For every up there’s a down, and before I know it I’m flying downhill towards Ramona.
I am once again descending at a speed somewhat faster than I’m used to, caught up in a pack of riders cutting through the wind. Staying with other riders particularly in the exposed sections is key, as one saves approximately 30% effort drafting behind others. While continuing this would become a problem later when no one else was around me, right now I am with a fast, capable group.
The terrain flattens out and we naturally form a single file paceline, with the front rider pulling for a while into the wind and then breaking off and going to the back. I grin as I realize that this is the very first paceline I have ever actually ridden in. How ridiculous; one of the toughest road races in the country and this is my first paceline. Road riding of any sort is still completely new to me, but it seems clear enough what one is supposed to do. When it’s my turn at the front I stay out a little longer than I probably should, but I’m feeling strong, and I don’t want to start out my paceline career with a limp and lame contribution.
Our engine fragments once we get into Ramona and past the worst of the wind. As I ride to the 44 mile mark and coast into the second SAG stop, I celebrate a little as I realize I have beaten the 10:30 cutoff by 20 minutes, and am on a good pace for me. After a quick stop where I fill a water bottle for the climb up Black Canyon, I head out on my own up the gravel road and on to the 10 mile climb up to Mesa Grande.
For the first time since the start I find myself slowing down a bit now, the adrenaline wearing off and the fast start catching up to me. All of that climbing and pack riding and feeling strong has also made me neglect to eat. That’s not good.
There is one thing everyone – EVERYONE – told me before starting this event.
“DON’T NEGLECT TO EAT.”
Eating is important. You need to replenish your energy stores, and because the digestion process isn’t instantaneous, if you fall behind it takes a while for your body to catch up. And, in the interim of low energy stores your body has to fall back on other less-efficient metabolic processes which adds to fatigue. You just can’t let yourself get hungry. You need to force yourself to eat. Everyone knows this. I knew this.
Remembering when you should eat also isn’t that difficult. I watched the time fairly closely on my GPS unit and the plan had been to nibble a little bit of something every 30 minutes or so, or every hour in the worst case.
Unfortunately, it is one thing to KNOW that you need to eat NOW, and another thing to actually do it. Flying through a single-track dirt section is a tricky place to eat (particularly while you are making derailleur adjustments….). As is riding in a paceline where you’re tucked low and holding on for dear life, or being near large groups of other riders where focus and attention is key. I also suffered self-inflicted problems like snacks that were difficult to reach or which required complicated battles with zippers.
Fortunately I had loaded a water bottle with high-calorie electrolyte at the start of the race on advice from Nikki, and that was appearing to be a great idea, because my stomach isn’t very happy early on. Not throw-up unhappy, but a sort of “don’t you dare put anything in here” unhappy. This surprises me because I’m only at mile 50 or so, and I can’t remember a ride I have done where stomaching food was ever a challenge. Some combination of the elevated pace and whatever other new variables were in play had thrown something at me that I hadn’t experienced in training.
Uncrustables are wonders of modern food science and are synthetic, highly processed, compact peanut butter and jelly sandwich-like entities. These make up the cornerstones of my feeding strategy. I have three of them with me, and their consistency, delicious taste, and carbohydrate density have made them excellent food sources on my training rides. Right now though I can’t even look at the things. On top of those I have some cliff energy shot gels and some Gu chews. None of these seem appealing right now either, so I haven’t eaten much since the start of the race.
In my training rides, the climb up Black Canyon to Mesa Grande was one of my favorite parts of the route. It is a beautiful area with sweeping vistas down the valley, particularly this year with all the rain, and the gravel with its washboard sections and random ruts the entire way up keeps the brain engaged. It is an extremely long climb, yes, but the climb isn’t particularly steep in any one part. I crank up the volume of my music and as Aerosmith blares in my helmet I spin up the canyon, choosing a line that minimizes the worst of the washboard sections and sand areas.
The race leaders come flying by back south in the opposite direction as I approach the concrete dam-crossroads and their speed and focus amazes me. I ride by Paul Dunlap who is manning the Velofix station at this junction, shout to him, and continue up the canyon.
