The Things That Hurt: 2013 Salt to Saint Race Report, Part I

09.23.2013 | 9:43 am

Prologue

It’s Monday morning. I’m home. I’ve had a good night’s sleep. I’m sitting in a comfortable chair. I feel like the time is right. I can begin to tell the story of racing Salt to Saint — 423.6 miles — in the solo category.

But first, I would like to enumerate the parts of me that hurt, in no particular order:

• Eyes
• Back of neck
• Upper back
• Lower back
• Wrists
• Achilles tendons
• Knees
• Quads
• Nostrils
• Throat
• Lungs
• A very particular area of my buttocks

Apart from that, I feel great.

Forward

This story is going to take a while to tell. For one thing, the race was pretty long. For another thing, the list of things I want to include in the story currently has 189 items in it. And that’s just the list. Which, by the way, keeps growing. 

Also, today’s post will only barely get to the point where we cross the starting line.

I say this not by way of apology, but simply so that you can set your expectations appropriately.

The Days Before The Race

I have never prepared so little for a race. Really, I was completely ridiculous about it. This 420 mile race was coming up, and I wasn’t doing anything to get ready for it. I wasn’t obsessing over previous race reports, I wasn’t researching segments on Strava, I wasn’t reading the race bible and strategizing. I just didn’t have the time. I was in an incredibly intense few weeks at work. 

The Hammer had to do all the prep. Which she did. Magnificently. 

In particular, she began baking. She had taken our copy of Feed Zone Portables: A Cookbook of On-the-Go Food for Athletes and had begun making all kinds of on-the-go food. Pizza rolls. Sweet potato pies. Blueberry turnovers. Cinnamon rolls. And more. So much more. 

“For a ride like this,” she said, “We don’t want to go to chews and gels until we have to. 

The Hammer also arranged our crew for the race, which would be broken down into four waves:

1. Jilene and my eldest son, Nigel, would get us to the starting line and then crew for us for the first 50 miles or so.
2. The Hammer’s brothers would take over from there and crew for us ’til about 8 or 9pm
3. The Hammer’s sons would take over from there and crew for us ’til about 5 or 6am
4. Kenny and Heather would take over from there and crew for us ’til the finish line.

The Hammer arranged a complex system of cars and pick up / drop off points and times. The logistics were as impressive as they were confusing and I was glad to not need to be a part of it.

I did offer one suggestion. “We should use my BikeMobile as the crew vehicle,” I said. My beloved army-green Honda Ridgeline, to my way of thinking, was the perfect vehicle for everyone to use as the crew vehicle. We’d put our four-bike Raxter rack in the hitch receiver, bring two road bikes and our Shivs, load up the back seat area and the truck bed with all the food and clothes we owned. What could be better?

Blake, though, wanted to make his truck the crewing vehicle. He had reasons, none of which made any sense to me. As anyone who knows him knows, though, once Blake has made up his mind, argument is futile.

And besides, what did I care? I wasn’t going to be in the truck anyway. 

So, Thursday afternoon, around 5pm, I finished my last report for work and  turned it in. Now, with fifteen hours ’til the ride began, I could turn my attention to this race.

We packed all — and I mean that pretty darned close to literally — our stuff and got to bed, setting the alarm for 5am the next morning. 

The Morning Of

I’d like to take a brief moment to say what a wonderful luxury it is to have a big race start close to home. Instead of sleeping in a hotel the night before the race, to sleep in your own bed. To get up and have breakfast in your own kitchen. To be able to use your own shower, to use your own sink as you shave.

Yes, I like to shower and shave before races when I can. No, I don’t know why. (But it may have to do with this theory that my facial stubble creates a lot of aerodynamic drag.)

We loaded up the truck and by 6:00am were ready to go. Jilene — one of The Hammer’s best friends and a ridiculously strong rider in her own right — arrived at our house right on time. Nigel was up and ready to go.

Everything was going perfect. I love it when things go perfect.

