Watch it now.

Janeen’s Notes From the Ride

Since I’ve backed myself into a corner with the one-uping myself for 100MoN, this year I thought I’d do something a little different that could serve as my ‘this is my last one’ retirement Nowhere.

So I found a road. In Colorado. Called Nowhere Road. Brain clicked. It made perfect sense to ride 5x 100 miles of nowhere to nowhere. Road. :)

Some quick facts

Rider: Janeen
Bike: Peanut Butter
Team: PB+J

What kind of centuries?

They were out-and-back centuries. Why? Because I was by myself and had to be able to get my car to the next century.

How did I get from one place to another?

It went like this: Drive to start. Sleep in a hotel. Get up, ride a century. Get back to the car. Drive to the start of the next (eat something on the way or stop if time). Sleep. Rinse. Repeat.

What was the hardest part?

Not the riding. That was actually the fun part. Driving and sleep were the issues. For example, I had a 7.5 hour drive to Cedar City from Fallon which only gave me 4 hours sleep that night before doing the Cedar Breaks century (which was the hardest). That was immediately followed by a 5.5 hr drive to Moab after a very long day in the saddle, which again only allowed for 4 hours sleep before the Moab century.

Any injuries?

5 centuries in 5 days was not without consequences. I felt great. The fittest I’ve been in a long time. I could have easily gone out and banged out a 6th century on day 6 had it not been for some compression damage to my ulnar nerve, which caught up to me on the last day. Left hand numbness, and only now, 17 days later with no riding, has the numbness and tingling in two fingers begun to get better. Nerves is crazy!

Overall?

Amazing experience. Fantastic adventure! I’m glad I did it.

I am talking way too much, I thought to myself. And way too fast. 

I had just finished the first leg of the Rockwell Relay, where — after a considerable (and embarrassing) struggle — I had managed to hand the baton off to Kenny, who had  immediately commenced to take off like a bat out of hell, racing like his life depended on it. 

Photo by Heather

It’s one of the reasons Team Fatty — Heather, Kenny, The Hammer and I — are a great team together: off the bike, we’re about the most relaxed four people you’d ever meet. On the bike, we all suddenly transform into the most serious, focused racers in the world.

So now it was Kenny’s turn to pour everything he had into his first turn on the bike, and my turn to clean up (in particular, to wash all the gel off me, my gloves, and my bike), change into more comfortable clothes, relax, and eat. One of our team rules is that for the first hour after finishing your turn on the bike, your only responsibility is to take care of yourself. Relax, refuel. Rehydrate. Chill out.

And so, with my stuff was loaded into the van, comfortable shorts and a t-shirt on, and a bottle of Coke in my hand (I knew I wouldn’t want to eat for another half hour or so), I was talking a mile a minute, the endorphin rush plus the feeling that I had just ridden to the absolute best of my ability plus the excitement of the day (and night and another day) ahead with three of my favorite people, just making me giddy and happy and talkative.

The Flight of Mr Jones

We caught up with Kenny, who was blasting along at an astonishing pace. “Need anything?” hollered The Hammer.

“Nope, I’m good,” said Kenny. 

We drove ahead a couple miles, piled out of the van, and got out the cowbell — we only brought one, and wished we (wait for it) had more cowbell. 

The racer ahead of Kenny zoomed by. We cheered for him — everyone cheers for everyone at this race, in spite of the fact that we’re all actively competing against each other — and we started our timer.

Three minutes, and then Kenny came by:

Photo by Heather

We got back in the car, leapfrogged past Kenny — nope, he still didn’t need anything (it was still early in the morning [hence not hot] and Kenny [like me] doesn’t really drink a ton while riding. Then it was back out of the car and cheering for our rider again.

Every time he went by, Kenny would smile huge as we shouted the steadily-dwindling time to the racer ahead of him, and we put the cowbell to good use.

Then Kenny hit the downhill, and it was all over for the racer ahead of him. And the racer after that. And the one after that.

Kenny’s kind of insane on the descents, you see, and there was a lot of descending on this leg of the race — 3400 feet of it (although there’s also 2441 feet of climbing). Like this:

After an hour or so, I moved into the driver’s seat, Heather moved into the passenger’s seat (this is the person who takes care of the racer and is the busiest person in the van), and The Hammer went into the back of the van to get dressed for her turn racing.

Moment of Realization

“Are people going to make fun of me if I wear my Tri singlet?” The Hammer called out from the back of the van. 

“Nobody gets to make fun of you when you’re passing them,” I replied.

The Hammer knew that her upcoming leg of the race was likely to be hot, and windy. A form-fitting outfit would be a good idea, and her tri singlet wicks like crazy.

So the Tri outfit it would be. Although not the pointy helmet. That would be a step too far. (Oh, and also not the Shiv; aero bars are specifically prohibited in this race.)

We shot ahead of Kenny for the last ten miles of his ride, giving us plenty of time to get The Hammer’s bike unloaded, take care of using the restroom, and basically being at the exchange point ready to go. 

Then, since we had the time, we thought we’d go and verify that we were, in fact, the leading co-ed team. The woman who was recording times through the checkpoint was happy to loan us her binder and we started looking through it.

By each team name and number was a code. Like nc-m, c-w, or c-c, for example. It took us a moment, but we figured it out: the part before the dash indicated the type of team: competitive or non-competitive. And the second part was the division: men, women, or coed.

Luckily for us all the competitive coed teams (labeled “c-c”) were bunched together.

And one of them — Team 91, “Lifetime’s Beauty and the Beasts,” had already gone through. 

We were not the lead coed team. We were in second. And Team 91 (as we called them, because that’s much easier to remember) was getting further ahead of us every second.

The Hammer…Hammers

Well, there wasn’t much we could do about it now. Just do the best we could. We were either faster than they were, or they were faster than we were. 

Looking down the road, I could see Kenny approaching, and doused The Hammer with water before her leg started. 

The day was heating up.

