Not only did Fort Lewis College sophomore Isaac Allred complete the infamous 224-mile Durango Death Ride loop. He crushed the FKT (fastest known time) with the help of his friends and now his feat has been seen by thousands on YouTube thanks to his friend Donovan Riley’s documentary.
Allred initially wasn’t worried about the FKT when he woke up before the sun rose on Oct. 5 intending to complete the Durango Death Ride. He knew his old Skyhawks cycling teammate Kellen Caldwell had done the ride and it destroyed him. Allred wanted to do the ride and provide Riley the opportunity to do a long-form documentary.
After climbing 15,433 feet of elevation gain on a beautiful fall day, Allred crossed the finish line in Durango in 10 hours 24 minutes and 40 seconds. His friends and support team were there to celebrate and Riley’s camera was there to capture the end of an epic day; Allred crushed the FKT by over 40 minutes.
“At the time I knew I could do a pretty good effort like that,” Allred said. “But now, after a pretty good off-season from the bike, I’m kind of shocked I actually made that happen. It's been a lot of time to reflect and I'm still pretty proud of myself for being able to pull that off.”
The history of the Durango Death Ride goes back to 1979 when Bob Gregorio, working with Fort Lewis College at the time, organized the ride just for fun and was planned as a two-day ride. The next year, the riders returned and wanted more of a challenge. So they did it in one day and the ride became more and more legendary as the years passed.
Beginning in North Durango, the route goes north through the Million Dollar Highway and up to Ridgway. After that, riders head south to Telluride and climb Lizard Head Pass. Then riders will rip through a 60-mile canyon into Dolores. Finally, riders head east through Mancos and back into Durango.
FLC cycling coach Chad Cheeney said Allred’s accomplishment is impressive considering how young Allred is and how new Allred is to the area. Cheeney said the training knowledge, the history of the Durango Death Ride and the advances in equipment have helped young riders like Allred continue to go faster on the route.
Allred is from Winona, Minnesota, and got into mountain biking in high school. He fell in love with the sport and during his sophomore year, he did a 100-mile ride and knew he wanted to get more into endurance riding. Then COVID-19 hit and Allred had some more time on his hands. He got a 20-year-old Trek road from his uncle and started going on more long road rides. Allred started enjoying the process and the training more. He realized he wanted to pursue cycling in college and found FLC.
He first heard about the Durango Death Ride last year as a freshman and since then, it was always in the back of his mind.
The perfect opportunity to do it presented itself in late August. Allred was out on a ride and Riley texted him asking him to shoot something.
Riley, from Littleton, Colorado, began doing photography in middle school and got into mountain biking in high school. He started making edits and fell in love with those. After he came to FLC for the cycling team, Riley continued to make edits and worked with the college’s marketing department to put stuff out on social media.
Allred and Riley met up and Riley made an Instagram reel of Allred riding his bike. Allred’s clothing sponsor, Champion System, saw the reel and loved it. They said they wanted more videos and asked about any ideas the guys had. Riley mentioned that he wanted to do a longer-form video instead of a reel. Allred was thinking about doing the Light Rim route in Moab, Utah, but Riley suggested the Durango Death Ride because there’d already been so many documentaries on the Light Rim.
“I was looking for just a bigger project to work on,” Riley said. “I had done a lot of stuff having to do with cycling. I wanted to encapsulate something that was close to the community here because there are so many amazing cyclists that come out of this place … He (Allred) mentioned he wanted to try to do this ride. At first, he wasn't even looking into doing the FKT. I was trying to encapsulate how it was originally going to be mostly about the ride and how big of a deal it was, with it being this giant ride.”
About a month before, the boys agreed to start preparing for the ride and got their friends Kip Sevenoff, Evan Dudley and Caruso Shanafelt to help. Sevenoff and Shanafelt were responsible for giving Allred nutrition during the ride and taking some photos and shots for the documentary. Dudley was driving the truck while Riley was in the back of the truck picking up rolling shots of Allred. Champion System also stepped in and contributed some funds to help the ride.
