At 14,000ft the air temperature is 28 degrees cooler than it is at sea level. As you climb the atmospheric pressure halves and the air grows painfully thin as your heart rate soars to 170bpm and your body struggles to supply enough oxygen to your brain. You’re breathing hard, lungs working overtime; it’s like running on a treadmill while trying to breathe through a straw.
Right now my lips are turning blue, my head is giddy, my concentration’s wavering and there’s an 80mph corner looming, one complete with a loose gravel surface with a sheer drop on the outside. My tongue is so dry it’s sticking to the back of my throat and I start dry-wretching in my helmet. Shaking my head to clear my mind and focus on the corner ahead, I pull my weight over the front, leaving the rear tyre to slide wherever it wants. For this is Pikes Peak, I’m three turns from the top and nothing’s getting in the way of me posting a decent race-time. Nothing.
I’ve wanted to race Pikes Peak ever since I first heard about the place some 20 years ago. Winding impossibly up the side of a mountain just outside Colorado Springs in Colorado USA, the race is 87 years old and has claimed countless lives since Lieutenant Zebulon Pike first set
foot on the 14,110ft summit. The first race to the top was held on August 12th, 1916 (while the rest of us were busy battling the Germans in France) and Rea Lentz from Washington won with a time of 20mins 55s. Nearly a century later the machinery has evolved somewhat, the times have been halved but the route remains identical. By 2012 the course will be tarmac from bottom to top (currently it’s 50% dirt and 50% paved) and when the granite gravel is covered over so will be a large part of what makes Pikes Peak such a unique challenge.
Our team was assembled by the superhuman efforts of Landers Sevier from Birmingham, Alabama. Landers made our assault on Bonneville’s salt flats possible two years ago. “I’ve got a
KTM690SMC and an Aprilia SXV450 – which do you want?” he asked way back in May. “The KTM,” I replied. “The Aprilia is bound to blow-up.” Prophetic words as the 450 lunched its internals just two days before the start of the event. Only an epic re-build got Landers back in the race. Team Ebsco/Visordown would be completed by John Pierce, ex-racer and a resident of Nashville, Tennessee, riding an Aprilia SXV550. The 70bhp V-twins sounded amazing on their open race pipes; my KTM was just loud. Our three-man squad looked the bollocks: bikes all stickered up with sponsor’s logos, flashy race leathers and helmets, and (most importantly) we had the biggest rig in the paddock: a 33ft motorhome rig as supplied by buyfloorsdirect.com.
If races were won in the paddock, we had Pikes sewn up before a single flag was waved...
Practice runs & early starts
Our alarm goes off at 2.30am. Practice begins at 5.30am and we have to be off the mountain by 8am. My jetlag works in my favour; 3am is 10am in my head so I’m suffering the least. John Pierce, a man so laid-back he sounds like he’s on a permanent morphine drip, is vocal in his dislike of the early starts. “Oh man, this is horrible. I’m too tired,” he cusses in his southern drawl. Being British and therefore made of sterner stuff than these feeble Americans, I tell him to stop moaning. How these idle Yanks have taken over the world is beyond me.
The mountain is broken down into three sections for the purposes of practice, the idea being that you get five or six runs on each section before piecing it all together on race day. It’s 25˙C in Colorado Springs but freezing cold up on the hill, people moving silently by the light of generators as they prep their bikes under the stars. Th e machinery on display is an eclectic collection, everything from 1972 Triumph flat-trackers to home-made, TL1000-powered sidecars. Some lunatics are even racing Buell Lightnings and there’s a KTM 990 Super Duke on race wets.
We get the morning briefing from organisers Sonny Anderson and Bill Brokaw. It’s like an audience with Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet show. “Take it easy up there today,” they chuckle together. “It’s day one and we don’t want anyone getting hurt. Knowing the road is everything here, that’s what you have to work at, you bozos.” Hurr hurr.
Briefing over, it all gets a bit weird as we bow our heads in prayer. “This is a race for life,” says a preacher (who looks remarkably like Jesus) over the din of warming engines. “Thank you, oh Lord, for giving us this beautiful day.” Just after telling us it’s a race for life, he rattles off a list of those who’ve died on the mountain or suffered heart attacks just off it.
And with that, we head onto Pikes Peak for the first time. The first three miles are fast, sinuous asphalt. It’s like the foothills of an Alpine pass, with positive cambers and easily-read, hugely enjoyable corners – I live for this kind of riding. At Picnic Grounds the road dissolves into dirt, swept and grippy. Your initial reaction is to knock it down to second gear, but that soon gives way to full-throttle, fourth-gear confidence.
We only get limited runs because the KTM’s playing up, but we post respectable times between 6min 18s (Pierce) and 6min dead (me). This was to set the trend for the coming days, Landers edging ever-closer to my times until we’re dead-level between Devil’s Playground and the summit.
Ridden in sections, the air of mystery is stripped out of Pikes Peak and it seems less intimidating, but none of us could remember any of the 156 corners from one day to the next.
Read on to find out how race day went
