Triple D 2011: The Photos!

I thought I’d upload some pictures from the recent Triple D winter bike race.  Many people don’t know what winter bikers look like; these pictures will help you be able to spot them from a safe distance.  If you see people matching this description, run inside and lock your doors!  Beware, for if you come in contact with them you will surely find yourself trapped in a conversation about running low tire pressure, clothing that ‘wicks’, and people named ‘Larry, Darryl, and Marge’ that will actually turn out to be bike parts, not people.  A strange group, this one.  The safest thing to do is to seek warm shelter, for they avoid following you, instead preferring to suffer outside in the cold.  Wait a few minutes, and they will begin to fade out of sight at a speed of somewhere between 3 mph (pushing) and 6 mph (pedaling).

Anyway, here are some pictures from the race:

8:30 a.m., ready to leave the house. I'm glad I live ten minutes from the starting line; short drive to get there, and a short drive to get home.

Not a typical sight at the Grand Harbor hotel. It's interesting to see the different approaches to riding in the winter. I was definitely in the 'this is what I already have' group. Mine is the red Fisher on the right.

My wife Katie and I at the start line. Her warm coat is covering up her 'I'm with stupid' t-shirt.

My sisters each made long drives from out of town to show their support. They are awesome. Both are Ironman finishers, and they would need that experience with tremendous suffering to combat the boredom of waiting for me to make it to the next intersection at 5 mph so they could cheer me on.

This was early in the race, before the pushing started. If you close your eyes and concentrate, you can just about hear me saying 'This isn't so bad..." This will be followed by the sound of Karma laughing wildly at me.

Let the pushing begin! My gps tells me that we went from 642 ft to 948 ft in barely two miles.

Misery loves company. I was relieved to see that I wasn't the only one walking my bike.

Luckily, you don't have to pay into the elevation savings account without making the occasional withdrawal. This short, steep downhill section was fun, but seeing the sharp left turn at the bottom made me want to cry. No carrying speed up into the next hill here.

And the summit is reached! We were so far above sea level that the oxygen up there was nearly nonexistent! Either that, or I am terribly out of shape.

Finally! A hill that I can pedal up. Just barely though; my heart rate monitor stopped displaying numbers and started showing arrows pointing to the nearest hospital.

Pedaling along...

Riding along Humke road with encouragement. This would be the last pavement I would see in the race. There would be more pavement later near the end, but my lights were fading pretty fast by then, so I really didn't see much of it.

Here I am being spit out at the bottom of the infamous Level B section of Humke Road. GPS shows me losing 400 feet of elevation in less than two miles, with the grade reaching 15-20%. Can't really believe the GPS too much though, because it failed to display 'You are out of control!' right before I got dumped on my ass about five minutes before this picture was taken. Later on it showed the phrase 'You have absolutely no business doing something like this.', so it is occasionally very accurate.

After 20 miles or so, I made it on to Heritage Trail. This was more familiar ground, as I had been riding out here a few times already this winter. Would I rather brave 10 degree weather and see views like this, or sit on the trainer for an hour and watch reruns? I think I'll take the Hallmark card option, cold notwithstanding.

Finally, the halfway point! This was my original goal, so anything beyond this point would be considered a success for me.

I don’t have a lot of pictures after the halfway point.  It was dark for most of it, so there wasn’t much to see, and I was pretty busy changing a tire, pumping up a tire with a slow leak, looking for broken tire lever parts, and hunting down the bite valve from my camelback.  There was even some pedaling!  And then, finally, after six more hours of s l o w l y traveling along, I reached the finish.

65 miles and 12 hours later, the bike is not looking too much worse for wear. It was much more prepared for this than I was.

"Who's this pudgy guy, and why is he so damn happy to be dead last?!"

As is so often true with photographs, they don’t do it justice.  It’s hard to explain what I went through during this race, what I saw, and why I was so damn happy for pretty much the entire time.  I guess you just have to try it for yourself.  See you there next year…

Triple D 2011: The Race

Now that I’ve explained my lack of preparation, it is time to discuss my unavoidable lack of performance.

The race was set to begin at 10:00 a.m.  I left the house later than expected (setting the tone for the day), but still made it to the hotel conference room in which the registration was being held in time to get signed in by nine bells.  I spent the next twenty minutes wandering around and checking out the bikes against which I would be racing.  Lots of interesting stuff.  Sure, I wanted a fat-tired bike before I arrived, but now I REALLY wanted one.  Lots of Surly Pugsleys, a few Salsa Mukluks, a 9:zero:7, (which is fantastic just for what the name represents) and Lance Andre’s Fatback, which just sat next to the registration table setting the bar for a what a racing snow bike can be.  Of course, I didn’t see any bright red bikes there besides mine.  In my mind, the most important decision when picking a bike for this race was ‘which will be the most visible to the search party sent to find me?’  Titanium is nice and all, but it won’t draw attention to me when I’ve crashed into the woods and become immobile.  I’ll take my bright red and white bike, thankyouverymuch.