We drove from Alpine to the “This is the Place” monument in Salt Lake City — a perfectly fitting place to start a race from Salt Lake to Saint George. I parked the truck, we unloaded the bikes (we planned to do the first 50 or so miles on road bikes, since we’d be doing a lot of start-and-stop city riding and a big climb and descent up and over Suncrest).

We picked up our race packets and The Hammer and I suited up in our brand-new FatCyclist.com kits. 

Once again, the guys at Twin Six have outdone themselves. This is fantastic-looking gear. 

Oh, and here’s a picture with Nigel in it too:

Yes, he is about six inches taller than I am.

Anyway, I went to pick up our SPOT trackers; they weren’t ready to go. Not a problem, we had an hour to go until the race started.

With nothing better to do, I would go back to check if the SPOTs were ready every five minutes until they had locked on to the satellite. 

Yes, race promoters, you know how there’s always one guy who won’t leave you alone and bugs you about something every five minutes? Well, I’m that guy. Sorry.

Houston, We Have a Problem. Like, a Really Big Problem

We had fifteen minutes ’til our 8am start, and nothing left to do. Jilene, The Hammer, and Nigel climbed back into the truck to warm up a little.

Except the truck wouldn’t start. Instead, it just blinked a message: SECURITY. 

Jilene called over to me, “The truck won’t start; I can’t turn the key!” I rolled my eyes, figuring she just needed to put some tension on the steering wheel and then it would work just fine.

No. Jilene was correct. The key would not turn. At all. We just got that blinking message: SECURITY.

As if the truck had decided that this race was not a good idea, and it was going to stop us from going. You know, for our own protection.

Jilene called Blake. “Try jiggling the steering wheel,” Blake said. 

“THAT DOESN’T WORK,” Jilene replied. 

Blake insisted, and Jilene — knowing how useful it is to argue with Blake — tried jiggling the steering wheel, along with a few other ideas Blake had.

None of that mattered. The truck would not start. 

Blake recommended Jilene call Zac (The Hammer’s eldest son), from whom he had bought the truck, and whom also is a mechanic.

“Try jiggling the steering wheel,” Zac recommended.

“Right,” said Jilene.

“We’ve got to line up, the race starts in about three minutes,” I told The Hammer. Then, to Jilene and Nigel, I said, “You’re both smart, competent people. We’re going to trust that you’ll find a way to catch up to us as soon as possible. And now we’ve got to race.”

“Take some extra food!” Jilene yelled, and quickly stuffed our jersey pockets.

The Hammer and I lined up. Almost instantly the race director yelled, “Go!” and we took off, beginning our 423-mile race.

Meanwhile, our crew was behind us, stranded in a parking lot.

“Well, this is a scary start to a long, long day,” I said to The Hammer.

Of course, I couldn’t know that things were about to get much, much worse. 

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Hey, Watch Where We’re Going

09.19.2013 | 6:20 am

Hey, just a really quick post today, because I have a monster of a report I need to turn in for work, and then I need to finalize our plans for the Salt to Saint race tomorrow. 

Basically, I have the following things to tell you.

1. We start tomorrow (Friday) at 8:00am MT, and we don’t stop riding until we finish the race, hopefully sometime in the early afternoon on Saturday. Like, 2:00pm MT would be good.
2. I am pretty sure you’ll be able to track us in real time on the SPOTs provided by the race. I don’t have a ton of information on where that will be, but try checking at the race’s home page for a link; there should be a “Live Tracking” tab you can go to. And if you don’t find it there, try looking on their Facebook page. And when one of you figures it out, post a comment with a link to the correct page, OK? (I’m counting on you, David.)

That’s it. Now I gotta get back to work. 

PS: Just because I don’t have time to write right now doesn’t mean I don’t love you.

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Rockwell Relay Race Report 2013, Part 7: In The Company of Strong Women

06.26.2013 | 10:06 am

A Note from Fatty: This is part seven of my 2013 Rockwell Relay race report. If you’re not caught up, you might want to read parts one, two, three, four, five and six first.

