24 hours in the enchanted forest

Posted

in

,

“Finished, 23:01, 12 laps, about 230 miles of singletrack”

Race summary
Amazing race, awesome adventure. My race was quite the roller coaster. I started out well sitting in 2nd or 3rd place through the first 100 miles (6 laps). Eventual winner Josh Tostado was flying and had a 5 minute lead on me by the end of the second lap. But even as early as the third lap, I was starting to struggle with breathing. I’m not sure if it was the altitude or the dust from the 30 mph sustained winds with all the racers on a very dry course. But I dialed my pace way back starting at Lap 4 and that didn’t really help much. By the end of Lap 7, Tostado had lapped me and I had slid back to 5th. The picture below is right before I started my 8th lap and pretty much says how I was feeling by that point.

“About to head out on lap 8. Just got lapped by Tostado, but I think I’m still in top 5. Fading…”

Lap 8 was the culmination of everything – unable to breathe, unable to put any power into the pedals even though my legs felt fine, I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I was passed by so many people – of all ages and genders. When I would see headlights coming up behind me, I’d pull over, stop, lean over the handlebars and wait/rest. Then I’d sit there for 30 seconds or so to let the dust settle (dust at night is similar to fog at night in terms of headlights and visibility) until the next rider came. That lap ended up taking over 2.5 hours – almost twice as long as my fastest lap. Speaking of laps, here is my timing breakdown:

Lap 1 -  1:12 (17.5 miles, started us out on course)
Lap 2 -  1:20 (19.15 miles for all subsequent laps)
Lap 3 -  1:27
Lap 4 -  1:33
Lap 5 -  1:40
Lap 6 -  1:39
Lap 7 -  1:59 (about half lap was at night)
Lap 8 -  2:32 (night lap, exhausted lap)
Lap 9 -  3:59 (Slept for 1.5 hours before starting this lap)
Lap 10 - 2:06 (night lap)
Lap 11 - 1:51 (only the first couple miles with lights)
Lap 12 - 1:40
Total time: 23:01

Towards the middle of Lap 8, I had thoughts of just quitting after that lap since I couldn’t hold onto the handlebars very well and just felt miserable getting passed by everyone. When I’d see someone’s headlights come up behind me, I’d pull over to the side of the trail and just rest for a few seconds until they caught up to me. By the end of the lap, I knew I didn’t want to quit but I also knew I needed to rest for a long time. So I sat in the chair, propped my feet up on the ice chest, and covered up with a big towel (temps were already down into the 40s). I didn’t fall asleep, though, I just laid there watching racers go by — including Tostado who lapped me for a second time. I got so cold after maybe 15 minutes like this that I moved everything out of the way and crawled into the back of the car to escape the 5-10 mph wind that was still blowing.

Joe Coffelt, who was helping me and whose wife got second place in the women’s race – see thank you section below, asked me what time I wanted him to wake me up. I told him I’d like to do 12 laps total, which meant four more laps. We calculated that 2AM would be a nice safe time to wake me up with enough leeway to get ready to ride again and have enough time to finish the last four laps. He ended up letting me sleep an extra 15 minutes – probably because I looked so miserable in the back of the car – but those 15 minutes may have been really important for me to finish the race at all. When I woke up, I had to change back into cycling clothes and then get ready to ride. I was so stiff I couldn’t imagine being able to complete another lap, but by the time I had made it to the top of the campground I was feeling tons better than before I went to sleep. Perhaps those extra 15 minutes were just enough to let my body and mind recover.

Also, there is no point in imagining how I might have done if I hadn’t slept at all. There’s no way of knowing whether my lap times would have continued to get slower and slower until I was forced to sleep either out on the trail somewhere or back in the pit area. That is what I think would have happened – although how epic would that have been to have pulled my bike off the trail, made a nest in the pine straw, and gone to sleep in the middle of the race. Or perhaps my body would have eventually recovered while riding. I’d like to think that I made the best choice I could have made given the circumstances. Those last four laps were the funnest of the whole race! I finally figured out all the sandy turns and was hitting those much faster and just generally enjoyed more of the course. I had expected that my last night lap on Berma (3 mile descent with jumps and fast turns) would have been my fastest because I hit everything perfectly, but it must have just been the illusion of descending at night that made it feel faster as it was only my 4th fastest time of the day.