We rolled out at a little after 10:00 a.m. from the behind the Star Brewery.  We headed north through Dubuque out to West 32nd street.  At this point, the race officially began.  I knew this not because I was at the front and saw it, but because earlier we had been told that this would be where the race would began.  I was content to hang out at the back so as not to slow down any of the real athletes who were competing in this race.  It is important to note that just because this was going to be a fun little experiment for me it did not mean that most (if not all) of the other competitors were truly impressive athletes bent on winning.  In fact, I think it says something about this race that the capability of entrants ranged from them, on the high side, to me, on the subterranean side.

Once we crossed West 32nd we started on a really rough, snowy bike path.  Last year this section was only rideable by a very few (among which I could not count myself), so the fact that this year I was not pushing my bike made me more than happy to get beat up as I rolled over the frozen human footsteps and canine deposits.

From there we crossed under John Deere road, headed across US 52, and then headed off into the snowmobile trails running alongside the north side of the Northwest Arterial.  This made for a couple of fun downhills, a few miserable uphills, and a few off-camber, barely rideable sections.  My heart rate was pegged right away, which I knew wasn’t going to be good if I had planned on making it more than an hour into the race.  I tried to balance this out by nearly falling several times on the steep downhill sections of the trails.  It turns out that this does not, in fact, balance out a raised heart rate on uphills, but actually contributes to it being high.  Who knew?

I did have a secret advantage; one that I didn’t notice any other competitor having.  At nearly every intersection, along almost every road next to the trails, and just about any other spot where you can fit a minivan I had my family cheering for me.  My wonderful wife, my two beautiful daughters, and my fantastic sisters were following along and cheering me on, complete with ‘Happy Ride Daddy’ and ‘Happy Daddy Go!’ signs.  It might have seemed a little out of place in this type of race, but I can say that I appreciated it.  They seemed to enjoy cheering me on, and really enjoyed seeing the other racers as well.  I do want to mention to the several female racers that my 3 and 5 year old daughters were particularly excited to see that there were girls racing their bikes in the snow.  I hope that they would assume that there were women capable of doing this race as well, but I’m sure it helps for them to see it directly.

After 20 miles or so of snowmobile trails, the course climbed up on to Humke road.  After a brief respite of paved road, the course then went onto a Level B section of the road.  “Level B” is the county’s designation for roads that were designed to cause injury.  I think most roads are probably Level A.  “Level A” == “avoid injury.”  “Level B” == “cause injury.”  I don’t know if there are any Level C roads in the county, but if there are you can bet it just a short concrete launch ramp over the edge of a bluff with a pile of skeletons at the bottom intermingled with rusty old mountain bike frames.  Level B is somewhere between a four-lane highway and that.  Needless to say, there is a spot on the output of my bike computer where the speed graph goes from over 20 mph to an abrupt zero.  I laid it down pretty fantastically there; my only disappointment is that there wasn’t a witness to it.  Luckily, I landed in pretty soft snow, and I was back up and flailing down the hill out of control almost immediately.  Because I’m sure the 20 seconds I picked up by going way too fast downhill was more than worth the increased chance of breaking my face, right?  It wouldn’t have made sense to take it easy down the hill.  Nobody turns down free speed!

Once past the Level B section, the course ended up on Heritage Trail, the local rail-trail.  At this point, it was relatively flat, and the course conditions were pretty good.  I found solace in trying to stay in the track of someone running a set of Schwalbe tires; Nobby Nic maybe?  Whatever the tire and whoever the rider, it tended to follow the part of the trail where I could ride faster and easier.

It is probably worth explaining that riding in snow is inherently different than normal off road riding.  The challenge is in finding the easy spot.  On any given trail there are subtle differences in the surface that are sometimes invisible, but they are there.  One experienced rider described the change in sound from a ‘crunching’ sound that was synonymous with difficult pedaling to a sudden silence, indicating that a slightly harder surface was now under the tires.  You can instantly feel a slight acceleration.  It is hard for me to describe accurately, but it makes riding a fairly flat and wide open trail more challenging; rewarding attentiveness and careful tire placement with a little bit of speed and slight drop in required exertion.

