Pre-Race (3rd in series)

I woke up two days before the race to an ominous sky and thunder.  The weather forecast had predicted rain for that day, but the extended forecast looked good.  I kept the T.V. in my room on the Weather Channel, although up there they call it the Weather Network.  Initially it was hard to figure out what they were talking about since everything was in Celcius and kilometers/hour, but after a while you get a mental conversion.  Nothing too outrageous in terms of temperature or storms was predicted for the entire next week.  The hottest day was supposed to be on Wednesday, the 4th day of the race, and it was only supposed to reach about 80 degrees Farenheit.  There were horror stories about years past when temperatures would hover close to triple digits and you would hear about check stations running out of water.  Luckily none of this would come to pass. 

I was in Panorama Mountain Resort for the next two days.  There was a ski lift right outside my patio door that was moonlighting as a lift for downhill mountain bikers in the summer.  The large mountain to my right suggested that this was a great place to come and carve some turns in the powder come January, and the crowds here are nothing compared to the chaos that surrounds Lake Tahoe for the winter months.  Everyone was laid back, but there was a nervous anticipation in the air.  Or perhaps it was just me. 

My partner would not arrive until late at night so I had the whole day to check out the resort and get in a very light ride.  The night before, I met four guys on the bus that were from San Francisco.  They were very nice and invited me on a training ride with them in the morning.  I waited for their call as I put my bike together out the travel box.  There wasn’t too much to do, but I certainly wanted to make sure that the bike was in working order; remember that was one of the requirements.  I met them downstairs and we started off downhill towards the main road.  Looking around the resort, it’s hard to imagine a more beautiful place to begin this epic race.  It seemed as though the mountains were giving our little area a bear hug, huge mountains jutting into the air and surrounding us with a warm embrace and more trees than you could ever count in a lifetime.  A river roared at the base of the hill and kept cutting through the mountains as far as you could see.  We head to the right, (I had no mental compass whatsoever) and immediately encounter one very large moose just on the shoulder of the road, munching on some grass.   He (she?) was not really caring about anyone or anything.  One of the guys hopped off of his bike to take pictures of the giant.  I thought to myself that this was just par for the course.   Why take pictures now, you’ll practically be riding over them on the way to the finish line?  I pictured moose walking down the main street in Fernie, like <i>Northern Exposure</i>.  What I didn’t know is that I would never see another moose the entire trip!  

The next day was the last day before the beginning of the race.  My partner arrived the night before and slowly began putting his bike together.  He is a bike mechanic, so he’s a little more thorough than I am.  We also went on another very easy ride to stretch the legs.  

 Later in the evening we had our pre-race festivities that were to include a presentation on what to expect during our time in the wilds of Canada and a buffet dinner.  The presentation started with someone explaining about how the race started five years ago and how incredible the race was and blah, blah, blah.  Then the guy who actually put the daily routes together came to the stage.  He laid out the terrain and the specifics of what we were going to encounter going into Day 1 of the race.  Pretty exciting and scary stuff.  Remember those beautiful mountains giving us a bear hug?  Well apparently their embrace is a little overwhelming, since there is no easy way to get out of the resort.  They tried going up the downhill course, but all of the riders passed out.  Not a good way to start the race.  Then the second option, which was agreed upon, was a two mile “hike-a-bike section” up the face of one of the mountains.  According to our announcer this would be a 20-30 minute hike.  As we would learn in the next 7 days, he was a lying jerk.  No, he was a really nice guy, but a liar all the same.  We absorbed the bad news, got in line for the buffet and ate like kings, carbing up for the next day’s start. 

My nerves were starting to get the best of me.  I was excited to get this thing over with, but the idea of the pain I would endure over the next week was enough to make me want to choke on my pasta.  Tomorrow would come too soon and not soon enough. 

(By the way, if you would like, there is the opportunity for a RSS feed.  Simply copy and paste the URL into your feed and get instant updates on this blog.  That way you don’t have to constantly check back.  Thanks for reading!)