If you were able to eavesdrop on Kenny and me talking sometime, you’d find us adorable. See, he and I agree that our women have — for whatever reason — taken on the most difficult legs of the Rockwell Relay Race: The Hammer with the third leg, Heather with the fourth.

On paper they don’t look like they’re the hardest legs; they have less climbing than legs one and two. But how these legs appear on paper and how they work out in real life is vastly different. 

Here, let me show you what I mean with a handy informational table, wherein I describe nice ride attributes in green, and nasty ride attributes in red:

	First ride	Second ride	Third ride
Racer 1	Cool, sunny, possibly windy	Dusk into night, warm to cool, possibly windy	Cool, sunny, calm
Racer 2	Warm, sunny, calm	Night, warm to cool, calm	Sunny, cool, calm
Racer 3	Hot, windy	Dead of night, cold, windy	Sunny, hot, windy
Racer 4	Sunny, brutally hot, brutally windy	Dead of night, cold, windy	Sunny, brutally hot, windy

Now, for the first — and maybe even the second — time we did this race, I think this mistake is completely understandable. But we’re into our third riding of this race now, and Kenny and I — well, we both felt kinda bad about the fact that our respective partners still each had two hard rides to do, in the harshest conditions of the ride.

But you know, we had urged The Hammer and Heather to trade with us, to take the Racer 1 and Racer 2 positions. But they had refused; they wanted their traditional spots.

[Note: the conditions shown in the table above apply only to teams racing at the speed Team Fatty goes. A much faster or slower team would have a different chart.]

Women can be stubborn.

So anyway, The Hammer had taken off at midnight — exactly at midnight, oddly enough — with a mere two minute gap between her and the rider from Team 91. 

Of course, during his first turn, the rider from Team 91 had put seventeen minutes on Team Fatty. So our hope was that The Hammer would just limit her losses as best as she could.

But The Hammer did not know this, and was too busy to care. She had things to do, like putting on a clinic on how to climb blindingly fast, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, with a huge smile on her face.

Really, I wish I had a photo of it. Or of anything from this part of the race. Unfortunately, I am not a good photographer under any circumstance, and when I photograph someone — who is shining three bright lights at the camera and is wearing a reflective vest over her otherwise entirely black outfit — in the middle of the night, well, I’m just not going to even try.

The New Normal

The seventh leg of the Rockwell Relay starts with a big descent — which The Hammer completed before we caught up to her — and then has two big climbs before it rolls with a big working downhill to the next exchange point. Like this:

According to The Hammer’s Strava of this section, this is 56.7 miles of riding, with 3752 feet of climbing. Which means that, by the time she finished this stage, she’d have ridden 113 miles and climbed more than 6000 feet.

And she flew for the whole thing, saying afterward, “I felt like someone was pushing me the whole ride.”

In short, The Hammer had a fantastic ride, which made crewing for her a real pleasure. We kept up our leapfrogging pattern — pull alongside the rider and give her whatever she needed, drive to the next place we could find to pull over, then climb out of the van and cheer her on.

But doing this during the night was a little bit different than during the day.

For one thing, we were all getting pretty tired. So Kenny, who was driving, would cheer her on from the driver’s seat. Heather was getting some rest (and later getting dressed and prepared for her next ride) in the back of the van. So whenever I saw The Hammer’s lights appear, I’d jump out of the van and would start ringing the cowbell, always totally conscious of how odd it was to be out in the exact middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, ringing a cowbell.

Sometimes I’d look up while I waited, amazed at the stars on this cloudless night, away from all the lights. Just another reason to love this race.

The Hammer would then come by, usually giving me a “Woohoo!” as she went by. And sometimes a high-five. 

And then it was back into the car for me, to rotate through the process again.

The Secret of My Success

Between the brief moments where we’d be cheering The Hammer on, everyone had their things to do: Kenny was driving, Heather was resting and getting ready to do her next ride, and I was…eating.

I wasn’t eating because it was the nutritionally smart thing to do, or because I’d be riding again before too long, or for any other reason that I was hungry. Without fail, a couple hours after I finish a big ride, my appetite wakes up. And it does not go back to sleep easily. 

