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Dave Wiens says he "couldn't be better prepared" for the 2008 Leadville 100

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Dave Wiens

Photo: file shot

At the Leadville 100 last year, when Floyd Landis attacked on an early climb, then-four-time defending Leadville champ Dave Wiens matched the acceleration pedal stroke for pedal stroke.

"For about 8 seconds," Wiens said with a laugh this week. "I realized I could stay with Floyd, but I'd never finish the race if I did."

This Saturday morning when Wiens lines up beside Lance Armstrong in downtown Leadville, Colorado, for the 6:30 a.m. start, he has a similar strategy: let the Tour star ride his own race.

"If he rides away from me at the beginning and I never see him again, I'm not going to be really surprised."

"I mean come on: Lance won the Tour seven times, he's one of the most amazing aerobic athletes of all time," Wiens said.

Then again, there's a reason Wiens, 43, is now the five-time Leadville champ. Last year, after letting Landis get a gap, Wiens continued on at his own pace, gapped Landis when he crashed, then held him off at the end.

He may be retired from pro racing, but the affable Wiens didn't win two World Cup races and a national cross-country championship in the 1990s, plus a national marathon championship in 2004, without considerable fire in the belly.

Wiens, who was fourth at this year's national marathon mountain bike championships in Breckenridge, Colorado, has always excelled at altitude, and he says he "couldn't be better prepared" for this year's Leadville test.

"I'd love to give (Armstrong) a good race," he said. "It's going to be super fun for everybody involved."

A "stretch goal"
Wiens races bikes about a half-dozen times a year these days, and trains on the bike 15 to 17 hours per week starting in April. He spends the winter alpine and nordic skiing and playing rec league hockey near his home in Gunnison, Colorado.

His training is not much different from when he was on Team Diamondback in the 1990s, preparing for much shorter cross-country races: he recalls just two rides of more than six hours this season; his record winning time at Leadville last year was 6:58:46.

"Leadville is a stretch goal. I don't really train to it, I just hope that everything else I'm doing prepares me for it ... when I was training for marathons for a few years I used to do a lot of long, long rides, but I never felt that sharp."

Wiens trains with a Suunto altimeter/heart rate monitor watch. He watches his elevation gain per hour and his culminative elevation gain and has done several rides this season that, while closer to the four-hour mark, match Leadville's 14,000-feet gain.

Family support — and a late-race treat
Wiens' wife, fellow Mountain Bike Hall of Fame member Susan De Mattei, will be at the Leadville support stops Saturday to hand up gels and water bottles filled with PowerBar energy drink — leftovers from when Wiens was on the PowerBar-sponsored RLX Polo team, which folded at the end of the 2004 season.

"Some of it is past the expiration date but it's OK," he said. At the final stop, Wiens will likely take a can of Starbucks Double Shot, which fueled his successful final stretch last year at Leadville, when he held off a fast-charging Landis.

Wiens' Leadville bike (as of Tuesday ...)

Photo: Dave Wiens

The bike: still tinkering
Wiens, a member of the Topeak-Ergon team, will ride a German-made Rotwild carbon fiber full suspension bike. In his previous five years at Leadville, he has tried full suspension bikes from Maverick and Tomac. Last year he rode a Yeti hardtail.

This week he's still mulling over his bike set up — in particular the wheels and tires — but as of Tuesday he had settled on the following spec:

Rotwild R.R2 team bike
● Ergon GX2 Carbon grips
● Topeak Carbon Shuttle bottle cages
● Topeak ProPack
● Topeak Micro Rocket AL
● Magura MD 100 R fork with handlebar lockout
● DT Swiss XR Carbon rear shock
● Thomson Elite 4X stem
● Thomson Masterpiece seatpost
● DT Swiss XR 1450 wheels
● Shimano XTR drivetrain
● Shimano Rapidfire Plus shifters
● Shimano XTR pedals
● Formula Oro brakes
● Continental Explorer Supersonic 2.1 tires
● Continental Race Light tubes
● Terry Carbon saddle