I once rented an altitude tent to prepare for an event and am not convinced it did anything besides make me very hot and make a ton of noise. I also never saw SpO2 decrease over sea level baseline with a finger sensor.
My experience with it was really negative, but this was a decade ago so things may have progressed since then.
Worked great for me last time, but this is a different supplier / different kit.
I get the hot thing though, I have to have the actual unit in a different room with all the windows open. If it was any hotter here right now I’d have it in with an air conditioner.
Well the Racing Ralph on my primary rear wheel is going to need to be replaced before race day. some knobs are starting to come loose.
Hopefully between Breck, Frisco, or Leadville I can source a new 2.35 Ralph or Thunder Burt. the other option is to run my “b” rear wheel with a 2.25 Burt. At least I’ve got time to get this taken care of and a fall back option if required. And knock on wood, the front looks fine… for now.
I have a 2.35 burt I don’t need if you can’t find something in stock.
Pros Closet has Racing Ralph in stock if you stop by Louisville (boulder area) on your way up to mountains. It’s the Addix Ground compound instead of Addix Speed, but BRR claims that one is actually faster 
If anyone really gets into a bind with equipment while you are in CO I have spare race wheels, a separate unmounted pair of used but still great condition Race Kings, pretty much any spare part you could need, hell I even have an entire spare XC bike. Catch is I’m 1.5 hours away from Leadville but happy to lend out something if disaster befalls anyone in the week or so prior.
If you can’t get it sorted, I’ve got an extra aspen 2.25 in my backup parts tote you can borrow.
Given I had my bike destroyed by baggage handlers before Austin Rattler, you have no idea how re-assuring that offer is to know about! 
Unrelated, upped the artificial altitude significantly last night and no change to my spo2. Frustrating, wish there was a simple way to test it. I remember last time all I had to do was sit in the tent and I’d immediately see my numbers dropping.
I would be surprised if you find a Ralph let alone a Schwalbe tire in Summit or Leadville. Shops around here basically only carry Maxxis or Spec and very little XC tires. If I were you, I would buy it online and have it shipped to where you’re staying.
I’m coming from the West and currently am in Heber City/Midway. I’ll hit Provo on my way to Grand Junction, so I’ll call around and see what the bike shops have between here and Frisco.
But I appreciate the offers and pointers. 
Edit: in any case is I can order from REI and pick them up in Dillon. but the worst case is I use the back up whees (Cannondale hollow grams, aka DT Swiss) that have a new 2.35 Ray upfront and new 2.25 Burt out back. Always have a back up plan when you’re going to be 1,200 miles from home.
This is rough. The thing you HAVE to remember is that you’re going to feel great and be excited on race day. Racing by RPE for ultra distance events is incredibly hard for many people to do and the majority will wildly overpace things and ruin their event. So I think your mentality is one that’s going to cost you because you can definitely be sub-9 pace after Columbine and blow up on the return. You are going to feel GREAT early on. But your fitness isn’t magically 30W (I know you don’t have a PM) better on race day, so you HAVE to go easier than you think. It should feel TOO EASY early on, or you won’t make it regardless of what your pace is at halfway.
Hopefully you have a really good feel for HR pacing? That can work. But man, good luck to you.
Edit: I see later you’ve done it before, so you probably have this all figured out. 
Yeah, this definitely isn’t my first rodeo.
Problem is that I do REALLY long events generally, so I always tend to underpace on short stuff like this.
No worries. I read stuff like that without the context of an individual’s background and alarm bells go off. I’ve just seen so many people - marathoners, ultradistance triathletes, etc. - who get to raceday and throw their plans out the window because they FEEL GREAT! And then their run split is 40 minutes slower than they anticipated because they blew themselves up on the bike or they end up walking the last 4 miles of a marathon because they went out way too fast trying to “bank time” while they felt good. It’s so, so common, and so easily preventable. Trying to get it just right where you leave nothing on the table is just incredibly hard, especially when just riding or running by feel, and you’re always going to be better off pacing a bit more conservatively at the start and pushing late if you can.
Anyway, best of luck!
