Ep. 189 ~ Justinas Leveika, Colorado Trail Race 2024
Bikes or Death
Patrick Farnsworth
4.8 • 563 Ratings
🗓️ 23 August 2024
⏱️ 129 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Justinas Leveika is fresh off an impressive Colorado Trail Race finish. This was his first time at CTR and he finished in 4d 7h 17m, which was over 8 hours faster than the next rider. However, due to a rule violation, which was unknown to him at the time, he was not the official first place finisher. That honor goes to Xavier Chiriboga with a time of 4d 15h 55m.
Going into Leadville Justinas destroyed his rear wheel on a gnarly decent which shattered the wheel, rendering it unrideable. To get it fixed he hiked to a trailhead, hitched a ride into town, replaced the rear wheel, and hitched a ride back to where we left the trail and continued on. Unlike other solo self supported bikepacking races like the Tour Divide, you are not allowed to get in a vehicle at anytime during the Colorado Trail Race. Justinas was unaware of this rule at the time, but it didn't stop him from putting on an impressive performance.
After returning to the trail with his shiny new wheel he quickly started packmaning his way through the field and finished ahead all the other riders. The broken wheel wasn't the only challenge he had to overcome on the race this year, but you'll have to listen to the episode to hear the whole story.
Regardless of an unfortunate rules oversight, what Justinas did was undeniably impressive. Even more so considering that he broke the long standing FKT on Tour Divide less than 2 months ago. Now, he sets his sights on the Arizona Trail Race in an attempt to complete the Bikepacking Triple Crown.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Bikes for Death podcast. |
| 0:03.6 | As always, my name is Patrick and I'm your host. |
| 0:06.5 | And on today's episode, I'm excited to welcome back Ustinus Laveca, who is fresh off of the Colorado Trail. |
| 0:14.2 | You'll remember that Ustinus was recently on the podcast after coming in first place at Tor Divide and setting a new FKT, beating |
| 0:24.6 | out the longstanding time held by legendary Mike Hall. |
| 0:29.6 | And this year, Oostinus threw down an impressive run on the Colorado Trail race. |
| 0:36.6 | It was his first time to ever see the trail, which makes it even more impressive. |
| 0:41.9 | He finished in four days, seven hours, and 17 minutes coming in over eight hours before the next rider. |
| 0:52.0 | I believe on today's episode I said 12 hours. That was a mistake. It is over |
| 0:57.3 | eight hours though. But even though he crossed the finish line first, he is not the official |
| 1:03.4 | winner of this year's Colorado Trail race due to a rule violation that was unknown to him at |
| 1:10.7 | the time. And to be honest, it was |
| 1:12.7 | unknown to me as well. So what happened was as he was going into Leadville, he experienced a |
| 1:20.1 | catastrophic failure of his rear wheel, rendering it completely unrideable. And he hitched a ride |
| 1:27.2 | into Leadville to get it repaired |
| 1:29.7 | and was returned to the same spot on the trail and picked up right where he left off and |
| 1:34.1 | kept going. But unlike Tour Divide on the Colorado Trail race, you are not allowed to get |
| 1:39.7 | into a vehicle at any time. And again, that was unknown to Oostinus. I didn't know about it either. |
| 1:46.7 | So we're going to start today's conversation with that topic because reading on the internet, |
| 1:51.4 | I learned that I think there's a lot of you that weren't aware of this. And so we kind of unpacked |
| 1:57.6 | that a little bit as an opportunity to learn from his experience. |
| 2:02.9 | And I heard someone on the internet call it an oustinist that going forward, if anyone ever |
... |
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