Before I get into describing the beautiful nightmare that is The 508 I need to thank some people for making it possible for me to participate. Ross: Thanks for taking a chance on me and letting me participate. I have memories and lessons learned that few will ever have the opportunity to experience. Larry Optis (our crew chief): Your patience with my lack of experience, the knowledge you passed along, endurance in dealing with my uncertainty, the sick amount of fun you injected with Matt and me during those long hours and of course pimping my ride with the amazing exploding chocolate shake all dramatically improved my experience. Things could so easily have gone a different way. Matt Minton: Was so glad to have you there to lighten things up and keep things interesting. Just when I think I’ve heard all of your stories you come up with more, and tell them in a way that splits the side. Even though you know about my anxieties I know a few times when we followed Ross closely I stepped them up to a new level and you somehow persevered. Thanks for your patience too and for being so well prepared to work directly alongside Larry when things got hairy. And finally, most importantly, to Kerri: Thanks for taking the full load of the household (I know, you usually do most of the time anyways) so I could take on this adventure. Jumping in was certainly out of character for me but with your support I was able to focus on the task at hand and do my job well. Although part of me wonders if you were hoping the race could go a bit longer so you wouldn’t have someone hogging the blankets in the middle of the night.;)
My writing and organizational skills are too poor for me to put this together in a nicely flowing, cohesive manner so I’m just going to dump a bunch of observations and descriptions of moments and situations below. Each bit on its own might not seem like much but the totality having occurred in 39.5 hours is what makes them all so special.
I’ll start with, “If I knew then what I know now I could have saved myself and everyone else a lot of grief”. What I mean is, I was totally stressed when we were 15 feet off Ross’ rear wheel while doing 50+mph on some downhills and the anxiety that produced ate a lot of energy, both from me and my teammates dealing with me. Now I know why that needs to happen. I know now that Ross already had a game plan and me trying to tell him that someone is gaining on him wastes his time and mental state; When he’s concerned he’ll *ask* us but can do without the unnecessary head-trip.
One thing we did very well (IMHO) was prepare our gear and dial in our van the night before the race. When we got up at 5am it was all about getting showered and packing the small remaining gear from our rooms for departure. We were not rushed a bit and had plenty of time for coffee and breakfast before heading to the start line.
The first 11 hours of the race were simple. We couldn’t follow our rider directly — We didn’t see him at all for the first 24 miles — We would park on the side of the road and hand things off to him as he rode by then hop in the car and drive a few miles ahead of him. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Ross’ first 200 miles went really fast: 10 hours to the base of Townes Pass. And that Townes Pass was a Beeeatch! We had already traded out his bike because his chain was skipping gears whenever he really stood on the pedal. Larry got that fixed and we readied it for the evening part of the ride with his lights.
I liked the “leap frog” portion because we got to meet a bunch of other teams and share the stories that were already starting to morph into priceless memories. And we entertained ourselves by throwing rocks up and trying to hit them with other rocks, like skeet shooting. Or we’d setup a tin can out in the filed and try to knock it off its perch. And when that wasn’t going on we were busy cappin on each other pretty heavily. The gelling that occurred between the three of us crew members ended up being the key to our NOT going insane. I was the smoker, drinker (not during the race of course), shitty diet, neurotic guy. Matt was the crazy fearless story-telling guy whose problem-solving skills are unmatched. And Larry was the experienced, organized healthy guy. In fact, that SOB would not let Matt and I eat any junk food. He really took care of us and whatever diet he devised is another reason we had the energy to power through 39.5 hours of focused driving. Basically, he saved Ross from getting run over by one of us due to fatigue.
Matt already knows me very well but Larry got his first taste of my neurosis on the downhill side of Townes Pass, into Death Valley. This is where we clocked Ross at 54MPH. Matt was about 15 feet off Ross rear wheel and I was freaking out on him, telling him to back off a bit so he didn’t run Ross over if he suddenly hit the brakes or took a spill. If ever I needed a beer (or 10!) it was then. I didn’t understand yet why Matt would drive so close. I didn’t know that he was protecting Ross from other drivers who might try to pass us and accidentally hit our rider. Not to mention that Matt was lighting Ross’ way. Unfortunately my bitching and moaning about the closeness went on for far too long; Up until I started driving and saw Ross nearly get hit because I was too far *off* his rear wheel. Yipes! From that point forward I was right on Ross’ wheel.
I mentioned earlier how well we all gelled. It really helped to have a meal together Thursday night at Pat’s house. Rana made the mad spaghetti with salad and garlic bread while Pat, Ross, Larry and I had cool conversation. Then we all hooked up Friday night for dinner and a few beers — Pat also joined us which further weakened the ice. What finally shattered the ice for good was an episode just a few hours into the race. To this day I have to wonder if Larry and Ross had it planned all along. I wrote about it briefly during the race here
http://ultrarider.ca/post/203522972/chocolate-on-the-inside but essentially Larry was preparing Ross’ first chocolate smoothie and after putting the powder and water into a shaker he began to, well, shake it. And guess what… The bloody top blew off and before he could stop it he had two wild shakes which basically spewed chocolate goop all of the inside of my van (which is only 3 months old!). A crapload landed on my head and back, not to mention every other part of the car. The only unscathed portion of the car was the driver seat and the [lucky-ass] driver, Matt. I wish you knew how lucky that guy is all the time when it comes to these fiascos. He’s rolled two golf carts (that I know of) and is the only one to not get hurt. WTF? And oh how I wish I could describe in simple text how the van really looked when the two shakes of the smoothie maker and the looks on everybody’s face. We all looked like statues for a few seconds with a look of complete disbelief. Like: No fuckin way that just happened. Yes, it happened and it wouldn’t be the last of the defiling of my new van. Thankfully Kerri just laughed about it and said something like, “well, maybe we’ll be the first people ever to collect on that stupid Xzilon Interior Protection that we got talked into buying with the car”. I’ll letcha know how that works out.
On to Death Valley. We descended into Death Valley just after dark. All was calm through Stovepipe Wells but shortly beyond that town the wind started to make its presence known. It was a bit of a crosswind, coming from our right but it was bearable (I was in the van after all!). A few more miles in we veered right and that’s when the hell began. The wind decided to act more like the bully in school who just won’t stop picking on you. And the punishment seemed to escalate rapidly. Soon we were into sustained 40-50 MPH winds with gusts I’d guess went to 70MPH. A stretch we figured we’d be through in two hours ended up being 9 grueling hours of pure misery. On the bright side, the heat was never a factor… I bet it hadn’t been that mild in 100 years. The race organizers indicated they were the worst wind conditions by far in the 20 year history of the race. Wow! Not surprised. This is another point I wish I could describe properly in text. There were times when Ross would stand on his pedal and push with all his body weight, only to see the rear wheel slip a bit and gaining him not a single inch. He was doing less than one mile per hour at times. Even on the precious few slight downhills he had to work to keep moving. If ever there was a time that I could have imagined Ross throwing in the towel it was this stretch of road. In fact as we headed up Salsbury grade we saw countless racers drive by in their vans, giving up altogether. A shocking 46% of solo riders Did Not Finish (DNF) and several relay teams also capitulated.
When Ross summited Salsbury and headed down the grade towards the Shoshone time station we had quite a nice bit of time for joking. And it was at this time that we were flirting with delirium. I forget what time it was but it was definitely morning… probably around 9 o’clock. A tiny fox jetted across the road and we remarked at how little wildlife we had seen. Matt indicated that it was likely a rare breed, possibly never discovered before. He thought we ought to catch it and kill it. So we’d have a new species both discovered and gone extinct in the same day. We’d be famous! We decided to name it the Dodo Fox. Doesn’t sound funny now but it was side-splitting for the sleep-deprived crew.
And speaking of names, boredom can cause you to do odd things to entertain yourself and in our case we decided to give names to the riders we happened across. See, riders weren’t given numbers, they chose a “totem” which was essentially a name of an animal. Ross was “Gray Wolf”. We didn’t know any of their names, just their totem. I won’t describe the real totems here because it could sound mean, even though we were just having fun. We renamed one guy to “crooked head” because of the way he held his head on the bike. And many others but again, too descriptive for this post as it may offend and I don’t want to offend the folks for whom I totally respect for finishing the race. And every person we met was just awesome, nice, supportive. Thanks for letting us amuse ourselves at your expense folks! It was all in good fun.
