What Coaches Do

Warmed up on a hill, then you see the five repeats!

[ Gentle Reminder: Help me help kids with cancer! ]

So today was a hill repeat day.  Not just any hill repeat day, but five-minute hill repeats.  Five of them.  Which means I needed a five minute hill.  For those who may not quite understand, that's a hill that it will take me a full five minutes to ride up on a mountain bike.  Which is a pretty long hill.  And add to it that I needed to maintain a pretty high power level for the entire interval, too, which means if the hill isn't very steep then it has to be REALLY long because I'm going to have to go fast to maintain that moderate power.

Great.

Step one was to find a hill.  In looking at some old data, it seemed like I could do it at Umstead State Park.  Well, I'd actually have to start outside the park on Old Reedy Creek Road and travel into the park on what was basically a really steep hill for a short distance that flattens out into not much of a hill.  But all I needed was any kind of sustained uphill and I'd just make the bike go really fast to keep my power up.

Great.

So as I got the hill figured out and looked ahead to doing the interval, I thought "see, this is why you have a coach.  What a great idea that was.  You'd never plan to do something like this otherwise."  And with that I patted myself on the back and started my day.  Unfortunately, the day actually started with a little over an hour in the weight room with my other coach.  With him, well, there is no plan that I know about, I just show up two or three days a week and he puts me through all manner of crazy exercises that I couldn't even remember much less plan to do on my own.  And sometimes I even get to work with NBA or former NBA or going-to-be NBA players.  Which is cool until you are actually doing exercises with these freaks of nature who have legs about a mile longer than yours and are half your age and yet you somehow feel like you must do everything in your power to keep up with them.

Great.

After that, it was off for some lunch, a couple errands, and then to my hill in the afternoon.  Which was, of course, the hottest afternoon of the entire year.  I got warmed up and hit those first couple hill repeats.  Those went well, and I even put out more power than I should have.  But by the third one, I was thinking "WHY THE HELL DID YOU GET A COACH?!?!  WHAT KIND OF STUPID IDEA WAS THAT?  AND WHY IS SHE SO MEAN?  DOES SHE REALLY WANT TO KILL ME?!?!?"  (Yes, I yell at myself in my own head.)  But then Pandora saved me with just the right set of songs at just the right time and before long I was near the end of that last interval.  And I pounded out the rest of it.  The data is lovely.

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

And with that, my thoughts pretty much immediately went to "Man, I love my coach.  That workout was something I would never have done in a million years if she hadn't been there to make me do it."  And just like that, I turned around and coasted down the hill for a while, recovered, and decided to take a victory lap of Crabtree.  Which, as it turns out, I did really fast because, well, I was inspired.  I didn't care that it was hot, I didn't care that I was tired, I just wanted to let loose and have some FUN.  And while it put me over my prescribed time by a few minutes, I'm pretty sure the kind of fun I had was something my coach wouldn't have minded at all.  But just in case she did mind, I'm going to suck up a bit and plug her by reminding all of you that she's not just an awesome coach, but she's an awesome writer and yoga instructor.  So go buy her books and take her yoga classes (in person or online!).  gulp

[ My apologies for the gratuitous use of underlines, bolds, italics, and most of all, combinations of all of the above. No, wait, nevermind, I do not apologize.  It's cool and you know it. ]

USMC Mud Run, Take Two

I've done a couple different Warrior Dashes, a Rugged Maniac, the Muddy Buddy, and now I've done the USMC Mud Run for the second time in less than a year.  The USMC Mud Run is by far the toughest of these events (there are a few others that are tougher than this, but certainly none more competitive).

This course is 5.2 miles in length and contains a whopping 36 obstacles.  Of these, many are impossible without teamwork, so this is a four person team event only.  Only a handful are fairly easy with the rest being moderate to difficult.  By contrast, I'd say most of the Warrior Dash and Rugged Maniac obstacles are fairly easy, with just a few moderate ones and no difficult ones.  That's what separates this event from the rest.

Both of my experiences with this race were with the same team...me, Alan, Michael, and Kenny.  All of us run a decent amount, with me the slowest of the bunch.  Fortunately I hold my own just fine on the obstacles, but it's nice that we have a variety of body types on our team.  Michael and I are larger and a little stronger than Alan and Kenny, but that's good because those two are lighter and easier to lift and carry.  You need a good mix in this race, not just a bunch of huge guys.

Last year we were 13th out of 84 corporate teams, and I believe 77th overall out of around 2200 teams.  Looks like this year the event was a little smaller at only 1500 teams, but we were 43rd overall and 7th out of 58 corporate teams.  We finished in 1:20 last year and 1:08 this year, but we think the course this year was a little bit longer thanks to having a couple more tough obstacles that were closed last year.  So we did a lot better.  Part of that was due to Alan having a small fall last year that required a few minutes of medical attention, but part was also our familiarity with the course and some better execution.  And we were probably in a little bit better shape.

