I had been thinking the whole day. Wondering. Searching the trail. Looking for answers.
Finally, I could hold back no longer. I had to speak.
“I have a question,” I said to The Hammer. “We haven’t seen a single snake in five days of racing. Not a single one. Why not?”
“I don’t know,” said The Hammer. “Let’s just be glad we haven’t seen any.”
“But I like snakes,” I said. “It always makes me happy when I’m mountain biking and I see a snake.”
“Snakes are horrible. And this ain’t no time for jibber-jabber,” replied The Hammer.
But she didn’t mean it. We both knew this was exactly the time for jibber-jabber. And so I talked, endlessly, about my theories for why there were no snakes (most revolving around altitude and short summers, none of them based on any actual knowledge of snakes).
Why was I happy? Why was I talking again? Well, lots of reasons. First, our fatigue had stabilized: we weren’t any more tired at the beginning of this, our fifth day of racing, than we were at the beginning of our fourth day of racing.
This meant that we — on our fifth day of racing — were really no more exhausted than the people who had not raced Leadville. We no longer felt like we were on uneven footing with other racers; we were all in the same boat, known as “The Good Ship Breck Epic.”
More importantly than any of that, though, was the fact that the sun was out, the trail was beautiful, and my knee was getting better.
It had taken a rough few days, but I had gotten through the far end of my tunnel of misery. I was happy to be on my bike again.
Little Things Become Big Things
After racing for so many days, we had begun feeling a strange sense of permanence. Like getting up and racing the whole day was what we had always done. What we would always do. We started to feel at home.
We noticed something great about our “neighborhood” (the course): it was brilliantly marked. Every day, for six days, we raced a different singletrack course — forty miles or so of it. And every day, we had absolutely no trouble whatsoever staying on course. We never got lost. We never even got to a point where we were unsure.
For six solid days of racing, in spite of increasing exhaustion and decreasing lucidity, we knew exactly where we were supposed to go.
Think about that for a second. That is a serious accomplishment, and one that I made absolutely sure to compliment the Breck Epic organizers on, often and profusely.
The next thing that The Hammer and I came to love were the aid stations. See, the same people were working the aid stations for the whole week, which meant that if you were actually stopping at the aid stations, you had a chance to hobnob with some of the same people a few times over the course of the week.
And you started to look forward to pulling into aid stations not just for the opportunity to get an orange wedge and to rest your legs, but to say “hi” to these people who were starting to become your race friends.
The Hammer and I might have gotten to know some of the aid station volunteers a little better than other racers did, because we didn’t just grab and dash. The Hammer, in fact, would pull out the bag, dole out our sandwich, chips, and Coke — yes, really — and then sit down on the ground to eat. (I would remain standing, because I didn’t trust my knee enough to sit down; I was worried if it stiffened up while I was sitting, I’d be unable to get back up.)
One of the volunteers — the father of another racer (whose name is Montana, but that’s all I know about him) — became a particular favorite of ours. He laughed at how, unlike a lot of the racers, we would settle in and have a picnic. He’d come over and talk with us for a while, happy to see us pull up.
One time, I had an extra Coke in our drop bag, which I offered to him. He seemed astonished and delighted, accepting it with pleasure. We stood around, drinking Coke and talking about what a beautiful place Breckenridge was and how much we were enjoying the week.
This remains one of my stand-out favorite moments of the entire race.
The Climber
Another good thing about this fifth day of racing is that with my knee feeling better and my power returning, we were able to assert ourselves on the climbs. Because — and I say this with all the humility I can muster — The Hammer and I are pretty fantastic climbers.
We’d reach a steep pitch and see others rolling to it, dismounting, and start walking. I’d turn to look at The Hammer, my eyebrows raised. She knew what my question was without my even asking it.
“Are we walking this?”
And I’d know her answer by the fact that she’d shift into a small gear and keep pedaling. I’d ride behind her, mostly because I never ever get tired of the look on guys’ faces as they — off their bikes and pushing — would turn to see who was cleaning the current monster of a climb, just to realize they’d been chicked.