So, having made it through the ‘difficult’ part of the race, it was now time to concentrate on keeping a decent pace, not overheating, getting some calories in, and not breaking anything.  I had already overheated and shed some clothes, then got cold and put them back on.  At some point my front derailleur had lost it’s grip on the shifter cable, but since it was in the small ring it wasn’t causing me any problems.  I figured it would be easy enough to pull the cable back through and tighten it up, but time spent doing that was time spent not pedaling.  At the pace I was maintaining on the trail (7-8 mph) I needed to worry more about forward motion and less about ensuring that I could get into my big rings.  So seeing as how my pace wasn’t really decent, I had already overheated, and I had broken some stuff already, I concentrated on getting calories in.  I thawed out a Clif bar and some gel under my jersey and managed to get those eaten, and I had been drinking a ton.  I wasn’t sure how much was getting absorbed and how much of it was just going through the system, but I was finally able to keep my heart rate down under 160, so I figured that would help.

I made it to the Dyersville checkpoint at almost exactly 5 hours in.  I was pretty happy to have made it this far.  I parked my bike outside Chad’s Pizza and went inside, eager to change into some dry clothes and get something to eat that was actually hot, instead of just ‘thawed.’  I probably stayed here too long, even though I only had one small slice of pizza and some corn.  I’m not sure why the corn sounded good; it was hot, and it had salt and pepper on it.  I figured that since it was a vegetable that it had to be somewhat good for me, and even had a brief image in my head of marathon runners flying through a checkpoint, grabbing a small cup of corn and tossing it back, and chasing it with Gatoraid.  I put on a dry base shirt, an insulated jersey, some dry socks, and then headed back out onto the course.  I figured I would be able to make it to Farley for sure, and that I would evaluate whether I would continue on at the point.  So far, except for some major cramping that I had been able to slow down and pedal through, I really hadn’t been having any problems.

I had ridden about a mile past Farley when I noticed my front tire was completely flat.  I’m not sure how long it had been flat.  Looking back at the speed graph of my bike computer I would guess that it had been flat since late November, but it’s more likely that it went flat right around the Farley tunnel.  I figured I would try to throw a tube into it, and if I didn’t get too cold, I’d keep riding, and if it didn’t work out that way, I would call my wife and go home and shower.  I called her to let her know my intentions, and set to changing the tire.  It was a little bit of a fight to get the tire off of the rim.  Not sure if this was because of the sealant, or the cold, or because I’m weak, or what, but it took longer than I expected.  I got the tube in, and spent a lot of effort trying to get the tire back over the bead.  Eventually, I got it, pumped it up, and kept on riding.  I was just north of Epworth now, and I knew Graf was only four miles away.  I was actually thinking ‘Graf would be a respectable place to throw in the towel, that’s over 75% of the distance’, but once I got there, I felt pretty good and decided to keep going.  At this point it’s already 9 hours into the race, and I know I’ve got probably three hours left to go.  My new tube in the front was leaking slowly.  I was stopping every few miles to pump it up; I figured if I stopped to change it again I would get too cold.  The whole time I was constantly surprised that I wasn’t in more pain, cramping more, or slowing down even more, but since none of that was happening, I really didn’t have a good reason to quit, so I just kept going.

I made it to the mandatory checkpoint at the Handle Bar in Durango around 8:30 or so, which was 10+ hours into the race.  I was quite obviously the last one to get here.  The bartender gently broke the news to me that I was last, checked me in, and then called the race organizers to let them know that I wasn’t lost, that I was planning on finishing.  I ordered some hot chocolate and some mini-tacos, and laid my gloves, jacket, and outer jersey by the fireplace to dry out a little bit.  I was there for about twenty minutes, and then loaded back up for the final push home.  I now had some drier clothes, and my front tire was actually holding air.  What could go wrong?

Well, nothing, except that I got lost.  In the town that was born in raised.  Twice.  (I got lost twice; I didn’t mean that I was born and raised here twice.  That wouldn’t make any sense at all.  Not that getting lost did either.)

The first incident was caused by the tunnel under John Deere road that led back towards the bike trail being completely shrouded in darkness.  I saw all kinds of tire tracks heading up a steep snowmobile trail just past the turn.  By this time my brain no worky so well, so I just got off the bike and started pushing.  It took a good five minutes before I realized what was going on, and then turned around and headed back down the hill, and then found the tunnel, and was back to getting abused by the rough trail to get downtown.  Once I got into downtown Dubuque I tried to remember which street would lead back to the road under the train tracks near the Star Brewery.  Everything east of White street is kind of a mystery to me; at one point I ended up riding backwards down a one-way street.  Anyone who has spent much time in Dubuque realizes this is any easy mistake to make, but they can still laugh at me if they like.

Finally, about 12 hours and 10 minutes after I started, I rolled my bike into the lobby at the Grand Harbor hotel.  I walked into the second floor conference room (where the awards ceremony had probably ended an hour earlier) and asked if it was too late to check-in.  Traci, one of the organizers gave me a big hug and started a big round of applause for me.  And that was awesome.  Highlight of the day.  I’m in a room full of people who did this same race in probably half of the time it took me, and they are telling me that I did well.  I’ll take that any day.

