TWO CYCLISTS HAVE DONE LEADVILLE 100 RACE ALL 25 YEARS
John Callahan and Todd Murray are the only racers to have done it all 25 years
John Callahan has a photo his wife took of him during the second Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race. He was posing at an aid station on the dam at Twin Lakes — which marks Mile 40 and Mile 60 on the out-and-back course — and had the spot all to himself.
He’s thought about that scene this year as Leadville prepares for the 25th installment of the world’s second-oldest 100-mile mountain bike race, which is set for next Saturday in the shadow of Colorado’s highest peaks.
“When you come through there now, you feel like you’re riding in the Tour de France, because it’s these huge crowds, up and down both sides of this long aid station,” said Callahan, one of two riders who has participated every year of the race since its inception in 1994. “There’s tents, and people get there early in the morning to stake out a spot. They even stake out places the night before.”
The race attracted 157 entrants the first year. Now race organizers cap entries at 1,850, and there is a lottery and qualification system to decide who gets in.
The race was a spin-off of the famous Leadville Trail 100 running race, which dates back to 1983. It starts in Leadville at 10,152 feet and tops out at 12,424 feet at the 50-mile midway mark. Along the way it adds up to more than 11,400 feet of climbing. Race founder Ken Chlouber will be inducted into the International Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in September.
Callahan, who lives and grew up in Aspen, was an Olympic cross country skier in 1992. The other rider who has done the mountain bike race every year is Todd Murray, now a Colorado Springs police detective. Both are still pedaling hard at age 55.
The first year, Murray was living in California but had a job that took him a couple times a month to Colorado, which gave him at least a little bit of altitude training. When a California friend suggested they do this crazy Leadville race — almost no one was racing long distances on mountain bikes in those days — Murray was intrigued. He had done several 100-mile races on his road bike, even a couple of 200-milers. He was in for a surprise when he got to Leadville.
“It humbled me,” Murray said. “I was a cocky 30-year-old guy thinking, ‘Hey, this is going to be no problem.’ I kept thinking, ‘How hard can that be? I’ve done a 200-mile thing on my road bike.’ Oh my gosh, it was one of the most difficult things I had done up to that point and really performed to less than I expected.”
A month later, Murray got married and moved to Colorado to start a family. He has done the race with his father a few times, and next year plans to do it with his oldest daughter.
“Leadville is a mix of everything,” Murray said. “You’ve got your paved roads to start on, you transition to some dirt roads, which transition to fourwheel drive dirt road. There’s a small mix of some single-track. There’s two major climbs. One would be up to the turnaround point, which is the Columbine mine, and the other one is on the way back when you have to go up the Powerline. Those are really difficult four-wheel drive or maybe beyond four-wheel drive kind of roads that are steep, loose, rocky. The difficulty comes in the altitude. That adds up over the course of the day. That can really zap you.”
Callahan decided to do the first one after getting a call from one of his lifelong friends, Roger Marolt.
“We’d never heard of anyone riding 100 miles on a mountain bike before,” said Callahan, now a computer programmer for the Aspen Skiing Company. “Back then a 40-mile day was ‘epic.’ We decided to go for it and give it a try.”
After the blast of double-barreled shotgun started the race, Callahan and Marolt were the last two guys to cross the starting line, not that it mattered in a 100-mile race that only 96 riders finished.
“None of us knew where we were going,” Callahan said. “You had no idea what to expect on any
of the climbs or the descents. I didn’t have an odometer on my bike, so near the end of the race I had no idea how much further it was going to be. I didn’t know if I had one mile or 10 miles to go, I just kept riding until the finish line showed up. It was really fun. The first year, because it was so new, was maybe the most fun year for me. It was so different from anything I’d ever done before.”
By 2003, the race had grown to nearly 800 entrants, and interest boomed after Lance Armstrong entered in 2008. Armstrong, who had retired from professional cycling in 2005 after winning his seventh Tour de France, finished second to six-time winner Dave Weins of Gunnison. The following year he ended Weins’ win streak and shattered his course record with a time of six hours, 28 minutes, 51 seconds.
“He brought so much publicity, that’s when the race really changed from a small-town event to being on the national stage,” Callahan said. “After he came, suddenly they had the big expo before the race where all the manufacturers and vendors would show up. Teams started showing up with team trailers.”
Callahan said the growth of the race detracts from his enjoyment.
“If you’re not up near the front, it’s so crowded at the first climbs that there’s no way you can ride your pace,” Callahan said. “You’re stuck behind everybody else at this slow pace. It happens again later in the race when you climb the 10 miles from 40 to 50 to the top of the Columbine mine. You’re just wheel to wheel all the way up this thing. I miss the days of being out there sometimes for hours by yourself.”
Murray agrees the race is different now, but he still loves it.
“I never planned on, ‘Wow, I’m going to do this for 25 years and make this a big deal,’ “Murray said. “Honestly I am more excited about next year than I am this year, even though this is a big year, because my oldest daughter and I went down to the Austin Rattler (a 62-miler in Texas) in March and she qualified for Leadville. I’m really excited to go next year. She and I have a plan of riding the race together.”