This course gets you soaked in mud at the very first obstacle, and keeps soaking you in mud all the way through.  For example, to get all the grit out of some thin Smartwool socks requires rinsing thoroughly (including turning them inside out and rinsing).  Then wash with them inside-out to start with (on an extra-rinse cycle).  Then turn them back right-side-out and wash them AGAIN.  That's the only way.  Good trail shoes can be recovered from this event.  The process is remove the insole and rinse after the event.  Let dry.  Shake shake shake everything you can out of them.  Then use some decent water pressure to hose them out.  Then soak them in hot water for a while.  Shake them out and rinse them again.  Then run them through a washing machine if you can.  Then let them air dry.  Then run in them a couple times, and wash them again.  That usually gets the last of the grit out.  I generally keep an old almost worn-out pair of shoes around just for this kind of race.  As you can see, it's very hard on them.

What do you wear?  Ideally something thin and tight.  I wear triathlon tights, a compression dry-fit shirt, dry-fit headband (keeps SOME of the goop from running down your forehead and into your eyes, but only some), Smartwool socks, and trail shoes.  Wearing anything more is just more for the goop to stick to and weigh you down.  And the fine folks at the USMC Mud Run have some muddy concoction that will stick to anything.  It's quite spectacular.

After this race, I'm pretty beat up.  The best you can hope for in this race is the most thorough exfoliation you've ever had.  Particularly the shins and knees...those simply feel raw.  Most folks leave with some small amount of bleeding in that area, which was what happened to Alan and Kenny.  I think Michael and I escaped that, but that's just luck more than anything.  We were all incredibly wiped out otherwise, but very happy with our result.  I do think, though, that we might be over the last of our urges to do mud races like this.  They're a lot of fun, but quite hard on you.  At least for this year, it's time to turn my attention to Leadville training...

2012 6 Hours of Warrior Creek Race Report

I've been looking forward to the 6 Hours of Warrior Creek race since I raced as a team with a partner last year.  This year it was to be solo since I've ratcheted up my training for the Leadville 100.  It was not only my first six hour race, but actually my first ride longer than 5.5 hours! 

Going in I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.  I did over-estimate my own speed capability on this particular course somewhat as I thought there was a chance I could do four laps (about 53 miles) in less than the cut-off time of 5:40.  But once they posted the exact race route for this year and I found it included several miles of additional course for the start, I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it.  And I was right as I ended up finishing four laps with a 6:02:17.  That only included one pit stop for just a tad over four minutes in between laps two and three.  That overall time was good enough for 32nd place out of 60 riders in Solo Open.  I'll be 40 later this year, and had I been in the 40+ age group, I would have improved to a whopping 31st out of 70 riders!  Which is to say this doesn't really get any easier as one gets older.

(Here's a very good video someone put together from this year's race.)

To back up and go into more detail, the weekend started with me meeting Alan at Warrior Creek on Friday to pre-ride the new start area and try to figure out where we wanted to setup our pit location.  You can't camp overnight at Warrior Creek for this event (camping doesn't open for another week or two), but we knew we'd be back at the gate early enough the next morning to be wherever we wanted, so that was good.  We got a nice pre-ride in and got a few questions answered about the course, and felt good about things for the start.  While I was sure the pre-race meeting would also answer questions, it never hurts to find out earlier so you can more fully plan how you expect things to go.  And then there was the unexpected contingency that we couldn't actually hear any of the pre-race meeting anyway due to not-so-awesome speakers (my only "complaint" about the race, and as such a very minor one, really).

Race morning came after a usual bad night of sleep.  That's probably part nerves and part just over-active brain wanting to think through everything to make sure I'm as prepared as I can be.  And then a big part that I'm not back home in my comfortable bed and am instead in an RV in a Walmart parking lot.  But these are things we do in the name of racing.  So we got to where we wanted to be for our pit space, got setup, and even had Alan parked and ready to save some space for Michael and Steve, who were driving up race morning from Chapel Hill.  But when Michael and Steve showed up, Alan had lost his car keys!  Fortunately we were able to get another guy to move temporarily so we could get Michael's truck out of everyone's way, and Alan eventually found his keys, so order was restored.  But not after about 20 minutes of desperate searching!

Race morning

Everyone got their gear ready and we headed over to the race start.  We sat there through the race meeting that we really couldn't understand (it was a lot like what the teacher on the old Charlie Brown TV cartoons sounded like) and then went to the starting line.  We started on time and everyone remembered to start their data (race starts now sound like a fast chorus of Garmin beeps, so it's getting harder and harder to forget it!) and started rolling.  It was a long section of road, but it really seemed to go by so fast and then we were on the temporary trail and finally onto the real trail.  The start basically put us on the main loop a couple miles "back" up the loop, so on the first lap we exited the race loop and continued straight to start a real full lap.  So the first "lap" had an extra three miles or so on top of the normal amount of just over 12 miles.