“That’s why she’s called The Hammer,” I’d explain.
With an extraordinary 7433 feet of climbing in 46 miles, The Hammer had plenty of opportunities to demonstrate this capability, once cleaning a brutal, never-ending 23% climb.
Existential Riding
It was on day four of the Breck Epic that we finally learned to just ride.
Up until this point, we had worried every day about the length of the day’s course. Where aid stations were located. Where the big climbs were. Where the big descents were.
And without exception, things had worked out differently than we expected. See, when you’re depending and focused on an aid station being at mile 10, then things seem seriously wrong if you don’t have an aid station ’til mile 13. If you expect the length of the course to be 40 miles, miles 41 – 46 can be pretty lousy.
If, however, you are riding with the expectation that every so often — every ten miles or so, say — there will be an aid station, you just accept the aid station when you get to it.
Likewise, if you tell yourself that the race isn’t over until you cross the finish line — nor should you expect it to be over, ever — you don’t spend anywhere near as much time staring at your GPS, wondering when will this damned stage ever end?
Hey, it ends when it ends. Until then, enjoy riding while it lasts.
It’s a philosophy that might even have some non-race application.
A Note From Fatty: Readers, I am sorry to inform you that Free Verse Friday has been suspended today, due to non-compliance with the strict no-rhymes policy enforced throughout this blog.
Specifically, the 05 October 2012 edition of Free Verse Friday rhymed the words “sated” and “unabated,” a clear violation of Free Verse as defined by the administrators of FatCyclist.com.
Since this unfortunate circumstance has only been recently brought to our attention, we are still collating and tabulating data, searching our hearts, and otherwise trying to decide what to do. We shall formulate an opinion once we know which way the wind blows and and render our verdict in an extraordinary meeting at a time to either be announced shortly or some other time.
Thank you.
UPDATE: It has come to our attention that the 05 October 2012 edition of Free Verse Friday, as currently published in this blog, is not in fact the Free Verse poem as originally published. By using high-tech Internet archiving software, we have uncovered that the original stanza in question read as follows:
This stands in glaring contrast to the verse as it is now published:
It is quite clear that the word “unabated” was added to the Free Verse after the poem had been published and subsequently forgotten.
By whom? And for what reason? We do not know yet why anyone would want to sabotage something as beautiful and innocent as Free Verse Friday.
But we intend to find out.
Stay tuned for further updates.
UPDATE 2: As FatCyclist.com management reviews past editions of Free Verse Friday, it becomes apparent that the Fat Cyclist (hereafter referred to as “The Defendant”) is not the only person who has clearly and substantially violated the regulations clearly stated for Free Verse Friday.
Indeed, a close review of poetry written for any given issue of Free Verse Friday between the months of whenever it started (management of FatCyclist.com is currently not all that interested in figuring that out) and now, clearly demonstrates that a majority of the poems rhyme.
Clearly, this problem is more widespread than originally understood, and many important questions come to mind:
Were commenters who rhymed in their poetry coerced to do so by The Defendant?
Why did some commenters rhyme in some poems, but not in others?
Why is almost all of the poetry so excruciatingly bad?
Is there any poetry that’s good?
Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
The management of FatCyclist.com recognizes that these revelations are rocking both the world of poets and the fans of famous, award-winning cycling bloggers. Unfortunately, they (i.e., we) don’t care very much, because it’s lunchtime.
Stay tuned for even more updates. There may or may not be any updates coming, but go ahead and stay tuned for them anyway.
A Note from Fatty: If you care about cycling, you probably read Red Kite Prayer. The creator and honcho behind RKP, Patrick Brady (aka Padraig) is one of the nicest, fairest, and conscientious cycling journalists you could ever meet.