I spent some time talking to people, ate a cupcake, and then headed home.  At the advice of my sister, I tried to take an ice bath to ward off the impending soreness in my legs.  THIS WAS BY FAR THE DUMBEST THING I DID ALL DAY!  It was the first time that I really got cold!  My feet shut down instantly.  I couldn’t feel my legs.  Horrible!  Why would anyone do this?  And she thinks I’m crazy for riding my bike in cold weather?  No way.  I took a regular human shower with warm water, and then went to bed.

Looking back on the whole thing, I’ve got more to say, but I’ll save that for another post.

Triple D 2011: Preparation.

I entered a bike race this past weekend called ‘Triple D’.  It was a fun one.  I entered it last year, but did not finish.  This year, I had better luck.  More on that later.  Anyway, once again, in an effort to provide information to others on how to prepare (or, more likely, how NOT to prepare) for a winter endurance bike race, I am going to write a little bit about what I did.  Pay attention, dear readers, for it is possible that both of you may find something useful here!  I will try to break up the precious needles of information into multiple haystacks, instead of burying them deeply in one long post.  For this first one I will list what I did to prepare.  Don’t worry, it will be a short one.

Training:  On a scale of 1 to 10, with ‘1’ being ‘I am in a medically-induced coma’ and ’10’ being ‘I occasionally get off of my bike to do jump squats, but then ride the other 23 hours a day’, I would rate my training regimen as a solid ‘2’, or ‘I rode my bike a three times in December and three times in January, and some of them were even outside.  The longest ride was for three hours, going about 20+ miles.  (yes, that’s right; I was averaging a little over 6 mph.  No sense in overtraining.)

Bike:   I rode the mountain bike that I ride the rest of the year in the woods in the same configuration as I ride it in the woods.  It is a Fisher X-Caliber; a basic 29″ aluminum mountain bike.  (No special snow bike here, but not for lack of wanting.)  It is set up just as I bought it when new, except that it has bigger tires on it:  29×2.35 tires (Bontrager FR3s, in case anyone cares).  These worked MUCH better in the softer snow than the narrow studded tires I ran last year.  I was running them tubeless, which allowed me to drop down to about 11 psi without any trouble.  (I know, I know; tubeless tires have problems in severe cold, etc. etc.  I liked how they worked for regular mountain biking when tubeless, and I figured if they wouldn’t hold air I could always put a tube in.  More on that later)  Anyway, I rode in the snow several times, and I would say the bike worked well.  By ‘worked well’ I mean ‘I was able to occasionally maintain forward motion.’  I knew if the conditions were really soft I would have trouble, but if the trail was packed at all I should be able to ride.

Shoes:  I splurged this year and bought some nice Lake winter cycling boots.  This was the single best decision I made about this race, other than deciding to do the race in the first place.  Last year I screwed around with regular shoes, extra socks, toe warmers, shoe covers, and so on.  Pain in the ass.  I’m glad I got the Lake boots.  I knew I made the right decision when I showed up for a 15 degree New Year’s Day ride with the local bike club and over half of the people were wearing the same type of boots.

Clothing:  Nothing exotic here; a pair of Sugoi insulated bib tights, some waterproof pants, a pair of cheap non-cotton long johns, some arm warmers, a WarmFront vest, some polypropylene base shirt, a regular bike jersey, and a snowmobiling jacket that was big enough to fit over my Hydrapak backpack.  Some insulated cycling gloves and a Sugoi balaclava to round it all out.  I had tried out this setup several times, and it seemed to work pretty well down to about zero degrees.  If the mercury receded below that I would be putting on an additional insulated bike jersey and/or calling for a ride.

Nutrition:  100 oz. reservoir full of Infini-T, some gel, and some Clif bars.  I had done some long (for me, meaning around 3 hours) rides on any empty stomach and went through plenty of Infini-T, always with good results.  By ‘good results’ I mean ‘I went very slow but did not vomit.’

Strategery:  It would be an insult to strategy to say I had a strategy.  More of a plan.  Or a plan to plan.  Anyway, I was planning to plan on riding until it wasn’t fun anymore.  That’s what I did last year, and that worked pretty well.  I was hoping to make it to Dyersville, which was the halfway point, but I didn’t really know what to expect.  Even halfway would be considered a personal success, since I knew I was going into the race underprepared, underequipped, and undertrained.  (But overweight, in order to keep the whole over/under thing balanced)  I did spend some time stretching the day before, and I did cut my hair.  Really, what more could I have done?

As you might have guessed from the hints above, I wasn’t really ready for this.  I had fully planned on training much more, weighing much less, and having a much better plan on doing the race.  That being said, nothing was going to stop me.  From entering, that is.  There was a no shortage of things that were probably going to stop me from finishing.