More on defiling the van… I drove from 12:30am until 6:30am before I had to get just a bit of rest. I switched with Matt (who had already driven from 7am through 12:30am) and hopped in the passenger seat for a 15 min nap. One thing to point out is, we have to follow our rider from 6pm until 7am. If we stop, he has to stop so we do whatever we can to not stop (I don’t think we ever caused Ross to stop). Apparently Larry *really* had to pee and just couldn’t wait any longer so rather than stop our rider he creatively rolled down his window and, ummm, hung *it* out there to empty ye olde bladder. Of course I was sleeping at the time so didn’t know anything about it until hours later. He swears up and down that the stains on the side of the van are from his rinsing out the water bottles and that he cleared the van completely. Sure Larry. I’m surprised you didn’t complain about road rash you wishful thinker. So yeah, pee remnants all over the driver’s side of the van. They told me right after we had been tracking Ross and he puked while doing 30MPH or so. He just turned his head while he was cruising and let it fly. Of course, it hit the front of the van. I had remarked that it was the second time my van had gotten unintended dressing and Matt and Larry started laughing, telling me it might be the third time. Sons ‘a bitches.
At the Shoshone time station we stopped to check in and help Ross with his blistering hands and terribly aching back. His back would only get worse as time moved on. We also dismantled his lighting equipment. Ross was also having a real hard time with keeping down the smoothies which were basically a powdered mix called Ultrameal from MetaGenics. Larry was concerned that Ross was not getting nearly enough calories to compensate for his burn rate so we pulled alongside Ross prior to Shoshone and talked about the situation. I totally thought Ross was joking but he indicated that he wanted to switch to Wonder Bread(TM) and see how that would go through his system. So in Shoshone we headed into the market and bought some “white bread” Really! A loaf of bloody white bread! That’s what he ate for the remainder of the race. It was pretty funny to see too because we’d pull alongside him and hand him a couple of slices. He’d crumple them up in his hand and jam the mess into his pie hole and keep going. I’m not sure if Ross wants me publicizing his caloric “secret weapon” but since no one ever reads this blog and fewer will get this far into my boring account of things, it’s probably pretty safe.
Just outside of Shoshone we could tell that Ross was exhausted. A couple of times he pulled us over and indicated that he wanted to take a brief nap. The following demonstrates where Larry’s experience and judgment played a key role in Ross’ success. Larry told him something like, “Look Ross, I need you to ride hard for 15 minutes, get your heart rate up around 150bpm and if you still want a nap after that, we’ll do it”. The way Larry described it to me later indicated that with our stop at Shoshone, Ross’ heart rate dropped and his body was thinnking it was wind-down mode; Time to go to sleep. So Ross had to “trick” his body into thinking that it still had work to do. And, holy shit, it worked. Ross powered through and eventually pulled over for his only non-whitebread meal: Some oatmeal soaked in water and put on the dash to try and get some heat from the sun to soften things a bit. But he kept going like a maniac. Larry had read Ross perfectly. In the end we always went with Ross’ wishes but Larry cajoled and prompted where it seemed necessary and Ross listened to his crew chief. It was poetry and I learned a lot in that time slice.
I hate to skip over most of the Shoshone to Baker but it wasn’t as remarkable as the other places. We did crest a long uphill and saw what was either a serious marine layer or a nasty sand storm and headed right toward it. Ended up being a sand storm that spanned the visible horizon. The wind then might have been 30MPH from right to left and it was only a couple of miles thick during a slight downhill so we didn’t suffer too much. Beyond the storm we finally started seeing other riders again. We had gone SOoooo long without seeing another rider so it was a nice change of pace. And in a Sea Bisquet manner, knowing there were riders that could be overtaken, Ross went to work and gained ground on several riders, eventually passing several before reaching Baker. The road was much busier than we were used to but it was less treacherous for the riders than previous stretches so my anxiety was kept at bay. It’s pretty amazing to see a rider 3 miles ahead of you and go to town on the pedals, knowing that you’re only gaining a foot or meter every few seconds but having the resolve to continue on, hoping that you’ll eventually catch them. This is one of the most amazing types of memories I have from the second half of the trip; The sheer resolve knowing that you’re only gaining an inch at a time but over time you can overtake someone else. That’s long term planning and of course, pure focus.
As we headed into Baker the team decided to fuel up one more time and have Ross ride straight through, with us catching up to him in a few miles. We ended up going to three gas stations before we found a place with a spot for us to pull in. By the time we gassed up 15 minutes (easily) had passed. So we headed off in Ross’ direction and started getting nervous because we didn’t see him for a long time. Well, we found him way up the road and he had passed like 4 riders. He was in a groove that we didn’t want to interrupt but we knew he’d be out of fluids (or close to it). When we reached him, Ross was just empty… wouldn’t have been pretty 10 minutes later.