Well, Patrick had a very serious crash recently, and could use some help on his medical bills. Over at Red Kite Prayer, they’re asking people to donate $5 to help Patrick. I’d like Team Fatty to show solidarity with RKP and Patrick. Please go over to his site and help him out, or — if you’re the impatient type — simply click the donate button below:
Update: I’m very happy to say that thanks to everyone’s generosity, the fundraiser for Patrick has raised the money he needs. I’ve removed the donation button and links here, and they’ve removed them at Red Kite Prayer, too.
Thank you everyone for being so incredibly caring.
A Note from Fatty: This is part of my race report for the the 2012 Breck Epic. My writeups for all parts of this story can be found here:
It was still raining, and I didn’t want to ride anymore. I had raced for three days, my stomach felt horrible, my knee hurt acutely with every turn of the cranks, and I was just purely miserable.
I wanted out.
So, following the awards ceremony after the second stage of the Breck Epic, I limped up to the race director, Mike McCormack and said, without looking in him in the eyes, “I don’t think I can do this.”
“You do look pretty tired,” said Mike, sympathetically.
“I think I’m going to have to bow our team out,” I said, doing my very best to sound like it wasn’t a decision I was making, but something that had been — alas — forced upon me.
“Why don’t you just take tomorrow off?” Mike replied. “Just take one day to recover, and then come back and finish the week strong.”
“We could do that?” I asked? “If I need to skip a day, we could still do the rest of the race?”
“Sure. You’d be in the ‘recreational’ category, but we want you to see as much of the Breck Epic as you can handle.”
Decision Made by Metal
As we drove back to our condo, I told The Hammer what Mike had told me. Then I said, “Let’s take tomorrow off, OK?”
The Hammer thought for a minute. Then she said, “Look, if you need to take the day off because you can’t ride because your knee hurts too bad, that’s fine. That’s not even a question. But if you want to take the day off because you’re just tired and burned out on racing, that’s different.”
“And besides,” said The Hammer, “I really want those finisher’s buckles.”
“Let’s go home and ice my knee some more, then,” I said.
Settling Into a Routine
By the third day of the Breck Epic, The Hammer and I had a daily routine pretty much figured out. Here it is, in all its glorious, glamorous glory:
Get up: This was always easy. For one thing, both The Hammer and I are morning people. As in, for us, “sleeping in” means getting up at 6:30. For this race, we’d get up every morning before 6:00. We set an alarm clock every day, but were always up before it went off.
Get breakfast: Scrambled egg burritos with onions, mushrooms, and bacon. I don’t think either of us ever ate the entire burrito.
Poop: The Hammer would do this while I worked on making breakfast.
Work on bikes: I’d go down to the garage and clean and lube the bikes, as well as make sure we had air in the tires. That’s pretty much all I know how to do. Luckily, that was usually enough.
Put together drop bags: While I got the bikes ready, the Hammer would put together our drop bags for the day, which would include rain clothing, sandwiches, a vast array of Honey Stinger products, and salted nut rolls.
Take drop bags: The Hammer drove the drop bags to race HQ about an hour before the race start. While she did this, I would…
Poop: Oh yes, I’ll go into detail on that, shall I? No? OK.
Suit up: We always took care to wear matching outfits. Yes, we actually did. With about seven versions of the Fat Cyclist kit available to us, we got to look stylishly similar every single day.
Take Advil: And hope it kicked in before the race began.
Go to start line: One of the many things we liked about the Breck Epic is that we could ride our bikes from our condo in town to the start line of the stage. There were a total of three different places the race started from, but none of them were difficult to get to; none of them required loading up the bikes and driving.
Race: I’ll get to that in a bit.
Come home: Immediately upon crossing the finish line — usually without even slowing dow, much less getting off our bikes — ride back to the condo.
Clean up: The Hammer gets to shower first, then I get a turn. Because I am a gentleman, that’s why. It’s not a problem, though, thanks to the seemingly endless supply of hot water our condo has.
Eat – or try to eat: After racing, we’d try to have lunch / dinner. But neither of us would feel like eating very much. The irony that we — two people who love to eat, nonstop — were not able to eat during the entirety of a week where it was absolutely OK and even encouraged to eat as much as we could, was not lost on us. But we didn’t find that irony very funny.