Then I feel it. My left calf which had started hurting at the bottom of the canyon is getting worse, and my entire left IT band is starting to hurt. That’s strange. This hasn’t happened before. I had ridden a few rides of 100 miles without any leg pain at all, and now on race day at mile 50 of 135 my left leg is starting to seize up? Oh come on.
And then a thought hits me and I shake my head in slow, sad realization. Oh no, no, no, no…. I did this to myself, didn’t I.
Don’t eat anything new on race day. Eat carbs in the days before a tough endurance race. Drink frequently. These are all things that everyone knows. I’d like to add one more to the list:
Don’t make fitting changes of ANY TYPE to your bike in the days before an event, no matter how minor they may seem.
One of the things that had bothered me most comfort-wise during training was that my bars were a little too low for a 11+ hour ride. My hands after a ride would be numb for days afterwards, and being bent over for so long had resulted in shoulder and back discomfort that hadn’t really gone away.
I also understood that changing my bike fit was an idea fraught with risks, but hoped that raising the bars just a little bit would be fine since its effect would be to simply shift some weight off my arms and hands into my butt, leaving my legs unaffected. It turns out I was wrong.
Raising the bars even a tiny bit somehow changed angles and distributions of force in my legs just enough to start to mess up my pedaling stroke.
As I continue to climb Black Canyon having not eaten a whole lot, and with a leg seizing up uncomfortably quickly and riders starting to pass me more and more frequently, it’s becoming apparent that it’s going to be a very long day indeed.
I went in knowing full well it would be a long day, of course, because I was attempting something that I wasn’t entirely prepared for.
When I had registered for the BWR it occurred to me that the only way I was going to get from my record ride length of 50 miles to 135 miles in 6 weeks was to take big leaps in distance and intensity each week.
With a bit of research I found that some of famous rider Graeme Obree’s ideas about training sounded like something that might work for me, and also something that would fit my time constraints. I couldn’t ride every day, but I could do two long, hard rides each week. I run my own business and can thankfully move things around to free up time during the week, so the plan was to ride very hard on each Wednesday and then once on the weekend, and rest the rest of the week.
Obree’s philosophy was that you do a hard workout, rest until you are fully healed, and then do a harder workout. You take on bigger challenges each time, but must be fully rested before taking them on. This made good biological sense to me: we get stronger not through training itself, but through healing/adaptation processes when we are resting. We actually get stronger not while we’re riding, but while we’re sleeping.
I sprinkled in some yoga classes twice a week to help with the flexibility and stretching that was required to counteract at least some of the muscle imbalances that hard riding creates.
Michael was a constant companion throughout the training period, and he imparted a lot of knowledge about the race, the course, and some of the common pitfalls. He would ride my first ever century with me.
As I mentioned earlier, one can adapt to longer and longer rides shockingly fast. I thought it would be weeks or months before I would be able to do 80 or 90 mile rides. Within four weeks my ride progression would look like this by mileage: 50, 73, 74, 78, 100, 102, then 14 times up Double Peak Drive for 8200+ feet, then a final 90 mile ride. Perhaps ramping up like this isn’t the most comfortable or advisable training approach, but it is possible. The trick was to take multi-day breaks after each ride to let the body heal up. Even so, by the end of the last ride at the end of week four my body was broken and worn down from the month of abuse, and a creeping illness heralded by a fever told me training time was over.
The BWR was two weeks away and if I was going to have any chance, I needed to let my joints and bones and brain heal properly. And so epic training turned into an epic taper, ending with a couple of short hard days of intervals which research suggested was the most productive type of activity to undertake within an endurance-ride taper period.
Michael catches up to me at the top of Mesa Grande where there is another SAG stop. I’m happy to see a familiar face and we exchange stories briefly. Shelly and Tanya are also there and their enthusiasm lifts my spirits. I get off the bike and try to stretch my calves out for a minute.
