These results are going to look much better tomorrow

At the end of the day, my stomach clenched mercilessly and none of food, water, beer or party hats could ease my pain.  My body was fighting off a fever of its own cannibalism, i cold sweated and shivered , couldn’t focus any energy, hacked from 84 miles of volcanic dust and altitude, and my heart pounded for an hour while I lay in bed.   Three hours of survival mode left me the worst I’ve ever felt at the end of a day, especially a good day.  I missed my “goal” of 10 hrs riding time by 1 minute, finished in under 11, did not get lost did not break anything and did not die from lead-poisoned water.  I rode with my friends and never once turned on my music, enjoyed mild temps and sunny skies, and the bike needed just some fresh lube to be ready the next day.  I’m kinda stoked about it now, but at the Finish I was begging small children to use their small hands and strangle me.

I couldn’t wait for race day to come.  This event again served as a sanity-check for me, forcing long road rides and gym visits to combat the hellaciousness of summer.  It did double-duty as inspiration to survive Shame Training, which ended that week as well.  I lost about 6 lbs to get back to my comfortable 153, and other than a cold at the beginning of the week, felt incredibly psyched to improve upon the inaugural race.

A bunch of my Phx friends were riding this year, and my buddy Noel invited our family to stay with their family at their Flagstaff cabin during the race. It was the lynchpin for an awesome weekend.  Noel’s daughter is 1 day younger than G, and his son 1 year older.  Monsters vs. Monsters!  Brilliant! Beckie and Noel’s wife Amy also had a lot in common and hit it off pretty well, so the gents got Saturday to ride and the ladies got Sunday.  Plus a bed, a sun deck, and proper Roman plumbing to complete a high-country getaway.  Did I mention Monsters vs. Monsters?

me, Noel and James pre-ride
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pre-race jibber jabber
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There were about 70 riders, a major boost from last year as word got out about what a fun time the Crazy 88 was.  My post from last year got tons of hits especially in the last few months.  Nathan again did everything right, and upped the ante in scale and services.  He flagged the toughest turns, not a lot, but just enough to keep from getting pointlessly lost in the forests around Flagstaff.  He also setup rest stops midway through both loops.  My inner purist wrestled with the “support” for an “underground” race, but it was perfect to take the edge off of the day — the course still did most of the talking.  The BBQ was even bigger, the awards plentiful, but still all managed to fit around a firepit.  It was a perfect balance between structure and spirit.  Thanks Nathan!!!!!

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The pack spread out quickly going up Waterline Road, and it was surprisingly fun, at least as fun as nine miles of washboarded jeep road can be.   I found a cadence, loosened up my body and my mind, and showed remarkably bad form drafting my friend BrianC on his single speed.   *shrug*   Not my fault he left his gears at home.

I cleaned the climb a bit faster than last year, and followed another rider flagging us onto Pickup Stix.   Having lost some time and gratuitous miles on this turn in ’08, i let out an optimism-inspiring whoop when the first cartographical challenge was laid to rest, pinned my ass over the back seat, and went screaming ~700 feet down over a mile through the aspen.   I laid into the turns and booted everything i could find, easily the best 10 minutes of the ride.

one of my better pictures
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The view back up from Locket Meadow campground didn’t suck either
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Another hour of jeep roads loaded with climbing got me to the rest stop at mile 24, which was our gateway to the Arizona Trail.   This 6.7 mile stretch was new this year, and recently carved out of the ferns and aspen along Snowbowl Road.

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Its gotten a lot of hype, but I was its negative backlash.   Pretty – yes.   About 800 feet of climbing in the first 3 miles – also yes.   It was nice, but very beginner trail, so mostly just seemed like a dusty uphill slog at the time.   It wasn’t until looking at Beckie’s pictures the next day that I remembered it more fondly.   I don’t think I passed anyone, including guys I had been yo’yoing with on the fire roads.   This should have been my tip that I was not feeling super-strong.   Due to only 1 day of altitude riding all summer, or getting over a cold early in the week, or not drinking enough water during the hot-for-Flagstaff day – I do not know?   But the fatigue that started about 3 hours into the ride was something that gradually grew as the day wore on, and I never really felt good again all day.   It was a very unusual sensation to be approaching bottom so early.   Typically moments of hurting will come in waves, and roll off me for at least 6-8 hours while my body attacks and parries.   I think now the sluggishness was mostly about the altitude, but suffering is just part of the ante with these events.   There was no way I was quitting when I had such a fast start and beautiful weather.   I tuned it out and focused on continuing to move forward, trying to ride smarter and carry momentum on the big 29r wheels whenever I could.