The stretch between Baker and the final time station was easily (hands down!) the worst set of roads I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to describe the road surface but my father-in-law calls it “chip coat” which basically means that there’s some asphalt with huge (and sometimes sharp) stones sticking out of the surface. Some were 3/4 of an inch up. The downhill side of that was a long descent and Ross was hitting 35MPH and I was nervous as could be. IIRC it was 11 miles of descent in those conditions. Yuck! Thankfully the turns were largely broad and sweeping so we didn’t have the worry of someone coming around a corner and taking us or our rider out. That changed in the final leg. We had one more climb and then a 22 mile descent (it was awesome!) before our final time station.
Even though I had learned a lot over the first 30+ hours I was not prepared for the last leg of the race, traffic-wise. We headed down old Route 66 for a few miles and turned left on Amboy Road, the way to 29 Palms. Ross could smell blood in the water… he saw a few flashing lights several miles ahead of us and he knew he could gain some ground on them. And for a change we had several miles of a tailwind on this flat path. He went for a long time (maybe 20 minutes) doing 25MPH and as we started the incline, although his speed slowed, his cadence never changed. We closed on his first “victim” rather quickly… probably 20 minutes or so of hard pedaling. He passed another rider in the process too (and we were passed by a relay team person ourselves) but as we neared the summit of our last big climb Ross jumped on the pedals and turned on a gear I didn’t think he had left in himself. It was the steepest part of the climb and pure brutality but he made it look like he had fresh legs and energy to spare. Then, off to the downhill for a few miles.
With 20-ish miles to go it seemed like we were unpassable; Ross had created a ton of distance between himself and the two nearest riders. In retrospect I think we gave him a bit of bad info and he acted on that data with his final burst. We told him that from the summit it was 20 miles of downhill. But it wasn’t… it was a “false flat” which basically meant, there was a tiny incline for most of the way. We had misread the elevation and by the time we figured it out Ross had already spent himself so there was no sense in telling him about the error immediately (we did tell him eventually). But those last miles were the most brutal of all when it came to his back. It had been bugging him ever since the first 200 miles but at this point he had to pull off every 2 miles or so and have Larry work it a bit and diminish the pain. Each time we pulled off 2 or more minutes were burned and after 3 trips to the side of the road we were overtaken by one of the guys Ross had worked so hard to pass on the previous incline. And then a couple more stops later we were passed by another that Ross had previously passed. He took it all in stride… no panic and no recognizable disappointment. He had to get worked on and that was the focus, regardless of other surrounding forces. Those two were the last to pass Ross.
We finished in just about 39.5 hours.
As we got into town things got a bit surreal. As crew members, we were exhausted. As the rider, Ross was “spent”. The street was busy and we had no real notion of where the finishing spot was. Well, Matt knew since he had parked his car there Friday afternoon. But it was late, dark and we were tired. The heartless bastards who designed this race had us climb two more brutal hills before getting to the finish line. They weren’t long like the others but man, they were *steep*. After we “summited” the first one and got to the base of the second, Ross pulled us off and had Larry do one more back massage. Ross asked where the finish was and we pointed to the top of the next hill. He told me something like, “Dude, I’m finished, I can’t get up that hill”. He was mostly joking in his exhausted state but I could see the look on his face and potential (I’m speculating here) disdain he had for the race organizers in ending such a grueling race with a small but brutal hill.
We finished in just about 39.5 hours. The folks greeting us at 10:30 pm were fantastic and made you forget about the pain of the previous day for a little while. They had a live-ish feed that my wife, Ross’ wife, Joe and others all got to see over the web.
In a sense the finish was anti-climactic for me. I was crazy-tired but had been having a blast with my team and wasn’t ready for it to end. I know Ross was ready. 🙂 I wanted to take a nap and go on another adventure in the morning to see what would pop up in front of us as a challenge or a chuckle but that was not to be.
I left the experience with a deep appreciation of my wife and family; She took on extra work so I could test myself and experience something that few will have the opportunity to experience. I was thankful that Ross gave me the chance. Thankful that Matt jumped in when he was needed and for Larry adding the spice that flavored the entire journey.
Now I’m home and rested and I wonder, “WTF were you thinking, Tom?!?”. Would I do it again? I suppose so (and I think I’d be really good the next time). But it’s so cool and unique that I’d rather wish the trip on someone who has never had the chance. We had the perfect storm of crew love and rider madness and I’d make sure going forward that the recipe was proper before I jumped behind the wheel again.