Ah this hits close to home as I had the exact same experience last year!! I came into this race at 165 pounds and with an FTP of 295 at 4,500 feet. My pace calculations were almost identical to the visual above posted by @grwoolf but I was behind by roughly 21 minutes at the top of columbine. The primary reason for getting behind was the Carter climb where I was in pretty bad traffic starting out of the middle of the white corral and just physically wasn’t able to run the numbers I had targetted as it was tire to tire and a couple crashes amongst the crowd to slow things down further. The white corral traffic can be real, and unfortuantely last year it was for those not in the very front! I was roughly 15 minutes behind at Twin Lakes Alternate despite keeping strong pace after getting through the carter climb traffic fiasco. I was starting to feel some cramps though which were unusual for me, and given that I felt 9 hours had “slipped out the window” at that point from the traffic jam, I took a ~3 - 4 minute feed there at twin lakes alt to stretch and take some extra sodium tablets from my USWE. I was still roughly 20 minutes behind on twin lakes alt inbound and given fear of fatigue setting in on the second half, continued to not push over my pace target as I was no longer aiming for 9. That said, I was surprisingly fresh on the powerline climb and flew up. At the top I was now just 13 minutes off pace and feeling great. I turned up the screws, holding 10 - 20 watts above target for the remaining 2 climbs and ~20 miles. I came in at 9:01:47…
The morral of both mine and BCM’s stories for those tackling the race here in a couple weeks, don’t fret if you are 20 minutes behind pace at columbine. I “gave up” for a couple hours mid-race when it felt beyond me, when in reality it was still well within reach at that point. Major remorse!
My other piece of advice is to give yourself some buffer room in your pacing target. If you want 9 hours, build your pacing plan for 8:45 as you should expect the unexpected to happen at some point…
Great advice and you can add me to the list of folks who kind of screwed up after falling behind pace. In 2022, I had a continuously leaking tire between powerline and twin lakes. Probably only coat me ~7 minutes, but I let it get in my head. 15 minutes off pace at top of columbine and I decided a sub 9 was out and I stopped pushing. Got lazy with fueling and hydration and kind of made for a crappy 2nd half. And looking at splits afterwards, I really wasn’t that far off pace at the bottom of powerline inbound and almost certainly would have had a shot if I hadn’t shut things down half way into the race. It’s a long day and my current pacing plan builds some buffer into the first half so I can still make it if I have a ~10 minute problem.
I appreciate everyone here posting their experiences with this race, especially the recent posts regarding pacing. How did ya’ll going about creating your pacing plan/strategy? I’ve read here and heard elsewhere (e.g. the Leadville podcast) that an NP of 2.5 w/kg is a reasonable target for sub-9. Is there anyone else here using that general target to build a pacing plan, and if so, how are you distributing the effort across the course? Do you have specific power targets for certain sections and climbs?
I raced Leadville in 2021 and paced pretty well, largely by feel. After blowing up in spectacular fashion during the SR50 earlier that summer, my plan was to go out extremely conservatively early in the race. And that I did. I remember looking back at the bottom of St Kevin’s and I was the last rider from my corral to start the climb. That had me a bit worried I was being too conservative, however I then proceeded to pass nearly 500 riders the rest of the race. I finished very comfortably, perhaps even with something left in the tank. Although I’m proud of my performance, it was still slower than the time I was targeting. This year I’m hoping to remain conservative early on while pacing a bit more aggressively (if there is such a thing). Would appreciate any thoughts folks might have on how they plan to pace or have paced previously.
Between this thread, the 2023 version, the 2022 version, and so on, you can likely find a pacing chart aligned with your weight, power (elevation adjusted), and target time. That’s the lazy way out 
One last piece of advice I’d give, and I hesitate slightly saying it, but I think we get a little “over calculated” with Leadville. Yes having a pacing plan is generally better than not having one, but your body doesn’t always subscribe to a specific pacing plan on a specific day… Pacing plans are predicated on averages which may or may not be the case for a given day. We may just as likely be on a good day, as a bad day.