There were a series of hard-to-spot turns at the end of the AZT around mile 31.   I blew an hour on this 10 mile stretch last year, so had copious notes and detailed topo maps collected from all manner of posts and FB threads.   They turned out to be overkill, but navigating all the turns smoothly onto Mace’s Revenge made the preparation seem worthwhile.   Mace’s led to Sherlock which led to Viet Springs – about 2 miles of moto trails that were rutted, powdery and at times unridable for bikes.   Some of this was really pretty trail and challenging, but I just wanted to get past it, knowing always there was the next difficult stretch or confusing turn to come.

A one mile, chunky downhill through Gimpy’s Gulley was a ton of fun.   A fair share of the riders were out of sorts on this terrain; I wished it led us all the way to the end of the first lap, as long as it was down.   But it led to more forest road climbing, a downhill full of stress since I blew this turn big time the year before, and then a rather crappy climb up a mile of Secret trail I had never ridden before and now understood precisely why.     At the top of Supermoto, I looked for signs of a reroute we were told about in the morning.   A handful of other riders showed up, none really knowing the story.   One of them was my buddy James; we had talked about sticking together, but figured our different speeds climbing would not be very compatible so agreed to just go with the flow.   James was looking fresh, had clearly put time on me in the deep singletrack, and had a flawlessly performing GPS.   I knew where the Old Secret trail bypassed the confusing part of Supermoto, so off we went on our mutually beneficial way into the forest.   I don’t know if the other riders followed us, and we quickly hit some technical stretches where I dropped everyone until slowing to let James catch me.   He took off from there, and it was all I could do to keep him in sight.   It was a strange dose of humility, as normally I’m a tad faster and smoother than James.   But not on this day, and on the bike the present is all that matters.   I pulled out whatever I had left prior to the break and refused to lose James, since I knew the value of staying on course.   The 2 of us pulled into the Start\Finish at about 5:05 total, about 4:53 spin time.

10 minutes of eating, drinking and refilling and I was ready to head out again.   James and I hooked back up, and again he seemed way too strong as we headed down Little Elden and Sandy Seep trails.   I was following him with everything I had, pushing my speed just past where my sluggish reactions were comfortable on the rocky and dusty trail.   The sense that James shouldn’t be faster than me served as some motivation.   This is not to take anything away from him.   He trained hard, had pre-ridden the whole course as a deposit on his performance, and he was kicking ass right now on his Mach 5.   But more that I knew that I was not where I ought to be, and that even if my body wasn’t feeling it, I had to strive for the benchmark of my buddy’s pace if I had any hope of pulling myself out of this funk.

I passed James on a long sandy uphill, and then wound up leading for about the next 10 miles of gradual downhill.   I was a little surprised that we settled into this pattern, since I thought James was going faster.   Not sure, the fuel from the lap break started to give me a boost and I   got comfortable speeding downhill again, but I wondered if I was holding James up and he was too nice to drop me, or if I was helping pace him as much as he was helping me.   I was hoping the latter, since I had not looked at the cue sheet in 2 hrs and having no navigational worries — along with the company of a friend — was making things dramatically easier.

Around mile 55, we came up on Doug Gangi, and the irony had me break into fits of laughter.   Doug is my good friend, and a stronger rider than me, but all week he had been begging me to let him ride along, claiming navigational incompetence and a desire to just enjoy the day.   Doug also has a bad habit of having horrible mechanicals hit him at the most inopportune times.   Noel and I spent the night before laying bets on how long it would take Doug’s inner hammerhead to win out over his desire to not get lost, along with how lost he would get and what breakdown would occur.   The answer was like a solution in CLUE: about 2 miles into the Waterline climb, going the wrong way under a railroad bridge, with a blown fork.