Take Advil: ‘Cuz it’s been long enough since I’ve had a dose now, right?
Ice my knee: I wonder how much ice I went through that week?
Watch Judge Judy: Really. After a hard day racing, there’s nothing quite like watching a cranky old lady dish out judgment.
Poop: Yeah, again. Our stomachs were completely insane.
Do laundry: Pretty much a load every day.
Go get drop bags, attend awards / pre-race meeting: There was an awards ceremony after each stage. We went, but after the first day didn’t ever go stand on the podium again. We felt silly, standing on the third-out-of-three place on the podium, though I guess there was something to be said for the fact that at least we kept showing up and kept making it through the day.
Go grocery shopping: We’d always need something, in spite of the fact that we weren’t great at eating any of it.
Try to eat: Sometimes we’d got out, more often we’d just make a sandwich.
Bed: Typically by 9pm.
It makes for a surprisingly busy day, in strong contrast to the vision I had of the week of racing I had in my head before we got there, which had I pictured as:
Race
Eat
Hang out and lounge around tthe town, enjoying the sites for three or four hours
Eat some more
Bed
Day 3
So you’ve probably figured it out by now, but yeah. By the time the third day of the race rolled around, I had agreed — a little bit reluctantly, a little bit sheepishly — to keep going.
And I was so glad I did.
For one thing, my knee started feeling better. I don’t know how or why, but it did. I could ride again, with some power even.
And the weather was good again. In fact, it was beautiful. Astonishingly, the trail was good too; I don’t know how that was possible, considering the extraordinary amount of rain that had fallen the day before, but it was true.
And with that, my entire perspective of the race changed. I started having fun. I started enjoying the climbs. I started looking around and thinking about the remarkable fact that I was riding — for six days straight — in some of the most incredible singletrack I had ever seen.
And I got a chance to interview Rich Dillen — a famous (though not nearly as famous as I am) cycling blogger:
I am such a fine journalist.
What I really should have got video of, though, was the fact that The Hammer and I actually caught and passed one of the other coed team — Team Bliss — during the climb up to French Pass.
So, briefly, we had a chance at moving up a spot on the podium, and on a day when there was a reasonable chance that my knee would bend well enough for me to step up onto that podium.
Alas, Team Bliss blew by us as soon as the climb turned into a descent. We never had a chance, really.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, because the second-most awesome thing of the entire Breck Epic happened at the summit of French Pass:
Yep, that’s right. One of my MTB heroes was hanging out at 12,000 feet with a big bag of Skittles (The Hammer and I show up about 6:15 into Jeff’s video), pouring them into racers’ outstretched hands.
They were the best Skittles ever.
Climb and climb and climb and descend and descend and descend.
From French Pass forward, the day was just amazing. Lots and lots and lots of climbing, followed by — more than once — half an hour or more of singletrack descending. Forested, rooty, rocky stuff. Sometimes flowing, sometimes so technical that I had to get off my bike (at which point the downhill artists would blow right by me).
By the end of the day, we had done 40 miles of riding, and about 6800 feet of climbing.
We crossed the finish line in the same place and about the same time as the previous day.
This time, though, we were talking about what a great day we had. And how wonderful it was to not be hypothermic.
I was in my early thirties and had been working at Novell for about five years when a recruiter called me, telling me about an interesting local tech company that was making waves with an innovative VOIP product. They were aggressively hiring, looking for tech writers, copy writers, editors, and HTML / JavaScript developers.
They liked that I had experience doing all of these things, and I was ready to move on. So I joined the company (called “i-Link,” which I can comfortably name because it hasn’t existed for years and years.)
It wasn’t ’til orientation that I learned that i-Link’s revenue model was based on multi-level sales. A pyramid scheme.
I came home from work, sick to my stomach. I worked for a company that made money in what I considered a morally reprehensible way.
