My friend Eszter is at it again! (longish back story inside) →[More:]

OK, so way back in last October, my good friend Eszter came in as a very dark horse candidate for the 24 Hours of Moab (endurance offroad bicycle race). Not only had she never done a 24 hour race before, she had only been racing as a pro for about six months. She won, in a triumph of talent over big money team productions.

This year she's had a lot of challenges - she and her (now) husband Chris moved from Boulder to Crested Butte, got married in June, and have generally gone through a lot of upheaval and uncertainty in deciding to pursue their shared dream of becoming backcountry guides and professional endurance racers, rather than staying on the Front Range to get Real Jobs and become Responsible Adults and so on. More power to them, I say.

Eszter's had a difficult year of racing this season; she's struggled a bit with finding time, motivation and cash to train and race at the top level, partly owing to working 2 jobs, and partly due to not really knowing where their next meal or place to sleep was coming from for a good part of the year.

She and Chris recently decided to join the Colorado Trail endurance race sort of as a last-minute challenge from our mutual friend and their sponsor, Walt at Waltworks. Chris is a very good mountain biker in his own right, but not really into racing that much (he's more of a backcountry ski dude), so the fact that he's opted to race as well is even cooler. He should be able to push Eszter along by pure virtue of being behind her most of the way (his words, not mine).

The following link goes to the Colorado Trail race tracker page, where you can see live tracks and GPS position data for all 40 of the racers (36 guys and 4 women) who started at the Indian Creek trailhead just west of Denver, yesterday morning.

These races are entirely self-supported. Unlike most bike races, you can't accept help from anyone, cache supplies along the trail, or pick up feeds or spare parts from volunteers or team support. You have to carry everything you need with you, buy it at local shops along the way, or you are allowed to post a box of stuff to hold at a U.S. Post Office along the route. You camp in a bivy sack, carry all your spare clothes and food, and apparently get rained on a lot (the weather yesterday was epic). A couple of guys have already had trouble; one dropped out last night, a couple others have had mechanical problems that forced them to camp overnight at bike shops in Frisco and Breck to do repairs when the shops opened up.

The CT route is 470 miles total, from just west of Denver, all the way down to Durango. Over 300 of it is singletrack, and it is hard, hard, technical, steep rocky nasty singletrack for a lot of it (ask me how I know this!). Being that much of it runs along the Continental Divide, there is also over 60,000 feet of climbing involved. The race route is mapped via GPS waypoints, and most of the racers use modern GPS units with loaded race routes supplied by the race organisers, but every year it seems people get disqualified for missing part of the course. A big part of being fast in this race involves good orienteering skills, and making sure you're following the right trail, and GPS is not always dead accurate, especially in heavily wooded areas. The course is not specially marked for the race, and there are no course marshals to put you back on track. In sum, you're completely on your own out there for a week or so.

Eszter is leading the women's field by a goodly margin at last check. She is also currently at least 2 hours ahead of Chris!

I'm sending her all the good mojo I can right now. Here's to good luck, dry campsites, easy route finding and no mechanical snafus for the next week or so!