I consider trying to adjust my bike here and now to try to take some pressure off my calves, but if making fitting changes before an event is a bad idea, then making fitting changes in a 135 mile event when you’re not sure what you’re doing is probably an even worse one. I’m hoping this is a temporary issue that will go away, knowing deep down that’s it’s probably not and probably won’t.
There is a strong headwind now, and riders are setting off towards Santa Ysabel in groups. I find myself trying to put as little pressure as possible on my left leg, pedaling mostly with my right as the left one has quickly become quite useless. Every pedal stroke brings shooting pain into my knee, and the thought of bending it doesn’t seem appealing. My gimpy-leg leaves me under powered and unable to keep up with other groups of riders on the ascents which leaves me to ride solo into the wind.
Little do I know that falling behind now will ultimately force me to ride solo for most of the next 70 miles.
The thing about riding on highway 78 is that it’s sketchy at the best of times. Today though, drivers seem to have been actively hired to try to take me out. They’re passing way too close, with trailers whipping back and forth behind cars in the breeze, huge RVs refusing to give me room, with great WHOOMPS! of wind smacking into me as they fly by way too fast. This probably isn’t the safest place to be riding solo on a busy weekend.
The leg issue has also reached a point where I need to do something fast or I’m either going to be DNFing out of this thing in a hurry or arriving at the finish line at midnight.
I veer off the 78 into a patch of tall grass and pull out my multi-tool. It feels like my leg is overextending just a bit as I pedal, so I lower my seat just a tiny bit and get back on. Almost immediately I notice a difference and the pressure is off my calves and knees and I’m able to return to a much more sensible pace without the shooting pain. Lowering the seat has moved more of the effort into my hamstrings and quads. Yesss! I regret not making this change earlier.
I descend down the Lake Sutherland Dam road, happy to be able to rest my legs, and my optimism is starting to return to where it was at the beginning of the race. The route winds back down to Black Canyon, where I will now head south back the way we had come before.
Black Canyon road is of course exactly the same as when I rode up it earlier, with one glaring difference: It is now the largest sandpit in San Diego county.
There are a few things that you should know if you suspect you will be running towards the rear of the BWR field. These are not complaints – if you want to avoid these things ride faster — but you should be aware that the race is more difficult and you will encounter more obstacles if you are slower.
If you are slow you will likely be forced to run solo because of a lack of enough other riders or at least other riders who are paced consistently enough for you to want to ride with. SAG stops start running out of food and your choices become more limited. Rear riders also miss out on some of the event perks like photos and dinner, both of which may shut down before you get to them.
One of the other inadvertent “rear rider challenges” becomes apparent the moment I start riding back down Black Canyon: the gravel sections of the course steadily break down as thousands of wheels pass through them. By the time the rear of the field gets to them they are very, very different than they were at the start of the day.
Large sections of Black Canyon now have the consistency of a beach, and the trip back down is a unique adventure of its own. I find myself grinning like a fool as I plow down the sand dunes on my bike, shouting out things like “yeaaaaah!!!” and “wheeeeeee!!” quite enjoying this new character of the canyon. I’ve always preferred challenging terrain over flat, boring terrain. I’m feeling good, this stupid sand has lifted my spirits, and I’m ready to get this show back on the road.
That is, until my low-grip 32s violently slide out in the sand at speed. I fling my body to counteract the slide, which tears at my already tender calf as it gets twisted while clipped in. I avoid a crash, but pain rips through my left leg as it feels like I’ve really strained my calf good this time. I shout out some choice expletives and move around various body parts to make sure everything is still mostly intact.
As I am collecting myself an official BWR van comes by headed down the canyon and a head looks out the window.
“We’re taking riders who are done back to the start line. Want a lift back?”
Really? Do I look THAT bad? Do I look like someone who NEEDS a lift back to the start line?? I look down at my dirt covered legs, feel the grit on my dirt covered face, and consider my weird hobbled one-legged peddling stroke and the way I am holding on to my left leg in pain. I probably do, I think.
“NO THANKS!” I shout.
There will be no quitting. Not from me. Not today.
Belgian Waffle Ride 2019 