I say this as I genuinely believe there is more remorse/regret felt in coming in with an 8:30 time and 1/8 - 1/4 of a tank of gas left in the body, than getting towed in with a 9:01 time after completely emptying the tank. I’d rather fall in the latter camp every day of the week for personal satisfaction reasons. Unfortunately it seems like the majority of people in my circle (including myself) fall into the former camp more and more often of late and I believe that pacing plans can hold us back as much as they can be an aid. The goal is to optimize our output so that we cross the line as we run out of gas… That’s much easier said than done is the problem. The body just can’t subscribe to exact certainty like we attempt for in pacing plans. Especially in an event like Leadville where the altitude, climbing, temperature variation, etc are far from “average” or normal, and hard to replicate or gauge in a real meaningful way.
Again, it’s all person and situation specific and only you and your body will ultimately know. Listen to your gut a little though, especially in the back half of the race. Jonathan Lee is probably cringing as he reads this based on his advice shared on the Leadville MTB podcast but I truly feel that for as many people’s times that are improved by pacing plans, an equal number are hampered and restricted.
I think a lot of people get too caught up in the “pace” that they have to do, and a lot of people go out too hard or try and hold a pace they have no business trying to hold and blow up. Not just at Leadville.
I personally paced by power last year, and will again this year, but supplement that with how I’m feeling, RPE, heart rate, and will adjust as I get further into the race. Yes, I’ll be watching my time against targets, but it’s not really how I’m pacing, especially early.
All said and done - I personally did 76% IF last year after correcting for altitude - came out at 2.45 w/kg (NP) on race day for my 9:02. It ended up being a little conservative and I had some left in the tank, but you have to remember last year was all-time good weather and conditions. I might have started falling apart at the end if it was hot.
Since you’ve done it before, you have a big advantage if you are coming in with similar fitness. Assuming you had a power meter, you should have a feel for what wattage you can do on the climbs all day without going into the red. For me, that’s the most important part to figure out. Beyond that, Strava can be very helpful if you want to spend the time looking at segments for athletes with similar weight/power. I analyzed the crap out of all the segments the first year I did the stage race and went in with specific power targets and I hit almost all of my target splits within a minute (having never ridden the course before). The climbs are basically math problems with very little variability besides weight and watts. You do have to be careful looking at columbine and powerline time vs. watts because walking time can skew things, but there are segments within those climbs (that most people don’t walk) that are good data points.
I’ll target a higher climbing power early and allow my NP (and climbing target power) to drop slowly throughout the day. Not going into the red, but definitely skewed toward getting up Kevins and Sugarloaf at a higher wattage than I’ll do coming back. I’ll have a floor and ceiling for Columbine, but that all goes out the window when I hit the goat trail and just do what I can to stay moving (a lot of surging/recovering is needed for me to get up some of those spots). On the flatter sections, I’m just trying to stay above a set power floor any time I’m pedaling.
Leadville pacing is tricky with so many moving parts (particularly the altitude if you aren’t used to it). And while much of it has the dynamic of an individual time trial (which suits steadier pacing), it also has traffic concerns early as well as significant draft dynamics that rewards pushing early to get with faster groups. I choose to push a little harder early to bank some time at the risk of giving up time late as I fade. I think it’s the fastest way around the course for me based on reviewing strava results of similar riders, but it’s certainly riskier than going out more conservative. Some of it also depends on your goals. If you are right on the hairy edge of sub 9 fitness and want to go for a sub 9, you will need to ride near the edge (with the risks that comes with that). If you have lots of minutes to play with, go out a little more conservative and don’t risk blowing up and don’t risk crashing/flatting on the descents.
This is a pretty great training strategy and one I use for people a lot, particularly runners where things are a bit more predictable. Some tells me they want to go sub-3 in a marathon, I plan for them to pace at 6:45/mile which is a reasonable amount faster than goal pace, is achievable and builds in the buffer for when something goes a little sideways.
You could do this to some extent for a cycling event using Best Bike Split too.
The problem comes when someone takes that plan and goes “6:45 is EASY! I’m doing 6:20s!!” on race day.
It’s obviously your coach’s fault for not training your short power enough to get that two minutes.