Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Shift One: Borrego Springs CA to Blythe CA
Once the opening ceremonies were complete Jeremy and Ken began their 5 hour shift. This left enough time for me to return to Point Loma, grab a shower and one last meal from home. Sounds relaxing right? It was anything but...
Tobias was my riding partner, the two of us would split our five hour shift trading pulls approximately every 15 minutes. This system allows you to ride very close to your limit for a short period of time and then take a short breather before repeating the process.
Well, our Team Car (A Nissan Pathfinder) was overstuffed at the start.
This would be our quasi-home for the next week and the compaction was a problem. Ed, Tobias and I would use this vehicle not only to arrive at our appointed shift but also for the six-hour commute immediately after in search of our hotel for the night, this generally meant driving 330 miles up the course from where we left off.
During these long hours, you must have access to spare bike parts, food, water and a whole host of other racing incidentals from your race radio to bike lights for night riding. Not just access, FAST access. During the race shift there is no time to dig and after there is no energy to dig. Tobias runs a bike touring operation in Europe and would be leaving directly after the race. This meant some extra baggage would be coming along in our truck which created a few problems.
First, Ed informed us the car was too jammed ("stuffed to the roof") at the start and we started trying to figure out what to do. Originally, the plan was to go to Home Depot in Point Loma and buy roof straps after the race started and then rush out to Borrego to start our shift. I suggested immediately removing out all non-RAAM stuff and shipping to Annapolis. Tobias did not seem interested in this option. So this Home Depot Plan is the scheme that found me nervously sitting in Point Loma watching the hours tick by. We had to race in Borrego starting at 7PM and as the clock raced past 3PM I knew the plan was failing. I called Ed a few times but he really had his hands full trying to navigate and get Tobias back in the car after he (at the last minute) was required to ride with Ken for an hour in case he flatted (no support vehicles are allowed on the course through the urban blight of Valley Center and other Dickensian tracts).
I told my wife to gather the kids and that they would have to drive me somewhere to jump into the team car. She had talked about taking the kids out and had she done that this would have been a REAL disaster. Ed finally called and acknowledged our original plan failed. My wife, kids (three game-ready troopers) and I flew out of the house within three minutes and drove to Poway road to meet the fellas.
Before I left however, Ed pointed out he was lost and had no idea how to get to the race course. In the three minutes before leaving I used Google Earth to plot our arrival on the course and the route through Julian and down the Banner Grade. This was VERY stressful because a small mistake would cause us to be late.
I found Ed, Tobias and Izzy (super-cool crew member) filling up at a gas station and we were off heading east through winding roads, a date with RAAM looming less than a few hours away. This pre-race cluster was unwelcome but, it turns out, is pretty much par for RAAM. You learn to expect the unexpected. By the end of the race, this phrase had a much deeper meaning.
The Drive to Our Start and Food
We started heading east toward Borrego. In preparation for the race, I tried to pack as much healthy food as possible in order to maintain performance on the bike. One of these items was the, soon-to-be-legendary, "chicken bag" which was a Ziploc with a few pounds of breast I had grudgingly tossed on my outdoor grill the night before. I made so much it was clear I should give some away. In a hasty exchange with Jeremy (he is also my nearby neighbor) earlier that morning we exchanged a chicken bag for my bike computer which he had loaded with GPS RAAM route data. Turns out, this little exchange bore much fruit as Jeremy was able to get good protein calories from the bird meat and his (and Brad Exmeyer's) work on the GPS was a life-saver on the road.
Ed (my dad) was our driver which meant he is not only on the crew he was responsible for getting us to the right place at the right time. As you will come to know, this is no mean task and Ed excelled in his role and saved our skins many times with his conscientious work-ethic and encyclopedic knowledge of the rules which he had spent plenty of time reviewing before the race. The rules have teeth too as officials are free to levy 15 minute penalties at their discretion. I mention Ed here because the drive to Borrego was an "E" ticket. Nobody would pay for this though.