I knew Steve wasn't in his best shape this year, was on about three hours sleep from a week in NYC, and really just hoped to do three laps.  But Alan and Michael would be formidable competition since both had recently beaten me at the Doubleshot race (and not to mention the fact that I've never beaten either of them in a race!).  So I was really curious after the first lap if either might still be in the pits when I got there, since I was not planning to stop.  Unfortunately my first lap got derailed a little bit by a crash.  I haven't looked at my data yet to see how much time it cost me, but it probably was only 30 seconds of being stopped and maybe another minute or two of being slow.  But the crash hurt.  It was about six miles into the race, and I had worked my way into a group that was fairly fast.  That said, there were still a couple riders in the front of the group that were causing some accordion effect at the slower technical sections and then a train of folks like me wanting to get around them.  But it was going to take some time, because those riders were pretty fast otherwise.

Thanks to the accordion effect, I was watching the riders ahead of me more than exactly what the trail was doing and simply missed a small slick spot until it was too late to miss it.  I hit it with the front tire while trying to turn to the left just a bit, and my front tire washed out JUST enough that I went down on my left side.  And where I fell was right into a section of roots sticking out of the ground.  I hit on my left hip and upper left leg (just below the glute) and hit so hard that it really felt like I had to have torn my triathlon tights as well as my skin pretty badly.  On top of that, my bike scraped the upper part of my left shin pretty good, too.  And then the train of riders behind me almost made it a lot worse (which wouldn't have been their fault!).  But somehow they ALL were able to avoid me (I mean I was in a big heap right in the middle of singletrack).  I figure about 25 people had to have gone by while I got myself gathered back up.

Upon inspection, not only were my shorts not torn, but neither was my leg.  The bike looked fine.  So I jumped on and took off again.  Man, these bikes are built so well these days.  And as I pedaled, I could tell my shin was going to burn when I started sweating, and I was definitely badly bruised on my back-side, but it didn't seem like anything that was going to hinder my pedaling.  I did need to come down off the adrenalin rush from crashing, but once you've crashed as much as I have, well, you figure that stuff out pretty quickly.  And fortunately for me as well, that group of about 25 that went by me was in front of a nice gap on the course and I was able to work back up to speed without being in much traffic again for a while.  That was a big help.

So I finished that lap, all the while keeping an eye on my power average.  It was a little higher than I thought it should be, but not a ton, so I just slowly tried to get it down a little.  I felt fine, but I knew just because I felt fine now didn't mean I wasn't burning through energy reserves that I'd need later.  As I finished the lap and rolled toward our pit spot, I really hoped I'd see Alan and/or Michael still there, but alas, they had already been there and gone.  I planned for only the stop at lap two (and four if I miraculously ended up doing five), so I rolled on through and kept going for lap two.

This lap was pretty uneventful, and I did get the power closer to where it should be, though still a little high.  I felt like I was drinking and eating very well, and remembered to take my salt supplements on the hour.  When I finished this lap and pulled in the pits, I drank a good bit of the water as I rolled in but noted there was still what felt like a few ounces left.  Oh, and Michael was in the pits still, but Alan had been there and gone already.  Michael was just about ready to leave, and I'd guess that he probably left about 90 seconds into my four minute stop, so he was back about 2.5 minutes ahead. I had some of a PB&J sandwich and headed back out after also swapping more Honey Stinger waffles into my feed bag.

At this point I had been out there just over three hours.  I felt okay still, but not great, so I tried to take it even easier.  Somewhere around half way through this lap (another six miles or so), I started to feel noticeably worse.  Still not horrible, but on the decline.  Wasn't sure why as everything was going to plan other than a slightly elevated power level (but this was race day, I kept telling myself!), so there wasn't much to change other than maybe slowing a little more.  As I got to mile 8 on this lap, I ran into "Ann from Charlotte."  She was chatty, and I'm never one to turn down chatty on the trail, so we talked from that point until the end of the lap.  While it was me that caught her, her pace was still very good and so I was fine slowing just a tiny bit more to have someone to talk to (especially since growing up in Charlotte, we had stuff we could talk about). 

We both thanked one another as we ended the lap for helping pass those miles a little better, but Ann needed to pit for some stretching and I kind of thought I better not stop lest I talk myself into not continuing.  I did see that Michael was in our pit, so I rolled through and asked him if he was going out again or not.  He said he was thinking about it, but seemed non-committal, so I said good luck and that I was continuing on and kept going.  So I knew Steve was still behind me (hadn't seen him all day, but again, no surprise as we didn't figure he'd be able to push four laps anyway), and now I was ahead of Michael, and Alan was somewhere on ahead.  Now, I had these visions for about a mile that maybe I could do some pushing and maybe Alan would bonk and maybe I'd catch him. 

But that was short-lived.  I really started to bonk myself.  Especially when I realized that I had missed my last salt supplement and was a half hour past it.  This didn't happen until near mile six. That didn't seem like a big deal, so I popped one and took a swig to wash it down.  I did get a mouthful of water, but noticed I got a little air.  WHAT?  Tried to take another swig and yes, indeed, I was sucking air.  Oh man, I was out of water.  Not good!  Especially since about two miles later was when the cramps hit.  I felt my left calf first, but only mildly.  Then my right leg started cramping from the knee to the hip just inside the thigh area.  I've never cramped quite like that before!

