The last test before the start line.

The Leadville Trail 100 MTB was not one of the 28. Like the Stage Race in July, it was preparation — the same hundred-mile out-and-back that appears twice in the counted campaign, ridden a year early.

Some of you know how the last attempt ended: eight years ago I turned around at Columbine Mine, at 11,000 feet, on a bad knee I had brought with me from a hamstring injury two weeks earlier. Rest, it turns out, is not the same thing as recovery. I went to the line fresh and de-trained, which are two different conditions that feel identical for about fifty miles.

Saturday I went back healthy. 101 miles. 9,955 feet of climbing. Ten hours and nine minutes. My longest ride on any bike, and my best day ever on Columbine.

In July I wrote that we were already in the 100 with a sub-12:00 goal. Small buckle, for now.

Michael rode it with me and finished on his debut. Hats off to him. He wrote afterward that a difficult test has a way of providing clarity — it shows you what your preparation got right, where you are stronger than you thought, and where the work still is. That is exactly what this one was for. It also did something quieter and just as useful: having it on the calendar kept both of us training through months when it would have been easy not to.

Michael made one other point that belongs here more than anywhere else. Behind every athlete who reaches a start line healthy and ready is a network most people never see — coaches, teammates, family, medical and performance staff, sponsors, the organizations that pay for all of it. He would know; he is USA Cycling’s Chief Medical Officer, and that network is his job. It is also precisely what the USA Cycling Foundation funds, and precisely what an American athlete with ability and no means goes without.

Leadville was the test. Rebecca’s Private Idaho over Labor Day is event one of twenty-eight, and from there this stops being a rehearsal.