Then Kenny and The Hammer did a rolling bracelet handoff:

Obviously, the two of them are a lot more coordinated than I am. 

Kenny was all smiles as he coasted to a stop. He had ridden his leg — 44 miles — in 2:12, moving us up to eighth place overall. Eight minutes behind Team 91. A not-impossible-to-recover time deficit, though we knew that Team 91 was sending out their third man, while we were sending out our first of two women.

We had to admit that we were looking like a second-place bet. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?

Kenny set up the shower rod behind his sprinter van and took a shower. Yes, really. How deluxe is that?

We then caught up with The Hammer, who was flying along, smiling the whole way:

Which seemed deserving of some serious cowbell.

Joining Forces

The day was heating up, and my job — now in the van’s passenger seat — was to holler encouragement at The Hammer every time we went by, and to exchange her rapidly-heating bottles for bottles full of ice water. 

Staying cool is absolutely essential when it’s 85 degrees outside and looking like it’s going to get to 100. Or warmer.

About ten or fifteen miles — some of the numbers jumble up in your head after a while — another rider caught up with The Hammer, and they agreed to work together for a bit.

This of course meant that we’d be leapfrogging and stopping with this other rider’s team, which is always great, because it gives you a chance to meet some of the other teams and learn a little of their stories and what they’re up to.

In this case, the story was pretty impressive. This rider was part of a three-person team: a couple of college triathletes from Florida who were on their way to St. George for a training camp. As long as they were there, they thought they’d go ahead and do this race as a two-person team, then picked up a third rider at the last moment. 

So the guy working with The Hammer was actually already riding his second leg of the day. Pretty impressive. At some point, however, his youth and eagerness to go hard were too much — The Hammer wished him well and he took off on his own.

At which point, a group of four guys came by and invited The Hammer to join their train. She was happy to oblige.

Unfortunately for one of these racers, by adding The Hammer to the line, the pace of the train picked up considerably and one of these guys dropped off.

How to Smell Good

I was glad The Hammer had been able to join up with a group of riders, because the wind — a hot headwind — was really starting to pick up. I looked back to Heather and asked, “Are you ready to ride in this?”

Heather looked only mildly concerned. Which was brave of her. (Oh, and by the way: that was foreshadowing for the next installment of this story.)

Meanwhile, the paceline was working well together and battling the wind as best as they could. When we pulled alongside the group and The Hammer was taking a turn pulling, I shouted — in (I swear) mock anger — at the group, “Shame on you for letting the woman take a pull!”

The Hammer rolled her eyes. One of the guys laughed. One guy said, “She wanted to!”

But the guy directly behind her — the racer from Team Green Gecko 1 (remember that name, because you’ll hear about them again in later race reports), yelled, “But I like riding behind her! She smells good!”

Which caused me to turn toward Kenny and say, “I’m pretty sure the guy behind Lisa just told me he likes the way my wife smells.”

“Yup,” said Kenny.

“Should that bother me?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Kenny replied.

For the rest of the trip, however, it became a running joke to stop mid-sentence and say, “Gee, Lisa, you sure smell good.”

We Reluctantly Begin To Try To Resign Ourselves To Our Fate

As we got to within ten miles of the next exchange, we made sure The Hammer had two full bottles of ice-packed drink, then drove on ahead to get Heather ready to go. 

We had everything down to a system by now. Kenny took care of getting Heather’s bike ready, I got drinks into her bottle cages, and Heather got herself ready to go. Kenny set up the shower so Lisa could clean up before we headed out to support Heather. Meanwhile, I put lights on one of my helmets (the plan was for me to be able to swap out helmets mid-ride, rather than have to carry heavy lights before I needed them), and set lights up on Kenny’s bike. It was weird to think of it now, in the middle of the day, but we’d be needing those the next time we rode.

Then, with plenty of extra time, we checked: Team 91 had put still more time on us. In fact, by the time The Hammer got to the exchange, Team 91 would be twenty-five minutes ahead of us, making our chances look pretty bad. In fact, we reasoned, the only way we were going to win was if Heather was a lot faster than the woman on Team 91’s team.

Even so, 25 minutes was a lot to try to pull back in a single leg of the race.

Well, we knew the Rockwell Relay Coed dynasty couldn’t last forever.

Surprise Ending

Heather rolled around on her bike, making sure everything was good. It was.

Looking down the road, I could see The Hammer coming, now with just one of the racers from the train she had been on. They had dropped the others during the climb.

We stood and watched. Heather got ready to start pedaling.

Lisa rolled up and held out her arm to hand the baton to Heather.

And that’s when Heather’s rear tire exploded.

Which is where we’ll pick up in the next installment of this story.

Another Note from Fatty: I love this race report particularly, because it’s absolutely positively totally old-school, taking the 100 Miles of Nowhere right back to its roots: on a trainer, going nowhere. And then he takes the idea even further back than that. 

100 Miles of Nowhere: Winner of 29-yr-old in East-Central Indiana stationary category

by Eric B.

I hadn’t intended to do the 100 MoN. As I a regular reader of Fatty’s blog I’d heard of it, but decided it was too much….but then I read this post. Now as a relatively sane man, I should have stopped there, but then I read Fatty’s original 100 MoN race report. As I am evidently a very damaged man, I went ahead and read every post and clicked every link I could find on Fatty’s blog about this event. I shouldn’t have.

100 miles…in a garage…on a trainer….with a MTB

I really didn’t understand what I was getting myself into. I knew that it would be tough, I knew I would hurt. I underestimated it.

See? That’s a pic of my mug at 6:45 am happy and hopeful, engergetic and pleased with myself, naïve and stupid.

To sum up my experience, I have a list of good ideas and bad ideas that others may want to take note of.