Pre-Race (2nd in series)

The 2007 Transrockies was unique in that it was the first year when they did the course in reverse.  In years past, they started in Fernie, British Columbia and ended usually in the Panorama Mountain Resort, British Columbia.  Starting in Panorama was unique because it required a 5 hour bus ride from the airport.   I started early in the morning on Thursday, August 9th, three days prior to the race.  I chose to leave three days early so that I could get acclimated to the elevation and also get a bearing on my surroundings.  As we dropped into Calgary Airport I was surprised by how flat it was, and suddenly I had a great feeling that maybe this won’t be so bad after all.  I mentioned this to the guy sitting next to me and he assured me that in fact there are very large mountains to the west.  Calgary lies to the east of the mountain range so it is similar to Kansas or the high plains of Wyoming.  All there was for miles were long rolling hills of green grass with hay rolled up like Hostess Ding Dong’s .   As I rode in the luxury tour bus towards our destination, I was treated to a very lengthy conversation going on behind me about all of the horrors we were to endure.  Apparently they had both done the race in previous years.  Luckily, Erica made a compilation of songs on her I-Pod so I sat back and turned up the tunes.  As the miles and songs went by the sky turned black with the pending sunset.  Suddenly there were large dark figures jutting up from the ground and it appeared as though there were clouds getting closer to us and stretching all the way to the horizon.  As they got closer, I realized that they weren’t clouds at all.  They were mountains.  They rose from the ground and burst into the sky like decayed teeth in some crazy, old man’s mouth.  I had never seen mountains that were so vain.  Standing tall and sticking their chests out they were indeed impressive and they were just the guards to the gate as our bus strained up the progressively steeper hills.  We proceeded towards Banff and picked up some people at a fancy hotel in the center of town.  It reminded me a lot like Jackson Hole, Wyoming in that it was clearly a cowboy town with some local money.  The main street through town was being torn up by diggers as some sort of facelift to the already increasing lease values.  Ralph Lauren had to pardon their dust.  It really was a nice looking town and Erica, Nathan, and I would experience it later in our trip.  The bus continued on and didn’t stop for what seemed like forever.  I didn’t arrive in my hotel room until 1:30 in the morning.  It had been a very long day.

 

TransRockies 2007

My trip to the TransRockies Race began a little over two years ago while I was reading an article in the National Geographic Discoverer magazine about how ultra-long endurance races were becoming extremely popular. They enabled riders to return to the roots of mountain biking: exploration and the thrill of the unknown. The first race was organized back in the mid-90’s down in Costa Rica with a group of riders who, in a tribute to the 16th century Spanish Conquistadors, retraced their steps from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean in three days. After they started the ‘La Ruta de Los Conquistadores’, a new trend in racing was born. Other races made their debuts, starting with the TransAlps in Europe, Cape Epic in South Africa and the TransRockies in British Columbia. Since the printing of the article, I have learned of two more races that have been added: the ‘TransPortugal’ and the ‘TransHimalaya.’ Both sound very enticing, if not life threatening, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So I remember closing the magazine and promptly telling Erica about the article and how I was going to accomplish the ‘Grand Slam’ of endurance biking, which at the time was completing all four international races. She gave me a quizzical look and said “great”, but she probably wasn’t really paying attention. Yet something struck a cord in me and I had my mind set on accomplishing this one solid goal in my lifetime. Something to be proud of and something that no one could ever take away from me. I always gravitated towards exploration and the thrill of the unknown, sometimes missing my exit on the freeway, just to see another way home (Erica would say that I wasn’t paying attention). Endurance racing would be the ultimate ticket out of the doldrums of mediocrity and into the record books of local fame and legend. Ok, maybe not, but at least I could say to Nathan that his old man once rode his mountain bike all over the world…in short spurts.

I was out of shape and not a very strong rider. The local hills were Mt. Everest and the air was so thin in the Bay Area that I would gasp for air on the slightest incline. I knew that I would never be good enough to make the attempt in 2006 (even though it was a year away at the time), so I set my sights on a 2007 race hoping to have a fighting chance of getting into shape and at least dragging my mangled body across the finish line. I looked over the now infamous list of torture races and decided that the TransRockies may work out since it wasn’t consistently sold out in the first five minutes and Erica wouldn’t have to pay as much in shipping and handling charges for getting my remains back to the states. August 2007 would be the moment of truth.