So, I was wolfing down slice after slice of pizza, along with probably half of a Subway sandwich. Just eating the food I like to eat. Drinking when I felt like I wanted a drink

I think this, along with the way that every fifteen minutes or so I was getting out of the van and thus keeping from ever really stiffening up, was a big part of why I never felt stiff or nauseous or otherwise discombobulated during the race. I stayed awake, stayed fueled, and stayed in motion. 

There’d be time for sleeping later.

The Catches

As we played our game of leapfrog with The Hammer, we were starting to see another rider. Was she gaining on him? At first it was hard to tell. And then it was clear: yes. The Hammer was closing the gap. 

Should we let her know? 

I decided against it, based on years of experience of riding with The Hammer. She rides at her pace, and is motivated by her motivation. When we’re going hard in our daily training, I used to give her pep talks and urge her on; I’ve since learned better. She likes me to be her riding partner, not her coach.

She’d see the guy when she saw him. She’d catch the guy when she caught him. 

Which she did. And as she passed, the racer on the other team stood up and did his best to grab her wheel. A futile effort. 

The next time we pulled alongside The Hammer, I said, “Roadkill count: one” — a reference to what racers in RAGNAR call people they pass.

And then, about ten minutes later, she passed another. Roadkill count: two.

Were either of these racers from Team 91? I’m afraid not. But one of them — I’m not sure which — was Mike from team Betsy Was Right, who has written a fantastic writeup of the race from his own perspective. I hope he doesn’t mind me excerpting his account of when The Hammer passed, because it’s really good stuff (and in fact, his whole account is really good. Be sure to read the whole thing: part 1, part 2 and part 3, and encourage him to finish his story): 

It was somewhere in this section that I could see headlights on the ground in front of me, which meant either my RV was coming up or someone was catching me. I was furious with myself. As the lights got closer, I could tell it wasn’t my RV. In the back of my mind I knew it was Lisa from Team Fatty, you know, The Hammer from the FatCyclist. I had headphones in so when she passed me I didn’t hear her encouraging words. I did pull them out because I hoped we could ride together a little but she had other plans at 2:30 a.m., like kicking my butt up the hill. Seriously. She rode away from me like I was the chupacabra looking for a midnight snack. I just remembered back to my dating life in college and her riding away seemed about right.

Where We Stand

When The Hammer had ten miles to go, we shot ahead to the Exchange point, to get Heather’s bike lights on and get Heather ready for her late night ride.

And then we waited to. But not for long. Team 91 — the Coed team we had been chasing — came flying in, sending their fourth rider — the woman on their team — out.

I started my stopwatch. In their first ride, the rider from Team 91 had put 17 minutes — a big gap — on The Hammer. How much time would he put on her this time?

I didn’t have much time to dwell on this thought, though. The Hammer came in three minutes later.

Team 91 had put one minute on us. Just one. 

The Hammer had just done this 56.7 mile ride, with 3752 feet of climbing, in 3:13. That is an average speed of 17.6 miles per hour.

QOM, baby. Q. O. M. By nearly an hour.

Sorry about the boasting, but it’s a husband’s right.

The Tide Turns

The Hammer’s effort had given Heather an extraordinary carrot. Two-thirds of the way through a 500+ mile race between two fast coed teams, the difference between them was three minutes. That is about as evenly-matched as you can get, and it made for an incredibly exciting race for us.

Heather took off, and we set about getting The Hammer’s bike loaded, after removing the light setup — after all, the next time she’d be riding it would be in the middle of the morning and in the upper-80’s.

And I had a breakfast burrito, which the guys at the exchange point were making for everyone and anyone who wanted one.

Okay, I had two. Yeah, I was still hungry.

Then we took off to catch up with Heather, hoping that her bike was working better than last time (Kenny had spent some time working on it after Heather’s disastrous first stage).

And it’s good we left when we did, because if we had dilly-dallied at the exchange point for another two minutes, we would have missed the moment Heather passed Team 91. 

Which is where we’ll pick the story up tomorrow.