The guys planned out what spots on the loop they wanted shots at using Google Earth. Riley and Dudley only did rolling shots where there was passing lanes to ensure safety and marked those areas down ahead of time using Google Earth.
Allred was ready to go. He didn’t need any special training and the guys’ time frame for the ride fit in perfectly with his end-of-the-year race schedule. Allred spent a ton of hours on the bike in the previous winter and he stayed in Durango during the summer to continue training. The only thing Allred did was ride up Red Mountain Pass about two weeks before to do a little recon and test out his legs on one of the harder parts of the route.
The night before the ride was scheduled, Allred was working at Tom’s Deli, ate a bunch of bread between washing dishes and went home. He didn’t have much trouble falling to sleep. The nerves hit him when he got up before the 6 a.m. start time. It was a cold fall morning and he couldn’t tell if he was shaking from the nerves or the cold.
Allred started the Durango Death Ride but had some early trouble with his seat post and had to stop to adjust it around Coal Bank and Molas Pass. But his boys quickly realized that he was looking good early on.
“With my fitness at the time, it felt like I had no real high end power, but I could motor for an entire day,” Allred said. “I was definitely staring at my Garmin quite a bit, because I had a live segment up so I could see exactly how close I was to the previous FKT. So I was staring at that, and at my power meter, making sure I wasn't going too hard, but also trying to keep the pace high enough to get a good time.”
After he got through the Coal Bank, Molas and Red Mountain Pass, Allred’s fitness allowed him to feel better as the hours went by. It also helped that he felt a tail wind for most of the ride. But there was one big problem: Neither Allred or his friends could confirm whether he was up or down on the FKT.
Allred gave his friends a spreadsheet of all the times he wanted to be at the certain feed stations to see if he was either ahead or behind the FKT. The problem was he didn’t calculate for 18 minutes early in the ride. Therefore, about halfway through the ride, Allred and his buddies didn’t know if he was 19 minutes up on the FKT or down on it.
“It was really not until Placerville going up Lizard Head that I was pretty confident that I was ahead,” Allred said. “But I tried to not focus on it too much and just push to my limit.”
Allred pushed and pushed with his friends giving him nutrition and cheering him on. He had no solid food on the ride. He pushed through with sugar water in his bottle, which was ambitious because he had an upset stomach at the end of the ride.
Once Allred got to Dolores, he really started to feel all he had put his body through. He didn’t know the rolling hills heading into Hesperus too well but he pushed until the final descent into Durango to finish the ride. His friends and support team were there for hugs as he realized what he had accomplished.
Allred and the support crew were exhausted from the 10-hour day. They stood around at the finish for a little bit before they all went home to sleep. The last thing Allred remembered from that day was chugging chocolate milk as his friends drove away from his house. He estimates he burned between 9,000-10,000 calories.
“It was so much fun having them there to support it,” Allred said about his friends. “Because I have never really had a ride like this, where I've had a ton of support like that … As the day wore on, I was pretty cooked by the end. Their enthusiasm really picked me up quite a bit. I was just so down in the dumps at a couple points. I'd ride past them and they'd all be screaming and I could not help but smile.”
While Allred’s work was done, Riley’s work was just beginning. With a background in reels, Riley is very detail-oriented and was working at a snail’s pace on the beginning of the documentary. He realized he needed help and he got it from his boss at FLC, Shan Wells.
Riley was worried about the flow of the plot points of the documentary; he didn’t want one point to be too long or another one to be too short. He knew he wanted it to be between 10-20 minutes long.
During winter break, Riley found his editing groove. He edited three hours a day as he crafted the story with beautiful drone shots of the fall scenery, smooth action shots of Allred crushing the FKT and blending in interviews with the guys. After feedback from Wells and his buddies, Riley published the documentary to his YouTube page on Jan. 18.
“I knew what he could do with the camera and how good he can make things look,” Allred said about Riley. “I had no expectations. I didn't know what to expect with how he was going to edit it but I was so happy with it when he showed me.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