• Good Idea: Doing the 100 MoN. Great fund-raiser for a great cause. ‘nuff said.
• Bad Idea: Riding a 15-yr-Old MTB:

• It’s slow. At a high cadence (90-100) in top gear I could only maintain 20-21 mph.
• It’s loud. The noises it makes when you get it into its top gear are dazzling and horrifying. It sounded like an evil popcorn maker was chasing me with a maladjusted dentist’s drill while also randomly opening and closing a zippo for over 8 hours.
• It has flat bars. You are severely limited in riding positions. Normal and side-saddle are about it.
• Good Idea: Electrolytes: It was hot, the Half-Evil from the swag bag and a whole load of G****ade kept me from bonking. My engineer/coach/younger brother told me I sucked down 2 ½ gallons of funny-colored liquid over the course of the day.
• Bad Idea: Drinking 2 ½ gallons of G****ade: I suffered from worsening symptoms of pyrosis , eructation, and flatus as the day went on…and on… and on.
• Good Idea: Being a Musician: I discovered that I am able to count my cadence without a cadenceometerajig. This ability started to slip at about the 75 mile mark.
   
• Bad Idea: Letting your engineer/coach/younger brother be an engineer for the 100 MoN:
  
  He will want to build a special rig to capture/store/monitor the data that corresponds to your suffering. You will start riding over an hour later than you intended. Just have him coach, or do the engineering part of it the day before.
• Good Idea: Eating: Once I started riding, I ate anything I could find. I had prepared 6 peanut butter sandwiches; gone before mile 60. I had the snacks from the 100 MoN swag bag; gone before mile 30. I had flatbread pizzas in the fridge for my lunch and my brother’s; I slapped them together and ate both of them like giant sandwich. My wife made pasta for 4 for dinner; I’m quite sure I ate half of it before anybody noticed. Eating is awesome.
• Bad Idea: Riding 100 miles on a trainer:
  
  I hadn’t thought it through, there are no hills to coast down on a trainer. You have to grind out every single mile. Knobby tires also drag down your inertia…a lot.
• Good Idea: Watching movies with the dog to get through it:
  
  Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The Avengers all only had a few slow spots that were tough to maintain pace.
• Great Idea: The 100 MoN: It’s a crazy challenge, but worth it.

Here’s proof I actually did it, with breaks, in 8hrs 44min.

I made my wife present me with the shirt like I’d just won.

She made me change clothes before I could come in the house. I’m making my engineer/coach/younger brother ride with me next year, someone needs to share this suffering and madness.

- E.b.

Living in the Boulder foothills, I had some interesting options to consider. I thought the local famous hills, Flagstaff and Old Stage seemed to fit the dimensions… but frankly sounded too painful. There are the ‘fruit loops’ in Lyons with some beautiful canyons and very conveniently located near Oscar Blues Brewpub, but I decided to ride back and forth on a stretch of road known as Rabbit Mountain.

This is a nice out & back option off the one of the standard road loops around here, that I estimated at about 5 miles, with a good grunt of a hill at the end. I declined to measure it on Google ahead of time, and preferred to measure it on ‘race’ day. I also remembered a trailhead there with a shelter, bathroom and the hope ( later dashed) of water.

Race day turned out to be rather cool, about 50 when I got up and I lazed around gathering food, reading the paper and feeding the dog ‘til about 8. I loaded up one of the kids old school backpacks with a jug of water, a couple juices and my excellent Honey Stinger snack pack as well as a baggie full of Gu Brew in a suspicious blue color.

I rode out through the tail end of a local triathlon with back-of-the-pack riders providing some traffic and scenery. I’m no powerhouse, and was taking it easy riding up the road AND carrying a 15 pound backpack, but I nevertheless was overtaking some people struggling up the hills on their tri bikes, aero helmets and all. Soon enough, the racers turned off and I had the road mostly to myself heading to the Rabbit Mountain turnoff – which turned out to be 12.5 miles from my front door. That made for easy math – I owed 75 miles of laps on Rabbit Mountain to qualify as a MONarch.

Rabbit Mountain road (actually 53^rd St) borders a Cemex quarry and trends up gently, through prairie (you can’t see the actual quarry pit) makes a bend or two until it reaches the Rabbit Mountain Open Space trailhead, then makes a left turn up past a few houses perched on Rabbit Mountain itself and a fairly steep climb.

The Trailhead Parking lot, the thunderbox, and the welcome cloud cover

As it turned out, the Trailhead was 3 miles from the road, and almost exactly 1 more mile to the crest of the hill, where the pavement ends and I made my turnaround. Total distance was a nice even 4 miles, making an 8 mile loop. That seemed great, I had estimated 5 miles – so now I only had to do 10 laps instead of 15!

The elevation at the low point near the road was exactly 5280, and the peak of the climb was 5670, so about 400 feet of climbing on each lap, with half over the first 3 miles, and the last mile climbing 200 feet with the steepest pitch at about 10-11%.

Of course, this also meant I had a 400-foot descent every lap.

I dropped my backpack at the trailhead rest area and got to work. I clocked my first lap at just over 30 minutes and for the most part held that pace throughout, my fastest lap was 28:30, my slowest 31:something.

One of the nice features of the road was that it was a dead end with almost no traffic, except for hikers and bikers driving to the trailhead. I was hoping for a steady stream of roadies to chat with on my laps, but outside of my second lap, I rode on my own the whole way, although a dozen or two riders passed me going opposite ways on the road.

My company for the ride was a steady whack-a-mole progression of barking prairie dogs who would wag their tails and bark to alert their neighbors of my approach, scurry to the mouth of their burrow and watch to see if I looked hungry. As the miles and hours passed, I got hungrier and began to consider how I might catch and roast a few, so their concern was not entirely misplaced.

Since this was a quarry, there was also the possibility of entertainment in the form of large explosions. I rode for hours in the hopes of hearing ‘Fire in the hole!!’ but finished the day disappointed.

I also had a field full of birds to watch: hawks, mockingbirds, some optic-yellow number that looked too bright to be real, and for one magnificent lap a pair of golden eagles. I was watching one of them flying over the field from a distance and realized it had to be bigger than a hawk, and about the time I started to suspect an eagle sighting, I realized I was riding past his (her?) mate who was perched on a fence post not more than 10 feet from me. Magnificent.

