Fireweed 200 Bike Race

The Fireweed 200 is a bike race that starts at Sheep Mountain Lodge and finishes in Valdez. All in all, it's about 200 miles of rolling hills, epic views, and really hard pedaling—especially for those who haven’t trained at all. (Spoiler: that would be us.)

Earlier in the year, I thought it would be a fun little ride, so I signed up and entered myself, Zach, and Christian… telling them after the fact. Zach was all game, but Christian was a bit disgruntled about biking the proposed 66 miles each—especially because he didn’t even have a bike yet. I’d done the park road earlier in the season, but the three months from that ride to the Fireweed consisted of very little training for me and a max distance of 25 miles. Christian was still very disgruntled and pettily refused to bike at all for training, relying on his typical training plan, which consists of just doing the event and then complaining about how much it hurts for the next few weeks—like a true champion of procrastination. Luckily, we had a last-minute entry from Brian, which helped lower the distance for each of us. Only looking at 50 miles apiece then!

We headed up the night before to camp out at Sheep Mtn Lodge. Christian was rocking an old Trek bike that he’d never ridden before, Brian an old Mongoose from the 80s (complete with retro vibes and questionable brakes), Zach with the nicest bike (a Specialized gravel bike), and myself with an older K2 road bike. We figured we’d just wing it and see where the road takes us. As we were deliberating our race plan the night before, we decided on just doing 50 miles apiece for the whole race. Luckily, a seasoned and slightly inebriated race veteran overheard our plans and recommended not splitting by distance but by time, since the course was so varying in difficulty and elevation. With our new race plan in effect—splitting by hours—we headed to bed for some pre-race sleep, excited for what the next day held in store.

The next day started wet. We had pouring rain starting around 1 a.m., and it was looking like we were in for a nice soggy day. Zach had pulled the short straw and was up first. At 0745, he rocked off through the rain for his first hour. Rain was pouring, and all of us in the truck were very pleased to not be biking in it—cozy spectators, we were. Zach's first section was brutal: all uphill, wet, cold, and foggy. I was next, and as Zach was cresting over his last hill, we were all quite thrilled to see that we had nothing but clear skies ahead—Zach had pedaled us out of the weather. Thanks for taking one for the team!

We handed off, and I got quite the fun section: lots of downhill and speed, with only a few uphills, made for some easy passing. Even though we were passing solo riders and not relay teams, it still felt great—like being the hare in a tortoise convention. Brian and Christian had the next couple hours, and before we knew it, we were cruising through Glennallen. We determined that hour segments were fine for the flats, but we would definitely need shorter segments through Thompson Pass, as there was quite a bit of elevation gain. We all finished our second hour rotation and started the climb. It was rough! My training had consisted of vacationing on the East Coast, Christian's consisted of nothing—but once again, his training plan surprised us all, and he rocked it—Brian hadn’t seen a bike in a month, and Zach had been laid out with sickness for the past week. So yeah, the hills certainly hurt. As we approached the top of the pass, Brian unluckily got stuck with a brutal portion—all uphill—and he passed the baton to Christian right at the top. Brian and I were quite upset that Christian snagged the best downhill right after, considering he didn't deserve it with all his disgruntledness—karma, where you at? Christian and Zach cruised through the next downhill portions, ecstatic to not have to be biking up hills anymore.

It was beautiful. Keystone Canyon was absolutely gorgeous: huge waterfalls on either side with the roaring Lowe River ripping through the center.

Brian and I took the next two sections, and before we knew it, we were in Valdez. We opted to do the last 10 miles as a team and ripped past the finish line for a total time of 12:19. Shockingly, we placed third in the open relay! We were thrilled and definitely didn’t let the fact that the first-place rider was solo and completed the race in 9:37 bring us down at all. For real though, 200 miles all by himself and managing to complete the race in less than 10 hours was quite the impressive feat! With quite sore rear ends and already plotting how to win next year (maybe with actual training this time?), we headed to bed feeling pretty accomplished in spite of our unconventional training and race plans.