Rolling down forest road around mile 40 of the Silver Rush.
Leadville’s Silver Rush 50 is a run and bike race series that was first held in 2008. The races act as a qualifier for the Leadville 100 and seems to become more and more popular every year.
Several years ago I completed the Silver Rush 50 Run and I’d always wanted to head back and try the MTB version someday. This year wound up being the year, as Parker pitched the idea to me over the winter that we should both sign up.
Parker and I at the race start.
Just like the run, the race begins as a mad dash up Dutch Henry Hill with the first person to the top receiving a lottery bypass for the Leadville 100 MTB. Good times.
Parker and I are usually pretty evenly matched on bikes so we were able to stick together for nearly the entire race. With a significant portion of the field on lightweight XC bikes and hard tails, we knew neither of us were going to be breaking any speed records. The main goal was to finish the race, not crash, and enjoy the day.
The day started off cool with clear skies, a near-perfect day in the Colorado mountains.
One of the reasons I had interest in this particular race on the bike is that nearly all of it entails fire roads. This makes it much easier to pass people, and perhaps much more pertinently, be passed. On the other hand singletrack can be more challenging to manage in a race environment, at least in my experience.
Near the Stumptown turnaround point.
The course is essentially a 25 mile out-and-back, with the turnaround point being at the Stumptown aid station northwest of Mt. Sherman. It’s both nice and demoralizing to preview the second half of the day as you ride through the first half of the day, depending on how you look at it.
Mining relics along the course.
The big final climb up Iowa Gulch with Mt. Sherman in back, which my cousin, his family and Anna-Lisa hiked to the top of while I was racing down below.
Temps continued to heat up, and the final climb up Iowa Gulch was just as brutal as I remember it on foot. The climb goes on for miles and caps off the 7,500 ft of elevation gain, so it’s really the race’s crux and final obstacle. Parker and I were still hanging together at this point and decided we might as well just roll across the finish line together. The last big descent into town seemed to go on forever and we were both fighting off cramps in the final few miles that wind through the hills above town. But in the end we both hit our sub-6 hour goal, barely.
Parker coming across the finish line.
Another race in the bag. It was also cool to run into so many Eagle County locals at the finish.
All in all the Silver Rush 50 is a well-run race and worth checking out at least once, whether it be on foot or bike. It’s a challenging but also attainable course in a central area of the Colorado mountains. Although the race is mostly on fire roads, that helps out a lot in making the MTB version run smoothly, and the views across the Arkansas River Valley towards the northern-Sawatch are top-notch.
Until next time, Silver Rush…