01 June 2013
Okay, okay, I’ll sign up…
I finally gave in after getting relentlessly trash talked for several
weeks. Besides being a sucker to my
buddies trash talk, I really didn’t have any races planned that weekend or
shortly after, so why not sign up for the Dirty Kanza 200...? It’s just another bike ride and besides, it’s
months away yet. Plenty of time to
train.
1 month away, the weather in Nebraska has been cold, it’s
been raining, and I haven’t been real motivated, so now the race is a few weeks
out and I’m nowhere near the shape I should be in, overall, I’m in good
position for a great second half of the summer, but right now, I just don’t
have the miles in for the DK200. So for
the next 3 weeks, I finally started toughening up, went out on the less than
ideal days, and started getting some saddle time in. At 1 week before the race, I needed to rest,
and all of the sudden it hit me that I’ve never rode that far, even on a road
bike…! Sure I’ve got 3 Leadville
buckles, but those were 11 hour days on the bike. The winner of the DK200 last year finished in
12 hours. A few calculations later, I
decided if I could do the race in 16 hrs that would be awesome… Crap, that’s a long day in the saddle.
Fortunately, my Leadville experience was valuable in that
I’m a preparation master, it took me all
week, but I had a whole food nutrition & hydration plan cooked and ready,
coolers, gear, and clothes, all stocked and labeled for each checkpoint drops.
Race Day. It was an
out of body experience standing at the start line, I knew I was in for one of
the biggest days on the bicycle I’ve ever had, I knew there would be highs and
definitely lows, my mind would go through a roller coaster of emotions over the
course of the day. How would my legs
respond? I had no idea, I knew they were
good for 5 hours no problem, I figured I could suffer for another 5, but what
happens after that? I didn’t know. All these unknowns brought me to the
realization that I was about to face unchartered waters, and this likely meant
I was in for one of the toughest mental challenges I’ve ever faced. I knew I would not quit, or did I
really…? My usual motto is: There’s 2 ways to finish a race, the finish
line or an ambulance! It’s the finish
line today… yes, the finish line…
And so it began,
Seems like every battle scene in the movies is prefaced by that
statement. Actually the start was
nothing dramatic, we just started riding, no one was in a hurry (surprisingly),
and we were off. The first nice surprise
of the day is that the roads were pretty much the same as the roads at home. I figured eventually we would get to this the
highly dramatized “Flint Hills rock”, but so far I wasn’t seeing it. This was good, because I had been imagining a
bed of razor sharp Indian arrow heads sticking out of the ground. Riding through it was going to be a game of
Russian Roulette with 5 chambers loaded.
We started hitting some rather steep hills, but they were
quick and minimally taxing, there were a few water crossings, but overall the
first 50 was going along as expected and planned: A nice easy ride.
Did I just say that?
Mile 35: A Knee Deep River Crossing!
This was the first event that started my downward spiral… The day was cold enough I did not want wet
feet, so I forded it with bare feet, and perhaps this is where the razor sharp
flint rocks were at! I ended up slicing
my right heel open and then on the other side was slimy mud… that was no fun to try and clean off and get
back into my socks… Well the trouble was
worth it as I had dry feet, and the cut on my heel was not somewhere that
bothered me. Thankfully this was the
last water crossing that required getting off the bike.
Still feeling good I only stopped at the first checkpoint
for maybe 5 minutes and I was off again. I was still feeling fine at this
point, and as expected the route turned into the wind and I found myself
looking for a group to ride with. The
wind was from the NW, which meant no matter how you tried to draft the guy in
front of you there was minimal draft advantage. I decided I would draft a fast
moving rider and just get through this part of the course. It turns out it wasn’t worth it, this guy was
cruising and he pulled me for miles, but the saved energy was minimal and I was
approaching 5 hours on the bike and I
was running out of energy, mostly my back and shoulders hurt, my legs weren’t
all that bad, but they were fatigued.
Mentally, I was crushed, I was only on mile 65 and I hurt worse than any
other race I had ever been in. Worst
part I wasn’t even close to halfway yet!
I slowed dredged on, everyone I knew passed me at this point, and
finally I stopped on the side of the trail to rest and put a jacket on. It was borderline cold, I had hand knee, arm,
and toe warmers on, but the wind was cutting through me. The jacket at least helped me mentally for a
while, it did warm me up, but mostly I was just beat down and any small thing
was a comfort. The next stretch of road
to get to the 100 mile checkpoint was straight into the wind. My plan was to just get to the checkpoint,
besides that I forgot the phone numbers to call for help anyway. That turned out to be a good thing as
quitting wasn’t an option.
