Adventures at 30,000 ft

It's tough to see from these pictures, but the surface of these clouds looked like the pictures of ice floes in Antarctica that appear in one of my favorite books, Endurance.

It IS possible to see every kind of cloud all at once.

When it comes to air travel, there are few things we should complain about. And I'm not talking about the petty things like delays or crying infants. The ability to end up somewhere 900 miles away from where you were only 2 hours ago is something many of us take for granted. When I travel, I accept and embrace all the experiences that come along with it, both the good and the bad. I understand fully that an entire network of people are doing their best to ensure that I have the safest flying experience possible, so when the odd hang up does occur, I "turn lemons into lemonade" and make the best of it.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are still a few things we ALL hope won't happen to us. I'll admit to playing the "Who do I hope to not get stuck next to" game in the terminal before boarding. I don't enjoy an unruly tot kicking the back of my seat any more than I enjoy sitting next to someone who should have purchased two seats instead of one or anyone who doesn't get the idea that when I put on my headphones while you're talking to me, you should give it a rest. Today, I would have traded my hand for any and all of those aforementioned circumstances than to have dealt with the cards I was given.

As the first round of beverages were served, I was sound asleep and missed my chance at a cool drink to wash down my pretzels. When the steward returned to collect the garbage, I asked if I could still get something. He quickly returned with a cup brimming with a sparkling, throat tickling, carbonated beverage that, no sooner did he walk away, did I proceed to knock over and watch in slow-motion horror as it cascaded off of my tray table and onto my lap. All 8 ounces of untasted, ice-cold soda began soaking into my pants and formed a pool under my ass. My four-lettered expletive was audible even to myself through my noise canceling headphones. I sat there, shocked by the cold on my most sensitive of areas and not believing what I had just done when the severity of my situation began to sink in. Walka, walka!

I dared not move, lest the soda that had not yet been absorbed by my skivvies would spill off of my seat and perhaps onto someone else's belongings. Unfortunately, the surface unto which my soda was collecting beneath me was none other than the seat cushion that can also be used as a flotation device in the case of a water landing (the little label on the seat before me reminded me of that for the remainder of the flight). Naturally, in order for that cushion to remain buoyant, it must be made of a material that would not absorb moisture. So I buzzed the steward and requested a towel or something to soak up the mess. He returned moments later with perhaps the only thing less absorbent than the cushion itself; a stack of those crisp, square airline napkins. I took the whole wad and jammed it in my crotch.

It was the longest 1:10 of my life as I dreaded finally having to stand up to exit the plane once we'd reached our destination. I envisioned a giant wet spot covering both my front and my back and having to walk through groups of people who'd thunk I had messed myself. Here is the only upside to the story. Lucky for me, I was wearing my Columbia pants with Omni-Dry technology. We've all seen the commercials with Mom and her son, testing the limits of Columbia outerwear in the most extreme environments in some sort of kooky way. I thought of writing them to let them know that their product passed the spilled soda air dry test at 30,000 ft. By the time we landed, my pants were barely damp (which is more than can be said for my undies) and showed almost no sign of wetness. Thank God! I still dreaded standing up, expecting to see a puddle on the seat, but there was none.

The ironic thing is that on my way through the terminal to meet my plane, I almost stopped to buy a bottle of soda, but didn't because I didn't want to spend the typically over-inflated airport price. In retrospect, I would have happily paid two, three, even four times the price for the soda and sat on Louie Anderson's lap just to ensure I had a spill-free flight.

Nervous Nellie

When examining something complex, sometimes it's best to break it down into parts. Today's race was a perfect example. To simplify things, we'll look at the best and worst parts. With the good comes the bad, and one cannot exist without the other.

My coach and I had been looking forward to the 7th Annual Darkhorse 40 for a few months now and it was our plan to have me peak for this event. A small part of me wishes I hadn't known that, as was the case in the KVSP H2H Race when I just felt like a million bucks and learned after the fact that I was peaking that day. It put some pressure on me because I was thinking I should have felt better than I was, causing me to second guess myself. Actually, it doesn't really matter now, since my race was practically over before it even began... and it almost didn't even begin. We'll come back to this.

The last three days of training were squeezed into two, resulting in me getting up earlier than normal to do the previous night's ride before work and then doing that day's prescribed ride after work. My diet and fluid intake were the same for the days leading up to raceday as any other, but it was my sleep that ultimately took the back seat on my list of priorities. I only got 4 hours of sleep last night because "Mr. Can't plan anything for shit" decided it was going to take 3 hours to drive to Stewart State Forest in Newburgh, NY, when both other times he went there he got there way too early.

This time was no different. I made it there in an hour and a half and had plenty of time to kill before the race. It was for the best, though, since for some reason I had a lot of anxiety (the bad kind) about this race and found myself with a sour stomach. I made several trips to the port-o's and noticed the abundance of mosquitos as I walked. There was one in my personal space, so before I offered him some tender flesh to sink his teeth into, I launched a preemptive strike. He narrowly escaped three solid attempts at his life by flying out from under my pointed finger. I finally left him alone when I decided my motive was unjust since he showed no interest in biting me in the first place. Instead, he stayed put right on the wall the whole time.

Rewind to the night before the race, which was to be spent packing all my gear, preparing a recovery meal, and making last minute repairs to my bike. I got out of work at 6pm and had full intentions of getting all that done and going to bed by 10pm. Four hours is enough time to do all that, right? Wrong. I didn't get to bed until after midnight and I still hadn't gotten everything done. One major oversight was the new cleats I attached to my new shoes. I will be the first to admit that it's a bad idea to make such a major equipment change mid-season, let alone right before a big race without ample time to break them in. I thought I had positioned my cleats properly and they did feel good when I tested them out, but on this morning's warmup ride, they were too far forward and felt very, very wrong. There was only 15 minutes before we had to begin staging, so I quickly dove into my toolbox and began loosening the screws. First shoe, done. Second shoe... a stripped bolt! NOOOOO! Now I had two unequally adjusted cleats, one with a stripped screw and no way to fix it. I went in search of a mechanic tent, as they are normally present at every race. Why would there be one today? I was forced to fend for myself and used my MacGuyver skills to somehow quickly create a surface on the head of the screw that some tool could fit in. I reached for a phillips screwdriver and my pedal wrench, which I used as a hammer to bang the head of the screwdriver into the screw. It started to work, but not well enough to be able to remove the screw. And even if it did, I would not be able to retighten it anyway. To add insult to injury, I inadvertently mistook my hand for my shoe and gave it a good womp with the pedal wrench. That was it. I'd had enough, I was sweating bullets in my van, the start of the race was minutes away, and I had to just ride with my shoes the way they were.

The course was changed from the usual 2, 20mi laps to 4, 10mi laps consisting of 98% singletrack. This race, being the second longest I've ever done (the longest being the Big Frog 65) was the hardest race of my life. The endless singletrack doesn't give the body any relief in the form of open fireroads to spin the legs out or rest in the form of coasting. From the get go, it was immediately clear that I was unable to pedal efficiently with my feet offset. Furthermore, it was nearly impossible to find my feet every time I had to clip back in because for one, each foot was different, and two, the cleats were new and it takes a little more effort to pop them in. It took a lot of excess pressure and twisting my feet in weird ways to get back in, which caused unnecessary strain on my already tired muscles. I knew if I wanted to finish the race in under 4hrs, I would have to maintain an average speed of 10mph. I succeeded in doing so for lap 1, with an average of exactly 10mph. That scared me because I was riding hard and I knew if I was going to break the 4hr barrier, I would need to maintain that pace the whole time. The goal became further and further out of reach as I saw my average drop over the next two laps. I knew it was a direct result of my shoes and lack of ability to clip in and out easily and that the effects of that were only going to worsen as the race progressed. To add, well, injury to injury, I crashed really hard on the first lap after conjuring up some camera courage for Luke and went hot into a loose corner. I lost the front end and fell, you guessed it, right onto my already bruised hand, jamming my thumb. I bent my brake rotor in the crash and my headset began to creak, so I had to listen to my bike crying the whole rest of the race.

