Tour Divide Race 2015 - Letter of Intent

My last blog post happened to be entitled "The next big biking adventure" & described my hope to compete in the 2014 Tour Divide Race. As is sometimes the case, life happened and for me the race didn't come to fruition.

I find myself some 18 months later in a very different place in so many ways.

With one exception. The Tour Divide Race.

Ever since watching the documentary with a ride buddy (thanks Jamey!) I've been drawn to that crazy undertaking. "The worlds toughest mountain bike race" sounded like my cup-of-tea.

This July I'll turn the big five-zero. What better way to celebrate than to be competing in the aforementioned race?

SO

The training has begun (albeit very tardily).

The bike is (mostly) built.

What's left?

To officially throw down the gauntlet to myself & to put it out there for all to see.

The Tour Divide Race 2015 is now on my calendar!!

The official race entry has been submitted and now sits on the 2015 TD Start List

Come mid-June of this year, I'll hopefully be joining a bunch of similarly crazy riders in Banff to setoff on the adventure of a lifetime.

Let the games begin!


For those of you who are Strava-inclined, you can follow my training exploits here

The next big biking adventure

2009 was a big year for me – at least from the standpoint of my biking. Going from an intermittently-avid recreational rider, to full-on “racer” (a difference my coach made a clear distinction between), racing in 24 Worlds, then continuing to train hard through the end of the year, was a fundamental shift in my abilities & outlook on biking.  Like was good, on the bike at least. Then an injury took me off the bike for a while, and the rest of life caught me up & chewed me out. The resultant adventure took me away from “the real world”, to a new life where the terrain went from dirt trails to the ocean, and the equipment from a mountain bike to a BCD & regulator.

Yup, I was livin’ the dream as a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer Instructor, having gone through Utila Dive Centre’s excellent dive program. Then a dive injury took me out of the water for a while, life caught me up & chewed me out, and I landed back in “the real world” in Austin again.

A lot has happened since then, and unfortunately not much of it has involved biking. But that’s not what this post is really about. After all, this blog is about biking, right? So in true, What Was I Thinking! form, I decided I needed something big on the calendar to work towards. One (not surprising) distinction “coach” Shaun makes between racers & riders is what’s on the the calendar. Guess what, you need to have a race on the calendar to be a racer. HaHa. So hold that thought while I move back in time a few years. I’d just arrived back in the real-world after my Caribbean dive adventure, and was sitting down with a bike buddy to watch a new documentary he’d just received – Ride The Divide – “An award-winning feature film about the world's toughest mountain bike race, which traverses over 2700 miles along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains.”

At the time, I thought “wow”, wouldn’t it be something to be able to do that. 2700 (mostly) off-road miles, 200,000 feet of climbing, totally self-supported. Crazy stuff. Someday, maybe someday, I’d like to compete in that little race.

Well, that someday will be (if the stars are aligned, and plans come together) June 14th 2014.

Yup

I’m officially putting it out there. Something big for the calendar. My goal is to race the Tour Divide in 2014.

Yeehaw! Let the adventure begin…

Mental Conditioning

So coach gave me some written homework this week.

What!!    Written homework?

I thought I was supposed to be out on the bike or in the gym – now I have to sit down and “think about an endurance racing topic that’s important to me”. What kind of training is this? Could it be some devious mental conditioning he’s sneaking into my day off?

Absolutely!  And that’s exactly the point…

When I started training about 10 months ago, I was targeting my first 24 Hour Solo event. My primary objective was training on the bike, thinking that I needed a major dose of physical conditioning to be successful. I sensed that mental conditioning was part of the equation, but I had no idea how important it would become. After three 24 hour solo races and over 100 hours of racing under my chamois, I realize now that I’ve barely scratched the surface. The longer or harder the event, the more I learned about myself at a very deep level.

 

Of course, every event brings a better understanding of the tactics necessary to  maximize physical conditioning. When to ride and when to walk. Maintaining momentum to minimize energy output. Monitoring power output to minimize the likelihood of “blowing up” after 18 hours on the bike. Nutritional intake. Pit stop strategies. Written race strategy. And the list goes on. All important tactics that will make a difference in race performance. That noted, in every major event my performance was ultimately constrained by mental outlook and not physical conditioning. As I continue to train my body, I have to toughen my mind even more. I feel I have so much more to learn about myself mentally than physically. We are all capable of far more than most of us can ever imagine, we just don’t believe it….

Now I have to continue getting mentally prepared for my next race, 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo. Bring it on!

24 Hours of Rocky Hill

This post is waaay overdue. The race was forever ago now and I’ve just been procrastinating big time. I usually give myself some time to reflect on a big race, but this was getting out of hand. So let’s see if I can remember how this went. Get on the bike, ride around  in circles for a day and you’re done right? Ahh, if only it was that easy…

The two weeks prior to the race had been pretty miserable as far as the weather goes. I’m sure if I was one of the countless Austinites that were praying for rain, it would have been just peachy. But as a mountain biker, it sucked. Luckily I’d been out to Rocky Hill a few times to practice ride the course already, so knew what to expect. The days leading up to the race were fine, and I was hopeful that the course had dried up. That wasn’t to be the case, but it could have been a lot worse.

I did have a loose game plan for the race, which in hindsight could have been buttoned down more than it was. My first two 24 hour races were approached more defensively, with tactical goals like minimizing the amount of rest in transition, not sitting down or pacing to ride the whole race. I went into this race with the intention of making the podium. I knew I had an excellent chance of meeting that goal, with the obvious wildcard of not knowing who I’d toe the line with until race day. I also had a goal to go out hard and push the pace to see how I would respond, my rationale being that I could always back down on the pace later in the race. During the race briefing, I leafed through the list of racers in the Expert Solo category. I recognized at least three really strong riders, so I knew I’d have my work cut out for me and had to go out strong if I was to podium.

I had arrived around 9:30am and stood in line to register. It was a record turnout, and there was a nice buzz going already. A couple of good riding buddies had gotten there the night before and snagged a primo site right at the entrance to the transition area. I just needed to wander in and make myself at home. Thanks guys! Even better, their significant others were going to be there for the duration as “pit bosses” :)

 

I felt pretty relaxed, and took my time getting setup. This mainly consistent of filling 26 bottles with custom Infinit liquid endurance blends, the details of which are super secret (but posted on Coach’s blog…). Infinit is the only nutrition I take now, whether I’m training or racing. I know how my body responds and I can go for 24 hours liquid only with no issues. And it’s so much easier to deal with. Just ride in, grab a replacement bottle and ride out.

iPods are allowed for the solo racers (as long as you use just a single ear bud). My plan was not to listen to any tunes until the night hours. I wanted to be on my game and focused out of the gate, and have the option of listening at night to keep me distracted from the inevitable fatigue. I did crank up U2’s Streets have No Name immediately prior to the start to get me fired up. It reminded me of standing together with Coach at the start of the World Championships and was a great way to get set mentally.

Like World’s, the start was Le Mans style. I’m not much of a runner, so this type of start is not my strong point. I was also pretty leery of twisting an ankle as my shoes are super stiff and not really designed to be clomping along over lose gravel. Ironically, I was within 15 feet of the bike when I did feel my left ankle give way. I was just waiting for the pain, but luckily dodged that bullet. I grimaced an inner sigh of relief, jumped on the bike and pulled away.

Check out this video that captures the Le Mans start, together with footage from the rest of the race

In keeping with my plan to go out hard, I stepped on the gas and started to pull by the racers that had left me in the Le Mans dust. I knew I was pushing the pace pretty hard as I could see how high my average power was over the first few laps, and it was a lot higher than in the prior races. In the back of my head, there was the rational voice saying “slow down you’re pushing too hard”. Unfortunately, the emotional side of me was enjoying the feeling of riding fast and kept thinking about how I had told myself (and others) that I was going to podium. Compounding that was an assumption that the other strong racers would be pushing equally hard with a similar pace. So I had a constant tension between backing off a little and riding my race, or keeping on the gas and riding what I thought was their race.

Sidenote: Looking back over my ride data,  I found that I’d broken my personal best CP60, CP120 & CP 180s. Sweet, except that you don’t do that at the start of a 24 hour race!!

In addition to my PowerTap readings telling me I was pushing it, my lower back was also making itself known by jabbing me with a hot poker at regular intervals. I’ve had this before at the beginning of races, and it’s always gone away within a couple of hours. Unfortunately, this was not going to be the case.