-tom
Before I get into describing the beautiful nightmare that is The 508 I need to thank some people for making it possible for me to participate. Ross: Thanks for taking a chance on me and letting me participate. I have memories and lessons learned that few will ever have the opportunity to experience. Larry Optis (our crew chief): Your patience with my lack of experience, the knowledge you passed along, endurance in dealing with my uncertainty, the sick amount of fun you injected with Matt and me during those long hours and of course pimping my ride with the amazing exploding chocolate shake all dramatically improved my experience. Things could so easily have gone a different way. Matt Minton: Was so glad to have you there to lighten things up and keep things interesting. Just when I think I’ve heard all of your stories you come up with more, and tell them in a way that splits the side. Even though you know about my anxieties I know a few times when we followed Ross closely I stepped them up to a new level and you somehow persevered. Thanks for your patience too and for being so well prepared to work directly alongside Larry when things got hairy. And finally, most importantly, to Kerri: Thanks for taking the full load of the household (I know, you usually do most of the time anyways) so I could take on this adventure. Jumping in was certainly out of character for me but with your support I was able to focus on the task at hand and do my job well. Although part of me wonders if you were hoping the race could go a bit longer so you wouldn’t have someone hogging the blankets in the middle of the night.;)
My writing and organizational skills are too poor for me to put this together in a nicely flowing, cohesive manner so I’m just going to dump a bunch of observations and descriptions of moments and situations below. Each bit on its own might not seem like much but the totality having occurred in 39.5 hours is what makes them all so special.
I’ll start with, “If I knew then what I know now I could have saved myself and everyone else a lot of grief”. What I mean is, I was totally stressed when we were 15 feet off Ross’ rear wheel while doing 50+mph on some downhills and the anxiety that produced ate a lot of energy, both from me and my teammates dealing with me. Now I know why that needs to happen. I know now that Ross already had a game plan and me trying to tell him that someone is gaining on him wastes his time and mental state; When he’s concerned he’ll *ask* us but can do without the unnecessary head-trip.
One thing we did very well (IMHO) was prepare our gear and dial in our van the night before the race. When we got up at 5am it was all about getting showered and packing the small remaining gear from our rooms for departure. We were not rushed a bit and had plenty of time for coffee and breakfast before heading to the start line.
The first 11 hours of the race were simple. We couldn’t follow our rider directly — We didn’t see him at all for the first 24 miles — We would park on the side of the road and hand things off to him as he rode by then hop in the car and drive a few miles ahead of him. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Ross’ first 200 miles went really fast: 10 hours to the base of Townes Pass. And that Townes Pass was a Beeeatch! We had already traded out his bike because his chain was skipping gears whenever he really stood on the pedal. Larry got that fixed and we readied it for the evening part of the ride with his lights.
I liked the “leap frog” portion because we got to meet a bunch of other teams and share the stories that were already starting to morph into priceless memories. And we entertained ourselves by throwing rocks up and trying to hit them with other rocks, like skeet shooting. Or we’d setup a tin can out in the filed and try to knock it off its perch. And when that wasn’t going on we were busy cappin on each other pretty heavily. The gelling that occurred between the three of us crew members ended up being the key to our NOT going insane. I was the smoker, drinker (not during the race of course), shitty diet, neurotic guy. Matt was the crazy fearless story-telling guy whose problem-solving skills are unmatched. And Larry was the experienced, organized healthy guy. In fact, that SOB would not let Matt and I eat any junk food. He really took care of us and whatever diet he devised is another reason we had the energy to power through 39.5 hours of focused driving. Basically, he saved Ross from getting run over by one of us due to fatigue.
Matt already knows me very well but Larry got his first taste of my neurosis on the downhill side of Townes Pass, into Death Valley. This is where we clocked Ross at 54MPH. Matt was about 15 feet off Ross rear wheel and I was freaking out on him, telling him to back off a bit so he didn’t run Ross over if he suddenly hit the brakes or took a spill. If ever I needed a beer (or 10!) it was then. I didn’t understand yet why Matt would drive so close. I didn’t know that he was protecting Ross from other drivers who might try to pass us and accidentally hit our rider. Not to mention that Matt was lighting Ross’ way. Unfortunately my bitching and moaning about the closeness went on for far too long; Up until I started driving and saw Ross nearly get hit because I was too far *off* his rear wheel. Yipes! From that point forward I was right on Ross’ wheel.