[Aside: For those of you who approve of and maybe even make a living using multi-level marketing (and that's probably going to include a lot of my Utah neighbors, because it's a very common business model around here), I'm not saying that what you're doing is wrong, and it's certainly not illegal. It just doesn't sit easy with me. Let's not make the comment section be about multi-level marketing today, K?]
So I had a serious decision to make. Stay? Or go?
I stayed. Only for as long as it took for me to find a new job — about six weeks — but I stayed.
I had a pretty good set of reasons for staying: I had a house payment to make. I had kids to feed. I knew it’s much easier to find a job when you already have a job than when you don’t.
I have never been so relieved to give two weeks notice, nor so happy when the HR rep told me money was tight and they’d prefer if I was going to leave, to just walk away.
I was free of that place.
But for six weeks I worked there, writing copy for and coding the public-facing website. Creating a tool to help people leverage a business model that made (makes) me ill. Proving to myself that if the price was right, I’d do something I felt was wrong.
Judging
I think about that experience often. For a long time, I thought about it with shame. Now, though, I think about it as an incredibly valuable learning experience.
Essentially, I learned that — like me — pretty much everyone wants to be a good person. Also in my experience, there are times when people — including me — do rotten things. I learned that if I can make serious compromises I’m not proud of and then continue to do them until I find a way out, I should guard heavily against judging others who do the same thing.
Since then, I’ve come to an additional realization: the people who are most harshly judgemental are generally the least likely to have spent time evaluating and rectifying their own poor choices.
I don’t want to be one of those people.
So, when the cascade of doping admissions confirmed that Levi Leipheimer — the pro I’ve had more personal interaction with than any other (including Lance Armstrong, many times over) — had been doping for a big chunk of his career, I did my best to switch from anger to understanding.
To move from thinking “You shouldn’t have done that” to “I’m glad you’re trying to fix the damage you’ve caused.”
Because I can’t see or understand people’s motives for what they’ve done in the past. I can only see what they’re doing right now.
Email Exchange
So I sent Levi this email:
Hi Levi,
Just in case it’s of value for you to know that you’ve still got a friend in a beloved, multi-award-winning, very handsome blogger, I thought I’d let you know: I’m still your bud, and still looking forward to doing something fun and stupid for a good cause with you next year, or maybe sooner.
In fact, let me know the next time you’re in Utah and in the mood for an easy ride. It’s about time you find out how awesome it is to go MTBing on a SS.
Elden
I honestly didn’t have any expectation of a reply, but I got one:
Elden,
I really can not put into words how much it means to me when I receive an email like this, I really appreciate your support- a lot! I’m sorry that we have damaged the sport that you love but I really believe this is the best for the long term. You have supported me personally and my community and I owe you an explanation, if you want to hear it? I’m looking forward to time healing this mess and being able to redeem myself. Thanks again for the email and the support, it really helps right now.
Levi
ps I’d still kick your ass on an SS MTB
I thought this was worth sharing, so asked Levi if he was OK with that. Frankly, he was a little bit uncomfortable with it — he thought it would come off as him promoting himself. I let him know that I’d be clear that he hadn’t expected or wanted this to go public. I just tend to overshare, what with being a blogger and stuff.
So, that said, I appreciated his offer of giving me an explanation, and plan to take him up on it. I’ll get back to you on how that goes.
So that’s the backdrop for The Levi Effect, the documentary that is showing across the country tonight.
I’m one of a few people who’s actually seen the movie twice. The first time was a couple hours after the GranDonut race. By accident, the projectionist had put the filename up on the screen, which was something like “levi_effect_short_version.mp4.”
So if that’s the short version, what’s the long version?
Well, obviously (at least it’s obvious now, although I pretty much connected the dots right when I saw the filename back at the Fondo), the long version’s the version that includes about six minutes of Levi talking about doping.