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I (May As Well) Wear My Sunglasses at Night: 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo, Part 3

02.21.2013 | 1:03 pm

A Note from Fatty: This is Part 3 of my race report on the 2013 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo race. You can read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

Before I get to telling today’s installment, I’d like to give you a little bit more information about NICA Executive Director Austin McInerny, the guy on our team who turned in an incredibly fast first lap, only to be injured right at the end of that first lap. 

First of all, here’s a great shot of Austin during his lap:

Photo courtesy of Zazoosh Media

Obviously a fast guy, right? Not to mention a guy who’s seriously involved in making the world a better place for both kids and bikes. 

And so it was especially a bummer to find out that Austin’s X-ray looks like this:

That’s a tibial plateau fracture, and it means surgery (plate and screws) within the next couple days, and then about three months of no weight on that leg.

As another guy who loves and pretty much lives for biking, I feel for Austin, and hope he gets through this quickly and is back on his bike as soon as possible. 

I wonder how many times he’s said to himself, “If only I’d made sure I was wearing the right shoes!”

I’m going to guess ten million.

It’s Always Darkest Just Before It’s Almost Just As Dark

As the fifth person to ride on the team, I finished my first lap pretty much as the sun was setting. Oh, and guess what: I caught video of the lap (then forgot to turn off the camera, using up my battery and filling my memory card, so would not be able to get any more video of the rest of the race). 

Check it out, if you’d be so kind (or maybe watch it all biggish-like over at Vimeo, where you can see it in all its HD glory. It’ll give you a much better sense of what the course was like:

While I was riding, the rest of the team decided that Stan and Bob would go ahead and do single night laps, after which we’d do a rotation where each member of the team did double laps, hence giving us each a better shot at getting more rest during the night.

Stan continued to show he was the alpha rider of the group by turning in a 1:10 — only four minutes slower than his first lap, and that included doing half the lap with the sun in his eyes and the other half in the dark.

Bob then did the first full night lap for the team. Check him out, getting ready to ride:

Photo courtesy of Zazoosh Media

No, wait a second. That’s actually a photo of him as he finished his night lap. Yeah, he was that fast — only ten minutes off his day lap pace.

And then it was The Hammer’s turn. She’d be doing two laps back to back, in 1:20 (only six minutes off her day lap time) and 1:23 (only three minutes slower than the one she just did).

While she was doing those two laps, I paid a visit to the NiteRider booth, hoping to get a replacement cable for my setup. They took care of that without any hassle. 

Seeing as how they were so friendly, I decided to ask for some additional help. “When I power my 3600 up to its brightest setting,” I said, “the battery status immediately says that the battery is almost dead. That can’t be right.”

They told me it was a software problem and that they could fix it right there if I’d leave the light setup with them for an hour or so.

Which I did, then went back to my tent and changed into my riding clothes — bib tights (no chamois is necessary for rides under five hours as far as I’m concerned), Smartwool tshirt base layer, long sleeve jersey — and ate another one of the Subway sandwiches we had brought along.

I noted to myself that I had hit the point of diminishing returns for Subway sandwich enjoyment.

Finally, I picked up the light setup on my way back to the exchange tent, set it up on my bike, and was ready to go. 

It was my turn to do two laps, back to back.

Night Lap 1

The Hammer came in within three minutes of when I expected her. Seriously, I have never seen a team that had such incredibly consistent lap times, even during the night.

“Running your lights at medium is perfect,” she said, as she handed me the baton and gave me a kiss.

I’m pretty sure I saw the volunteer at the table roll his eyes. Hey, whatever.

Having learned my lesson from my first lap, I immediately located my bike, hopped on, stepped up both my helmet light (a NiteRider Pro 1800 LED Race) and bar light (a NiteRider Pro 3600 LED) to medium, which was in fact plenty of light.

The wind had calmed. The temperature was mild. I had enjoyed a five-hour-long break since my last lap. It was clearly time for me to go at full tilt, racing as if I were only going to do a single lap, instead of two.

Because I am a moron.