Ed grew up in the rural America of the 1950's and 60's. This was the Car Era, where young men prided themselves on the ability to do full-speed 360's without spilling a drop of their drink. Sadly for us, the extremely tortuous road called Banner Grade gave Ed an opportunity to whip the fully loaded SUV with three white-knuckled passengers down the hill like a diving falcon. Worse, his outrageously technical driving apparently does not even require his full attention and Ed starts talking about the old days and the joy ripping along country roads while contemporaneously killing us. Seven days of this?
After a while, I think Ed noticed nobody else was really talking to him for the inability to form words in the dual-state of terror and nausea. He kindly offered to "ease up" to which all passengers readily accepted. I did not really notice any change in his driving thereafter but somehow we made it down the hill and it was clear we had a driver ready to push that Pathfinder as hard as we intended to push our bodies. Metal. The team was better for it even if that drive really sucked and I get seasick just thinking about it. It turns out, every rider and crew member came through and showed their mettle before the race was over. This is part of what makes the whole adventure noteworthy.
Ride Time 7PM: ...and its well after 6!
My glance at Google Earth hours earlier left me with the impression we would hit a "T" in the road marking our intersection with the course. At this point we would contact our team mates and figure where to meet them on the road. I read the "T" wrong and our road simply kept going straight. A half an hour earlier we had seen many support vehicles take a hilly left and head northeast toward Borrego Springs. As we screamed down the road, obviously, the "T" never appeared and we became disoriented and (for me) felt sick that we had driven off the course for nearly an hour. With nothing but flat terrain ahead, I told Ed to "stop, now, here...this instant" to figure out how bad things were.
We got ahold of Matt Butler (Ken and Jeremy's driver) who relayed they were coming down the Glass Elevator which is the long hill which ushers riders into the desert plains to be traversed that evening. OK, we were alright on physical position and just had to backtrack a few miles and get set up for our first exchange. We decided I should ride first because Tobias had already ridden an unexpected hour with Ken at the start. We suited up, checked radios and made sure everything was ready to race!!!
My First Pull: the exchange
The race rushes at you. Once you see your team car, it will be on you before you know it. Its even worse when Jeremy is driving the train. That guy is fast. He is also a serious competetor and I knew he would come off that hill breathing fire. In RAAM, rider exchanges during the day are pretty easy, the guy riding comes charging up to the rider taking over from him and must "cross wheels" which effectively passes the baton to the new guy who then takes off as fast as he can.
So now, after all this preparation and training RAAM is rushing at me at about 35MPH in the person of Jeremy Gustin. I clicked into my pedals and ramped up to 25MPH, I took a quick peek back and Jeremy is approaching but not as fast as I'd thought. I'd made a rookie mistake of taking off too early and too fast. Having never even done a single pull what I did not know is that the rider ending his pull (and even more ending his five-hour shift) comes up for the exchange with NOTHING left in the tank. That man will destroy himself to put his final strength on the road for the team. Due to my poor execution I was terrified to hear Jeremy screaming "slow down!!!" at me.
As our wheels finally crossed I muttered to him "oh **** man I blew that." He took his last breath to say something about it being alright. Today, Jeremy does not even remember the exchange. You go to deep and unconscious places during RAAM. Now I know.
Heart Rate Primer: the unscientific sort
Most riders wear heart rate monitors or less common power meters which are used as benchmarks for proper exertion. These things are particularly useful on RAAM because you are riding unfamiliar roads under variable wind, surface and elevation conditions. Also, when you ride in darkness you are deprived of your normal visual markers which you might use to gauge your effort in terms of speed or even whether you are climbing a hill. For this, the heart rate will tell a rider if they are working hard or, perhaps, too hard or in "the red" (which means beyond your limit) in a way which will soon cause collapse and a serious loss of power.
I am a modest "stat geek." While I believe some data is helpful, my interest in riding could be quashed were I to analyze each pedal stroke. My teammate Ryan Denner is a good example of someone who took his preparation very seriously and successfully used a coach, power data and a methodical approach to get ready for RAAM. I use some science and the rest is METAL.
Over the years, I have found that a Heart Rate of 165 Beats Per Minute is likely my lactate threshold. This is entirely unscientific but it is really relevant to me as a rider. If I'm riding at 150 there is more power to be had. 185 means death shall soon come and I am riding waaay over my head. I mention this because as I go through the race I'll tell you my HR at the time and you will know how close to snapping I am.