I asked BikeMonkey to send me a copy of the long version of the movie, and they obliged. So I watched it with some friends last Friday night, then filmed a few minutes of our conversation afterward:
Is the movie worth going to see tonight? Well, my point of view is kind of slanted, because I know and like a lot of the people in the movie. And I’m not talking about the “stars” of the film, I’m talking about the folks from BikeMonkey: Greg Fisher, Carlos Perez, Yuri Hauswald. And Levi’s wife, Odessa Gunn.
So, with that grain of salt, I’ll still say “yes.” It’s worth seeing. For one thing, it shows off Levi’s Gran Fondo, which is in fact one of the most amazingly awesome events put on by anyone, anywhere.
And for another thing, you’ll walk out of the theatre with an interesting conversation on your hands. See, once I turned off the camera (of course) in the video above, the conversation kept going, and actually turned a lot more serious.
It’s a good catalyst to talk about doping. And judging. You might, in fact, find that the greatest value of The Levi Effect is that it makes you think about pro cyclists as people (fallible for sure, but good at heart, like the rest of us) again.
A note from Fatty:Jenni Laurita was the ambassador for Team Fatty at the YSC Tour de Pink. I’ve asked her to tell her story, as well as give us a video. I think you’ll agree she gets an A+.
Next year I want to ride the Tour de Pink as the number one fundraising team. I’m just putting it out there before we get started.
I love it when a plan comes together. One might say this plan started a year ago when Heather rode the TdP. I was excited and inspired by her ride report and by her story.
Like Elden, I believe I have superpowers. To date, my superpowers have proven to be holding things until they dry, standing in the light (any light source for anyone working on anything important, that is), and being able to sing one song while a completely different song is playing. The mark of a good ride I think forces you to discover new superpowers.
By that standard, this ride was a winner. I discovered two new superpowers: fearless switchback descending and that I lack any knowledge of my personal limitations. I obviously can’t tell you what my personal limitations would be since I lack knowledge of them, but what I can tell you is that I entered this commitment of 206 miles in 3 days and 12,000 feet of climbing without having trained or even ridden very much in the preceding months. I arrived with a fresh bruise on my arm from my most recent blood test and lingering pain from recent biopsies, but none of it would matter in the slightest.
I arrived at the hotel nice and early the day before the ride, and immediately had a chance to start getting to know people. Everyone was super friendly and happy to be reuniting. Organization and information was the best I’ve ever seen on any organized ride anywhere, and that’s saying a lot. I’ve ridden many events around the country–the care for the riders was absolutely top-notch, start to finish, morning to night. In fact, the worst thing I could say about the whole weekend was they were out of sandwiches by the time I finished Sunday afternoon.
Before I flew to California, Giant offered to hook me up with a loaner bike: A TCR. I usually travel everywhere with my pink custom Sweetpea, but I was excited to demo a new bike on what I already knew would be a tough course.
Thursday night, Giant, whose headquarters were just 3 miles away, showed up with trucks of loaner bikes. As I approached my bike, I couldn’t help but notice it was just a wee little thing. I was the Gulliver to its Lilliputian. Ironic it was a “Giant” frame, the XS sticker giggled noticeable at me as I stood and frowned. I’m 5’7”. Not going to work. Val, the amazing bike rep for Giant’s woman’s line, Liv Giant , tried to talk me into riding one of “her” bikes. Unfortunately for me, she used the word “comfort,” which evoked baskets and step-through imagery. I was not a willing participant, I pushed for an appropriate TCR.
I was given a less diminutive full-carbon/ultegra TCR and enough adjusting of saddle height to make me feel ready to ride. I happily told the mechanic my crotch was going to friend him on Facebook, I was so grateful for the care he took making sure I was comfortable.
The skies had finally stopped raining and everyone was astounded by an extremely rare (for SoCal apparently) double rainbow. Here’s my new friend, Val.
I made quick work of outfitting my bike with GoPro, Garmin, and an amazingly reassuring and motivating message from my sweetheart.
I totally got caught by surprise singing these words out loud as I rode up some huge hill and a pack of riders passed me. Awwwkard.