What I never saw the entire day, was a single rabbit. Perhaps the prairie dogs chased them off….

I did have a low point about mile 40, when you realize that a few hours have gone by and there were many more to go. I was feeling some numb hands and wondering why I should stay out for most of the rest of the day. This seemed like a good time for a break, so I went and sat in the shelter, took a bathroom break, ate some food and did a bit of stretching. The sun came out, and I pushed off and headed up the hill.

Once I got going again, the day went by pretty fast… I crossed 50 miles, then before long I was at 60-something and had to calculate my finishing laps. I figured out that 9 laps would bring me to the end of the road with 83 miles, and 12.5 miles home. Hoping that the 12 miles I rode to the mountain would turn into something more like 15, I gathered my bag and headed for home.

Unsurprisingly, I pulled into my driveway with 96 miles showing on Mr. Garmin. I thought about dumping my bag and riding through the neighborhood across the street which had a few blocks I could make a loop around to round out the mileage – then I remembered that I was out of beer!

This gave me a motivating mission, remembering the friendly liquor store about 2 miles away. I emptied out the backpack and headed off to stock up on Oscar Blues Dales Pale Ale.

Ride Stats

Since there are lots of data junkies like me out there, I wanted to include the data from the ride. You’ll notice I ended up just shy of 98 miles – because when I left the store giddy with my fresh beer, I neglected to restart the GPS. Then when I arrived home, I ran into a neighbor eager to share my beer – so the planned car trip with the GPS in my lap to round things out never happened.

TrainingPeaks Graph

Wrapping it all up

Although I’ve done many tougher events (double centuries, Ironman Tris, 100 Mile MTB races..) I think I have generated more amazement with friends and family for the MON than almost any other. They almost always ask me to repeat the concept and stand slackjawed in amazement that I (and hundreds of other internet race-mates ) would willingly go through the mental struggle of a repetitive stretch of road like this.

It was a bit of a mental breakthrough pushing past the desire to quit, which was quite strong. On most races and rides, there are very few bailout points (Marine Corps Marathon runs you past the parking lot at about 3 miles – always a temptation..) but passing the way home every 30 minutes provides a unique temptation and tug on your determination. I’m proud I could (mostly) stick with it all the way through.

After spending the first ten miles — about half an hour — of a 54-mile leg of the race alone, I was grateful to be caught by a group of fast guys. I jumped onto the back of the peleton and did my best to recuperate; I knew that a series of hard climbs were coming up, and I didn’t want to be shot out the back when that happened. 

Within no more than a minute of sitting in the back, letting others pull me, I felt much better. Staying with the group was no problem. I felt like I was ready to hit the climbs hard. Maybe even split the group up a bit with an attack.

I watched the first really hard climb of the day approach. 200 yards. 100 yards. 50 yards. 

Go.

I jumped to the front. Most people bridged, but not everyone. I pulled to the top of the climb, bringing anyone who could hang. Did I have a strategy in doing this? Absolutely not. I was just reveling in the fact that, in the last few days of my 46th year, I am able — for the first time in my life — to jump to the front of a pack of fast guys and hurt them a little bit on a climb.

I wasn’t worried about smart. I was just having fun. 

Once we got to the top of the climb, I drifted back to the back of what was left of the bunch, thinking maybe I’d do it again in a little while.

Wait, Come Back

In truth, it really didn’t matter even a tiny bit that I had created this split in the field, because right after this pitch, we ran into construction traffic. The entire group rejoined as we slowed down and slalomed our way around cars and cones.

No matter. There was lots more climbing where that came from. Around 5000 feet of climbing in the 54 miles, according to my Strava of the ride. Here’s what the elevation profile looks like:

Yeah, it’s mostly just a lot of up. That said, there’s up, and then there’s up. And I wanted to make sure I didnt get dropped on the next hard pitch. So as it approached, I moved forward, and then — just like the last time — stood up and hammered away on the steep part. 

What was the advantage? None. As far as I knew, there was nobody from another coed team in this group of riders (as it turns out, I was wrong — more on that soon). Beating them here didn’t help my team at all. 

But I just wanted to. I was racing. Not racing smart, mind you, but definitely racing.

I succeeded. I split the group up. But I was beat. Time to move back to the smaller field I had created.

Except we were already at the base of another hard climb.

I tried to rally to the front, but this time the real racers — the guys from the teams that would win the overall race, eventually — hit the climb hard, and I couldn’t hold them. Not even close.

“That’s OK,” I thought to myself as I crested the climb with the smaller group I had managed to attach to. “We’re still doing very well.”

All Alone, Again

The group of three or four guys I had glommed onto worked together well, and we flew along, not worrying about catching guys we could never hold on to, but not being passed by anyone else, either.

And then, around mile 25 — halfway through my first leg — my team pulled alongside me in the van, ready to swap out bottles and give me any food I needed. 

I had kinda wondered where they had been all this time. As it turned out, that construction traffic that I had zipped through was a one-lane-only area. Right after my group had rolled through, the construction workers had stopped everyone — including a majority of the racers and many support vehicles — for twenty minutes or so.

I drifted back a little way from my group and switched out bottles, while the team took some pictures…

 
Oh, is that a new bike there? Hm. You can’t see it very well, can you? I guess we’ll learn more about that bike another time. 

…and cheered me on:

The Hammer, with cowbell.

This is one of the most awesome parts of the Rockwell Relay: the near-constant cheering from your teammates. It gives you an indescribable boost, and makes you want to be the absolute fastest you can be.

In this case, though, I had made a mistake. I had drifted too far back to get a bottle, and by the time I was all taken care of, the group I was riding with was a considerable distance ahead of me.

I gave chase, but to no avail. I could see them, and could even keep them from gaining on me, but I could not catch them.

I was riding alone. Again.