My First Pull: that horrible sound
After my bungling start-stop-start exchange with Jeremy, I pushed the pedals in anger for the first time in RAAM. It was around 90 degrees, dry gusts and lots of suspended dirt in the air, my lungs were burning within 20 seconds.
I was riding my Time Trial bike and I gave it all I had to get up to speed and then settle into a hard rhythm which I would hold for 15 minutes. My heart rate was 185! Too high. This pace was not sustainable, I was now alone with my thoughts. Questions flooded in: Could I have trained more? Will I let the team down? Why am I riding at 185? I did not have long to consider these doubts.
My rear tire flatted with a loud crack much like a gunshot! A cyclist nightmare. I've been riding seriously for more than 20 years so I knew what to do, it was a question of how fast. I instinctively raised my arm high above my head to indicate a problem to any ViaSat entity that might see. Out of pure luck, the follow vehicle was right there. I screamed "rear flat!!!" into the follow vehicle and saw Veronica Acosta (ViaSat Media) eyes' were as big as saucers. This was the first of two times I screamed in her direction and caused this reaction.
Barry (crew member extraordinaire) was on the spot, fast, with a spare rear wheel in hand. He was calm and professional and this caused me to come back to earth and get down to the business of changing the rear wheel. My TT is peculiar (with rear facing dropouts) so a wheel change requires particular care and attention. Lousy work could result in a dragging rear brake or a misaligned wheel dragging on the chain stays (frame). I took a moment to make sure the new wheel was properly seated and it was again 'go time.' The crew had saved the day here for the entire operation, it was the first of many times this would happen. We lost a few minutes but avoided a disaster. That's RAAM in a nutshell.
After this initial shock, Tobias and I settled into a very fast series of pulls. We were flying across the desert, regularly cruising near 40MPH with a nice tailwind. This was really cool because if there is one thing I relish its the chance to make people trying to figure out where to exchange riders have to re-think because you are simply tearing up the course and obliterating "projections" as you rocket down the road.
Poor Ed was trying to give us 15 minute pulls but we were hauling so fast (remember 30MPH means you are clicking off two-minute miles) he was struggling to get in front far enough in front of the active rider to set up for exchanges. Ha Ha.
In a similar vein, when you ride at night, the follow car has to stay within 30 feet of the rider meaning they must be "one unit." This means on a dark winding road where a rider can readily hit 45 miles an hour there is a poor soul driving the follow car trying to stay on the rider, negotiate corners and "not break the speed limit." Once again, Ha Ha.
This is my flatted wheel moments after I took off being discussed by Ken, Jeremy and Barry
Here is Ken mentioning my flat
Battle in the Desert
Team Surf USA is a four man team headed by celebrity big wave surfer Laird Hamilton. Once we hit the right turn at Salton Sea we began a back and forth battle which went on for, seemingly, hours. We heard Laird got sick at Lake Hensaw so we never saw him. It could be this was their intended rotation and it was Laird's turn to rest. So it was three Surf USA's against two ViaSat and brutal combat was on the menu.
We first encountered these guys on my pull. Now that it was dusk the lights from their Team Vehicle was a carrot and I jumped into the Pain Lake to close on them. For "Night Riding" RAAM imposes many safety-based restrictions such as staying on the follow vehicle's headlights and such. Violations carry big time penalties and this was my first few hours as a RAAM rider.
Once I reeled in Team USA, I did not pass them because the road looked like a freeway and rules state there is no passing on freeways. I was pretty annoyed as I watched my heart rate drop and realized I would not get to go all out. At this point Barry, crew member extraordinaire, saw me letting up and cracked through on race radio, "Andrew...this is NOT a freeway..." and something to the effect of 'pass if you can.'
With a surge of adrenalin and all the power I could muster it was time for a full-gas attack. I had no trouble getting around the car and rider, it turns out Don Wildman was on the road for them. That guys is awesome, he is in his 70's and he was really pulling out there. I had work to do now. I did my best to put a demoralizing gap on those guys so MY car would not become their carrot. This was too much to ask for two main reasons. First, now that it was completely dark, riders could see for miles up the road. Second, Team USA is loaded with tough-as-nails competitors who would not lay down for anybody. Game on.
