Leadville race week report

So me and my wife left for Leadville on Monday night with the trailer in tow and drove 3hrs to stay at Turtle River State Park in ND USA.It was nice with a bike trail close by ( which i rode Tuesday morning ). On day 2 we drove on to Ponca State Recreation Area (7hrs) in Nebraska which had just had a storm so there were many downed tree's.From there on day 3 we drove to Windmill State Recreation Area  ( 4hrs ) which was nice and quiet and was close to the interstate.On day four we had a 10hr drive with stops to get to our final camping spot in Buena Vista CO USA which is 30 miles south of Leadville and is at 8000ft.We then settled in and went to bed.Day 5 i headed up to Leadville at 10000ft with Brandy to check in and get my race bag.There was also a rider's briefing later on in the morning.Man there were alot of people and the weather was great.I got all my stuff looked around talked to lots of nice people and then went to local bike shop for some supplies while Brandy got us a seat for lunch.Holy smackers the lunch was good i couldn't even finish the hole thing.Then we headed back to the camper at 8000ft to get my shit together.Soon it was bed time and because they started staging at 5 am i had to get up at 3:30 am plus we had a 30 min drive to get there.When i arrived at 5:45am i was almost last in a line up of over 1000 people so i had to weasel my way up to around the middle.The start was controlled with all the pro's at the front.I wanted to get past as many people as i could before we reached the first climb but there were just to many and there wasn't much opportunity to pass so i just went with the flow.There was lots of climbing and lots of rocky fast descents which i made sure to take my time on.I saw one guy that had gone down hard and had to be choppered out with head trauma.I never saw so much liter on the trails though.There were bottle's, gels,number plates,food and clothes.It was the worst i have ever seen.The last climb on the outbound at 13000ft is what made me suffer bad.I honestly though if i pushed any harder i was going to pass out.They say you need 3weeks to a month to get used to the altitude and i had 2 days.Every time i would talk to people they would say how they were here for a month or were sleeping in oxygen tents at 13000 ft and then they would ask me where i was from and after i told them they would say good luck with that but i can say now after looking at the results that i beat alot of those people.I guess i can suffer more.The return 50 miles was a death march.I saw so many mech's like chain's,pedal's,rear dropouts and ton's of tire's.I was glad to see the finish line because i was cooked.It was for sure my hardest race ever a true ultra endurance race.I also forgot to mention there were alot of single speeders and tandem bikes.Every one was friendly and the volunteers were super.