Part 3

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

Bananas weren’t part of the plan, but they may have saved my day. 

The plan was to eat a combination of energy chews, cliff energy shots, and uncrustables, and touch no extra food at the SAG stops until perhaps the very end.   But as my stomach refuses to eat any of the things I had brought with me, I frantically eye the items available at the stops looking for something that might be able to be stomached.   Peanut butter bagels?  Look delicious, but a little dense.  Energy square things?  Too dense and pointy.  There was even some tequila available, but that probably wasn’t the best of ideas – I’d leave that as the very last fallback.   But the bananas… they just might work.

Bananas are the one thing my stomach has any interest in so I leap on them like a cat on a rat at every opportunity. I don’t think the SAG volunteers have ever seen someone so excited at discovering that bananas are present.    From Mesa Grande on I seek out bananas, raiding SAG stops like a bloodthirsty Banana Viking intent on hoarding all the bananas for himself.   I become bananas for bananas.  

I’m at mile 80 or so as I fly down an incredibly busy 78 alone towards San Pasqual Valley, once again buffeted by trucks, SUVs, and cars driven by people who really seem to be trying their best to kill me.    The desire to be off this road as soon as possible accelerates me to an impressive race speed quickly. 

At the bottom in San Pasqual Valley is another SAG stop, and by this time I have eaten very little in three hours, so I rejoice at the sight of more bananas, sucking them down like a vacuum cleaner in a door-to-door demo .  I have also caught back up to Christina who I had ridden with earlier and we have a brief chatty reunion before setting off again.  It turns out she has had some adventures and mishaps of her own, but is back on track now.

She hands me some concentrated electrolytic salt stuff to take to perhaps help avoid cramping in my left leg.  While the leg wasn’t a problem in the descent on the 78 it is now slowing me down again and Christina quickly takes off ahead of me, and I find myself again solo in the sandpit that is now Sandy Bandy.

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I heard from a lot of other people after the finish that the middle miles — not the end miles — had been their toughest, and this was the case for me too.  

Once I hit mile 100 riding back along the Lake Hodges trail west, I feel stronger than I had from miles 70 to 100.  By this point my leg is starting to numb out a bit so it isn’t bothering me quite as much.    Now I am just pushing forward, because that’s just what one does in a bike race.  I pedal on, and things feel more like an average, pleasant weekend ride.  Each mile I take is one mile closer to the finish.    Most of the difficult climbs are now behind me. Although I am just now passing my longest ride record set a couple of weeks earlier at 102 miles, I only have a little over 30 miles left to go in an area that I am very familiar with.

I am listening to some great music, still have some banana power in my legs, and my stomach is feeling better now than it has all day, so I start eating some of the food I have been carrying around all day.   This in turn gives me a boost of energy I haven’t felt since the start.    There’s also something about the flat, fast route west along Lake Hodges that brings the race back into my soul and I pick up speed.   Both climbing and descending in traffic can be exhausting, and so the calm flatness combined with the beauty of the trail on this part of the ride is a joy.    Doing some math in my head it is clear that I have more than enough time to make the finish line in the official time limit as long as I can avoid mechanical issues.

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Avoiding flats is part tire choice, part skill, and part luck.  A tubeless tire with sidewall protection is a good start.  Picking the right lines in the dirt to avoid rocks that are most likely to take out your sidewall is also crucial to improving your odds.  In the end though, there are always areas where there just aren’t any completely safe routes through or where you are blocked from the best lines by traffic, and you are at the whim of chance and luck – a mere spectator where you cross your fingers, your toes, and plow on through a sketchy stretch of rocks or protrusions, hoping that you make it through to the other side without hearing a “PSSSSssssssffffttt…!!”

Today luck would be with me, and I would avoid flats, even though at times it would feel as if someone had designed the course specifically with the intent of trying to take out tires.

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I hit mile 110 and my pace is the fastest it has been in hours.   I’m on a roll blasting through the Hodgendam gravel section and back towards Del Dios.   My right leg is starting to weaken from the extra effort it has taken on for my left over the past six hours, but at this point I’m too close to the finish to care.   I push up Del Dios, which is now in shadow from a sinking sun.    It’s getting colder and duskier, and it’s clear that I need to keep moving.

I arrive at the Oasis SAG stop at the bottom of Questhaven as it is closing down.   The party is over, and there aren’t any bananas left.   It doesn’t matter though, I’ve got enough energy in me to make it to the finish line.

I am happy to catch up with Shelly and Tanya again at the Oasis, and I learn they have been fighting their own battles.   Tanya has been sick periodically for a couple of hours now, and Shelly has stayed with her to help her through it the entire time.  In an astonishing show of strength and willpower Tanya has insisted on continuing to push forward.    She looks at me with the eyes of someone who is deadly focused and who is ready to make it to the finish line at any cost.