We put in some good hard pulls and I hoped we'd dumped those guys for good when one of those RAAM moments came up. The Follow Vehicle needed to stop for gas and needed to backtrack as we were now in the desert. This meant Ed had to convert his Support role into a Follow role, the real simple issue here is that rolling exchanges are not permitted at night with only one Vehicle. So now, every stop required the rider to fully stop while the other rider jumped out and ran up into the beams so he could take off. While we got pretty fast at it, dead stops are not a recipe for speed and Team Surf USA came roaring back.
This time a crazy cat with long hair and no shirt comes tearing across the desert. Once again, I closed but this guy was strong as an Ox. I was pushing 90% to catch him and ended up pulling along side of him. At this point the most exhilarating spirit of true competition kicked in and Jason and I started hooting and hollering about how awesome it was to be out there in the desert going all out mano-y-mano. Unexpectedly, there was an instant bond. He told me they were doing 45 minute pulls. We were doing 15's so our more frequent exchanges and their longer pulls meant a sea-saw battle was on tap. I would yield nothing but hold no grudge if he could drop me.
With the pace already high, I silently wondered if I could stick around. Would I be the guy who let them go?
Well, it may be my first RAAM but I've been riding my entire life. I held his pace but searched for ways to relax, places in my body which should be shut down. Was I squeezing the bars, flexing my arms, up too high into the wind? I reduced my entire effort the dead minimum required to mark my rival. I was holding him as my HR came down and some spring came back into my flaming legs.
As before, I did not want a gradual increase in speed. Rather, I jumped back up to 100% effort and tried to give both the impression that I was not working any harder and showing a kick that would require the other rider to wonder if HE could sustain the increase. It is a game a chess, because I clearly cannot go 100% for long. My mission was to get rid of him and find a way to smoothly ramp down to a sustainable fury to prevent him from creeping back in.
My last encounter with these guys was the most surreal. The follow vehicle has bright lights which casts two major shadows of you onto the road. You always see a "V" shape on the ground which means everything is good. I had just taken over from Tobias and I saw a faint second V dart on my left side. You rarely look back at night as you'll gain nothing but temporary blindness and a loss of speed. Something was going on back there so I decided to up it a little. A couple minute later the V was back this time on my right and more distinct. I looked to my right and, naturally, bass player from Rage Against the Machine was there. Naturally.
Tim Commerford is a beast. The guy is ripped and covered in tats and he rides with power. I assume he saw us do an exchange and went all out to close the gap. Well this would be the last we saw of these guys because the table had turned. We had just had a big gap on these guys and now they had caught us from behind. Next, the terrain had turned to rolling hills and Commerford looks to be about 180 pounds of solid muscle. Finally, I had been pushing along at 85% and had a nice burst in me to try and dump him. Given his big pull to catch us, heavy muscles on hills (not a problem for me at 145 pounds) and that my hair was not flaming I felt good about ending this battle for good.
The Commerford Battle was unnerving and fascinating. I never looked at him, nor did we exchange any words, this was just a battle of strength and wills. Given his apparitional shadow appearances and silent arrival leaving him behind for the night was the only way to leave this strange dream state in between days and worlds. I rode the rest of the night like that guy was coming after me with a chainsaw and hockey mask.
Tobias Ed and I settled into the rest of our shift that would end up just short of the Colorado river and Arizona border in a town called Blythe. RAAM had one more surprise before our 1AM hand off to Ryan and Larry.
As I was ending a pull, I threw my front shifter into the small chainring and skidded up to Tobias for our night exchange. Night time rules require exchanges to happen in the headlights of the parked vehicle with its lights angled onto the road. This means you scream up to the exchange point 25-35MPH and slow down to 2-3MPH...fast. I jumped into the truck to be driven up the road for my next exchange. Only when I emerged to take over for Tobias did I find a problem with my bike.
