06.12.2012 | 5:12 pm
A Note from Fatty: NYCCarlos — one of the premier Friends of Fatty — is a finalist in the “Get the Sun Valley Remedy” contest, where he made a video and now needs a lot of people to watch it and tweet it and mention it on FaceBook and stuff. If he wins, he gets a mountain biking trip and a canoe-ful of gear.
I think we should help. So here’s whatcha gotta do:
- Go watch the video. And maybe leave a comment too. Can’t hurt, right? And besides, it’s entertaining.
- Retweet my Tweet about the video. All you have to do to do this — provided you’re on Twitter and stuff — is click here to go to the tweet I posted about Carlos’ video and retweet it. Social media at its finest here, folks.
- Visit Sun Valley’s Facebook page and leave a comment. Like, say, “I found Carlos’s video to be truly sublime.” But in your own words.
There. It’s that easy. Do Carlos this favor, because you know he’d sure as heck do it for you.
Another Note from Fatty: Part 1 of the ongoing story of this year’s Rockwell Relay can be found here.
After kenny and I finished our first legs of the race, it was time to start crewing for the women of Team Fatty. Both of us had concerns about this, due to the fact that the day was getting hot, and the headwinds just kept getting worse.
We didn’t care — seriously, we didn’t — about whether we would lose what was apparently a rapidly solidifying repeat of our Coed team division victory (when I came in from my first leg, no other Coed teams even seemed to be on the radar). We just didn’t want to watch our women suffer.
I tell you this, of course, so you’ll think I’m a wonderful, caring person.
However, I am evidently not so caring (nor wonderful) that I threw in the towel. Instead, I handed off the bracelet to The Hammer (she races third) and wished her good luck.
The Hammer Makes a Friend
Within a few miles, The Hammer could see another racer up ahead — the third racer from Team Life Time Fitness. “There’s my carrot!” The Hammer shouted.
And sure enough, she caught — and dropped — him on the next climb.
But then, impressively, this rider from Team LifeTime Fitness rode up and latched on. Then he rode forward and took a good long pull.
The Hammer gives a thumbs-up for drafting.
And suddenly, an alliance was born.
We learned from the rider’s crew — who we had plenty of time to get to know as we took turns supporting each other’s riders — that Ryan (the rider working with The Hammer) is a programmer at Adobe. That he’s been training since December, during which time he’s lost 60 pounds. And that putting a LifeTime Fitness team together for this race had been his idea.
Seriously, how could you not be a big fan of Ryan?
The Hammer and Ryan worked together for nearly the entire leg of this race, each making the other faster. Taking fair, consistent turns at pulling — Ryan suggested forty crank rotations per pull, according to The Hammer, which worked out great for both of them.
Though I suspect, based on looking at their photos, that The Hammer might have gotten slightly more draft benefit than Ryan did.
The Hammer’s leg of the race was a long one: 56.4 miles. And sometimes it gave the distinct impression that we were trapped in a Road Runner cartoon:
The Hammer is somewhere just beyond the horizon.
Even so, though, she smiled the whole way. Not ceding any places to any racers, working with the other rider to make good time on her leg of the course. Loving the ride, loving the view, loving having made a friend, loving the experience of this race.
We were all digging it.
Eventually, of course, it had to come to an end. The last five miles of this leg of the race are steeply uphill. Ryan simply could not hang with The Hammer, and she finished a few minutes ahead of him, passing the baton/slap bracelet off to Heather for her turn climbing in the heat and wind.
But The Hammer insisted the rest of us (Kenny and me) wait to take off ’til Ryan got to the Exchange point, where she cheered for him louder than anyone, then rushed up and gave him a huge hug, and we got this photo:
The leg these two worked together on show exactly why I love this race.
And then we were ready to pile back into the van. The Hammer looked pretty cooked (not to mention salt-encrusted):
She had a right to be. She had just raced more than a half-century, in the heat, against a hairy headwind, against a field entirely of men (as near as we could tell). And she had not only not given up a single place in the race, she had moved us up a notch.
I was incredibly proud of her.