Most people were riding a little more conservative at night, possibly because they’re tired, probably because they can’t see as well. But I could see great, and I had all kinds of energy. And since people could tell I was coming up behind them — thanks to the blindingly bright wash of light I was suited up with — I hardly ever even had to say a word as I approached. People would just move out of my way.

They probably thought I was an 18-wheeler or something.

Night Lap 2

I felt triumphant as I finished my first night lap, having knocked it off in only 1:13 — only five minutes slower than my first day lap!

But then I had to do another lap. 

Which, as it turns out, I probably should have taken into account when I attacked my first lap as if it were the last ride of the day.

I first noticed a surprising lack of power as I rode The Bitches. Instead of just standing and sprinting by other riders, I sat and rode in a conservative gear — not being passed (at least not constantly), but certainly not passing people very often either.

And then I started feeling a pit in my stomach: the feeling that I was getting hungry, and would soon — if I didn’t do something about it — be bonking.

“I don’t want to take off my gloves to get food out,” I said to myself, and kept riding.

Because I am a moron.

The thing is, though, it’s really hard to tell how fast or slow you are when riding. I knew I was slowing down, but by how much? Was I really going half as fast, like I felt, or was most of my slowdown just in my head?

Regardless, I was feeling beat and just wanted to get to the exchange tent, where I could send Stan on his way for his two night laps.

And yet, I continued to not eat anything. I expect you can guess why. (Hint: because I am a moron.)

Bring On The Dark

With about a quarter of the lap to go, I started to notice a problem: my vision was blurring. I had a harder and harder time focusing my vision, and no matter how much I blinked, I couldn’t see sharply. 

“Maybe,” I thought to myself, “I just need more light.” Since I only had another 20 minutes to ride and my bar light battery indicator showed I still had plenty of juice, I figured I could step up to full power.

So I did. And it helped. For about two minutes, after which — with no warning at all — the bar lights shut off altogether. 

And they wouldn’t turn back on. 

Fantastic, I thought. But at least I still had my helmet light. 

And so I struggled on, closer and closer to a bonk (but stupidly unwilling to just grab something out of my jersey and eat). My vision poor. My lights about a third of what they had been. 

Then, without seeing what caused it, I crashed. 

“GAAAAHHH!” I yelled. Or maybe I said “GAAARRRGGH!” I can’t remember exactly. 

The truth is, though, I wasn’t really hurt. I just didn’t want anyone to crash into me as I collected myself and my bike off the trail.

I got back on the bike and continued. But more tentatively.

In the end, I finished this lap in 1:20. Seven minutes slower than the one right before. Which, objectively, is not too bad. 

But it felt like I had been out there for days.

G’night Everybody

I rolled up to the table in the exchange tent…but Stan wasn’t there. Should I wait here for him? I wondered. 

No. If he wasn’t here, I reasoned — it is now amazing to me that I was able to reason so clearly — it was because he didn’t know he needed to be here right now.

So I rode back to camp, found Stan’s tent, and yelled, “You in there, Stan?”

“Yeah,” Stan said.

“You’re up. Time to ride,” I said.

“Is Elden going to finish his laps soon?” Stan asked.

“I just did,” I replied.

Stan was up in a shot, getting ready and on his bike in just a few minutes (the handoff miscue happened because Stan was hoping for a wakeup call, and The Hammer didn’t know where to find him to wake him up).

Meanwhile, I found the tent and climbed into my sleeping bag. Suddenly, my hunger wasn’t anywhere near as important to me as getting out of these clammy, cold clothes and getting some sleep.

“I’ll get the lights off our bikes in a few hours,” I told The Hammer. “I’ve got to get some sleep now.”

And in fact, I was already fading — strange, when you consider how hard it usually is for me to sleep right after a race — when The Hammer said, “You’re wheezing.”

It was true, although I would have said the more generous description of the weird sound my breathing was making would be “rattling.”

“Sorry,” I replied. “But you’ve got earplugs in, so that shouldn’t matter.”

I set my alarm for my best guess of how long it would take Stan and Bob to each do their two laps, and then I was asleep.