Soon after we picked up Doug and his two riders, we began about 15 miles of gradually climbing singletrack.   Both James and I knew the peril this section would present if weather did hit us, and superstition motivated us to keep moving.   The climb, along with the heat of the day, started to really take its toll on me here.     I remembered how awful this was in the mud last year, so tried to sit in my Happy Place and appreciate the good conditions, but I couldn’t shake the fatigue and exhaustion that was getting the best of me.   I was leading our group of 5 and thought I was setting a decent pace, but I was coming apart.   There was another aid station about mile 60, and I hunkered down and focused on those next 5 miles before a good break and resupply.   Approaching mile 60, with no aid station in sight, and the prospect of 3 more hours of largely uphill spinning ahead, I caved and asked for a rest.   Doug and his friends rode on, James and I rested about 2 minutes, only to find the aid station a few minutes further down the trail.

Stopping again after the effort it took to get rolling again demoralized me, chugging a pint of water hurt my stomach and demoralized me, the good cheer of the volunteers at the aid station demoralized me, my bike almost toppling over demoralized me,   realizing that I was physically imploding and had no mental games left to play on myself demoralized me.   The only thing I could think about after 7 hours of moving time was to keep moving forward, the momentum taking on a life of its own, and it affected my judgment in not taking another quart into my camelback.     By the end of the ride I had gotten really dehydrated.   Ironic someone from Phoenix, who trained in 100+ degree heat for hours at a time, would get dehydrated in Flagstaff.   I just did not feel hot, the weather was so refreshing compared to the Valley, and carelessly did not force myself to drink enough, getting probably 1-2 quarts behind where my body needed to be.   The along with the altitude wrecked me.

We pressed onward through Walnut Canyon, the short technical descent put the briefest of smiles on my face, soon replaced by a grim visage during the steep HAB out.   The Canyon was not as long as I remembered it, and I got a good look at the spot where I ate shit last year dropping in.     Totally ridable, and if I’d felt just the least bit better I would have gone back to hit it.   That and one staircase on the AZT were the only things on the course I did not clean, descending at least; by the end I couldn’t hardly climb a speedbump.

James dropping into the Canyon
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Somewhere in this stretch James told me that he had surpassed the most mileage he had ever done in a day.   He was still looking strong and positive, which was quite an accomplishment since he’s only been biking about a year.   I tried to muster enough energy to give him the congratulations he deserved and let him know how proud he should be of himself, but I’m pretty sure what I said was along the lines of   “shut your fucking piehole, bitch.”   I had officially entered my Dark Place.

Doug rejoined us past Walnut Canyon, after getting himself lost again.   It was about 4 miles to Fisher Point, the next landmark which would lead us off the AZT singletrack and begin the last 17 miles of the ride.   I struggled to find motivation in this, or in anything, kept pushing, focusing only on finishing the next climb and the next spot I could coast.     Several times I thought I would puke.   I got off and walked one stretch as James and Doug pulled away from me, and came about 5 seconds from cracking completely.   How soothing it would be to just drown?   If I had wallowed for 5 seconds longer, and they had gotten just 5 seconds further away, I would have.   Pride mostly, a little survival instinct, and a dreadful fear of making any wrong turns drove me forward and I closed the gap back up to about 10 seconds.     This happened several more times before the day was done, but each time I managed to hang on.   It wasn’t physical ability any longer that kept me going, I had become numb to the emptiness in my legs and the hot flashes and nausea.   I just could not stop, the only way out was forward, and my body continued to consume itself.

I missed Fisher Point last year, and got a brief bit of psych when we passed that wrong turn and began the too-short descent.   500 feet down in one tight, technical mile.   With Doug’s blown fork and James’ still-developing tech skills, I was able to be the strong one for a brief stretch.   And it gave me enough of a boost for another mile or two as we traversed some flat singletrack in a wide meadow, en route to the cinder-covered Urban Trail.   We rode along a creek, and I kept thinking about just putting my head under and drinking, sanitation be damned