Team Control4.com’s (formerly Team Lobotomy) Fascination With Heather Continues
Last year, The Hammer’s son — AKA “The IT Guy” — was on Team Lobotomy and rode his first leg with Heather, providing good and valuable services along the way.
This year, unfortunately, he wasn’t on the team.
So it seemed pretty shocking that Team Control4.com (no longer called Team Lobotomy) was right there, riding with Heather, for almost the whole leg this year, too. Just with a different rider (Troy) this time.
It wasn’t planned this way. In fact, we have it on good authority that Team Control4.com had made it a primary objective to beat us this year (which was OK with us, since they were an all-male team).
But still, within a couple miles of this windy, hot, climbing-centric lap, they were working together. And a good thing, too, because this leg is brutal enough without having to push through the wind on your own.
Here they are together, as Heather gets ready to drop off a bottle:
And here’s Heather, getting a bottle hand-up from Kenny:
And here’s Heather, taking a drink:
In fact, now that I look through my photos, I’m not sure there are any pictures I have of Heather in this leg where she isn’t getting a drink. The day was that hot.
The thing is, though, in spite of heat, wind, and derailleur problems that kept making her chain drop, Heather never stopped smiling. Big happy grin the whole leg.
And she rode incredibly strong.
The cool thing is, in the same way that we got to really know the LifeTime Fitness guys in the previous leg, we got to know Troy’s wife, who was crewing for Team Control4.com, on this leg (and, as it would turn out, on pretty much every leg — we were neck and neck with Team Control4.com for the whole race). Here she is, cheering Heather and Troy on:
I saw her and her red truck just about as often (maybe more often) than my own team during this race. And the awesome thing is, she cheered Team Fatty on just as (or maybe “almost as”) enthusiastically as she did her own team.
When you’re doing something wacky like this race, the competition between teams kind of fades into the background; you start thinking more about how much you have in common with anyone who has chosen to spend their weekend out in the Utah desert, riding, racing and crewing nonstop, for around thirty hours.
Which explains why, when she got toward the end of her leg and noticed Troy was fading, Heather waited up for him.
“We’ve ridden this whole leg together,” she said. “Let’s finish it together!”
Maybe not the awesome-est race tactics in the whole world, but in an event like The Rockwell Relay, racing is only a small part of the experience, and — honestly — probably not the most important part.
And besides, we were now a full rotation through the race and had not seen or heard of another Coed team anywhere in sight.
Our Coed Team victory — and a reasonable claim of a dynasty — looked pretty much like it was in the bag.
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06.11.2012 | 4:03 pm
Here’s a question to ponder instead of doing whatever it is that you ought to be doing right now:
Why race?
There have to be reasons, right? Because you’re paying to do it. I don’t know what your reasons are (though you should feel free to tell me in the comments section), but I race to see if I can make myself go faster than I normally would. Or even could.
I race to see if I’m faster (or, often, slower) than I was the last time I did an identical race.
I race, every once in a while, to win — or at least try to get on a podium.
I race to be with other people who like the energy of a race.
But all that’s pretty general. For a specific race, there needs to be something specific that draws you to it. And the Moab to St. George Rockwell Relay — which Lisa, Heather, Kenny and I raced as a team for the first time last year — has some things about it that really draw me in. That make me not just enjoy the race, but love the whole experience.
So, fair warning: I love this race, and I loved this edition of this race. My storytelling may gush a bit. Feel free to roll your eyes as often as necessary.
The Night Before
It may surprise you to find that I like bratwurst. But only if you’ve never really read my blog before.
It may also come as a surprise to you (if you’ve never met me before or have never read my blog) to find that I like to talk and exchange ideas. If someone asks me for ideas, I’ll usually give them ideas.
It may further surprise you to find that I’m a cheerful, enthusiastic person who likes to jump in and do stuff.
As a result, when — probably as a courtesy — Tyler S with the Rockwell Relay called, asking for ideas on how to improve the race, I said, “Everyone else does pasta feeds before big races. You should do something unique: serve brats. I’ll even be in charge of grilling them.”