It’d be daylight before I had to ride again.

Which is where I’ll pick up the next installment of the story.

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Say Hello to My Little Friend: 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo, Part 2

02.20.2013 | 12:52 pm

A Note from Fatty: This is part 2 of my 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo race report. Read Part 1 by clicking here.

With Austin out of the picture, our team had to scramble. Could we substitute in another racer (i.e., steal one from the eight-person IMBA corporate team)? No, as it turns out we could not. If we wanted to stay in the race, Austin had to get certification from the medical tent that he was injured, at which point we could stay in our existing category: Five-person Co-ed 200+ combined age.

So, we figured out a new plan. We’d continue doing one lap per person until we got into the late night, at which point we’d switch over to double laps — making it so everyone got a longer rest during the night.

Stan was our second racer (and with Austin’s exit, now our first and fastest), and turned in a blistering 1:06 lap — the fastest lap the team would turn in during the race.

While Stan was out, Bob Winston — Chief Executive Honcho over the Board of Directors at IMBA (not his real title) as well as our team captain — warned us that he wasn’t a fast guy, and was just out here for fun, and that we shouldn’t expect too much.

Which just goes to show that Bob (who is 50+ years old and looks 38) is a total sandbagging anti-trash-talker. 

He turned in a freakishly fast time of 1:11. 

It was official: our team was here to race. Which is just the way I like it. Play when you’re off the bike, hit it hard when you’re on.

As it got to be close to the time Bob should be getting back in, The Hammer and I went to the baton exchange area. There, she stood with the rest of the racers waiting for their teammates to come in, waiting for their team number (ours was 409, which was super-easy to remember). The Hammer gave me a thumbs-up:

She was ready to race. 

Her number was called, she ran to the table, signed in with the volunteer (major kudos to the volunteers for doing an incredible job in the exchange tent for the entire race), got our team baton from Bob, and she was gone. 

I walked back to our camp, changed into my riding gear and headed back to the exchange tent and started looking for The Hammer. My guess was that she would turn in a 1:15 riding time. 

I was wrong. 1:14. But as she came in, I could see she was very dirty and her chest was covered with little spiky quills. 

“I had a crash,” The Hammer simply said, then gave me a kiss, handed me the team baton, and wished me luck on my lap.

Which is when trouble began for me.

Wherein I (Once Again) Show What A Complete Dork I Am

I think I’ve mentioned before that when I’m racing, I am not the same person I normally am. Which is to say, the bloodlust overtakes me and I want nothing more than to completely ruin myself, while hopefully crushing all those in my line of sight.

I am not a strategic racer. I’m not even tactical. I’m pure, unadulterated, 100% attack dog, no longer even thinking in words, but rather simply in targets to aim for and obstacles to avoid.

This way of thinking — i.e., not thinking at all — became a problem for me before I even got on my bike. 

After getting the baton from The Hammer, I ran out of the tent to where, along with every other racer, I had set my bike in a bike stand.

Except I couldn’t remember where I had put my bike.

I ran back and forth, looking for my red-and-white S-Works Stumpjumper (I was racing a geared bike, though I had brought a singlespeed as a backup). 

I couldn’t find it.

Running back and forth, I scanned the rack again. Then ran and looked at the next rack, even though I was pretty sure I hadn’t put my bike that far away.

Still couldn’t find it. Had someone stolen it?

And then: there it was! A red and white Specialized S-Works! I grabbed it, threw a leg over, and then…realized it was a full-suspension bike and was therefore definitely not mine.

Well. Pffff.

And that’s when I realized that while I had been looking at bikes on the racks to the right of me, I had placed my bike on the rack to my left.

Duh.

And with that little adrenaline rush out of the way, I jumped on my bike and took off, charging at maximum speed, hoping to catch all the people who had calmly gotten on their bikes and started the race while I ran back and forth like a headless chicken.

Say Hello to My Little Friend

The 16-mile course starts with some fun, twisty, flat singletrack to get you warmed up, after which you get to make a decision: 

Do you want to ride The Bitches?

