The Butte 50 Part 3: Training

After I decided to do the race, I think I had three weeks or so to tune up my training for the event. I had been splitting my time between road biking and mountain biking and continued to do so. I knew the course would have a ton of climbing: around 9000 ft for the 50 miler. Every Tuesday I ride the road bike up Bozeman Pass from Livingston on the frontage road. It is a 12.5 mile climb at a pretty mellow grade. I usually get up it in about an hour. I kept that up, and added going down the other side of the pass to Jackson Creek and got another half hour of climbing in. I also made sure to do some moderate intensity intervals on the long climb. I was doing 4x6 minute cruise intervals and then going real hard up any of the shorter steeper sections.
I also did some 2-3 hour road rides. The weekend before I did big mtn bike rides back to back on Saturday and Sunday. From my house I rode the highway to Suce Creek and then up and over and came out Livingston Peak Road to Swingley and then home. That was about 25 miles and three hours and 3600 feet of climbing. I felt good and strong for the most part. Sunday I did Bangtail Divide as a loop from Brackett Creek. 4:20 ride time, 31 miles, and 4000+ ft climbing. I felt pretty good on that one too. I had done it in June and gone 40 minutes slower, so that was good improvement.
In a colossal failure of judgement I decided NOT to preride the course at all. In hindsight this was a major error, given that it is only a 1.5 hour drive away. I was relying on course maps and descriptions, both of which proved to be woefully inadequate.
I felt I had basically done the bare minimum amount of training to be able to survive and perhaps finish an event like this.