Wednesday, July 25, 2012

WORS#7: The Sun has burst

We were up early on Saturday, trying to do the nearly impossible. We were planning on getting up, having a nice breakfast out together, driving 2 hrs northwest to my sister’s house in Edgerton for a summer party, then driving 2.5 hrs northeast of there for a Mountain bike race. Traffic getting out of Chicago was terrible, and we ended up having to abort the trip to my sister’s house before we even got past the Edens. It’s a shame because from what my parent’s told us on Sunday, they had a great time on Saturday afternoon whereas my afternoon was rather miserable.

We headed 2.5hrs due north from Chicago and made it to Kewaskum with plenty of time. We toured the Kettle Morraine North state forest for a bit, before circling back south to the Sunburst Ski area where we got the lay of the land, found registration, and I got ready to preride. Morleigh sat under a tree reading a book, and I went out to suffer for 40 minutes. I was pre-riding so I tried to take it easy, but the first mile or so of the course was all up hill, winding in switch back after switchback along the west and south faces of the ski hill. It was not an easy climb. There were a few non-technical loops of single track wrapping around the top like a bad comb-over, but all too quickly the coursed headed down the far side of the hill into the abandoned X-mas tree farm below. The bulk of the course (in terms of distance) distance wise was wrapped like small intestines through the tight rows of trees. There were a lot of straight aways, 90deg or 180 degree turns, and a lot of climbing that didn’t really seem like climbing. They were deceptive because they were not as long as the climb up the mountain, but they were still steep and soul crushing. If Iola took us through the forest of Fangorn, then this course was the plains of Gorgoroth in Mordor. The sun had baked the earth, and it crumbled into fine powder which was projected upward as an aerosol. It was brown, dry, dull, and hot. Of the 40 minutes I spent riding less than 5 minutes was actually enjoyable. It was like the worst parts of a mountain bike race (climbing single track) combined with the most boring yet difficult cyclocross course I had ever seen.

I rolled back over to Morleigh and was seriously befuddled. Was I in such a serious emotional funk that I was incapable of actually enjoying anything? Or was it really that bad? Did I need to ride another lap, or was one enough? I went, registered, and came back, and I decided that riding another six mile loop on that particular course would do nothing for my performance the next day. There were no technical sections that required additional attention. It felt like the best thing I could do for my performance would be to go back to the hotel, get a good meal, and get a good night sleep. As I was changing back into civilian clothes my suspicions about the course were reaffirmed by a group of women who were having a conversation behind me. From what I could gather from their conversation the course was in their estimation both difficult and boring. I felt somewhat vindicated in my assessment, and my decision to not ride a second lap. We drove around the chalet and found a good spot to set up our tent. We staked it to the ground and then went back south to West Bend. We did the normal Saturday night things: we checked into the hotel, and looked for a restaurant. We have had good success with the restaurants in micro-breweries, and our experience was West Bend was no different. They had great food, and even had homemade root beer, and a delicious orange vanilla cream soda. We then topped our evening off with a little shopping. We had both forgotten the snacks that were sitting on the kitchen counter, and needed a few personal items, so we stopped at the Walmart across the street from our hotel. I sure know how to treat a girl to a nice Saturday night.

The next morning we enjoyed our make-your-own-waffles and headed to the venue. The southern parking lot was almost empty when we arrived, so we parked as close as possible to the tent and proceeded to unload. We set up chairs, pulled over the cooler, and started the process of getting ready. I did not bring my camera, because with the compressed timeline of the day I did not want the extra weight (both physically, temporally, and emotionally). So I had a race-only day, and I was able to focus on my preparations. I did help others prepare as well. Amy D from Half-Acre was arriving late, and I helped her with her final preparations getting her to the starting line on time.

Because I was not distracted taking photos I was able to get everything ready, and start a long, slow, early warm-up. I was out on the road by 10:45AM and was able to roll up and down the road for a good 20 minutes, burning hard and working the sloth that was lingering heavy from my legs. I was off my bike because of work on Monday – Wednesday, because of laziness on Thursday, and did a light workout with some intervals on Friday. The one adventure I had with registration was realizing that my pull-tag did not have my number written on it, but was three less than my race number. I went to registration and got a new tag, but then spent the rest of the morning until my flight looking to see if anyone was registered with that number to have them check if they were wearing my pull-tag. I never did find anyone with that number.

We made it down to the starting line, and bantered a little bit before the start of our race. I let one gentleman know that he did not have a number on the front of his bike (I don’t know what happened to him). We pulled up to the starting line, and my though through my strategy again. I was not going to go out hard and try to get the whole shot. I was going to blend in for the first lap, and try to take it easy.

GOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

With my call-up I was near the front, but it’s always a crap-shoot being in the second line as to who is best to line up behind. I was in 8-10th place after the first turn, and the sight of riders within my wave disappearing egged me onward. But still I tried to keep calm, keep my heart rate down, because I knew there was much work left to do. We made it through the prologue, past the tent of my cheering family, and when we made it around the barrels at the southern part of the course those initial matches that my competitors had ignited at the start, started to sputter and fade. I tried to keep pedaling at a sub-maximal pace, and before the top of the open switchbacks I was in third place heading into the wooded switchbacks. I was happy with that, but my body was not. Before the second set of switchbacks my Garmin alarm started to go off. My heart rate was above 167 which is not a sustainable pace for me. Unfortunately there was no time to recover. We climbed on, climbed on, climbed on.