Other than the intermittent hot poker in the back, I was actually having a blast on the course. The trail conditions were great, I was feeling strong and passing riders on a regular basis. Somewhere on lap three, I passed one of the solo riders I thought was going to give me trouble, which gave me another boost of confidence. My lap times were shorter than I had originally planned, but I was feeling strong. If only that darn lower back pain would go away. No worries, it always does…

For some reason, I remember lap six as being a particularly fun. I was nicely warmed up, feeling strong and just flying. At one part of the course, I actually yelled out loud I was having so much fun. Yeehaw!!

Just like at World’s, my pit stops were barely stops at all. I’d scream up, skid to a halt, yell out my time and indicate whether I needed bottle of Infinit with or without caffeine. Once the bottles were swapped out, I’d be right on my way. The only time I stopped for any appreciable time was to put on my lights and then again to replace the batteries after another 5 hours during the night. My goal was to minimize time in the pit, for obvious reasons, but also to maintain “mental momentum” and stay in a racing mindset.

I continued to knock out laps at a healthy clip, dropping the pace a little as the laps passed by but not significantly until lap 11 when my back really started to hurt. The intermittent poker had turned into a steady blowtorch which didn’t feel like it’d go away any time soon. Coming into the transition after lap 11, I really wanted to take a longer rest but that wasn’t part of the game plan. I took my usual minimalist stop and headed straight back out again. Maybe I should have had a more flexible game plan and given myself permission to rest? I’ll never know, but lap 12 is when I started to come unglued and spent an inordinate amount of time standing up out of the saddle trying to stretch my back and turn down the blowtorch. A few times I actually stopped entirely and stood over the bike to alleviate the pain. I’d never felt back pain like this before and I just wasn’t sure how to handle it. The physical pain was only part of it, as I started to think about the implications of toughing it out. Do I stick with my mantra (Keep Pushing, Stay Tough) and just push through the pain? Maybe. But could I have caused some more serious damage to my back if I did? Never having been faced with this before, I just didn’t know. So after an inordinately long lap 12, I rolled into the transition and sat down for the first time in the race. And could barely stand up again… Hmm, this doesn’t feel good. I eventually pulled myself up out of the chair and proceeded to hobble around like an old man. Definitely not good. At this point, I knew I wasn't going to jump back on the bike anytime soon, so assumed I had “failed” to meet my podium race objective. Still in pain, I hobbled slowly to the car, reclined the front seat and attempted to stretch out and get a little rest.

By this time, I’d decided that I wasn’t going to go back out again. Could I have taken a couple of hours rest and gotten back on the bike? Most likely. With 8 hours left of the race, I could probably have pushed out 3 more laps and taken 3rd place (although I didn’t know that at the time). But that wasn’t the game plan. If I had done that, would I still have back pains now? Probably not, but I do know one of the solo racers who gutted it out with knee pains and put in a superlative performance. He knew the score, elected to go for it and his results reflect it. Unfortunately, he’s still off the bike and now faced with knee surgery. That’s tough, and I feel for the guy. I was back on the bike after a few days, competed nicely in a local endurance race a couple of weeks later and have decided to got for it big time at a 48 hour solo in a couple of weeks (stay tuned for reports).

So after about 16 hours of solid racing, and a couple hours of sulking, I packed up my kit and headed out to find something to eat and get some rest. Another 24 for the books.

I’ve had lots of folks ask me about the race, and my response now is that I’m happy with the way it went. I’m not satisfied with where I ended in the standings of course, but I am satisfied with what I learned. A few things in particular I took away from the experience.

• Don’t go out too fast
  Well duh…
• Have a written game plan.
  I thought I had a good idea of what my strategy was, but I think it would have been better internalized if I’d written it out.
• Be flexible.
  There’s a lot of stuff that can happen in a 24. I needed to be more flexible and taken an occasional  “mental moment” to step back, reassess and maybe adjust my game plan real-time.
• Give myself permission to rest.
  In a similar vein to being flexible, taking some time to rest could have helped. Not so long as to cool down & get out of race mode, but long enough to get a mental & physical break.
• Ride my race and not ride what I think the other guy’s race looks like.
  Nuff said.