Strangely, even though there were many miles to go, they only caused me to walk two places that were short but very steep hills.  Everywhere else I just made sure to gear all the way down and not try to put any big power in.  Just spin spin spin at a decent cadence.  And breath very well.  Before the hill came, breath very well.  And happily, it worked.  I never had a bad cramp.  I did have to slow down a good bit, but that's better than vapor-locking on the trail.  I was regularly passing people at this point who were stopped and stretching stuff out against a tree somewhere.  All that business about maybe seeing Alan had been long past, so I wasn't surprised to see he had been finished a while when I came in.  I was a little surprised to find out that "a while" was actually 25 minutes!  That's a pretty good crushing, right there.  Had I run my best lap of the day on that last lap, he would have still beaten me by over ten minutes!  Oh well, there's still more work to do if I am to beat him in a race.

I had to dig deep to do it, but I'm really glad I made four laps.  I could tell only a few minutes off the bike that my wound was fairly severe, though.  There was no bending at the waist after long, and it hurt.  So I got myself in the shower in the RV quickly and got clean and got some compression tights on.  I then got packed up and was able to head out of there as soon as we were allowed (once the race was officially over).  I iced the area a couple times before getting home, and it was very swollen and a little dark already.  By the next day, it was a lot of colors of the rainbow!  Plus I was wasted.  I was able to eat okay after the race, but didn't want a ton.  For the next day and a half, however, I ate like a fiend!  And I was still dehydrated at that point, because I've needed more lip balm than at any other point in my life!

All in all, I feel pretty good for still being four months out of Leadville.  While I wasn't quite as fast as I thought I could be, I'm not really trained very well for this kind of course.  I've done most of my training on longer hills since that's what I'll see at Leadville, and Warrior Creek is all very short hills (and a lot of them), which is just way different in how it affects the body.  But it still went very well, and so much better than it would have been at any other point in my life, so I'm really happy about that.  I owe most of that to hard work, but a lot of it to the kind of intelligent hard work that comes from having an awesome coach, Sage Rountree. Thanks, coach!

Vegas Vasectomy Vacation!

That's right, it's not a blog post about some stupid mountain bike race!  Unfortunately, it's a post about vasectomies.  Vasectomi?  No, spell check says vasectomies, so vasectomies it is. (Aren't you glad I chose a picture about Vegas instead of that other thing?)

So I'm listening to the radio this morning on the way to the dentist and the deejays are talking about a vasectomy clinic somewhere that offered a March Madness special.  Get a vasectomy this week and they provide free pizza for you all weekend, with the hook being that the first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament is the perfect time to be unable to get outside or do much else.

Later as I was catching up on my twitter feed, I was noticing a few sports writers talking about how cool it would be to be in Vegas enjoying the tournament in a sportsbook.  Then it hit me...Vegas Vasectomy Vacation!

Wait, why does there have to be a vasectomy in there?  Well, it's like this.  Between my wife and I, something more permanent must be done on the birth control front.  And our doctor is a woman, so she and my wife rigged an election and I lost at the polls.  *badump-bump*  And my doctor normally recommends these things be done sooner rather than later once the decision has been made to do them, but she gave me a reprieve due to training for the aforementioned mountain bike race and the fact that what we've been doing has been working this long and should be fine for a little longer.

So back to the new plan.  Wait until mid-March next year, fly to Vegas, get vasectomy, enjoy the first weekend of the NCAA tournament from a sportsbook!  I mean if you have to do something like that to yourself, you deserve a little treat, right?  And it must be a great idea, because I've already gotten offers to go with me and make sure I'm "okay" after the procedure.

So consider this an open letter to my doctor, because the only catch here is that my wife said the only way she's letting me do it is if I can get a referral from her for a reputable doctor to handle this in Las Vegas.  I'm sure the good doctor will help me make this happen, though.  Sure of it.

Just Do It

That's a lot of kilojoules.

Sometimes you have to just follow the wisdom of the greatest marketing guys ever and Just Do It (I've actually met the marketing duo that came up with this campaign for Nike...very interesting guys and a story worthy of blogging in a few more years, I think).  That's what I did today, anyway.  What do I mean?  Well, today was long ride day.  That meant a 5.5 hour mountain bike ride.  It's also unseasonably warm and the high was supposed to be in the mid-80s.  The combination didn't seem like a great one, so I decided I should get up early and get this one done before it got hot.

But yeah, getting 5.5 hours in before it gets hot is hard.  That means starting in the dark, so that's what I did.  I've got a kick-ass headlamp that I've never used, so I busted it out.  Besides, Umstead isn't very hard to follow, and that's my preferred long ride kind of place since it's the closest kind of terrain we have to what I'll see in Leadville.  Okay, it's not close in terms of terrain at all, but it's close in terms of the kind of speed I'll be doing, which is good enough.