I had "thrown" my chain off the front rings ending my previous pull. Tobias is screaming up the road for the exchange and I have about 1 minute to fix it. Normally, riders pride themselves on restoring thrown chains fast and (ideally) with no touchy the chain. Its an honor code thing. Well, my TT bike is no regular bike, in fact the rear brake is located behind the bottom bracket to reduce aero drag. It also means a thrown chain gets sucked up into the brake and can be a bear to remove. Tobias, still digging for the line. Here, John Tyner (Crew Cheif) jumped in and helped extricate the chain but all the bike wrestling caused my SRAM link (special link that can be opened without tools) to open and my chain was now an oily string of metal hanging off the bike.
I jumped in with both hands, hands totally greased and gritty and managed to get the chain back on with around 10 seconds to spare. Here is the RAAM miracle of the night. If you think of a chain as having two pins that each touch the chain in two points, you have essentially a metal square. As soon as Ed and Tobias screamed past me to head five miles up the road I noticed my chain was acting strange.
I had shoved the chain back together improperly and each pin was only connected once. In short, it was hanging by a thread and it it went Ed and Tobias would have to back track and we would lose bunches of minutes. I signaled to the team car I had a problem but apparently waiving arms around and pointing at the read end of my bike does not convey the chain condition mentioned above. I held my breath and decided I would look at the chain and give a little gas intermittently and try to avoid asking two much of the hosed up section. I was averaging 25MPH but this was about 10MPH below full-gas due to the nice tailwind. I limped along and the thing held together, Tobias did his last pull and we were done.
Big night. Its 1AM and we would now drive to Flagstaff Arizona to meet Ken and Jeremy in 15 hours. During that time I had to change a tire, address my mangled chain, pack in/out of the hotel, eat, sleep, get clean and be ready to race all-out again. Wow.
Tobias was my riding partner, the two of us would split our five hour shift trading pulls approximately every 15 minutes. This system allows you to ride very close to your limit for a short period of time and then take a short breather before repeating the process.
Well, our Team Car (A Nissan Pathfinder) was overstuffed at the start.
This would be our quasi-home for the next week and the compaction was a problem. Ed, Tobias and I would use this vehicle not only to arrive at our appointed shift but also for the six-hour commute immediately after in search of our hotel for the night, this generally meant driving 330 miles up the course from where we left off.During these long hours, you must have access to spare bike parts, food, water and a whole host of other racing incidentals from your race radio to bike lights for night riding. Not just access, FAST access. During the race shift there is no time to dig and after there is no energy to dig. Tobias runs a bike touring operation in Europe and would be leaving directly after the race. This meant some extra baggage would be coming along in our truck which created a few problems.
First, Ed informed us the car was too jammed ("stuffed to the roof") at the start and we started trying to figure out what to do. Originally, the plan was to go to Home Depot in Point Loma and buy roof straps after the race started and then rush out to Borrego to start our shift. I suggested immediately removing out all non-RAAM stuff and shipping to Annapolis. Tobias did not seem interested in this option. So this Home Depot Plan is the scheme that found me nervously sitting in Point Loma watching the hours tick by. We had to race in Borrego starting at 7PM and as the clock raced past 3PM I knew the plan was failing. I called Ed a few times but he really had his hands full trying to navigate and get Tobias back in the car after he (at the last minute) was required to ride with Ken for an hour in case he flatted (no support vehicles are allowed on the course through the urban blight of Valley Center and other Dickensian tracts).
I told my wife to gather the kids and that they would have to drive me somewhere to jump into the team car. She had talked about taking the kids out and had she done that this would have been a REAL disaster. Ed finally called and acknowledged our original plan failed. My wife, kids (three game-ready troopers) and I flew out of the house within three minutes and drove to Poway road to meet the fellas.
Before I left however, Ed pointed out he was lost and had no idea how to get to the race course. In the three minutes before leaving I used Google Earth to plot our arrival on the course and the route through Julian and down the Banner Grade. This was VERY stressful because a small mistake would cause us to be late.