Yuck

And so, for the second half of the first leg of the race, I soloed it. Just rode my brains out, all by myself. The very personification of the opposite of the “don’t play harder, play smarter” axiom.

From time to time, my team in the van would give me reports: “You’re still one minute behind that group you can see up ahead!” Or, “There’s nobody behind you for miles.”

So I just kept pedaling. Going as fast as I could, on my own. What else could I do?

Every half hour, my GPS would chime, and I’d suck down a Honey Stinger gel (the Acai and Pomegranate flavor is my favorite). There’s nothing that works nearly as well as these for me when I’m racing. However, I did learn something important about handling them, which I will now share with you. As I ran out of the ones I had put in my jersey for the beginning of the ride, I yelled at my team for another as they went by me in the van. “And have it open for me already,” I said. 

Which they did.

As I pulled alongside them and took the gel, however, I grabbed a smidgen too eagerly, and…splut. 

Gel all over the left side of my body. Especially my left hand. What a mess. Which, naturally, transferred onto my bars, effectively gluing my hand there.

“I,” I thought to myself, “am perhaps the clumsiest dork who has ever lived.”

Introducing The Comedy Act of Kenny and Fatty

I pulled into the town of Monticello, looking for the City Park, where I’d hand off the slap bracelet — which acts as the relay baton — to Kenny.

I stopped, then proceeded to remove the bracelet so I could hand it to him, allowing him to start his leg of the race:

But there was a little problem. See, I was completely fried from my ride. My hands were shaking, and I had no coordination at all. So the transfer, uh, didn’t exactly go smoothly:

And in short, it took around forty-five minutes for us to make the transfer, with an ever-increasingly large crowd gathering around and laughing their heads off.

And then, finally (!!!), Kenny had the bracelet, and was gone. 

In spite of my (lack of) race tactics, I had ridden a good, fast race: 2:36 of riding by the race clock, which is 21mph on average, for 54.4 miles, which is not bad at all when you factor in that this 54.4 miles includes 5000 feet of climbing.

It was Team Fatty’s fastest time for leg 1 of this race ever, by 17 minutes. This was fast enough to put us in tenth place overall — out of 100 teams — at the end of the first leg of the race. I assumed — wrongly, as we’d learn soon enough – that this would easily put us in the lead for the coed division we were racing in.

I could rest now, til the evening, when it would be my turn to ride again.

Now it was Kenny’s turn to see what he could do. 

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

Upon the announcement for the 100 MoN ’13 edition I rallied two buddies to register and join in planning for the day. I was excited to have 3 of 500 “official” MoN participating and began talking to other people about our insanity. During one of these share sessions with one of my patients, I was intrigued when she told me of a newly forming charity called the Team Ryan Foundation for pediatric cancer research and I began to have ideas for something larger scale.

Fatty was gracious enough to give his blessing for bringing in more riders for the MoN, so we added a silent auction, and the “Spin and Bid” event was born. Following two weeks of intense planning, our event was going to happen! Here is the flyer we had made to spread word:

We had decided to allow additional riders to join for a minimum donation of $20 to Camp Kesem. Next Door Pizza, our host for the ride and after party, committed to donating 10% of the day’s sales to Camp Kesem as well. During the evening after party, a silent auction of items donated from all over the city was held benefitting Team Ryan. The three “official” riders had also received an incredible anonymous sponsorship of $10 per mile ridden to go to Team Ryan.

In 2 weeks time, we received approval from the local police and parks and rec. dept to use the route we planned without alteration – a 2.5 mile loop going into park grounds, past ball fields, and around a community college campus with what appeared to be leisurely rolling hills. Media coverage was obtained and silent auction items were coming in. Riders were asked to ride a minimum of one lap of the course that was marked and then feel free to continue the loop or take another route as desired.

Much advertising was done through the Select Physical Therapy (where I am a therapist) cycling group that was formed and organized by myself earlier this year. We gained more riders from work, set up a Facebook page for the event, had hand-painted banners donated, set up a tent for registrations, and were ready to start the day. I stayed with the FC jersey to maintain representation through the day.

The morning couldn’t have started much better. The winds were very calm, temps were perfect, and 3 gorgeous whitetail deer were observed on the initial laps before a large group of approximately 50 riders came through the other direction and scared the deer back into the woods.

The route was nice as it provided good scenery entering park grounds, moving toward a lake, a nice tight bend to play with, approaching youth baseball fields, and traveling alongside a golf course. This provided lots of exposure but also unpredicted complications. The deceptive rolling hills were longer and steeper than first anticipated as well.

Contact was made with Scott R., another “officially” registered 100MoN rider and he was able to join up with us approximately 12 miles into our ride. It was great having him out to join, was able to chat some during one lap and then my wife (Mighty Athena) and 7 yr old son arrived to join on the ride. Scott had gotten called away and needed to leave, sorry I missed you leaving and hope everything was alright – thanks for joining us while you were able!

Most of my route pics were taken while riding with my 7 yr old, Derek participating in his first event and proudly displaying his homemade race number. Around the time that my wife and son joined, we began seeing more and more coworkers show up. There was also a second group from the bike shop (30-40 riders) leaving. Awesome doesn’t appropriately describe riding the loop twice with my son and hearing his joy proclaimed with each down hill section (“Woohoohoo, YEAH!!!”) and cheers and encouragement for him from the bike shop riders! 

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the camera ready as the large group went by.

There was some fun and building confidence developed in taking that tight bend with speed. The initial laps averaged going the through the turn around 16 mph. As the day progressed, the speeds and comfort increased and I learned that my top speed going through was 27.6 mph, couldn’t quite stay in my lane when I hit 28 mph. There was bump prior to entering the corner and Derek’s first trip around, his feet flew off the pedals and his handlebars shimmied side to side 5 or 6 times but he saved it and maintained upright and moving forward. There were some good ascents he completed and was a real trooper when needing to push 3x, if only he had some gear options!