Also, during that same lap I caught the 2nd place woman a mile or two before she caught the 1st place woman. I was in no hurry so I asked if I could just ride behind her for a while. Shortly before catching the 1st place woman, she surged and dropped me on the climb and attacked the woman who had been in first. I eventually caught the now second place woman and tried to encourage her before passing her with about a mile to go on the climb. It was really cool to see what I thought was the battle for first and second in the women’s race play out in the middle of the night. But as it turns out, one of the women had problems with their eyes on the next lap and had to stop, which moved my friend Laureen Coffelt, whose husband was helping me in the pit, up into 2nd place by the end of the race. I didn’t see Laureen the entire race until about mile 4 of the last lap when we were both on our 12th lap. I encouraged her and then raced on by imagining that 9th and 10th place were catching up on me and would boot me out of the top 10. As it turns out, though, I caught and exchanged positions with 7th place sometime during that last lap — although it’s impossible to know exactly when since there were teams, women, and singlespeed riders still out on course – and I passed a lot of people on that last lap.

I uploaded a higher res version of the results below – there were about 60 solo males that started the national championship race, so I was happy to finish 7th in my first 24 hour mountain bike race.

Men's solo championship final results (click to enlarge)Men’s solo championship final results (click to enlarge)

Thank yous!!!

Huge thanks and shout-out to Joe and Laureen Coffelt (and Scott Kuppersmith for connecting me with them). Joe was supporting his wife, Laureen, who got 2nd in the women’s race. It worked out awesome that we were never in the pit at the same time, and Joe took complete care of everything (greasing the chain, refilling my camelbak, getting me food, drink, and coaching me through my first 24 hour race to a top 10 finish with some really strong guys here!) Also, a big shout-out to Kyle Taylor who inspired me to do this race early in the season when he invited me to do this race as part of a four-man team. But then I had my crazy bike-car accident which left me in the hospital for a week only six weeks before this race. Nobody, including myself, thought I’d be able to do the race which threw everybody’s plans for the race into confusion. My jaws were still wired shut a little more than a week before the race. I had to beg the doctor to cut the wires off, and was still ordered on a strict no-chew diet – but this race officially ended that. If I’m able to survive a rough 24 hour mountain bike race with no impact to my jaw, I think it is safe to eat again! My jaw and accident may have impacted my performance a bit – one very positive way and one very negative way. The positive way is that I essentially had 6 weeks of altitude training with me having to breathe entirely through my nose. I believe this really did help with the altitude (the entire race was above 7000 feet, and maxed out at 8300 feet). But the negative impact was my nutrition. I am a powerbar kinda guy. I like to eat bars, and that is how I have raced for years and years. For this race, I mixed up 10 bottles of a meal replacement drink and put them into my bottles to drink between laps for calories. This worked OK, but I was hungry and I started eating stuff after Lap 8 – chocolate chip cookies, snickers bars, whatever I could find at the aid stations. And I think my exhaustion by Laps 7 and Lap 8 may have been because of a calorie deficit. No excuses, though, because my altitude training may have offset the calorie deficit so that it all worked out even in the end.

I’ll upload more data and comment more about the course and event when I get home, but I just managed to lose this entire post and had to type it in a second time so I’ve left out some of the fun details of the race. Also, I’m in Albuquerque, New Mexico and for RAAM training for next year I’m going to go get back on the bike even though I’m very sore and climb Sandia Peak – should be fun!

Comments

2 responses to “24 hours in the enchanted forest”

  1. bamaearl Avatar
    bamaearl

    I saw your road bike at Brick Alley with the sheared off fork blades and the only thing that is more impressive than that is your recovery and this post! Well Done Professor.

  2. […] for the somewhat rare dragon Deino. My last experience in this part of New Mexico was racing the 24 hour mountain bike nationals in 2014, and I noted that i had no cellphone data while inside Native American reservations. I […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *