Leadman competition coming up at Silver
It’s time to test your flexibility, endurance and pain tolerance with Kellogg’s winter Ironman – the Leadman multisport competition at Silver Mountain resort.
It’s a ski-bike-run race on April 29 that this year will raise money for a historic project to pay tribute to the mining industry that put Silver Valley on the map.
Last year’s Leadman raised $5,000 toward a brick drinking fountain in the city park.
“This year we expect to double that,” says Karey Scholey, fund-raising chairperson for Kellogg Rotary Club. “We have high expectations.”
Participants can enter as individuals or in teams of two or three people. Skiers and snowboarders start on top of Chair 2, racing about a mile, depending on how much snow is covering the course, to the ski-to-bike transition point.
Then it’s off on a mountain bike over a course that contains ups and downs and fast single tracks until, finally, 11 or 12 miles later, a stretch of pavement terminating at the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes trailhead at Big Creek, east of Kellogg.
The 4 1/2 mile run, “the most grueling” leg of the race, says Scholey, starts and finishes at the Gondola Village.
Many of the contestants enjoy the first two events but have a hard time running, according to Roger Baker, who competed in the first three Leadmans. He suggests the running-averse get a high school track star for a teammate to finish the Leadman competition.
Baker, 62, plans to use his Ambush K2 snowboard for the first leg of this year’s race. It’s his first year of snowboarding, although he has 50 years of skiing behind him.
“It’s the number of turns that makes you good,” says Baker, “not the number of years.”
Besides practicing his turns, Baker plans to prepare for the race by riding his bike and running on days when there is no new snow on the mountain.
Last year his goal was to finish all three legs of the race in two hours, a time he beat by 20 minutes. This year he wants to finish in under an hour and a half.
Sixty people of all ages competed in last year’s Leadman, and more than 100 are expected for this year’s event, says Scholey. “Already we have teams signing up from the University of Idaho, NIC and Spokane. We want to make this a huge event.”