As the day progressed, the temps were climbing, nearly all riders completing above 40 miles were cramping badly, and the ball fields and pedestrians were becoming more busy and nonobservant, causing some safety risks in continuing to push the distance.

In the early afternoon we encountered a raccoon, and we knew that with him being out at that time of day, we were best to leave him alone!

My final 6 laps had both quads cramping to the point I couldn’t pedal on flats but had to keep pushing for the sponsored money and on my final lap decided to stop as two cars blocked my passage near the ball fields and people were beginning to congest the road making it stop and go which the quads couldn’t take.

Unfortunately, I was only able to complete 66 miles this year, one rider went nearly 70 and I was the final representation on the course for 2 loops to end the day.

There was a decent turnout for the ride and evening silent auction, but sadly we did not get the television coverage before and during that we were promised. Final numbers for the day included a total of 16 riders and 499.77 miles, and additional $260 raised for Camp Kesem (not including the 10% from the restaurant as it was unavailable upon leaving), $558 raised from 17 silent auction items and $1960 from mileage sponsorship (although likely to be full $3000 as hoped) raised for the Team Ryan Foundation. Their “motto” is HANDS IN!! but sadly there wasn’t anyone to finish the ride with hand in hand, so did it myself.

Nothing feels better than knowing we were able to help two great organizations. Hopefully next year we’ll have more than 2 weeks to plan!! Oh, forgot to mention that I still won the “Enjoy volunteering, but have a whole new respect for event organizers – 38 yr Male division.” Special thanks to FATTY, Todd and Toti for your enthusiasm in joining me, an incredible group of coworkers for your support and participation, volunteers, auction item providers, and NDP for hosting!

I love bikes. I love bike races. I love the kind of people who do bike races. I love the people who spend their time and energy putting on bike races. 

And above all, I love standing behind a grill, serving really good bratwurst (Colosimo’s) to racers and talking with them about all of the above, the night before a bike race. 

Here I am, last Thursday afternoon, right before the crowds showed up. 

Those two big ice chests behind me are holding 400 brats, which The Hammer had boiled in PBR and onions the day before, since I was kind of out of my head with work deadlines.

Which made the hours of 6pm ’til around 8:30pm — when The Hammer and I grilled and served around 300 of those 400 brats (the rest would be grilled and served at the finish line Saturday) to racers and their families (and to the occasional random park-goer who was drawn in by the incredible smell) of the Rockwell Relay: Moab to Saint George.

We told favorite stories. We shared race tactics (i.e., bring an ice chest completely full of ice to keep drinks cold), and we talked about what a strange and fun experience this race was every year, and the fact that every single team would come away with an amazing story to tell.

I also signed a couple books, which served my vanity very well.

Most importantly, we listened very carefully whenever someone else mentioned that they were part of a coed team, asking — very casually, mind you — whether they were there to race, or just to ride.

Hey, as two-time winners of the coed division of the Rockwell Relay, we had a dynasty to defend; we needed all the beta we could gather.

Then, around 8:00pm, The Hammer and I made our first critical strategic race move: we called Paradox Pizza in Moab, and ordered five 14″ pizzas (a Supremo, a Greek, a Caprese, a Hawaiian Italian, and a Margherita). 

Once those arrived, we let them cool down, folded them so the crust side was facing out, and then put them in ziploc bags.

Our team’s primary race food source was taken care of. 

The Race Begins

The Rockwell Relay starts at 8:00am, so Team Fatty got breakfast at Denny’s together to make final plans. We agreed that – for the first time — I would take the Racer 1 position. Kenny had raced it our previous two times, and we were both interested in trading to see what other legs were like. This meant Kenny would take leg 2, while The Hammer would take leg 3, and Heather would take leg 4 (as they both had the previous two times we’ve done this race).

During this breakfast, Heather — who has been plagued with flat tires this year — observed, “Finally, I’ve had three consecutive rides without a flat!”

I turned on her, with fury in my eyes. 

“You’re using The Secret wrong,” I said. “You’re jinxing us for sure, and guaranteeing a flat.” 

Heather apologized, but I knew we were now doomed to have at least one flat during the race, since the process for reversing misuse of The Secret is lengthy and complicated, and we had no time. 

But this was no time to dwell on what could not be fixed. So we finished our respective Grand Slams, then grabbed a quick team photo:

Left to right: Fatty, The Hammer, Kenny, and Heather

And then I shouldered my way into the very front of the line. 

Did I belong there? Probably not. But I have been riding hard. And I am — I’m pretty sure — the fastest I have ever been. Maybe by a lot. So I wanted at least a chance to hang with the fast guys.

The race began, at which point very strange things started happening.

First, three of us shot out front: me, a guy in blue, and a guy in red (that’s honestly all the detail I remember of them; they probably remember me as “guy in pink.”) We rode together for the first couple blocks, and then the guy in blue stood up and took off.

I looked over to my left at the guy in red. Was he going to chase? No. He was not. “Let’s just work together,” I said, and kicked it up half a notch so he could settle in behind me while I did the first pull.

Then the guy in blue — who was, by now, fifty feet ahead of us — suddenly pulled over to the side of the road, and stopped. 

What?

I figured he must have flatted or had a chain drop, or something like that. Regardless, the fact that we had gone less than half a mile meant that the rest of his team (everyone on all the teams rides the first mile or so of the race, with three out of four of the racers just rolling along in parade mode) would see him in a minute and could help him out.

So I kept on going, thinking, “How weird that I am currently the lead racer.”

After a couple minutes, I waggled my left elbow, signaling the racer in red to come up and take a turn pulling.

Nothing.

I waggled my right elbow.

Nothing.

I looked over my shoulder.

Nothing. And nobody.

Unintentionally, I had managed to launch a solo breakaway from the entire field, about half a mile from the beginning of the race, with 54 miles and 4100 feet of climbing to go.

“So,” I thought to myself, “Now what?”

All Alone

I considered my options. “I can either keep going and try to stay out front, seeing if I’m the rare breakaway that succeeds,” I thought, “Or I can drift back to the group.”