Normally I sort of look forward to long ride day, but I was fretting this one a little bit.  I did a mountain bike race on Saturday and then another fairly hard road ride on Sunday, so it  hasn't been a full week since I stressed my riding legs pretty hard.  On top of that, I had an aborted run on Monday due to not feeling well, and my run yesterday wasn't all that fun, either.  And two weight room sessions in between.  And then I had to set the alarm for 4:45am to get the kind of start I needed.  Combine all that and you have a lot of reasons to whine (and I usually only need one, and if I can't find that I'll make one up).

Just Do It.

Set alarm, get up, get going.  That's what it takes.  It's pretty simple, really.  But that doesn't mean your body is going to cooperate when you get there, and there were times early in the ride that mine felt like it wanted to revolt.  But it wasn't a serious revolution, and everything worked itself out.  I have a little course I like to ride out there that's a little over 16 miles, so I rode it four times.  Now, the first time was mostly in the dark, so that one was a little slower than usual.  But the next one was kind of fast.  And when I came in even quicker on the third one, I knew I should see if I could make the fourth my fastest.  That would bring me in at right around five hours even and leave me with thirty more minutes to do, so I couldn't just blow everything out.

I came a little close to over-doing it, but I didn't.  I did get my fastest split, though, which meant I got faster for five straight hours, which is pretty cool.  Then I took it easier on the last part, but still wasn't really slow, either.  And with all that, I got my longest distance on a bicycle ever at 72 miles, as well as my fastest average speed for a long ride at 13.0MPH.  That's the first time I've had a long negative-split like that, too, so there were a lot of firsts today.

All on a day where I didn't want to do it, but I did.  Just Do It.

2012 Doubleshot Race Report

Race start, I'm on the far right in the Tire Rack jersey. Photo by Petr Masny.

My most recent race is an event called the DoubleShot. This is a pretty cool concept where you mountain bike and then transition to a road bike all in one race.  You actually do a "Le Mans" start where you have to run in your mountain bike shoes across a small field and hop on your bike and take off.  Oh, and it's started by the firing of an actual cannon! Then it's two laps of a six mile loop of really great singletrack and you transition to your road bike for a ten mile loop followed by a little over two mile climb of 800 feet in elevation to the top of Hanging Rock.

(Don't forget to help me raise money for First Descents as I train for the Leadville Trail 100.  Donate today!)

My day didn't start so well.  I woke up at about 3:45am with a normal middle-of-the-night bathroom requirement and got back in bed.  I was dozing off again around 4:10 (yes, it takes me that long) when our dogs started barking.  And barking.  And barking.  What the heck?  We live so far out in the country that it's not uncommon for a raccoon or possum or even a skunk to send them into an uproar, so since my alarm was set for 4:45 anyway and now I wasn't likely to get back to sleep for enough time to matter, I went ahead and got up.  I went out and yelled at the dogs to hush, and they did.  Briefly.  I got myself dressed and ready for the race day ahead and went outside to see why they were STILL barking at 4:45am.  Turns out a couple of the neighbor's dogs had gotten out and came over to play.  When this happens, we grab the dogs and put them in one of our empty horse stalls and let them know where to find them, so that's what I did.  So my early day got an hour earlier start than usual.  Great.

So I finish getting ready, have my breakfast smoothie, and load up and head to Alan's house to meet him and Michael.  We load their gear and bikes and head toward Hanging Rock, which is about two full hours away.  About half way there Alan exclaims "oh shit, I forgot my helmet…and my shoes…and I'm really not kidding."  Oh wow.  I'm driving and sort of half-panic, but it quickly occurs to me that there's no time to be going back to get them.  I do realize somewhat quickly that I did have a spare pair of shoes with me.  Unfortunately for Alan, my shoes are a size 14 and he's a size 11, but that can be made to work.  We quickly also realize that we're near probably the last Walmart that we'd be near on this trip and they probably have a bike helmet that will work.  So we get off the interstate and hit the Walmart and score a helmet.  Another quick Chick-fil-A stop and we're back in business (I needed some solid food for my stomach, and Michael needed some coffee so he could spill most of it on my van seat!).  Fortunately we had a little time padding and we arrived at the race site in plenty of time to get our gear and ourselves ready.

The main thing I wanted to work on was my race start.  I've had this habit of starting too hard.  And what that does is cause my heart rate to spike, and when I do it at the start like that, it seems to "stick."  By that I mean there's just about no amount of "slowing down" that will get it back in check.  So I needed to work on starting out easier and paying better attention to my heart rate so that I didn't go red too early.  Having a Le Mans start wasn't the best scenario since I seem to be much more likely to spike my heart rate when I run than when I bike.