This timeframe of the DK200 is the darkest part of the
story, I was so deep in the hurt locker, it was somewhere I had never been
before, I was mad at myself for not training more, my ego was crushed, and I
was absolutely convinced I was selling
off all my bikes and never riding again.
This was it, after today, I was
done cycling forever! I was 100% serious
about this. Perhaps it was a game I had
to play with my sub-conscious to keep going, I really don’t know but I really
did have this thought and decided it would be the best thing to do. Not at this exact moment, but tomorrow when I
got home…
Finally, I made it to the checkpoint, I refueled, refilled
water, and sat down, ate some more, and sat down again, I don’t think I was really even contemplating
quitting, but it was nearly 40 minutes before I got back on the bike to keep
moving. My plan was to at least ride 13
more miles, the wind was at my back it would be a nice break and quitting at
113 miles was better than 100… The next
13 miles were rolling hills and there was nothing enjoyable about it. I was back to suffering. Or was I suffering? Yes my back and shoulders were killing me,
but my legs didn’t hurt…? I decided my
lack of will power and energy had to be in my head, I was telling myself I
couldn’t do it. It’s really not a
dramatic event when you change your attitude and decide you can keep
going. Eye of the Tiger does not start
playing in the background, there’s no cheering crowd, no adrenaline rush, actually
there’s nothing, I felt just like I did a minute ago, but things did start
improving!
The next few miles, I did some calculating and realized that
when I made it to the 150 mile checkpoint they were going to pull me, I wasn’t
on pace. I also realized that a lot of
the people around me were talking about quitting. I wanted to encourage them to keep moving,
but I didn’t have the energy to tell them anything, I just did what I knew
needed to be done, I kept moving!
The next 40 miles would be the climax of this story, in addition to changing my mental attitude,
the roads flattened out. It didn’t even
matter that they were now headed straight into the wind, they were flat, flat I
said, this is where my legs work the best!
You would think everyone has this advantage, but it’s just not true, if
you ride in hills all the time, the flats seem endless and never give you a
break. Well, for me they felt like
resting! All the sudden my speed went up
to 15 mph into the wind! And I was cruising easy, I also started passing riders
every ½ mile, rider after rider, one down and on to the next. Another thing I did was walk a hill every 5
to 8 miles, no stopping, it was a double win, rest the legs while knocking a
hill out and keep on going. This
strategy was so fast, unless I had just passed someone at the bottom of the
hill, they never caught up to me again.
This pace also put me back into the green! I was no longer going to get cut at the next
checkpoint, which meant I was going to finish the race!
I continued this same strategy all the way to the finish
line, there was only 1 event worth
telling on the last 50 miles and that was the near flat. I think it was around mile 180, it was pitch
black around 11pm. I of course had my
NiteRider mega light on, so I could see really well, but not perfectly. Washboards were hard to distinguish at any
time, and above 20mph small rocks were even blurry… Well I crested a hill on a Min Maint Road,
and right in my way is a rider fixing a flat.
I quickly changed to the other side of the road, but all the sudden it’s
a mine field of rocks and I’m going way too fast over them, I hear them
bouncing off my down tube and then I hear my tire crash into one so hard the
tire compresses and the rock hits the rim.
That one seemed ok, but then it happens again and I hear a rush of air
coming out of the tire, I was already
trying to get slowed down and I finally got stopped and first thing to do is
get the leak down. I run tubeless tires
and this means I have liquid sealant in the tire and I needed gravity to get it
all to the leak to hopefully stop it. It
seemed like forever, but finally the leak stops! I looked down and at least an ounce of fluid
is on the ground, wow it must have been a big cut!
At this point the jerk that was in the road asks me if I got
a flat too? Besides being a “here’s your
sign” question, he seemed rather happy to have company in this
mis-fortune. I tried to be nice, and
replied yes, but as I did this I was pulling a CO2 cartridge out of my pocket
and I knew in about 10 seconds I would be rolling again. He was sitting down with a wheel off the bike
putting a new tube in… I refilled the
lost air and disappeared into the night.
Usually, I’m a very friendly comrade out on the trail, but part of me
hopes he’s still sitting there wondering where I went and how I did it so fast.
About a mile later, I did have to add some more air, but
that was it, the tire was still holding air the next day. Turns out it was a ¼” cut! Pretty much the maximum any sealant is good
for. Explains why I lost so much before
it sealed.
After a few mile detour, I finally made it to the finish
line. Honestly, I didn’t even care I
just wanted off the bike and to go back to the hotel room. Amazingly, at the finish line was my friends
from Kearney and Hastings. On the
surface, they said congratulations and were truly happy I finished the race,
but they also saw me at mile 65, and really the look on their face was saying
“holy crap I can’t believe you made it!”
Actually, that’s what I was thinking too.