When we made it up to the top our first opportunity to catch our breath was a downhill straight away along the edge of the neighbor’s soybean field. It was straight and steep, and just coasting we approached 25mph. At the bottom I locked up the brakes, and slowed down as we turned right. I didn’t see what happened, but the leader of our wave (I think it was Jerry) went down hard. The whole line backed up, but he got back quickly and limped up the hill. When the single track opened up into a wide grass patch at the top, he pulled over to re-align his handlebars. I made a move on the C40+ who was in second place and took the lead of my wave. My heart was still thumping loud in my chest, and my garmin was still beeping.

We fiddled about on the top for a short while, and then dropped off the backside on the fast, steep, and all too short descent, and back into the plains of Gorgorath. At that point we had just started rolling up on the stragglers from earlier waves, so I was happy to have the extra space to pass, but I was unable slow down and catch my breath. Whenever I tried to back-off the speed to catch my breath Don, the number two rider from my wave was right behind me egging me on. My Garmin continued to beep. It was like watching the fuse of a cartoon bomb burn down toward the gunpowder. Would Elmer Fudd make it to the finish line before he blew up? Finally I hit my threshold and knew that I had to slow down. When we reached the top of yet another loop that went half-way up the ski-hill, I told Don that he could take the lead and pull for a while, because I needed to “drop 10 beats or I was going to blow up.” He said he was in the same place, so I continued to lead. The second lap was a blur. I was, after 20 hard minutes of riding, able to get my HR back down to about 160, and started to feel like I was in a sustainable place. Then I had to climb the hill again.

The second time up the hill I was able still able to move, and passed some people climbing on the wide grassy slope, and crawled by some people on the steeper uphill. When I made it back to Gorgoroth I had opened up a sizable gap the rest of my wave. I could see Dan and the other riders in my wave as we looped past on some of the longer switchbacks. I had no sense of how far behind they were, but their footsteps were ever ringing in my ears. The second time through Gorgoroth was marked by the degradation of fine motor skills that is associated with low oxygen to the brain. I was taking corners poorly, and was running off the relatively wide track into the grass and trees, and making the small kind of mistakes that would have been punished greatly in the woods. I had to shake my head and tell myself to wake up and pay attention a couple of different times. I came into and through the bulk of the single-speed field during the second trip through the plains.

When I came out of the plains into the “completely unnecessary switchbacks” that separated the plains from the finish line, I was reeling from the effort and from the heat. At the neutral aid-station I took two cups of water, one on the downhill side, one on the uphill side, and doused both of them down my back. I was using my camelpak as much for cooling (suck and spit) as I was for hydration. I took a hand-up of nutrients from my Mom (“Thanks Mom”) and went to face the last time up the hill. It was brutal. My heart rate once again spiked to almost max, and my speed dropped. I was in my granny gear, spinning as fast as I could spin, and it felt like I was not going anywhere at all.

Yet I was still passing people. I even had to burn a match against my will because I was stuck on the step wooded single track behind a rider who was going so slow I had to stop and track-stand at one particular point to keep from running into him. I made my way past, and continued to pass more riders. It was in the third pass through the planes that my systems started to shut down. I had come upon a number of riders, who were kicking up major dust clouds that were coating my skin, my nose, my mouth, and my eyes, but I could not push my way through them. It was feel the dust layering on my cornea, and I could not produce enough tears to wash it away. My core temperature started to rise, and my speed drop. I started to shiver and knew that heat exhaustion was eminent.

I could see the rest of my wave coming up from behind. There were two guys who were closing fast. Jerry from Wheel and Sprocket, Marcus from Titletown were closing as well. I could not hold Jerry. He would not be denied, and he passed me on the “completely unnecessary switchbacks”. Marcus was closing in fast as well. When I got to the uphill side of the neutral aid station, I could see him approaching on the downhill side. It was one thing for one of the older guys to pass me, but another Clydesdale slipping by without so much as a whimper? My pride roared up from within the deep within the pain cave. “Get down here and make him earn it.” I rounded the final switchback, and got out of my saddle and sprinted up the final hill. I looked back as I crested and saw a big enough gap that I let off the gas and coasted downhill into the finish. I was second in my wave, and had suffered for 1hr and 24 minutes straight. My average heart rate was 91% of my maximum over the course of 1.4 hrs, and my max heart rate got to 98% of the highest ever recorded. I didn’t know where I had finished in the pack, but the C40+ (Marcus) stopped by to congratulate me and say he was glad to learn that we were in different age classes. He had been chasing me thinking that I was between him and the top of the podium. He was relieved to realize he was already there.

Setting up the tent right next to the finish line was probably the best thing we did all weekend. I rolled across the course and I was in the shade, with cool water to douse over my head. It felt good to rinse off some of the dust and lower my core body temperature. It wasn’t quite as good as the Post-Gravel metric baptism, but it was very very close. It took a while before I felt human again, and the stress/fatigue I felt was comparable only in magnitude to the Gravel Metric. But eventually I got my feet underneath me, started to clean up, pack up, and get ready to go. I would have liked to stay for the podiums, but I ticket for a 7:07PM flight leaving O’hare, and we had a number of errands to run on the way home. We had to go to the Bike shop to drop off the team tent, then to my apartment to drop off the bike and stuff. We rolled out of Kewasum at 2pm, and I was standing at gate B10 by 6:05PM having accomplished all of the aforementioned errands plus a pit-stop at an A&W for some “to-go” food. Our guardian angels were looking out for us and clearing the way that day. Any number of traffic-choke points or lines at the airport could have left us short on time and me trying to duct tape myself to the wing of an airplane. Instead I was at the airport with plenty of time to relax and prepare for the early beginning of my work week.

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