 

And for those of you that are into stats & charts:

• 12 laps
• 121 miles
• 14,258ft  elevation gain
• 1st hour – 82% FTP
• 1st 3 hours – 72% FTP
  

The ever popular heart rate chart. My back wasn’t the only thing getting worn out. My heart was getting pretty tired too :)

Not much of an elevation change at Rocky Hill, but the elevation gain over 120 miles was still north of 14,000 ft. Almost half way up Mount Everest…

Now I need to get my butt in gear and do a write-up of last weekend’s local endurance race – The Enchilada Buffet

Double Boundary Trail race

68.5 miles, 11,500ft of climbing at elevations of up to 11,00oft, the Double Boundary Trail race was going to be physically very demanding. It also proved to be even more demanding mentally…

Like all endurance events, physical conditioning is just one side of the equation. Mental conditioning is also super important; the longer and harder the event, the higher the likelihood that this will become the limiting factor. This was one of those events, although that turned out to be a very good thing.

The prior two night’s camping had been decidedly chilly, so  I wasn’t looking forwards to the 5am alarm. As luck would have it, the temp was around 10 degrees warmer than the day before, approaching 50 degrees. Perfect!

I rolled into the parking lot of The Bean coffee house and joined the small group of riders gearing up for our little sojourn in the mountains. After my obligatory 2nd cup of coffee (and prolific application of  Assos), I was ready to go. We lined up for the photo while Lenny pulled out the the camera. The group was pretty relaxed and they all seemed to know each other well. As the sole Texan, I felt decidedly out of place, although I was made to feel welcome by the friendly crowd.

We rolled out of the lot and headed up the road towards the trail, following side roads for the first couple of miles before hitting the trailhead. I was still feeling the elevation, even on on the flats, so took it easy while I warmed up. I didn’t want to get drawn in by a brisk early pace by the “locals”. It wasn’t long before I was left behind and began the long ride alone.

The first part of the event consisted of a number of individual trails hung together to form what was referred to as the North Boundary Trail (which doesn’t exist as a trail per se). As I pretty soon realized, the trails were cut with hikers in mind and many sections were unrideable. I’d been warned about the hike-a-bike nature of the trail by a fellow MoJo – and now I really understood why. It was starting to feel like a hike, with the occasional stretch of biking thrown in to remind me why I was there :-)

Having a decent GPS was critical for this event and my trusty Garmin 705 was loaded up with the course track. I lost count of the times I found myself off course and had to backtrack, or realized I was actually on course, but the GPS track was off by 50 ft. One section in particular was a long series of downed trees that I had to climb over with no trail in sight. The trail had been flagged in these sections with the occasional small pieces of orange tape, a welcome sight just when I was thinking “there’s no way the trail could be going through this mess!”

The initial rocky ascents/hikes gave way to beautiful vistas once I reached the tree line. I didn’t take much time to get some good shots (despite explicitly being told “take lots of pictures of the race”). Hopefully you'll get the idea from this one…

Having spent the prior days at a similar base elevation in Durango, I was hoping to feel better adjusted, but that just wasn’t to be. Maybe I’d ridden a little too hard in Durango, but ascending even relatively mild inclines seemed unusually difficult. By this time, most of the race was between 9,000 - 10,000ft elevation and it was draining me. At least the weather was still nice, so I toiled up the ascents and had fun blasting down the fire roads that joined a large section of trails.

Somewhere around 5 hours into the event, the mental side of the equation started to tip the balance. Coming in to the event, I hadn’t given much thought to not finishing – it just wasn’t part of the equation. Now it was right on the table in front of me and I struggled to come to terms with it. The few endurance events I’ve competed in have typically used the Solo term to identify the athletes who are competing without teammates. A quick online search gives this definition from the Collins English Dictionary:

“Solo: To undertake a venture alone”

24 hour solo races are decidedly not “alone”. There are certainly times when you are riding alone, but you are never very far from other riders and there’s usually a host of people in the transition area (pits) on each lap. This event was most definitely solo, and was an experience I wasn't mentally conditioned for. Physically I was fatigued and suffering from the elevation, but I’ve been tired and worn out before and was equipped to deal with that. This was different.