So my plan was to take it very easy and just jog the start, which was as much a safety thing as a heart rate thing since we were running in bicycle shoes (which are very rigid) across very rocky and uneven terrain.  Then I'd make sure and watch my heart rate closely on the bike and take it very easy, particularly on the very early hills, even short ones, that I'd encounter.  So that's what I did.  I made sure and downshifted a gear or two more than I really wanted so I kept my cadence nice and high but my effort low.  And it worked!  It wasn't long before I felt warmed up and had covered a couple miles and my heart rate was still doing very good things.

Photo by Ross Gobble.

That was in spite of the fact that I was very frustrated.  You see, the problem with starting out slow in mountain bike races is that you end up behind a good many riders that were fast on the easy stuff and probably went out too hard, but aren't very good when things get technical.  And on this course, things got a little technical fast thanks to recent rain.  Now, it wasn't bad, but it was bad enough to scare people.  And in this race, there were probably a higher percentage of competitors who were not very good technically because they were lured by the road portion of the event. 

So I was stuck in a few conga lines while I fought to pass where I could, all while keeping a close watch on the heart rate.  But I was able to both move through the pack and keep myself in check.  After about three miles, I stopped watching it very close and just kept an eye on climbs to make sure I wasn't expending too much energy as I was really worried about the road portion of the race.

But what I ended up doing was saving a little too much, ultimately.  I really could have had a little higher average power output on the mountain bike portion.  But the first thing you see on the road is a long grinder of a hill, and that worried me.  But you live and learn, and I learned a lot about what I need in that situation. 

Oh, in the later stages of working through traffic, I had an interesting situation occur.  I was stuck behind four other riders, and stuck for a while.  When I finally got a peak of what looked like a reasonable place to pass, I took it. But in looking for the spot, I really just looked at the ground for something resembling a place where the "trail" was wide enough.  As I got fully beside the fourth guy in line, I noticed I was heading right for a large tree that was sticking out from the side of the trail.  There was room on the ground, just not at head-height.  So I squeezed the dude a little and ducked.  I cleared him and the tree, but he was pissed enough that he exclaimed "that was a really stupid place to pass with that tree being there!!"  I thought "well duh!  I wouldn't have done it if I had seen the tree!" But I didn't bother saying anything, because it just didn't matter.  And I didn't have time…apparently the fact that someone was passing scared the heck out of the guy in third in this line, because he pulled off and slammed on his brakes to let me go by. 

And on top of that action, the front two guys were just running up on some other incident on a small wet climb where a rider or two had gone down and were trying to get up and out of the way.  They both moved to each side of the trail and stopped and everything just sort of opened up right down the middle of the trail for me.  So I passed about five more people all at once right there without ever slowing down.  I don't know what happened there, but apparently it stacked everyone else up, because I got several switchbacks ahead and couldn't see any riders for a long ways back.  From there it was pretty smooth sailing through the rest of the eight miles or so of singletrack with only a few polite occasional passes here and there.

I zoomed into transition, grabbed my GPS off my mountain bike, stuck the bike on the rack, and grabbed the road bike.  I popped the GPS on while I hurdled the ditch to the road, jumped on, and took off.  Well, I shouldn't really say "took off" since what I did was more of a "okay, how do I do this again?"  I got clipped in (I had put a set of Eggbeater pedals on my road bike so I wouldn't have to change shoes, which was a good idea) and pretty immediately was rolling across a bridge.  Which made me think "Oh God, my bike is broken…what is that wobble?!?"  Only to go "wait, I'll bet it's the bridge…just keep going and …. ahhhh, yes, it was the bridge."  Okay, now to grind up that huge hill.  (Apparently there was smooth and pretty pavement over some layer of very uneven bridge surface…everyone I mentioned that to went "oh yeah, I thought the same thing!")

Photo by Ross Gobble.

And grind I did.  Pretty quickly into low gear I go.  Yay, isn't this fun?  No, it's not fun, and there's a lot more of this hill to go (this was the road we drove in on, so we had seen it already).  But I grind on up while getting passed by a couple guys who were obviously very serious road riders.  I know just enough about road bikes to be dangerous, but what I know for sure is my road bike was built for training and comfort, not racing.  I have cushy tires that suck power, I have a fairly upright seating position that means my tall frame is up in the air where the wind can kill my power, and I have a flexible titanium frame that absorbs a lot of road bumps, but also absorbs….POWER.  But the worst road bike is still infinitely easier to pedal on the road than the best mountain bike, so the trade was well worth it.

The real problem here is that I don't know yet how to find the sweet spot for me in terms of power output and endurance on the road.  I don't road ride a lot, and when I do it's always been just training where I have fairly specific goals.  I've never raced on the road before today.  So it was here that I really wasn't working as hard as I could have been.  And that went on for five miles of the ten mile loop.  And then….

