08 June 2013

Dirty Kanza 200: My Worst & Best Day Ever Riding a Bicycle

Emporia, Kansas
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.
 

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