I mentioned earlier how well we all gelled. It really helped to have a meal together Thursday night at Pat’s house. Rana made the mad spaghetti with salad and garlic bread while Pat, Ross, Larry and I had cool conversation. Then we all hooked up Friday night for dinner and a few beers — Pat also joined us which further weakened the ice. What finally shattered the ice for good was an episode just a few hours into the race. To this day I have to wonder if Larry and Ross had it planned all along. I wrote about it briefly during the race here http://ultrarider.ca/post/203522972/chocolate-on-the-inside but essentially Larry was preparing Ross’ first chocolate smoothie and after putting the powder and water into a shaker he began to, well, shake it. And guess what… The bloody top blew off and before he could stop it he had two wild shakes which basically spewed chocolate goop all of the inside of my van (which is only 3 months old!). A crapload landed on my head and back, not to mention every other part of the car. The only unscathed portion of the car was the driver seat and the [lucky-ass] driver, Matt. I wish you knew how lucky that guy is all the time when it comes to these fiascos. He’s rolled two golf carts (that I know of) and is the only one to not get hurt. WTF? And oh how I wish I could describe in simple text how the van really looked when the two shakes of the smoothie maker and the looks on everybody’s face. We all looked like statues for a few seconds with a look of complete disbelief. Like: No fuckin way that just happened. Yes, it happened and it wouldn’t be the last of the defiling of my new van. Thankfully Kerri just laughed about it and said something like, “well, maybe we’ll be the first people ever to collect on that stupid Xzilon Interior Protection that we got talked into buying with the car”. I’ll letcha know how that works out.
On to Death Valley. We descended into Death Valley just after dark. All was calm through Stovepipe Wells but shortly beyond that town the wind started to make its presence known. It was a bit of a crosswind, coming from our right but it was bearable (I was in the van after all!). A few more miles in we veered right and that’s when the hell began. The wind decided to act more like the bully in school who just won’t stop picking on you. And the punishment seemed to escalate rapidly. Soon we were into sustained 40-50 MPH winds with gusts I’d guess went to 70MPH. A stretch we figured we’d be through in two hours ended up being 9 grueling hours of pure misery. On the bright side, the heat was never a factor… I bet it hadn’t been that mild in 100 years. The race organizers indicated they were the worst wind conditions by far in the 20 year history of the race. Wow! Not surprised. This is another point I wish I could describe properly in text. There were times when Ross would stand on his pedal and push with all his body weight, only to see the rear wheel slip a bit and gaining him not a single inch. He was doing less than one mile per hour at times. Even on the precious few slight downhills he had to work to keep moving. If ever there was a time that I could have imagined Ross throwing in the towel it was this stretch of road. In fact as we headed up Salsbury grade we saw countless racers drive by in their vans, giving up altogether. A shocking 46% of solo riders Did Not Finish (DNF) and several relay teams also capitulated.
When Ross summited Salsbury and headed down the grade towards the Shoshone time station we had quite a nice bit of time for joking. And it was at this time that we were flirting with delirium. I forget what time it was but it was definitely morning… probably around 9 o’clock. A tiny fox jetted across the road and we remarked at how little wildlife we had seen. Matt indicated that it was likely a rare breed, possibly never discovered before. He thought we ought to catch it and kill it. So we’d have a new species both discovered and gone extinct in the same day. We’d be famous! We decided to name it the Dodo Fox. Doesn’t sound funny now but it was side-splitting for the sleep-deprived crew.
And speaking of names, boredom can cause you to do odd things to entertain yourself and in our case we decided to give names to the riders we happened across. See, riders weren’t given numbers, they chose a “totem” which was essentially a name of an animal. Ross was “Gray Wolf”. We didn’t know any of their names, just their totem. I won’t describe the real totems here because it could sound mean, even though we were just having fun. We renamed one guy to “crooked head” because of the way he held his head on the bike. And many others but again, too descriptive for this post as it may offend and I don’t want to offend the folks for whom I totally respect for finishing the race. And every person we met was just awesome, nice, supportive. Thanks for letting us amuse ourselves at your expense folks! It was all in good fun.