BLAM.  As I neared the crest of a pretty large hill, I decided to downshift one more gear.  And in doing so, all the sudden I was in my HARDEST gear on the rear.  As I struggled to maintain a pedaling motion at all, I fumbled with my shifter to try to make it go back to an easier gear.  Nothing doing, it wasn't moving.  So I pulled off the road quickly and flipped the bike over to find my shifter cable had some off the rear derailleur, which means it defaults back to the hardest gear.  Okay, no problem, I'll just dig my multi-tool out of my saddle bag that I carry for just such emergencies and put it back.  Only, oops, no multi-tool.  I had removed it weeks before to put on a different bicycle and never put it back.  Wow, that was a fit of stupid…particularly in the fact that I didn't check that bag for completeness before a RACE.

One thing I'm particularly proud of is my ability to cope.  See, those of you reading this who know me know that I can have a bit of a temper at times (and shut up every single one of you that's mouthing "that's an understatement!" right now…just shut up!).  But honestly, I never got mad for more than a single "crap, this sucks" and then I started worrying about how to fix it.  My first thought was I just need another rider to come along who is nice enough to hook me up with a multi-tool.  So I look back down the hill to see nobody for a LONG ways.  So I start walking forward on the course pushing my bike with the thought that there's no reason to STAND when I can be moving the right direction, at least, even if it means getting the tool a little bit later.  And after not very long I start to see riders approaching….

Only the first five or six claim to have no multi-tool (possible, but I'm guessing most just didn't want to have to stop, and this is a race, so I get that).  Then one does, and he stops.  But I honestly and truly felt bad stopping someone and because of that, I really hurried to get done what I needed to do and give him back his tool so he could be on his way.  And in doing so, I screwed up the repair.  I forgot to shift it back to the hard end of the range, so I simply ended up with a tightened cable that couldn't tighten any further via the shifter.  And I gave him back his tool and sent him along.

So when I jumped on to go, well, it wasn't very easy to go and it wouldn't shift to an easier gear.  But thanks to the walking, I was in a fairly flat spot, so I could get it going.  And get it going I did.  I concocted a new plan.  This plan was born of two things.  One, I wanted to pedal for a while and not repair. Two, when I had to repair again, I did not want to be near the guy who had loaned me the tool and ask him yet again for the same thing.  I felt pretty stupid for botching the repair the first time.  Yay for egos!  Why yay?  Because in my desire to just get moving for a while, I learned something.  I have pretty powerful legs, especially when I stand up and mash. 

So?  Well, I decided to try that mashing thing in the hard gear up the next hill.  And it worked!  I was a little flabbergasted.  I mean I had to go a lot faster to do it than I had been taking similar hills, but I made it, and my heart wasn't about to jump out of my chest.  It wasn't easy, but it was reasonably possible.  Well then, let's make it as easy as we can, and REALLY bomb down the hills.  I realized I could upshift my front chainring on the downhills, so I did and I went as fast as I could go down the hills.  I rode with my hands on the "drops" (the lower part of a road handlebar) so that my body was more "aero" (almost laying down and out of the wind as much as possible).  And I kept spinning that big gear as long as I could.  Then I'd immediately downshift the front to the little ring and push that as long as I could.  Then when I couldn't keep it going any more, I'd stand up and mash the hell out of it.  And somehow I would do that all the way up every single hill for the next five miles.

Bike service! Photo by Steve Orthel.

And on this course, that's all there were.  Uphills and downhills.  No flats anywhere.  But I rounded a corner and there was our transition area!  Yes, I have tools on my mountain bike!  Oh wait, even better, there's a bike shop mechanic and real tools nearby, too!  I quickly tell him what happened and he and I fixed it within about two minutes (the fast way requires two sets of hands).  This time I had already gotten the shifter and the adjuster knob in the right spot before I even dismounted, so everything went smooth as butter.  I jumped back on the bike while finding out his name before I got out of ear-shot.  As I started pedaling, I was able to use my experience on the mountain bike to adjust the shifter and boom, I was in business and climbing in low gear again.  It was heaven.

Until it turned into hell.

I had no idea what I was in for, but what I was in for was 800 feet of elevation gain over 2.1 miles of distance.  There's one silly little break in the action where it flattens out in what amounts to a teaser before one last little vertical jaunt to the finish line.  So I put it in low gear and started grinding.  Before long I realized that while I wasn't catching people quickly, I was catching people.  And there were a lot of them in sight, too.  I passed two or three folks fairly uneventfully before the most interesting pass of the day.  Some poor guy was completely blown out.  He was wobbling all over the place and taking an entire car lane.  As I approached, the last thing I could afford to do was slow down, but I couldn't figure out which way to go around him.  Finally I settled on the left and ended up completely on the yellow line and he still almost hit my back wheel as he turned almost completely sideways in the road, unable to grind any more.

I can only assume he stopped after a little more of that and had to walk (or rest) for a while.  But I motored on catching and passing more and more riders.  The race organizers had marked the pavement with 3k, then 2k, then 1k markers.  After passing the 1k marker, I saw two more riders a little bit ahead and they had been together for a while.  I was catching them, and then I saw the front rider break away.  I thought that seemed kind of interesting, but we were still far enough away from the finish and he was far enough ahead of me that I thought he was on his own and maybe I'd at least catch the other guy.  But the other guy apparently gave in at the sight of the breakaway, so I caught him very quickly.  And then I realized now I was catching the front guy, too.  He had attempted a breakaway and it had worked enough that he had left his partner, but it apparently hurt him pretty bad.  I was reeling him in.  When I saw him look back I figured he'd take off again, but he dropped his head.