I can’t count the number of times I looked down at this, knowing people were pulling for me while I was pushing myself really made so much of an impact- this note stayed taped securely to the top tube of the bike all weekend. I loved watching people walk over to the bike to read it, more than one woman teared up at its awesomeness. I highly recommend before embarking on a tough ride to tape something inspirational to your handlebars or top tube, or surprising a friend and doing it for them.
Day 1
The first day’s ride was relatively flat except for a massive downhill on some of the best switchbacks I’ve ever ridden. Ok, they’re the only switchbacks I’ve ever ridden but that’s where I discovered my superpower of downhill bombing. We were told to go only one at a time on the switchbacks, but I quickly realized I had to pass, and pass I did, with aplomb.
Many years ago I famously missed the century cut-off time on the Austin Livestrong course because I stopped to pet the llamas. It has been a recurring joke in my core group that I am not to pet llamas anymore, and I was determined this time to make good time. I was nervous about being able to finish such an ambitious course each day, sagging out just wasn’t an option, but then I found too many reasons to stop. There were fields of red peppers . . .
There were interesting people with unique ideas of where to store what clearly must be an extra helmet or perhaps a woolen sweater…(how YOU doin’?)
There were diversions aplenty…
Fortunately, I made good enough time to enjoy myself every step of the way throughout all days.
Day 1 finished with a horrific climb up to the night’s hotel; on this organized ride, hotel stays are included each night, along with all food. An absolutely incredible joy, you really only have to worry about riding your bike.
Day 2
Today was going to be a tough day, it was the longest and contained an optional massive climb. I was fortunate enough to have roomed that night with Val, that rep from Giant. We discussed how unhappy I had become on the TCR. It’s a fantastic bike, but completely wrong geometry for me; I was in a lot of pain. The handlebars were too wide and with an exceedingly long stem, I was reaching and suffering the whole day.
She offered me Giant’s AMAZING “Avail”- full carbon, Di2 shifting, women’s geometry- it was the “comfort” bike from day one, and I have to say I was never more comfortable. It’s absolute dream bike I started instantly planning to steal. On more than one occasion I was so impressed with the stiff response to my efforts I thought surely the electronic assist was helping to pedal.
It was on this day that I realized there is an absolute science to understanding route advice from other riders. I overheard one woman telling another that the beginning of this ride was going to be “brutal”, which scared me and likely the woman receiving this information.
After riding the decidedly not-brutal-for-me beginning of the ride, I started to qualify people in their ability to give route advice. I’m from New York, we have hills and mountains all over my base riding area. Another New Yorker needs no qualification, I’d accept their route advice point blank (unless of course they’re not a cyclist, I’ve fallen for that one before). If you’re from Iowa, or say, Kansas, your route advice comforts me, knowing full-well a brutal hill in Iowa can be the highway overpass. If you’re from Colorado and your route advice includes the word brutal, I’m going back to bed.
In any case, I got through the initial ride and set my sights on the who-was-I-kidding-it-was-never-actually-optional mountain.
At the decision point, my bike instinctively turned toward this climb, it was something like 1000 to 1400” climbing in just under 4 miles. Lacking knowledge of my limitations served me well here through the 6-13% sustained inclines. Along the course the organizers arranged for us to be riding with a team of professionals, the team name escaped me partly because I’m forgetful and partly because I sucked wheel so closely I could only ever focus on the space between my bike and whomever was fortunate enough to be pulling for me.
Cry O’Clock
The point is, on this climb there were a few pros peppered throughout the climb to help us along. Gil first came to me, and I told him to go away, I prefer to climb alone, partly because I was going just fast enough to stay upright, and partly because I was entering what I like to call, “Cry o’clock”.
Cry o’clock happens on every cancer-focused ride, and it’s probably the main reason I subject myself to suffering on the bike; cry o’clock gives me the opportunity to release what I’m holding and experiencing about the pain of cancer. As I struggle, I’m able to leave it all on the road. Sometimes I cry for myself, sometimes it’s for someone I know, but I always cry. I did not want someone with me for cry o’clock, it’s a somewhat sacred time. Admittedly, more than one Team Fatty member has helped me (or joined me) in cry o’clock, and I’ve always been grateful for them.