I spent at least half of the first three laps unclipped, which means I was only able to exert downward force on my pedals rather than being able to pull up equally and evenly with the opposite leg. This put terrible strain on my quads, and though I never cramped, by the final lap I simply ran out of strength. I did not clip in at all during lap 4 and resorted to walking up almost every climb. On the descents, I used my thighs to squeeze the saddle to stay in control and prevent my feet from slipping off the pedals, making my legs even more sore. Actually, before I even completed lap 3, I debated attempting a 4th lap and almost turned back once I started it, but we won't talk any more of my temporary willingness to give up, since I never wholeheartedly submitted to such a crazy notion. As I was walking on the final lap, I couldn't help but think of Chris Eatough and the film 24 Solo that I had recently seen. He resorted to walking at times, and if Chris could walk, I could walk. I was determined to finish. I had set goals for this race, but they were now traded out for the goal of simply finishing, even if it meant walking across the finish line. Besides, I had noticed that I wasn't at all the only racer who was feeling the effects of the heat and conditions and many were dropping like flies. If I had chosen to throw it in and DNF, I would never know how close I was to actually finishing well if that was the case. Also, many of my friends today crashed and sustained injuries (I'm glad none were too serious) and some couldn't finish. One of my closest friends and teammates, Jim V., was unable to attend this race due to an injury sustained on a training ride and I decided that I was going to finish this race for him. There is another Jim V., (more famously known as "Jimmy V"), who was an inspiration to countless others in his lifetime, whose words were with me while I was out there. I love many of his quotes, but my favorite is perhaps the most simple, "Don't give up. Don't ever give up." As long as my bike was rideable and my muscles worked, I was going to keep moving forward. Even though I was suffering, there were some really fun parts of the course that just HAD to be ridden. One such section was a climb that was short and steep with a giant tree with exposed roots that split the trail in two just before the top, where it got a little steeper. Riders had to choose the left or right fork, but I saw a super fun line that went right up the middle, over a few roots and just to the right of the tree. I cleaned it on every lap and each time destroyed other riders in the process. It was so cool hearing them behind me expressing their astonishment. On the fourth lap, I hammered up it next to a girl riding for Overlook whom I chatted it up with leading to this hill and passed her right at the top using my sick line. I crested it and yelled, "I'm not even clipped in!" and stuck my feet out. She wasn't impressed.

Near the end, I was going so slow that the mosquitos were keeping pace with me, which is pretty sad if you can't outrun tiny winged insects. My slower pace also carried the onset of heat exhaustion, since I was no longer creating the apparent wind to cool me off. I was too nervous to eat all of my oatmeal this morning and knew I needed to replace some calories during the race, but I tried to eat a cookie at a rest stop and I just couldn't swallow it. I did stop at the beer tent on mile 8 for a cold PBR on lap 3 and 4, but couldn't finish either one. I was burping up Strawberry HEED, chocolate flavor Hammer gel, and PBR. Yuck-o. I wanted to hang around and see the results and awards afterwards, but there was little shade and nowhere to sit. I was feeling faint and sick and knew the best thing to do was get the AC cranking in the van to lower my core temperature and once hunger set in, get some food in my system. I know that my body has to feel hunger before I can feed it well after a race, so I kept the fluids flowing and headed to Qdoba Mexican Grill for a celebratory burrito. It hit the spot. Oh, and a few things I learned today about endurance racing: I will never, EVER wear a Camelbak again as long as I live and I will never ride a singlespeed in any race over 30mi. With a geared bike, if you tire out, it's possible to downshift and keep some kind of pace going. On an SS, it's all or nothing. I did give it my all on the homestretch, though. As I emerged from the singletrack, a Darkhorse singlespeeder was right behind me and said, "Come on, Dude!" and launched an attack. He thought we might have a mellow drag race to kind of push each other the last 1,000ft, but I had no idea of his intentions so I clipped in and sprinted for the finish and beat him by about 900ft.