“Where would we get the brats?” asked Tyler.
“I’ve got a connection for that,” I replied, remembering that I had exchanged email once or twice with guys from Colosimo’s about two years ago.
So I introduced the guys from the Rockwell Relay to the guys at Colosimo’s Sausage, and within a few hours I was all signed up to work the grill during the pre-race dinner / packet pickup.
And I have to say: I loved it.
For one thing, it put me in exactly the right kind of place for me at a party or picnic: staying busy. I am not great at just standing around. I need something to keep me occupied.
Here I am, for example, with both hands occupied:
It also put The Hammer and me in an easy spot to talk with people as they picked up their packets. For people who had done the race before, we could talk about last year’s event. For the large number of people who were new to the race (registration for the 2012 event grew by more than 50%), I could give them all kinds of valuable advice on how to race.
Ha.
Here I am with one of the teams that raced in 2011 and came back in 2012 for more:
You know how many times I’ve been asked whether I’ve reserved the domain ShortCyclist.com? Plentysix times, that’s how many.
At The Starting Line
About an hour and a half after when we said we were going to close the grill and packet pickup, we actually did, then headed to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.
The next morning at the starting line, I discovered — to both my amazement and delight — that one of my nieces was also doing the race — and that she had taken on the hardest race position (racer 1). The moment called for a cameraphone portrait, to text to my sister / her mom:
Since she was on a coed team and I was on a coed team, we were theoretically racing against each other. Neither of us seemed particularly concerned by this.
With just five minutes ’til the race began, we got someone to snap the obligatory Team Fatty pre-race photo, which captured the last time we would look well-rested and lucid and stuff for what seems like several days:
Fatty, The Hammer, Kenny, and Heather
Just in case you were wondering why I’m dressed like it’s cold outside while everyone else is dressed like it’s summer and already hot outside, I have a very reasonable explanation:
It’s because I’m dumb.
We didn’t plan which of the FatCyclist jerseys to wear on which laps, the result being that we all always looked like a rolling museum of FatCyclist.com wear.
Oh, and if you look closely, you can see an important equipment difference between this year and last year: Kenny was riding a road bike with gears.
Hey, we had a “Coed team champ” title to defend, and we were taking it waaay more seriously than we would have liked to admit.
Kenny Goes First: The Race Begins
Everyone was really happy with the legs of the course they raced last year, so we all kept the same legs. Which meant Kenny first, me second, The Hammer third, and Heather fourth.
The race started, and Kenny took off like . . . Kenny. Which is to say, he took off very, very fast, while the rest of us were happy to ride the couple of “parade” miles at a dawdler’s pace. Hey, we had our own hard riding to do soon enough; we weren’t about to bust a move when it didn’t count.
Then, with Kenny gone, we rode our bikes into town, picked up our race vehicle, went to the grocery store to pick up half a dozen bags of ice to go in various ice chests, and then out toward Monticello to start support.
A Quick Aside About The Race Routine
With the experience of last year’s race under our belts, we settled into our race routine quickly. One person would drive. The person in the passenger seat was in charge of preparing and handing off drinks, as well as being the main cheerleader for the current racer.
And the third person — usually the person who had just finished a leg, but in this case the person (me) who would be racing the next leg.
We’d leapfrog the racer, pull off the side of the road, climb out, and cheer. Once the racer went by, we’d pile back into the van, ask the racer what s/he wanted as we drew alongside, then dropped back to grab the requested stuff: usually a drink (water or sports drink) and / or food. We’d then catch up, gather any spent bottles or wrappers, and then hand off the new supplies.
No seconds wasted.
Which leads to one of the things everyone on the team loved about this race: you’re engaged in what’s happening all the time. You’re either racing, driving, supporting, recovering, or suiting up for your next leg.
And almost always, we were talking about how the race was going.
I don’t think I was bored during this race, ever.
Back to Kenny
Kenny’s first leg told us some very important things about the race. First of all, it told us that of the 25 or so new teams in the race, at least 15 of them were very serious about racing it fast. Whereas last year when we raced we were never in worse than fifteenth place (overall), this year Kenny quickly found there were some really fast guys racing the first leg.