More on defiling the van… I drove from 12:30am until 6:30am before I had to get just a bit of rest. I switched with Matt (who had already driven from 7am through 12:30am) and hopped in the passenger seat for a 15 min nap. One thing to point out is, we have to follow our rider from 6pm until 7am. If we stop, he has to stop so we do whatever we can to not stop (I don’t think we ever caused Ross to stop). Apparently one of the guys *really* had to pee and just couldn’t wait any longer so rather than stop our rider he creatively rolled down his window and, ummm, hung *it* out there to empty ye olde bladder. Of course I was sleeping at the time so didn’t know anything about it until hours later. He swears up and down that the stains on the side of the van are from his rinsing out the water bottles and that he cleared the van completely. Sure crew mate. I’m surprised you didn’t complain about road rash you wishful thinker. So yeah, pee remnants all over the driver’s side of the van. They told me right after we had been tracking Ross and he puked while doing 30MPH or so. He just turned his head while he was cruising and let it fly. Of course, it hit the front of the van. I had remarked that it was the second time my van had gotten unintended dressing and Matt and Larry started laughing, telling me it might be the third time. Sons ‘a bitches.
At the Shoshone time station we stopped to check in and help Ross with his blistering hands and terribly aching back. His back would only get worse as time moved on. We also dismantled his lighting equipment. Ross was also having a real hard time with keeping down the smoothies which were basically a powdered mix called Ultrameal from MetaGenics. Larry was concerned that Ross was not getting nearly enough calories to compensate for his burn rate so we pulled alongside Ross prior to Shoshone and talked about the situation. I totally thought Ross was joking but he indicated that he wanted to switch to Wonder Bread(TM) and see how that would go through his system. So in Shoshone we headed into the market and bought some “white bread” Really! A loaf of bloody white bread! That’s what he ate for the remainder of the race. It was pretty funny to see too because we’d pull alongside him and hand him a couple of slices. He’d crumple them up in his hand and jam the mess into his pie hole and keep going. I’m not sure if Ross wants me publicizing his caloric “secret weapon” but since no one ever reads this blog and fewer will get this far into my boring account of things, it’s probably pretty safe.
Just outside of Shoshone we could tell that Ross was exhausted. A couple of times he pulled us over and indicated that he wanted to take a brief nap. The following demonstrates where Larry’s experience and judgment played a key role in Ross’ success. Larry told him something like, “Look Ross, I need you to ride hard for 15 minutes, get your heart rate up around 150bpm and if you still want a nap after that, we’ll do it”. The way Larry described it to me later indicated that with our stop at Shoshone, Ross’ heart rate dropped and his body was thinnking it was wind-down mode; Time to go to sleep. So Ross had to “trick” his body into thinking that it still had work to do. And, holy shit, it worked. Ross powered through and eventually pulled over for his only non-whitebread meal: Some oatmeal soaked in water and put on the dash to try and get some heat from the sun to soften things a bit. But he kept going like a maniac. Larry had read Ross perfectly. In the end we always went with Ross’ wishes but Larry cajoled and prompted where it seemed necessary and Ross listened to his crew chief. It was poetry and I learned a lot in that time slice.
I hate to skip over most of the Shoshone to Baker but it wasn’t as remarkable as the other places. We did crest a long uphill and saw what was either a serious marine layer or a nasty sand storm and headed right toward it. Ended up being a sand storm that spanned the visible horizon. The wind then might have been 30MPH from right to left and it was only a couple of miles thick during a slight downhill so we didn’t suffer too much. Beyond the storm we finally started seeing other riders again. We had gone SOoooo long without seeing another rider so it was a nice change of pace. And in a Sea Bisquet manner, knowing there were riders that could be overtaken, Ross went to work and gained ground on several riders, eventually passing several before reaching Baker. The road was much busier than we were used to but it was less treacherous for the riders than previous stretches so my anxiety was kept at bay. It’s pretty amazing to see a rider 3 miles ahead of you and go to town on the pedals, knowing that you’re only gaining a foot or meter every few seconds but having the resolve to continue on, hoping that you’ll eventually catch them. This is one of the most amazing types of memories I have from the second half of the trip; The sheer resolve knowing that you’re only gaining an inch at a time but over time you can overtake someone else. That’s long term planning and of course, pure focus.
As we headed into Baker the team decided to fuel up one more time and have Ross ride straight through, with us catching up to him in a few miles. We ended up going to three gas stations before we found a place with a spot for us to pull in. By the time we gassed up 15 minutes (easily) had passed. So we headed off in Ross’ direction and started getting nervous because we didn’t see him for a long time. Well, we found him way up the road and he had passed like 4 riders. He was in a groove that we didn’t want to interrupt but we knew he’d be out of fluids (or close to it). When we reached him, Ross was just empty… wouldn’t have been pretty 10 minutes later.