As far as mountain biking is concerned, there are a lot of elements to it that are different from road riding or a leisurely stroll on a bicycle built for two. First you have a mountain… with dirt. Lots of dirt and all members pertaining to the dirt family. And rocks. Sometimes big rocks, sometimes small rocks. You also have roots, cliffs, rivers, trees, small and large fauna, hairpin switchbacks, other fallen riders, and large logging trucks on roads that were only meant for large logging trucks and nothing else. Needless to say, mountain biking has its own set of hazards that aren’t seen on a typical tricycle ride through central park. Additionally, you have a pair of knobby tires that, although give you good traction, tend to complain about continually going around and around and would rather stop altogether, almost like an old mule. Therefore, in my experience, every 1 mile of dirt riding equals about 2 miles of smooth pavement riding. And this is probably conservative. So taking these elements into consideration, we would be riding 350 dirt miles or 700 you-can’t-find-in-the-Bay-Area smooth asphalt miles. Or in astrological terms, one very long fall from the moon. In addition to these ‘dirt’ miles, were the mountains. I came to find out that there were indeed very large hills in the British Columbia Rocky Mountain Range, and we would be introduced to approximately 40,000 feet of her backside. I grew worried.

Now you are probably thinking the same thing that I was at the time. “Why had I repaid for that damn magazine subscription?” Or, “Why would someone pay thousands of hard-earned dollars to subject themselves to this type of torture?” It would be much easier to stay home and listen to President Bush try to public speak. But determination got the better of me and I figured that I needed to begin exercising and training so that I could begin the arduous process of talking myself out of this.

According to the race rules of the TR, you must have a partner to lug around due to the ruggedness of the route and unpredictability of the furry locals. You must have a bike in working order (duh?), clothing (except for one mile to be described later), bear whistles, bear bell, bear spray, helmet, and plastic baggies. Apparently you were supposed to put the bear in the plastic baggies after you whistle, bell and spray him to death. I certainly hoped someone would explain the logistics of that one to me. Later I would learn that this isn’t the true mandatory list anyhow. The ‘true’ mandatory list, as described by seasoned veterans, is approximately 8 pages long and does include many more baggies (must be for larger bears), the entire men’s section of REI, 12 different pairs of gloves, many socks, shorts, jerseys, food, and butt lube among many, many others. Since this was a high elevation climate, we could either have 100-degree days or snow. So pack the golashes and the flip flops, arm warmers and suntan lotion, ski jacket and the g-string and try to fit it all in a 16”x16” x36” duffel bag along with your sleeping bag and mattress. I had a lot of work to do in the next two years…

For the next year I began learning a lot about nutrition, biking, training, mechanics, and motivation (not necessarily in that order). I read many books of the various subjects and began competing in races to get the feel of what it was like. I started with a sprint triathalon, then some bike races, some century rides, and then some longer mountain bike races. I dropped some pounds after coming back from the deep fried south in Louisiana and began getting used to the miles I was putting on my legs. I started going from dead last place with the 12 year olds kicking my butt, to actually getting into the less than pathetic 50% percentile in some of my categories. The creme de menthe came this summer when I got my first top-10 finish. However the closer I got to the start of the race, the more nervous I became about actually being able to finish. I had worked so hard for so long, sometimes getting up at 5:30am to log 80 miles, I had a feeling that I could at least try to finish or maybe get choppered across the finish line, but these were some of the best riders in the world competing for the honors. Had I made a mistake? Was I really mentally and physically prepared? Do they allow refunds? Only time would tell, but I was strong in my resolve, as Bush would say.

I also had a partner. His name was John and he was a bike mechanic at the local bike shop that I frequented. I found him after putting the challenge out to some of the other riders in the shop and he responded with enthusiasm. He had already been to the summit of Mt. Everest, done the “Death Ride” in Tahoe, and had a body fat percentage of negative 5%. I told him immediately that he was stronger than I was, and would probably need to give the Medivac my home address, but he was still excited to participate. I was excited to have him as a partner and him being a bike mechanic was an added bonus. We trained extensively together, getting up early in the morning to do our regular 50 mile loop and get back in time for him to get to work. One week we put over 200 miles on our bike. I was really proud of myself until I realized that it was only about half of what I would be doing in the Rockies in the same week’s time. John and I worked well together and I was becoming strong enough of a rider to keep the pace or even lead at certain times. We did many miles together and the race was approaching fast. I was getting nervous, but also a little more confident about my abilities. Miles began to pass like minutes and soon we would find ourselves far from where we started. Century rides were becoming commonplace as training rides and our collective strength was shining through. So far so good.

Something fun until my next post!! I’m never, ever gonna quit!!