Which meant that, overall, we were in about 25th place.
“Well, we don’t really know which — if any — of these racers are in the coed division,” we observed, since there were no women racing leg 1 that were ahead of Kenny.
So how were we doing? We just didn’t know.
But we’d figure it out soon enough. Or at least we’d think we had it figured out.
Meet the Ultimate Bikemobile
OK, now for another quick aside. I’d like to present Kenny and Heather’s Dodge Sprinter van, customized to be the ultimate bikemobile: easy bike storage for four bikes, a bed over the bike storage area, a bench seat in back, and still plenty of floor space for ice chests, bags of bike clothes, and bins of food.
From the outside, it looks like your run-of-the-mill van, the kind you’d expect to see hauling dry cleaning around, or parked across the street from a suspected mob lair:
But check out how deluxe-ly roomy our ride was, especially compared to the minivan we drove (my 2001 Honda Odyssey) last year:
Here, Heather’s showing she has room for full leg extension. Behind her, you can see all our bikes, some mounted on fork mounts, some hanging from hooks. All easy to get to. Above that is the bed, which meant we all got to get in an hour or two of sleep during the race — an incredible luxury.
The Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Wheel Change
There was a paceline of twelve up front, a lone rider in-between, a group of eleven next, and then Kenny’s paceline of three. Riding 54 miles, with around 4100 feet of climbing.
Against a fierce headwind.
And then Kenny’s rear tire started going soft. Soon it would be flat.
“Get ready to swap out Heather’s rear wheel for mine!” Kenny yelled as we went by. So we drove forward a quarter mile, stopped, and I got out Heather’s bike and had the wheel off by the time Kenny pulled up.
Quickly — but shaking with adrenaline — Kenny got the old wheel off, and I put the new one on.
But the cranks wouldn’t turn when Kenny got back on.
So he got back off and took another look.
Oh, that’s the problem — the chain wasn’t threading properly through the rear derailleur. A quick tug fixed that problem and he was gone.
In only about 10X the amount of time a pro would do it, we had Kenny off and riding again.
Kenny’s First Finish
About ten miles before a racer on our team will arrive at their designated exchange point, our team waves goodbye and drives on up ahead, so the next racer can get their bike out, get dressed, use the bathroom, and so forth.
We got to the Exchange point in Monticello without trouble — having already done this race made finding Exchange points so much easier — and I got all suited up. I wanted to ride at my absolute limit — or maybe just a hair past that limit — for this leg, hoping to keep the placing Kenny had earned for us, or maybe even earn a couple places further up the field.
So I put in my Arriva Leo Bluetooth Headphones (Full Disclosure: I bought these online and got no special deal), planning to play music loud, nonstop, for my entire race leg.
This was time for rocking out and riding out of my skull. It weren’t no time for jibber-jabber.
I love the way that the curve of the wheel on truck behind me makes it look like I have an even more enormous gut than I actually do.
And then the waiting began. Here, I’m looking up the road, expecting Kenny any moment.
Then Kenny came by, handed me the baton — a slap bracelet — and just about collapsed on the ground. He had really pushed himself hard.
Kenny had raced as strong as ever, but even so, he was considerably slower than he had been last year.
Stupid wind.
My First Turn
Kenny had ridden in with one other racer, and so it made perfect sense — especially considering the headwind — for me to stay with the counterpart to the competing racer that started the leg at the same time I did.
And that was my intent. Really it was.
But I tend to ride a little bit out of my head when I’m racing. Meaning I honestly do not exactly understand words anymore, and don’t think about anything except the question, “Can I push harder?”
So while I rode with the other racer for a mile or two, taking turns pulling, when we got to the first major climb I just stood up and attacked from the front, not thinking about strategy, not thinking about tactics, not thinking about cooperation.
Just thinking that the answer to my question was, “Yes. A lot harder.”
And that was the end of our cooperation.
Before long, I caught another guy, and dropped him similarly. Then I caught and dropped two guys who were working together.