So, all of these aforementioned ramblings sound like they sum up the worst part of today's experience and it may be hard for some to imagine how there even could be a best part. What was the best part? That there was simply nowhere else I would rather have been.

**Update** I learned today that I didn't finish in second-to-last place or even in the back half of the field like I thought I did. My willingness to press on and not quit was almost enough to let me reach one of my goals of getting a top 10 finish. Out of the 31 starters, only 17 finished. I got 11th. Fuck yeah!

Mano y mano

August 2nd was the Plattekill Mountain Challenge, stop #2 in the NYS MTB series, in Roxbury, NY. I heard a few racer friends of mine mention going to this event, so I signed up. Right up until the night before the race, when I checked to see who else was registered in my division, I was the only Cat 2 Singlespeed entrant. That sounded kinda cool, since all I had to do was show up, complete the course and I'd get a gold medal (my first ever). I was still hoping that others would register day-of so I would actually have to work for it. I was very pleased to see my friend, Sal from Darkhorse Cycles, riding back from registration. He said he saw that I was all by myself and he didn't want me to race alone. What a guy! As it would turn out, and as was evident in past races, Sal is a very worthy opponent and we regularly finish seconds apart, so this was going to be a grueling battle to see who would come out on top.

The race course was actually a ski slope with lots of singletrack linking the ski runs together. It was one of the most intense races I've ever done. The loop was 8 miles round trip and was essentially 4 miles up and 4 miles down. We were to do two laps. The lap began at the base and went straight up a ski run. While we were staging up, we could see racers pre-riding the course waaaaaaaaaaay up on the slope, traversing the ridge. I said, "We're going up there?" The riders looked so tiny! Climbing such a hill on a singlespeed is a brutal task, which maybe is why there were so few of us present that day.

Now, a lot of time has passed since the race and all the memories of the pain and suffering I endured and desire to sell all my bikes after the race have given way to only the best moments of the day. For example, on the climb up at the start of lap 2, a rain storm swept in over the course, but only on the top of the mountain. We ascended into thick clouds and what started out as a misty fog soon became torrential rain. I was soaked through, but it felt amazing! My glasses immediately became useless, so I ditched them. Unfortunately, they were very necessary on the ride down when the trails became rushing streams with actual mini rapids. I wished there were photogs present to have captured my visage as I scrunched up my face and left only enough space between my eyelids to keep the mud spray out, but still see where I was going.

Sal and I exchanged places all during the first lap. I made two wrong turns, one in the middle and one at the end of lap 1, where I lost the lead I had worked so hard for. The first wrong turn was due to a poorly marked turn and the second, well, I was just stupid. I followed a rider off course as he went to retrieve a bottle from his feeder station. Once I realized my error, I turned right around and climbed back up the hill to regain the course just in time to see Sal emerge from the woods. D'oh!

I caught him on the climb on the second lap and really began to work some strategy into my game plan. I knew that if Sal could physically see me, he would feel like he could catch me. So I did everything I could to get through a technical section at speed and then sprint long enough after to disappear around the next corner. I found out later that my plan had worked perfectly when he told me that once he lost sight of me, he just settled in and rode at his own pace. Me, on the other hand, I wanted as much distance between us as possible so I rode like the wind and hit everything as fast as I could. The downhill portion was very rocky with water rushing down it. My hands ached so badly from the vibrations and staying on the brakes, that I thought the whole time I would lose control and crash horribly. I knew that being out front means taking those risks, but also riding as smart as possible.

When I reached the finish line, the MC knew my name and my team and announced it over the PA as I crossed the line. That was pretty awesome. It was also quite intense waiting during the awards ceremony, seeing the podium and knowing that the top spot belonged to me. Even though I am proud of my achievement, I'm still hoping for an actual legitimate podium. My third place at KV was kind of a fluke, but hey, I'm not complaining! I learned also that my time would have earned me 3rd place in my age group, Cat 2 19-29 if I was racing with the geared guys, which is very cool. I felt good that day, I enjoyed the course, I was happy to do battle with my friend, and I came away with a gold medal. Best day of my life. :-)