The Questhaven climb is the one I was least looking forward to of the entire ride because it goes on for what feels like forever when one is tired before turning into another climb up to Double Peak.  Today though I’ve got company, and Shelly blares out music from her handlebar speakers. 

We shout each other on, ignore our physical discomforts and climb that hill like we’re just getting started on the day.

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In BWR circles there is a bit of a whispered reverence to the Double Peak climb itself, with hushed stories of riders breaking down, walking up the hill, stopping to deal with cramps, or otherwise meeting their match.   For sure it is a steep climb, but it’s also fairly short. 

Two weeks before the event in an attempt to shock my body into quickly getting used to prolonged climbs I had done fourteen hill repeats of this very hill in an afternoon, and so the feeling of climbing Double Peak while being tired was freshly familiar.  I’ve ridden this hill so many times that I now ride on autopilot, counting strides in my head.  There’s no thinking, it’s just doing.  Stand up, 50 pedal strokes.  Sit down, until that sign.  Stand up, 50 more. Another push at the water tank.   I zig-zag up it a little more than I had on any other ascent in the past and ride it with an unusual right-leg-heavy stroke, my left leg once again starting to become useless as my ITB starts to make crunching noises.

Today, for me, Double Peak isn’t the soul breaker that many had built it up to be.  Perhaps that’s because my soul had been broken hours before and now I just don’t have one left to break.   Or maybe it’s the fact that this is it:  the last hill.   Every pedal stroke brings this final hill that much closer to completion.    

We make our way up Double Peak, singing along to music blaring from Shelly’s speakers, and climb to the top overlook.   Beautiful moody clouds dot the horizon, lit slightly from the dusk light that is starting to curtain over us. 

The temperature is starting to drop and Tanya is looking like she really wants this to be over so we quickly turn and head back down the hill towards the final gravel section.

We fly down Twin Oaks towards the finish line, the sun fully setting now and the sky getting decidedly darker and ominous.   I check my watch to note that it is 7:15, 45 minutes before the DNF cutoff and official race completion time of 8:00.   I’ve actually done it.   Not only completed the Belgian Waffle Ride, but done so within the official time limit.

I hear my number called out as I cross the finish line, and the people remaining cheer and I’m handed what will soon be my favorite new T-shirt:  the waffle completion shirt.  

Some of my friends are still here, and I am so happy to see Michael, Joe, Casey, Nikki, and so many others who have cheered me on and supported my attempt these last few weeks.

There is no dinner for me – the early worm apparently gets the dinner, but there are still waffles available and that’s just fine with me. Waffles to close out the Belgian Waffle Ride; fitting isn’t it?

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The BWR is a wonderfully run event. Every aspect of it moved like clockwork, and the quality of the SAG stops, route planning, recon rides, and course markings were first class. Not having to carry around a large amount of supplies with me because of the thoughtfully located supply stops and Velofix trucks made it a lot more approachable than it might otherwise have been.

Over the course of this six week adventure I learned a lot about endurance sports and became a better rider because of it.   I made numerous mistakes before and during the event, and hope that next time I take it on — and there will be a next time — it will be a little less chaotic, with better fitness, and at a faster pace.

I think we are all stronger than we give ourselves credit for, and that ultimately it’s our desire for comfort that gets in our way of doing bigger and more involved things — things which can only occur outside of our comfort zone. I think that giving the middle finger on occasion to comfort and taking on something like this event potentially sets us up to do greater things with our lives outside of cycling.

Fitness and preparation are important of course, but it is just as important to be determined.  By saying at the very start that quitting isn’t an option, you set yourself up to have a better chance of success because you leave yourself fewer paths that lead to failure.

The BWR has left me fitter right now than I have ever been in my life, and that’s probably worth the experience alone. But perhaps even more important is that the BWR experience brought me closer to other people:  those who I trained with, met at recon rides, and corresponded with online, and those who cheered me on and rode with me during the event itself.  There’s nothing like adversity to bring people together, and in a way, the Belgian Waffle Ride is nothing but adversity.  It brings people together because when things are difficult we need each other. 

And I think that’s just great.

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After stuffing the remains of my victory waffles in my mouth I say goodbye to my friends and arrive back at my car, covered from head to toe in filth.  I look like someone who has been rolling around in the dirt all day and digging for worms with my face.  The side of my leg and knee are now making disturbing cracking sounds as I walk, the structures of my IT band grating against my knee cap.   In four days time it would be considerably better, although not completely healed.

I hop around to the back of the car, stow my bike, upload to Strava, collect all of the trash from my pockets and find the garbage bag in the back.

As I open the front door of the car and glance at the seat, my eyes grow bigger and my head shakes from side to side slightly as a smile grows on my face.

There, on the driver’s front seat, illuminated in the dull yellow cabin light, lie two completely straight, unused twist-ties.