I’m pretty sure they said something about working together, but I wasn’t listening to anything but My Chemical Romance and the question / answer session going on in my head. “Yep, you can still go harder,” was the answer.
If it weren’t a race, I guarantee you the answer would have been much different.
Although, come to think of it, it’s possible that they were just asking each other whether it was really possible they had just been passed by a guy who looks like this:
I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m Fit-Fat.
The team caught up with me. I assumed they were asking if I needed anything, although I couldn’t tell for sure, due to the wind noise, the music playing, and my inability to make sense of words when I am riding my hardest.
As it turns out, they were asking something completely different, so the vague “thumbs-up” gesture I hoped answered their question didn’t really give them the info they needed.
Sorry, team!
They went on ahead, so The Hammer could prepare for her first leg of the race, which was totally fine — I was doing great and wouldn’t need any more food or drink for the rest of the leg of my race.
And that’s when my calves both started cramping up. Hard.
So hard, in fact, that I became fascinated with the new shapes they were taking on. How is it my calves had become concave? Was it really possible they were going to split right down the middle?
Could they hurt any worse? I didn’t think so, and decided I’d better stop pedaling and stretch. But as I coasted to a stop, my calves proved to me that they could hurt very much more indeed.
So I switched to a new plan: don’t stop pedaling. Try to stretch while pedaling.
I slowed, drastically, but the pain eased off. And none of the people I had passed earlier ever came into sight.
With the pain fading away, I picked up speed again, now wishing I had had the presence of mind to take a photo of the truly freakish shapes my calves had twisted into. Next time, maybe.
Finally, toward the end of the leg, I dropped two more racers who were working together. And then one more guy on the last big climb.
All told, I caught and dropped seven people by the time I handed The Hammer the slap bracelet at the end of my leg. And none had passed me.
Sometimes, riding stupid and hard works out OK. Which is good for me, cuz sometimes that’s all I’ve got.
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06.8.2012 | 12:00 pm
A few months ago, I decided to register for the 2012 100 Miles of Nowhere because it is good to occasionally do tough things, which may not make a whole lot of sense, just to test one’s mettle. It was also great that the proceeds would be going to a good cause. As I started putting a plan together, I came up with some criteria that I wanted to try to stick with:
- No sharp corners (so I would not have to slow down on the turns)
- No stop signs (so I would not have to run them)
- No elevation gain (so I would not have to suffer more than necessary)
- Good places for spectators to hang out (so family cheer squad would not be bored)
- Smooth pavement (just because)
After a bit of searching on Google Maps, I found a route in Daybreak (a master-planned community in the southwest corner of the Salt Lake valley) that seemed to meet all of the criteria. The route was a 1.15 mile banana-shaped loop on one-way, bike-friendly streets with roundabouts located on each end.
The route was also about as flat as one can possibly find in the great state of Utah and has fantastically smooth pavement. Perfect.
Now I just needed to find someone to do the ride with me. Luckily for me, I have a cycling buddy that is always up for an adventure. We shall call him Biker Ben, because his name is Ben…and, you guessed it, he has been known to ride bikes.
In fact, if you want to have fun on a bike ride, all you need to do is invite Biker Ben. Regardless of the route, weather conditions, or circumstances you may find yourself in, you will have more fun during the ride and better stories to tell afterwards if Biker Ben is there. Also, he will tell the stories much more enthusiastically than you would ever be able to, so that is an added bonus.
Biker Ben and I have spent a good chunk of the past decade riding mountain bikes together.
And when I say “together” I really mean that we usually stick together on the climbing portion of the rides. Then we get to the top of said climbs and Biker Ben disappears, in part, because he has more downhill biking ability than I do, but primarily because he lacks that rational, little voice in his head which tells him to slow down in an attempt to avoid certain death.
A few years ago, I got the itch to buy a fancy new road bike. Biker Ben also found a nice used touring bike online. The bike is too small for him and weighs about two tons, but it seems to “fit” him perfectly.
