Rode for four days in the Methow. On Thursday and Friday, I pre-rode the XC and downhill courses for the Boneshaker mountain bike race, and then on Saturday and Sunday I actually ran the races.

In the XC, I rode the Jekyll and finished 5th in the 50-60 year old category.

The coolest thing about this race was getting to ride against some really good riders, the best of whom was a pro woman who started in the group after my group.

By the beginning of our second lap (we did two ten mile laps and about 2500 verts), the fastest women in the next group were passing the men. The lead woman caught me as we were flying down toward the Beaver Ponds, but I still had some juice left so I was able to stay with her for 5 or 10 minutes.

She had a wonderful, refined hardtail line, and maintained a much faster cadence than I was able to. I felt she was much faster on the flats and slow, steady climbs, but I was faster than her on the down, and on steep climbs. In fact, I caught her twice on the only steep pitches in this section of the course and blew right by her. She tried to spin up the hills, which meant she kept shifting into lower and lower gears while her speed just died.

I died, however, at about the one hour 30 minute point as we headed into the last half of the last lap on the Paterson Lake Trail. It was just like the cliche -- I hit a wall. Suddenly, slight uphill grades that I would normally spin in the middle cog in the back forced me into the biggest cog. It was like I was in slow motion. I caught and passed one guy at the very end, with the finish line in sight, but I was really spent.

In the downhill on Sunday, the starter was having a bad hair day and would start me. So I rode the course anyway (it was like a fast Galbraith Trail with a lot of log drops at the top), and then went over to Lightning Creek and rode it.

Had a wonderful stay in a very nice bed and breakfast in Twisp, the Methow Valley Inn, as well as a pleasant dinner with John Bonica and his wife Laura.

Approximately 7500 combined verts.

Vert Quest chronicles "The Man Known As Mongo's" pursuit of the World Record for climbing on a mountain bike, 404,000 vertical feet, or the vertical equivalent of 13 sea-level-to-summit ascents of Mt. Everest during a 12 month period. Mongo's mountain bike climbing tricks are distilled in Mongo's Over-the-top Guide to Climbing.