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Podcast: Breckenridge’s ‘Doc PJ’ chats Saturday’s Imperial Challenge ‘psuedo-triathlon’

Photo courtesy Joseph Large | Special to The Daily Competitors ski up Breckenridge Ski Resort's terrain at the 2017 Imperial Challenge "pseudo-triathlon" event. In its 27th year, the annual event will take place this Saturday in Breckenridge and is part of the resort's season closing weekend celebration.

Competitors ski up Breckenridge Ski Resort’s terrain at the 2017 Imperial Challenge “pseudo-triathlon” event. In its 27th year, the annual event will take place this Saturday in Breckenridge and is part of the resort’s season closing weekend celebration. (Photo courtesy Joseph Large / Special to The Daily)

Take heed the rest of you Imperial Challenge contestants out there: Doc P.J.’s bike tires still have studs on them.

The forecast may be calling for 8-16 inches of snow through Saturday morning here in the High Country, but that won’t stop Craig “Doc PJ” Perrinjaquet and other Imperial Challenge contestants from hopping aboard their bikes — or slipping on their best winter running shoes — and setting off for the annual end-of-winter/beginning-of-spring race, in its 27th year.

The annual event combines both cycling and running with uphill boot-packing/skinning and downhill skiing and snowboarding for a one-of-a-kind event that organizers describe as a “pseudo-triathlon.”



LISTEN: Got 15 minutes? Breckenridge’s “Doc PJ” chats Imperial Challenge tips, memories and what the annual event means to Summit County’s recreation community.

For the first time in the event’s 27-year history, the 2018 Imperial Challenge race will feature both splitboarding and snowshoe-snowboard categories, divisions that will award first-place medals of their own.



But Doc PJ will be taking on the race just like he has done more than 20 times in Imperial Challenges of yesteryear: by affixing all of his skin and ski gear to his bike before the 6.2-mile cycling route to Breckenridge Ski Resort.

In a preview podcast, Doc PJ shares stories of Imperial Challenges of years past while also describing just how his Shasta bike came to have all of the affixed gadgets that help him secure his decades-old skis to the bike for the first leg of the race. The Breckenridge local and Imperial Challenge fixture also shares do’s and don’ts for this year’s race and contextualizes what he feels is the connection between the fun-loving annual race to the Breckenridge and Summit County communities where the event continues to take place.

Check out the podcast online at SummitDaily.com, and if you’re interested in registering for the race at the last minute, go to: MavSports.com/imperial-challenge/


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