You see, in this context, “The Bitches” are a set of seven (I think) short but steep hills, one after another. Hitting them at race pace takes a lot out of you. And so you have the option: go around The Bitches. But you should know: it’s a longer trail to go around.

And so — not wanting to be the only guy on the team to skip The Bitches, I went after them…and was glad I did. Because, at least on this first lap, I had plenty of energy to just rocket right up them, staying in my big ring, in fact.

A quick flat section then brought me to where the singletrack began. And where vigilance became absolutely necessary. You see, on the singletrack portion of this trail, there is always a cactus on one side of you or another. If you crash, you’re going to be a pincushion. If you drift off the course a tiny bit: pincushion.

If you try to pass where you shouldn’t: pincushion.

Luckily, the singletrack had lots of good places to pass. Very regularly, the trail would diverge for 20 feet or so, then reconverge. And — absolutely completely without exception in my experience — racers were astonishingly courteous about letting other racers by. 

It made me happy to be among these people.

However, I was still wanted to pass often, and pass fast. And so, at one point, thinking I had room to pass, I shot around another racer, only to find — too late! — that I in fact did not have room to pass. I tucked in front of the racer I was passing, grazing some plant.

My right shin suddenly felt like it had been cut wide open.

I looked down, and there, embedded deep in my shin, was a golfball-sized, football-shaped little cactus ball. 

I got queazy just from the sight of it.

Before the race, though, Kenny had told me, “If you pick up a cactus, just finish your lap with it, because there’s no way you’re getting it out without a comb.”

So I kept going. In fact, the pain focused me, and I went harder, looking forward to when I could get that stupid little hitchhiker out of my shin.

I noticed that it would hurt worse in certain situations. Like when I stood to climb. Or when I bottomed out in a gully. Or when a gust of wind caught the thing and tried to blow it around. 

It kept me from enjoying the trail like I think I otherwise would have. I just wanted to get to the end and get that little intruder out.

So I rode harder. Standing for the climbs, even though that hurt, because it was faster. 

A Whiskey Tree Miracle

As I rode, I wondered, “Do we even have a comb back at camp?” I don’t have any hair, and The hammer uses a brush.

How was I going to get this stupid thing out?

And then I remembered: The Whiskey Tree. During the pre-ride, we’d seen that there were lots of hair picks (combs) dangling from that tree. I started planning: I’d stop at that tree, grab one of those picks, and go. It would be worth the time lost.

If there were still any of those combs left. 

Great luck: there were. I stopped, saw that one pick was at just the right height for me to grab. I saw that it was attached with nothing but a twisty, and so just gave it a hard tug to break it off, jammed the comb into my jersey pocket, and took off again, excited for the moment when I’d get to use that comb to get rid of that thing.

Another half hour of hard riding went by as I fantasized about no longer having a cactus stuck in my leg.

Sweet Relief

And there it was — finally — the exchange tent. I rolled to a stop, dismounted, and walked to the table where we made our exchanges. I handed the baton to Stan, who took off on his second lap.

1:08. Not too bad for a guy who lost his bike, picked up a cactus, and stopped to grab a comb off a tree.

But now it was time for me to see if I could get that stupid cactus out. 

Which is when The Hammer walked up to me. 

“You did great!” she said.

“Look at my leg,” I replied.

“Ooh. How are we going to get that out?” she asked.

I handed The Hammer the comb and — being a battle-hardened nurse of around 13 years, she didn’t say a word but just stooped, slipped the comb between me and the cactus, and popped it out. 

She then set about pulling out the individual quills that remained in my legs. “This would be a lot easier if you’d go back to shaving your legs,” she muttered.

“I will as soon as I weigh 165 pounds,” I replied. “I don’t deserve shaved legs yet.”

Soon, my leg was a little bit bloody, but entirely free of cactus parts.

And I was left with a fine little souvenir:

Oh, what the heck. Let’s see that up close:

You can see blood on the spines.

One rotation down, four to go. It was time to set our bikes up for the night laps. 

Which is where I’ll pick the story up in my next post.

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