HE DROPPED HIS HEAD!  I may not be a road racer, but I've been involved in enough sports to read that language loud and clear.  He was cooked up.  I had a chance.  Through all this, I never really sped up very much.  I just kept grinding.  And that's all I did here, and I motored right by.  And pulled away a bit.  But then his break came…there's one last small flat area as you go by a lake!  I felt like that might breathe some life back into him, so I made sure I kept my power output pretty consistent which meant I could click up a few gears and get some speed going again through here.  I did NOT want to look back and let him know I was thinking about him, so I just listened well.  Yep, I could hear him coming.  But not too fast.  And guess what?  The road was turning vertical again.  I've never been happy to see a hill before on a bike, but I was happy for this one.  I knew there couldn't be much distance left, so even though I had to downshift back to low gear, I kept hammering.  I could hear him right behind me, but he was no longer closing.  As we approached the final bend I heard him put the hammer down.  So I stood up and started hammering, too.  He pulled as close as his front wheel being even with my back wheel, but that was it…when I got my power going I pulled back away right at the finish line to stay a full bike ahead of him across the line.

That felt good.  And my power data looked good.  Either the Powertap maxes out at exactly 1000W, or I maxed out at exactly 1000W.  My guess is I went over 1000W but that's all the meter will register.  Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it, anyway (at least until I see data above that!). 

Hanging Rock Climb Summary:

15:46 minutes to cover 2.08 miles and 774 feet of elevation gain.  That works out to an average speed of 7.9 MPH with an average power of 281 watts and a peak of over 1000 watts. The take-away from all that?  I still had too much energy left at the finish.  I really wasn't suffering very badly, and that's a brutal climb.

Alan and Michael beat me pretty handily in the race, even if you take out the two times I was stopped completely by the cable problem.  But I can say that I beat each of them by a little over two minutes on that final climb, which is kind of cool, anyway.  It's hard to compare the road loop section due to the couple stops I had to make, though I'm sure they had me by a little bit even if you take those out.  They also had me by about a minute on the second loop of singletrack, and probably three minutes on the first loop (thanks to me being so far behind on the start).  There were 57 riders in our class, and Michael finished 27th, Alan was 28th, and I finished 34th.  Taking out the 5-6 minutes for the repair, I still probably only move up to 30th or so, so it really wasn't that big of a deal.  I am still glad it happened, though, because I learned a lot from it (including valuable lessons like CHECK YOUR SADDLEBAG TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING YOU MIGHT NEED IS IN IT!).  For anyone curious, here is my race data on Garmin Connect.

I think a better warm-up (at events that allow it…this event start might have killed that anyway) will help me not have to start quite so easily.  I may have started a hair too easily even at this one, too.  And the other big thing I learned is I can get my output a lot higher on these road hills without it killing me, too.  I think doing these things alone will get me a lot closer to Alan and Michael.  It'll be pretty fun the first time we're all in sight of one another at a finish, that much I know!

After the race, I went back and gave the bike mechanic a tip for helping me out.  He didn't want it, but I insisted so he said he'd pass it along as a donation to help out with more trail building at that site, which was plenty fine with me!  The trails were really great. The road loop was really great, too.  I can't wait until the next Doubleshot!

Leadville Race Bike Details

Here is the bike I intend to ride at the Leadville Trail 100 MTB Race:

The particulars:

• Santa Cruz Highball carbon frame in size XL, matte finish
• Fox 120mm front suspension fork
• Edge Composites wheelset, Chris King hubs, hand built by The Bicycle Lab
• Shimano XT brakes
• SRAM 11-36 cassette, X0 front and rear derailleurs, X0/Quarq power meter crankset
• X0 shifters
• Thomson Masterpiece setback seat post
• WTB Rocket V saddle
• FSA 110mm/6* rise stem
• FSA XC carbon handlebar
• Ergon GP-1 large grips
• Crank Brothers Eggbeater 2Ti pedals
• Epic Ride Research Feed Bag
• Backcountry Research AwesomeStrap and Tulbag

This is the bike shown in the foreground, and is a brand new build.  Most of it was done with spare parts I had for the bike in the background, my original Highball.  That bike is similar, but has a 1x10 drivetrain.  I decided for Leadville I really needed a 2x10 drivetrain for lower low gears and higher high gears (since I'll be climbing and descending much larger hills than I generally ride in NC).  I also decided having a complete back-up bike would be a better idea than just spare parts.

 This bike is incredibly efficient, yet comfortable, while still descending very well.  It should be a great bike for an all day epic adventure.  I look forward to finding out just how good this bike is and where it can take me!

(And don't forget, it's not too late to donate to my cause!)