See the following link for a folder with downloadable and printable PDF time sheets that you can tape onto your top tube and use to help pace yourself to your time goal at the Leadville 100 MTB!
The time checks are as follows:
Carter Summit
Top of Sugarloaf Climb
Outward Bound Aid Station
Twin Lakes Aid Station
Top of Columbine
Twin Lakes Aid Station
Outward Bound Aid Station
Top of Powerline
Carter Summit
Finish
We have time sheets for the following times:
12hrs
11hrs
10hrs
9hrs
8hrs
7.5hrs
7hrs
6.5hrs
6hrs
Good luck to everybody out there, and feel free to ask any questions!
This is awesome! Just wanted to point out that the 12hr time sheet has you hitting Twin Lakes at 4:18 if I’m reading it correctly, which depending on what corral you started from (probably Brown or White for a sub-12hr goal), will put you over the 4 hour time cutoff for Twin Lakes Outbound. It’s a tight time cutoff if you’re targeting going just sub-12, so I just thought it was worth pointing out.
I read the chart to be “chip” time so you are 100% right, you’d be pulled off the course if you followed the times here for 12 hours and you’d have 5 minutes to spare following the 11 hour chart.
As such, I’d not follow the charts if you have a 11+ hour goal.
I’ve given a lot of thought to that particular cutoff recently, and it contributed to my decision not to race this year since I feel pretty certain I’d miss it by about the same margin as that pacing chart or blow up trying to go faster for that part, so it caught my eye because my own pacing plan was going to be similar until realizing it wouldn’t be enough for that first time cutoff.
Don’t know how useful it would be a MTB course or on anything other than a 10xx head unit but there’s a Garmin Connect IQ app called Race Notes where I’ve added timings and pitstops before.
It sounds like there are other contributing factors, but there is nothing wrong with lining up for the race and then missing the cutoff. The cutoffs at Leadville are about as tough as they come, lots of folks get pulled from the race. At worst, it provides some insight on how far off you are. At best, people often surprise themselves. And whether someone completes the entire course or just partial, it’s a pretty cool event to participate in. Again, sounds like you had other reasons, just pointing out for anyone who might be on the fence that many don’t make the cutoffs and still make a great day out of it.
I think I heard something about this cutoff thing….that none of the last 25 riders to make the cutoff were able to finish in 12 hours. Maybe in the 2023 race? Can anybody confirm this? If it’s true then the cutoff makes sense, even for the last corral.
Yep, the further back in the pack you go, generally the more riders slow down throughout the day. If you can’t make it to twin lakes in 4 hours, you have very little shot of completing the course in 12 with the toughest climbing still to come. Not saying it’s impossible, but it’s a long shot.
But the cuttoffs are there primarily for safety reasons (weather risk at the high points), not designed around finishing time. Letting someone start the columbine climb at noon would be a crap shoot on the weather and it’s extremely exposed for both riders and volunteers at the aid station. The stage race is a good race on the same course where you can finish regardless of how slow your pace is (I rode sweeper this year and I think it took the back of the pack about 5 hours to get up columbine and back to twin lakes).