After finishing the — ok I’ll say it — brutal climb, we had time for a few pictures before zooming back down. The view was fantastic, but the people were better. What a great bonding moment to stand with other hypoxians.
SAG met us at the top and refreshed our water, and everyone was off again.
We continued on more or less together until we arrived at the hotel, which — we were not told — was on a cliff. At the end of the day where I climbed thousands and thousands of feet, the last .1 mile was straight up the driveway at easily 12% grade. It was like a fart in your open mouth. Just nasty. I cursed the whole way, and I was not alone or unjustified, but seeing the other women standing and cheering at the top made it almost worth it.
Almost.
Day 3
Day 3 seemed to be sketching a lot of people out- it was the shortest ride, 53 miles, but was supposed to have over 5000 feet of climbing up and through a canyon. At the morning mandatory meeting the organizers shared two short-cuts with us; one would end at about 35 total miles and cut all climbing, one would cut 8 miles and route around the worst of the climbing.
I really wanted to finish the whole course, but at this point my body was hurting, my energy was zapped, and I wanted to take the shorter routes. I had suffered enough, I did well enough. But something in me wouldn’t have it. There is such a beautiful synergy between battling whatever is going on in your life to battling against yourself on a bike. Perseverance takes over where physical ability wanes. Fortitude develops where fatigue festers. So, at each marking on the course, I put my head down into the wind and fought forward.
Fortunately I’ve ridden long enough courses through my life to know I can handle 53 miles of just about anything. Well day 3 was all of the above; it started with having to climb a large section of the previous day’s “optional” climb, it had fierce headwinds AND rounding out the hat-trick of awesome, the temperature eventually read 100 degrees.
I rode mostly alone; climbing just isn’t conducive for me to stick with someone. I employ the JenniMethod™ of riding my friends have come to know as yo-yo riding. Sometimes I’m very fast, sometimes I’m incredibly slow. I have no interest in altering this method to try to stay on someone’s wheel. So day 3 was me and the road.
And one by one I watched seemingly everyone around me sag out. At one point the sag wagon came along side me (not unusual, they gave us encouragement the entire ride, it didn’t necessarily mean they were trying to get me in) and in the most lady-like tone I could muster, I declared I would not be getting in their pretty wagon, though I’m pretty sure instead of pretty I said muttered a vulgarity.
Somewhere after oh you know, the 20th mile of climbing, I got to enjoy the gorgeous sweeping downhill, and met up just at the end of the course with another survivor. We rode in the last few miles together, to (wait for it), ANOTHER uphill finish, where I first collapsed…
And then realized there was only one good use left for the buckets of then-ice water used to soak towels for our heads (by this point, the party was breaking down).
I quickly hatched a plan to steal what has become one of my favorite bikes of all time…
And finished out the night with lots of hugs and friendship, especially from Team Fatty sister, Heather, one of the sweetest people I could have ever been blessed to meet.
Highlights:
Sisterhood from everyone- this is after all the Young Survival Coalition. I was perfectly in place to share my story and hear the stories of every other young survivor, and for once, I did not feel so alone
No mechanical problems at all
Getting to ride Giant’s Avail
Knowing I contributed to an amazing cause I will be supporting for many years in the future
Lowlights:
Not actually coming home with the Avail
Meeting and loving new sisters who are currently battling cancer- as joyful as I became to meet and bond with them, I was concurrently saddened that they are still battling breast cancer, or other kinds of cancer
My stupid GoPro mount snapped for no reason and my GoPro camera went hurtling into traffic- the case was run over, the card flipped out, the brand new wifi attachment scratched
Never actually got to set foot in the ocean
Not having enough space here to write about each amazing woman or every incredible part of the weekend.
PS: My extra pictures of the trip are on my flickr page.