The stretch between Baker and the final time station was easily (hands down!) the worst set of roads I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to describe the road surface but my father-in-law calls it “chip coat” which basically means that there’s some asphalt with huge (and sometimes sharp) stones sticking out of the surface. Some were 3/4 of an inch up. The downhill side of that was a long descent and Ross was hitting 35MPH and I was nervous as could be. IIRC it was 11 miles of descent in those conditions. Yuck! Thankfully the turns were largely broad and sweeping so we didn’t have the worry of someone coming around a corner and taking us or our rider out. That changed in the final leg. We had one more climb and then a 22 mile descent (it was awesome!) before our final time station.
Even though I had learned a lot over the first 30+ hours I was not prepared for the last leg of the race, traffic-wise. We headed down old Route 66 for a few miles and turned left on Amboy Road, the way to 29 Palms. Ross could smell blood in the water… he saw a few flashing lights several miles ahead of us and he knew he could gain some ground on them. And for a change we had several miles of a tailwind on this flat path. He went for a long time (maybe 20 minutes) doing 25MPH and as we started the incline, although his speed slowed, his cadence never changed. We closed on his first “victim” rather quickly… probably 20 minutes or so of hard pedaling. He passed another rider in the process too (and we were passed by a relay team person ourselves) but as we neared the summit of our last big climb Ross jumped on the pedals and turned on a gear I didn’t think he had left in himself. It was the steepest part of the climb and pure brutality but he made it look like he had fresh legs and energy to spare. Then, off to the downhill for a few miles.
With 20-ish miles to go it seemed like we were unpassable; Ross had created a ton of distance between himself and the two nearest riders. In retrospect I think we gave him a bit of bad info and he acted on that data with his final burst. We told him that from the summit it was 20 miles of downhill. But it wasn’t… it was a “false flat” which basically meant, there was a tiny incline for most of the way. We had misread the elevation and by the time we figured it out Ross had already spent himself so there was no sense in telling him about the error immediately (we did tell him eventually). But those last miles were the most brutal of all when it came to his back. It had been bugging him ever since the first 200 miles but at this point he had to pull off every 2 miles or so and have Larry work it a bit and diminish the pain. Each time we pulled off 2 or more minutes were burned and after 3 trips to the side of the road we were overtaken by one of the guys Ross had worked so hard to pass on the previous incline. And then a couple more stops later we were passed by another that Ross had previously passed. He took it all in stride… no panic and no recognizable disappointment. He had to get worked on and that was the focus, regardless of other surrounding forces. Those two were the last to pass Ross.
We finished in just about 39.5 hours.
As we got into town things got a bit surreal. As crew members, we were exhausted. As the rider, Ross was “spent”. The street was busy and we had no real notion of where the finishing spot was. Well, Matt knew since he had parked his car there Friday afternoon. But it was late, dark and we were tired. The heartless bastards who designed this race had us climb two more brutal hills before getting to the finish line. They weren’t long like the others but man, they were *steep*. After we “summited” the first one and got to the base of the second, Ross pulled us off and had Larry do one more back massage. Ross asked where the finish was and we pointed to the top of the next hill. He told me something like, “Dude, I’m finished, I can’t get up that hill”. He was mostly joking in his exhausted state but I could see the look on his face and potential (I’m speculating here) disdain he had for the race organizers in ending such a grueling race with a small but brutal hill.
We finished in just about 39.5 hours. The folks greeting us at 10:30 pm were fantastic and made you forget about the pain of the previous day for a little while. They had a live-ish feed that my wife, Ross’ wife, Joe and others all got to see over the web.
In a sense the finish was anti-climactic for me. I was crazy-tired but had been having a blast with my team and wasn’t ready for it to end. I know Ross was ready. 🙂 I wanted to take a nap and go on another adventure in the morning to see what would pop up in front of us as a challenge or a chuckle but that was not to be.
I left the experience with a deep appreciation of my wife and family; She took on extra work so I could test myself and experience something that few will have the opportunity to experience. I was thankful that Ross gave me the chance. Thankful that Matt jumped in when he was needed and for Larry adding the spice that flavored the entire journey.
Now I’m home and rested and I wonder, “WTF were you thinking, Tom?!?”. Would I do it again? I suppose so (and I think I’d be really good the next time). But it’s so cool and unique that I’d rather wish the trip on someone who has never had the chance. We had the perfect storm of crew love and rider madness and I’d make sure going forward that the recipe was proper before I jumped behind the wheel again.
-tom
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Tom , that was awesome. thanks for sharing! –