“Or,” I thought, “I can keep going hard, but knowing full well that I’ll eventually be caught, at which point I can try to just hang with the lead group, instead of getting dropped by them.”

That sounded like a pretty good idea, and I figured that I’d be swept up within a few miles. “I’ll go hard, but not so hard that when they catch me I can’t join them,” I told myself, over and over.

But then a few miles went by, and I was still in front, all alone.

And then it was five miles.

The photographer and videographer caught up with me, taking pictures and video of me, riding. Alone.

Seven miles. Still alone. 

I began to fantasize. “What if they don’t catch me?” I thought to myself. “What if I somehow, during the night, magically became the fastest person here? Faster than the Cat 1 racers who are here? Faster than Brute Force, which has won this race every year?”

“Well, why not?” I thought, and went harder. 

I looked down at my Garmin Edge 510. Ten miles into this race, and I was still leading. 

And that’s when two people rocketed by me as if I were standing still.

“OK, I knew that would happen,” I said.

And then, seconds later, a group of twenty racers surged by me.

My solo moment of glory was over, and the race — the real race — was on.

Which is where I’ll pick up next time.

There were several reasons that we chose to ride our 100 MoN in the dark, starting with wanting to do something that we hadn’t done before, something more ill advised than all the other rides we’ve done. Once my brother and I began talking about the concept, we got pretty excited about how we’d pull it off:

• The highly excellent system of paved (former RR) trails in Minnesota became the obvious choice for safe riding after dark. Specifically the Wobegon, Soo Line and Central Lakes Trails:

• When I started looking at night lighting products for bicycling, there was no doubt that we’d be lighting up the night in a colorful way. For a thrill, check out Monkey Lights on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLtbeU8FJW0
• We would have several 100MoN poachers, all in need of a commemorative T-shirt. Twin Six carried the perfect shirt for our ride, especially after I added this 100 MoN graphic to the sleeve (yes, it’s the 2012 graphic, which T6 kindly let me use):

t-shirt

Purloined graphic

We are the Borg

Soon our enthusiasm spread to several of our riding friends/family and we ended up with eight riders (including one from Taiwan!) plus four support people. It’s possible they all recognized the futility of resisting the tide created by our passion for a “really good idea.” It’s happened before. Resistance is futile.

Joining us was Isaac N., a friend through Fatty. Wet conditions had kept the local MTB trails closed, so he was forced to consider alternative plans for his 100MoN. The futility of resistance.

And They’re Off!

Friday, May 31, 8 pm. Early dusk: For the first hour, we were able to ride without using our headlights but, as darkness fell, the forest closed in around us forming a dark tunnel. We all agreed that we were riding in a cocoon of nothingness.

Things get mystical

Weather forecasts for the night were grim, with thunderstorms likely all night long. We were prepared to suffer immensely. OK, that was a lie. Is anyone ever prepared to suffer immensely? All I know is, extreme suffering did not become necessary on this ride. In fact, it may be safe to say that we were all awestruck with how the night turned out.

11:30 pm, already past our bedtimes: By the time we first crossed the Mississippi River, roaring through the Blanchard dam, the sky was a sea of stars, with nary a cloud in sight. We celebrated our first crossing under the stars by sharing a bit-o-whiskey with the river.

12:30 am, June 1: Traveling southwest after our 2^nd crossing of the Mississippi, we began to notice northern lights (aurora borealis) off to our right. When we stopped and turned off as many of our blinky-flashy things as possible, we were treated to the most spectacular natural light show most of us has (have?) ever seen. Keep in mind, we live “up north”, and we were still mightily impressed. Here’s the crazy, mystical thing about the light show: I had gathered several “door prizes” for our riders and the one shown below was the most special, the one I felt captured the sense of what we were doing, the one I planned to award to the rider most vexed with mechanicals. It’s a limited edition poster entitled “Flat” by Adam Turman, a Minneapolis artist who beautifully illustrates the bicycling life:

This made me a bit nervous about the skull themed gifts I’d prepared:

1 am: Shortly after our northern lights stop, we rolled through Holdingford, MN, where this guy sits along the trail and is ever willing to share his bench:

1:30am: Our second swing through Albany brought us to our stationary sag vehicle where we enjoyed sandwiches, Chicken & Stars soup (the jury is still out on the soup), other sundry snacks and world-class encouragement from our support, Laurie and Christine.

2 am: Now riding east toward our campsite, with ~27 miles to go, the half moon appeared on our horizon, dead ahead. Orange with a few wisps of clouds before it, the moon was our beacon for the remainder of the ride. As fatigue set in, we began to notice, profoundly, the washboard on each of the seemingly dozens of bridges we crossed. Soon we were all making that “ahhhhhhh” noise like little kids do when bobbling on Grandpa’s knee.

3 am: We’d advanced to sounding out chords as we hit the bridge decks. My brother, Del, determined that we’d struck the opening chord of the final movement of Beethoven’s 9^th symphony which, he later explained, is noteworthy in that it is two completely incompatible chords blended together such that someone with normal ears would say, “What was THAT????” I thought we sounded good.

The moon, still with us, had risen higher in the sky and become inexplicably smaller. Explanations for this phenomenon do not work at this time of night. For me, they never work.

4 am on the dot: We arrived at our campsite, one hour later than originally projected:

With the rest of the campground fast asleep, and the police just down the road, we high-fived silently. In post race analysis, I now realize we were a generally geriatric bunch of riders. Only the three youngest of us still thought beer sounded good. At 55, I was pleased to be one of the three. It was a struggle, but I had a reputation to maintain.

And in the morning we had pie. Moon pie. Homemade.

Summary

• Not one mechanical issue, not one mishap, no bonks , no crying, and minimal whining (and only after 3 am), our 2013 Dark 100 Miles of Nowhere was a smashing success!
• I used the occasion of this ride to do some additional fund raising for Camp Kesem by registering as a non-rider in the Livestrong Davis event. With a few weeks remaining before the Davis ride, I’m confident my goal of $2K will be reached.
• Soon I’ll have video and more detail about the Dark 100 Miles of Nowhere on my blog: Nanabananabike.blogspot.com.
• Oh yeah. I won the women’s division.