On a side note, there were quite a few “gates” across the trails that consisted of barbed wire tensioned with a big stick that you had to leverage into place by brute force. I wasn't feeling like much of a brute at this point, more like a wimp as really struggled with a couple of them!

The event was designed with a single “cache” area where a truck was loaded up with each rider’s extra water, nutrition and any extra clothing they might need. The truck was parked in a lot around the midway point and was ostensibly the last bailout point before heading back into the mountains for the southern part of the event. I’d been warned about the temptation to bail at this point, and had laughed it off back in Austin. Now I wasn’t laughing.

As luck would have it, a charity road ride was taking place the same day, and the parking lot was full of roadies and support staff. I’m sure a few of them wondered where the heck I’d just rode in from! With all the other folks milling around, it felt a little like the transition area in a 24 hour race. And, not surprisingly, I got a little mental recharge from the energy of the folks around me. Feeling much better, I quickly refueled and headed on up the trail.

By this time, another factor outside of my control was quite literally moving in. The weather. At this elevation in the mountains, changeable weather goes with the territory, and the forecast had been 50% chance of thunderstorms in Taos. The temperature had dropped and ominous black clouds were starting to roll in. It was looking like I’d be on the wrong side of the 50% pretty soon. Crap!

The mental recharge I’d received at the cache area only went so far. I was getting colder and the clouds were getting blacker.  They weren’t overhead, but with hours of unknown trails ahead of me the little mental bailout demon was beckoning again. I was moving away from the only bailout point I knew, so had to make the go/no go call that I hadn’t given any thought to prior to the race. No go. Feeling disconsolate, I turned around and backtracked up the trail and out to the road.

Highway 64 descended directly into Taos, and was downhill all the way. At this speed, I outran the black clouds and the temperature increased  Now I was feeling really bad about bailing. Despite the fast downhill, the ride into Taos still took over an hour, and the weather was nice the entire time. Back on the trail, it was a very different scenario.

I rolled back to the car, changed into my ever-so-practical Sport Kilt. Cameron’s my clan, and yes,  I wear it like a true Scot ;-) Suitably attired, I drove over to Eske’s Bewpub, the official finish line. Start with coffee, end with beer! I was the first to roll in, so I ordered a big burrito, chowed down and waited for the others to finish. The “locals” started to come in a few hours later bantering about the their exploits on the trails.

As we sit around chatting, it becomes clear that the storm has picked up over the mountain, and there’s universal agreement on “damn, I’m glad I’m not up there”. If I hadn’t bailed when I did, that would have been me getting pounded. I’m emotionally really bummed, but intellectually damn glad I’d bailed. The storm eventually rolled over the pub and we were treated to a nice downpour with the beer.

I found out the next day that the temperature had dropped to the point where snow had fallen for about an hour on the pass. I had extra clothing with me, but I certainly wasn't prepared for snow. Dang!

My first true solo endurance event ended with a DNF, bummed me out big time for a few days, but proved to be a tremendous education.

Here’s the race profile. The trail ends about two thirds of the way in, then it’s downhill on Highway 64 into Taos.

So now I’ve had time to recover and reflect, the event has taken on a very different perspective. You learn more from losing than winning, and I learned a lot from this event. The biggest realization was the mental conditioning it takes to compete truly alone and the accompanying mindset that’s required. As with any conditioning, depth comes from experience and I’ve barely scratched the surface. I have a very different perspective, and whole different kind of respect for the the folks that compete in the truly epic endurance events like the Tour Divide and Colorado Trail races. I know that  future events I’ll enter with a very different mindset.

Being ill-prepared mentally for this race also served to emphasize to me how well prepared I was for the Solo 24 Hours World Championships. Coach worked my ass off physically, but also “trained” me mentally on how to approach the event. I was super-focused and entered the event with no doubts in my mind. Physically and mentally it all came together and I blew away my expectations. The course was an incredibly tough one and my results could have been very different if I had entered with less mental conditioning and focus.

We are all capable of far more physically than most of us can ever imagine, we just don’t believe it…

Durango day 3 – Andrews Lake

After the last two days of fun, I decided that it was time for a recovery ride. I took the opportunity to get some easy elevation work in by driving up a mountain rather than riding. A buddy in town recommended that I head up to Andrews Lake and take an easy noodle around up there. At approx 10,800ft , it was a similar elevation to the highest point in the upcoming Double Boundary race.