Due to scheduling conflicts, we decided the best time to do our 100 Miles of Nowhere would be on Memorial Day, May 28th. Since Biker Ben had never actually ridden a century ride, we decided to sign up for the Salt Lake Century on May 19th just to see how things would go.
May 19th happened to be the best weather conditions for a century ride in the history of Salt Lake City, with mild temps and no wind. We rode hard with a good group and hit the 100-mile mark in 4:47. Things seemed to be looking good for our 100 Miles of Nowhere on the 28th.
We decided to start our 100 MoN in Daybreak prior to dawn, ensuring us a victory in the 100 MoN Daybreak pre-daybreak Division. We rolled out onto the streetlight- and headlamp-lit course at 4:24 am.
There was no traffic or wind, so we breezed through the first 20 miles in just under an hour. A flat tire at mile 25 was no problem since we were never more than approximately .2875 miles from our car which was parked in the middle of our 1.15 mile loop. It also meant that we never had to carry any extra food or drink because the car was close by whenever we needed it. We started to think that riding a century ride like this was the best idea ever.
Miles 21-40 came and went just as easily as the first 20. Our lap times stayed remarkably consistent at 3 minutes, 22 seconds (plus or minus a few seconds). We remarked that someone needed to organize a crit race on this very route because it was absolutely perfect.
The wind started to kick up a little around mile 52, but we were still able to finish up the first 60 miles in just under 3 hours of riding time. Which was precisely when our awesome group of spouses, kids, sisters, brother-in-law, nieces and nephews started to show up.
Then wind shifted and started to get stronger. I would like to say the sky darkened and the earth opened up in an attempt to swallow us whole, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate since it was only chilly and annoyingly windy. We rode each lap from that point on being cheered by our families. They rang cow bells, clapped, and hollered words of encouragement each time we rode by for the last 40 miles of the ride. They even seemed to be enjoying themselves while they watched us ride around, and around, and around.
They cheered and rang bells for other people who happened to ride by, which probably made each of their respective rides a little more awesome too. We have good peeps in our families; they do good things to make random passersby feel happy.
Miles 61-90ish were a bit rough. Our pace was slowed by the wind and our lap times sometimes stretched to just under 4 minutes. Biker Ben started to realize that maybe he had not fully recovered from his first century ride just 9 days earlier.
My sister pulled out a giant 800mg ibuprofen tablet while we were stopped at mile 72, which he impressively swallowed without the assistance of liquid. We pressed on.
Around mile 80, we were passed by a rider on a Specialized S-Works Tarmac. He had fancy schmancy carbon aero wheels and was decked out in full team kit, cycling cap included. We reeled him in a lap or two later and asked what he was doing. He said he was on a “recon ride” for the crit race on Friday, June 1 st. We then told him we were about 83 miles into a 100 Miles of Nowhere ride and we had been riding laps on the crit race course since about 4:30 am. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his Oakley Jawbone sunglasses, but he appeared to look at us like we were crazy. Then he replied, “Wow…seriously?! Let me give you a pull for a few laps then.” It is odd how a complete stranger, who seems to think you are nuts, can totally make your day. He kindly gave us a pull until we stopped for our last rest stop at mile 85.
Miles 85-100 continued to be a bit of a sufferfest, but at least we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I took turns pulling double laps as Ben waited for the 800mg of ibuprofen to kick in.
Finally, at 99.9 miles, we both got out of the saddle and sprinted to the imaginary finish line, to the roaring cheers of our loyal family members.
I stopped the GPS at 100.17 miles and 5:13 of riding time.
We finished strong, but were so mentally and physically drained that the idea for a victory lap on cruiser bikes was immediately abandoned.
Instead, we climbed into our cars and headed directly to my sister’s house less than a mile away to celebrate our podium finish in the 100 MoN Daybreak pre-daybreak pre-crit Division.
It was an awesome ride. We had a fabulous cheer squad supporting us. And Biker Ben and I made a great team. Biker Ben and I now know what it must feel like to be a racecar driver who knows every inch of his favorite racetrack…and we may just show up a little early to the crit race on June 1st to offer some helpful tips to the other racers.
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