Thank you!

Nancy in Minnesota

It would be a bit hyperbolic to say that the only reason I wanted to participate in 100 Mile of Nowhere was to have a ridiculous course, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t remember if I knew about this park with a great view before I started scheming over 100 Miles of Nowhere or not.

Great view, eh? (Downtown SF, the Bay Bridge, and Treasure Island, for those of you not from around here.) I love infrastructure: bridges, railroads, transmission lines, ports. This has the additional historical footnote of being the westernmost point on the Union Pacific Railroad.

Plus, the water link from one end of the park to the other would be my hook to get my kayaking boyfriend to participate. First I thought we would both bike and kayak, but the number of transitions seemed overwhelming. So we agreed that he would kayak and I would bicycle. Flat water kayaking for a whitewater kayaker is basically like being on rollers in a basement for a mountain biker.

Because kayaking is much slower than bicycling, we decided it would be a parallel relay event. (This is probably a concept I’ve invented. Which hopefully means we’ve placed first in our division: Coed Simultaneous Bike and Kayak Relay, Oakland CA.) The bicycle leg was 80 miles, and the kayaking leg was 20 miles, back and forth across the narrow section of the park horseshoe.

I’ve included the Strava screen for the ride. Started from the house, a bunch of times around the park, and a deviation for a sausage at Rosamunde’s before heading home to realize an extra loop around the block was needed to hit 80 miles.

The day was great: sunny, not too hot or windy, lots of birds (pelicans, blue herons, white egrets, avocets, gulls by the dozens and Canada geese by the hundreds). My boyfriend, T, got the best view of a pelican diving for a fish just ten feet off his kayak. Next time we do this, I’ll be getting a kayak leg, too. Getting hissed at by Canada geese multiple times just doesn’t have the same cachet.

However, if you are familiar with Arrested Development, you’ll understand why I was concerned for his well-being after seeing a harbor seal early on in the day, but it kept its distance. Sand sharks and bat rays were also hanging around.

I have done one other 100 Miles Of Nowhere, a few years ago with a friend doing loops of Golden Gate Park. One of the interesting things about spending all day in a park is seeing the ebb and flow of various parts of the community interacting (and operating completely separately in different areas), and generally all having a good time.

The Middle Harbor Shoreline park also has the benefit of being along the shipping channel. One of the bike legs looked out at multiple sailboats heading out the morning, a huge container ship coming into port later that day, and at the end, a large Coast Guard ship, probably heading up out of the Gate and up the coast. I can’t describe the effect of seeing these different sized vessels gliding by, apparently crossing my path at the end of the bike path.

We ended up taking about 8 hours to do the ride/paddle, and Strava shows me with 6 hours and 40 minutes of rolling time.

PS: FYI, Fatty, you’ve created another Strava user. I was wondering if I needed to bring out my long unused GPS device to track the ride, and of course thought about iPhone apps. When I saw Strava on the list of bike tracking apps, I immediately chose it. And ended up with a couple of trophies by the end of the day for the competitive Oakland Middle Harbor area. Also, I was impressed that Strava didn’t destroy my battery. I managed to get through all 8 hours with battery left over. As good or better than my purpose-built GPS device. Of course, most of the time, the screen was off. I’m just disappointed I didn’t know how excellent (and easy-to-use) Strava was for my first real mountain bike ride last weekend in Pennsylvania.

I have “raced” the 100 MoN for the past 3 years. In fact, my first century ride ever was my first 100 MoN ride. Things are a little different for me this year. I am training for a “little” mtb race in Colorado in August [That would be the Leadville 100 - FC] and have a tune-up race next week. So I was trying to figure out how to fit the 100 MoN into my training schedule.

Looking at my training calendar I saw that I had a 5 hour ride on tap Sunday June 2. Perfect, except how to get 100 miles in 5 hours AND accomplish my training goals?

So I thought, and thought, and thought some more.

Then it struck…..a timed crit…..on my mountain bike……riding the dirt road short lap around my block! It’s a 2.7 mile loop that takes about 11 minutes. There are three “hills” (maybe 30 ft elevation gain each). One is an attention-getter (12% grade) the other two are a little more mellow. And let’s just do six hours instead of 5. With the course and time set, my division? The Potsdam, Training for a Big Race, Mountain Bike, Timed Criterium.

The weather was calling for scattered thunderstorms, and I started the ride in a downpour. The dirt roads were muddy and soft. But the rain only lasted about 2 laps, then it stopped. And gradually the roads dried a little bit, and got a little firmer.

I settled back into the ride: crank/sprint up the kicker hill, “recover” down the backside, temp the rest of the way around.

One of the things I like about this event is that it is meditative. You can settle into it and through repetition lose yourself. Yeah, OK that’s definitely the half full metaphysical version. 32 laps around my block was definitely tedious. :)

Coreen and the kids came out periodically and cheered me on. They got me bottle refills, and 3 hours in, brought me a coke (Yumm, best mid ride drink ever!).

The weather held pretty good until about 4 hours into the ride (2 hours to go) when it rained hard again for about 20 minutes. All that nice firming up of the dirt road, gone. It became soft and muddy again.

After 6 hours the GPS said I did 86 miles, with a 14.4 mph average and a 4400 ft elevation gain. Oh, and I won my division (go figure).

My most memorable moment of the day: hitting a big snapping turtle. It’s turtle-mating season here and they are all over the place. They like to lay eggs next to the roads. The incident occurred during the initial downpour. I had a face full of spray — was cleaning it out — and when I looked up, there she was: directly in my path. I swerved and clipped her. She was fine (me too!), but it could have been very ugly.

Cars? Only was passed by one the entire six hours. I love living on a dirt country road.