 

Andrews Lake is a picturesque spot, popular for fly fishing, & turned out to be the perfect place for an easy ride. Essentially flat, with a short looping trail around the lot, it was just what the doctor ordered (Coach in this instance).

 

 

Not one to break a trend, I had to do some parking lot work again. As far as parking lots go, this was by far the most scenic one I’ve ridden around :-)

I’m sure the folks up at the lake were wandering what the heck a mountain biker was doing riding around the parking lot at the top of a mountain - in the rain. That’s right, beautiful sunny weather on the drive to the lake. As soon as I’m geared up, in rolls a friendly little black cloud & down comes the rain. Sigh. The Saturday forecast for Taos shows a good chance of rain, so I’m expecting to get wet at some point in the race. This was just another opportunity to simulate race conditions (at least the elevation & precipitation – certainly not the trail conditions, unless there’s a parking lot up there ;)

 

As soon as I started, I could tell my legs were feeling a little flat. Hopefully I didn’t overdo it the prior two days and they’ll feel fresh after a couple of days rest. After an hour of spinning & keeping the power output low, I rolled back to the car, loaded up the bike & headed down the mountain. At least the rain had stopped by this time.

So no major riding today, but I was out on the bike in a beautiful spot. Ain’t life grand!

Durango day 3- Horse Gulch

After yesterday’s little sojourn on the Colorado Trail I was thinking of doing more of the same, with even more climbing. Maybe if I was here for pure fun that’d be OK, but I needed to be reminded that I had a race coming up. My instructions from Coach  were  “something a little more flowy and fun today with not quite as much climbing … let your body recover and also adapt at a cellular level”.

Hmm, what to do. Telegraph Hill had been recommended by a few folks, and it seemed to fit the “not much climbing / flowy trail” profile, so off I went to the Horse Gulch trail system.

I still wanted a reasonable time in the saddle so had enough liquid for up to 5 hours. I met a couple of locals close to the trailhead and they recommended heading up Telegraph Hill then hitting the trails on the far side, before coming back & doing the rest of the system.

Telegraph Hill is a nice easy climb, nothing technical, which fit the bill perfectly. Once at the top, I stopped for a brief photo stop.

Hmm, I wonder why they call it Telegraph Hill?

Now it’s time to explore the “far-side” trails. From Telegraph I headed down Sidewinder to Cowboy. Damn, that’s some fast flowy trail. Way too much fun (not). Out of the saddle, stupidly fast, throwing the bike around the smooth trails. On the flat sections I gunned it in the big-ring to maintain momentum. At this speed, maintaining focus is critical, so I put on my best serious-scowl-of-concentration face. Inwardly I had a shit-grin though :)

The trails are really well marked with little white placards at major intersections. I had to laugh at one point, as a little uphill on Cowboy was marked as “rugged climb”. It was smooth as a baby’s and reminded me of the smooth steepish ascent on Rudy’s trail in Austin. Rugged is all relative. HaHa.

After so much downhill fun, I was expecting more climbing to get back than it actually felt. South Rim->Carbon Junction->Crites Connect was a pleasant climb with plenty of switchbacks and some smooth, short, flowy downhill sections. Now I was back to the top of Telegraph Hill and headed down to the “near-side” trails.

Despite the name, Anasazi Descent isn’t nearly as fun a downhill as Sidewinder /Cowboy. I was on the brakes most of the time, to the extent that I noticed some fade towards the base. At this point, my legs were feeling nicely “warmed-up” and I remembered Coach’s “not quite as much climbing” instructions. I didn’t want to head out just yet, so made my way towards Cuchillo thinking that it looked like a relatively flat trail. Nope. More climbing. Nothing major, but by this time I was definitely feeling it in my legs. No big deal for a regular ride, but I did have a bunch of real climbing to do on Saturday. The good news was that this climbing led to another “serious-scowl-of-concentration / inwardly shit-grin”  flowy downhill back to the Meadow Loop. Yee-frickin-haw!

All good things must come to an end & I finally headed back to the trailhead. I spun around on the road for a little while before calling it a day. The actual ride time was only about 3 hours, and I ended up with 24 miles and about 3,300ft of elevation gain. Fun stuff!