I was in some kind of nightmare going up Grays,” said 20-year-old Lucas Chandler as he shivered through bouts of hypothermia at 7:45 a.m. Saturday while his crew readied his bike for another eight hours of riding. “I was not fully informed of the magnitude of the climb. All I was told was that it was rocky.”
Chandler, who was persuaded to race only two days earlier, is the youngest rider to finish Montezuma’s Revenge, besting the record set by his crew chief and the aforementioned persuader, Colin Barker, nine years ago.
Grays ended Dan Montgomery’s race.
“I’ve had enough,” said the 40-year-old with a weak smile, noting that he had ridden for seven hours and hiked for seven hours before bowing out of the race early Saturday morning. “Everyone has their own reason for doing this. It has been on my list of things to do in my lifetime. I had to see. And I saw. It’s not for me. But I am very satisfied.”
Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