James at the bottom of Fisher Point
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I had two thoughts as we hit the Urban Trail and worked our way up through Flag – draft Doug if I could possibly manage to catch him, and find some water before we left town.   I had about a quart of gatorade left, but it would not last with almost 2000 vf climbing in the last 10 miles and me gulping every time I grabbed the mouthpiece.   Once I started thinking about   water, i lost all control.   I imagined water fountains next to buildings, and thought about jumping in any puddles or sewage we passed, finally sneaking into someone’s side yard and filling a bottle from the hose.   The water burned my mouth like gasoline, and I spat it all over the street.   I wondered if the light-headedness was a result of some poison I had just drank, or was just the dehydration?   Finally I told the guys to go on if they must, and walked into a swanky coffee bar and begged the bartender to fill my bottle.   A pint of tap water never tasted so good, and the desperation flowed out of me and I felt my body and spirit relax just a bit.   Another few miles up through town, through cinder trails, and onto the Jump Trail where I spotted a melon-sized pool of blood in a rock drop.   One of the other riders had snapped his frame and smashed his face.

More gradual climbing, which we gave back descending 2 unsatisfying miles back down Elden Lookout Road.   James stopped for a gu, I overshot the turn onto the last 4 miles of Schultz Pass Trail in my stupor.     As I found out last year, Schultz Pass Road sucks ass.   Its not flat, covered in powder, and all washboarded.   Schultz trail is buff, shorter, and actually flows in spots.   James passing me on the trail below less than a mile up the road was all the proof I needed, so I just rode down the steep hill to come up on his wheel.

We continued this way for about 30 minutes.   I kept thinking James would waver, but he kept up a steady pace, and each time I thought I would fall off the back I somehow managed to keep him in sight.   I kept imagining the fence that leads to the final half mile before the end, and started hallucinating it around every corner.     Getting into the middle ring for a few brief spurts of carrying momentum was painful, but the quick .1 miles it covered ticked off in my head “another 2.5% done!”     Less than .5 mile from the end, James pulled up and went to work on his bike, his chain sucked into his rear cassette.   He was unsure how to fix it, so I held his bike and told him to pull the cassette away from the wheel, and the problem was solved with minor damage to his spokes.   I hopped on and continued pedaling before my muscles tightened, but  now faced a serious ethical dilemma.     James had been the stronger rider today, and had we finished at the same time, I was going to be sure he signed in first.   But, he was fucked with chainsuck if I did not help him, and through no fault of my own I ended up in front of him at the last stretch.   My feeling the finish and desire to avoid any 11th hour morality plays caused me to stand up and push a bigger gear.   I felt James sprinting in on me as we got close to the end, matched his pace, and looked up to see G and Noel’s kids blocking our path.   I did what any responsible dad would do:   held the outside line and used my daughter as a pick so I could sign in first.

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this picture kinda hurt
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then G took over the camera
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and took pics of her friends Gianna and Aran
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her sister Monster Jr
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the other G
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mommy and Ms Amy
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Kila ganking food off of BriancC and the Nowackis
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her filthy legs
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our filthy legs
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all our filthy legs.
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The awards ceremony and BBQ were lots of fun, but despite the great weather, I repeated my pattern of leaving early due to spawn. Too bad, I can’t say enough times how cool the people you meet at these types of events are, and how great the camaraderie is hanging out after one of them.

Sunday I slept in to the ridiculous hour of 8:30, and woke to find Amy had made blueberry pancakes.   Noel needs to hang on to this woman.   She and Beckie set off to ride the AZT from Aspen Corner to 418 and back, while Noel and I took the kids for a short hike and generally lounged on the porch sipping beers and recounting our adventures.   Some tragicomic things happened with cell phones, I did not much care as I enjoyed the afternoon and played with the kids.   Beckie took some nice pics which put a bright sunshiney band-aid on the part of my memory that was still hurting.   I’m already looking forward to improving on my mistakes for next year.

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after years of Beckie’s making fun of my bike porn, I find this moneyshot on my camera
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7 Comments

  1. Just a fanstastic write up Jason. I could feel your pain as you set out and then your enjoyment when you hung with James and then the hunger of the finish line. Wish I was there to suffer with you. Next year!!
    DW

  2. Reading about your self-flagellation, we’re glad you made it to the Finish, enjoyed [sic!?] yourself, and very happy we didn’t lose YOU!

    Mom & DAD

  3. Dude….the part you wrote about me telling you I surpassed my mileage record left me laughing….I suspected you were up there with your Vader mask on! For sure…gotta do some more pain miles soon….thx for the kind words, I’m flattered.

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