I found Ed, Tobias and Izzy (super-cool crew member) filling up at a gas station and we were off heading east through winding roads, a date with RAAM looming less than a few hours away. This pre-race cluster was unwelcome but, it turns out, is pretty much par for RAAM. You learn to expect the unexpected. By the end of the race, this phrase had a much deeper meaning.
The Drive to Our Start and Food
We started heading east toward Borrego. In preparation for the race, I tried to pack as much healthy food as possible in order to maintain performance on the bike. One of these items was the, soon-to-be-legendary, "chicken bag" which was a Ziploc with a few pounds of breast I had grudgingly tossed on my outdoor grill the night before. I made so much it was clear I should give some away. In a hasty exchange with Jeremy (he is also my nearby neighbor) earlier that morning we exchanged a chicken bag for my bike computer which he had loaded with GPS RAAM route data. Turns out, this little exchange bore much fruit as Jeremy was able to get good protein calories from the bird meat and his (and Brad Exmeyer's) work on the GPS was a life-saver on the road.
Ed (my dad) was our driver which meant he is not only on the crew he was responsible for getting us to the right place at the right time. As you will come to know, this is no mean task and Ed excelled in his role and saved our skins many times with his conscientious work-ethic and encyclopedic knowledge of the rules which he had spent plenty of time reviewing before the race. The rules have teeth too as officials are free to levy 15 minute penalties at their discretion. I mention Ed here because the drive to Borrego was an "E" ticket. Nobody would pay for this though.
Ed grew up in the rural America of the 1950's and 60's. This was the Car Era, where young men prided themselves on the ability to do full-speed 360's without spilling a drop of their drink. Sadly for us, the extremely tortuous road called Banner Grade gave Ed an opportunity to whip the fully loaded SUV with three white-knuckled passengers down the hill like a diving falcon. Worse, his outrageously technical driving apparently does not even require his full attention and Ed starts talking about the old days and the joy ripping along country roads while contemporaneously killing us. Seven days of this?
After a while, I think Ed noticed nobody else was really talking to him for the inability to form words in the dual-state of terror and nausea. He kindly offered to "ease up" to which all passengers readily accepted. I did not really notice any change in his driving thereafter but somehow we made it down the hill and it was clear we had a driver ready to push that Pathfinder as hard as we intended to push our bodies. Metal. The team was better for it even if that drive really sucked and I get seasick just thinking about it. It turns out, every rider and crew member came through and showed their mettle before the race was over. This is part of what makes the whole adventure noteworthy.
Ride Time 7PM: ...and its well after 6!
My glance at Google Earth hours earlier left me with the impression we would hit a "T" in the road marking our intersection with the course. At this point we would contact our team mates and figure where to meet them on the road. I read the "T" wrong and our road simply kept going straight. A half an hour earlier we had seen many support vehicles take a hilly left and head northeast toward Borrego Springs. As we screamed down the road, obviously, the "T" never appeared and we became disoriented and (for me) felt sick that we had driven off the course for nearly an hour. With nothing but flat terrain ahead, I told Ed to "stop, now, here...this instant" to figure out how bad things were.
We got ahold of Matt Butler (Ken and Jeremy's driver) who relayed they were coming down the Glass Elevator which is the long hill which ushers riders into the desert plains to be traversed that evening. OK, we were alright on physical position and just had to backtrack a few miles and get set up for our first exchange. We decided I should ride first because Tobias had already ridden an unexpected hour with Ken at the start. We suited up, checked radios and made sure everything was ready to race!!!My First Pull: the exchange
The race rushes at you. Once you see your team car, it will be on you before you know it. Its even worse when Jeremy is driving the train. That guy is fast. He is also a serious competetor and I knew he would come off that hill breathing fire. In RAAM, rider exchanges during the day are pretty easy, the guy riding comes charging up to the rider taking over from him and must "cross wheels" which effectively passes the baton to the new guy who then takes off as fast as he can.
So now, after all this preparation and training RAAM is rushing at me at about 35MPH in the person of Jeremy Gustin. I clicked into my pedals and ramped up to 25MPH, I took a quick peek back and Jeremy is approaching but not as fast as I'd thought. I'd made a rookie mistake of taking off too early and too fast. Having never even done a single pull what I did not know is that the rider ending his pull (and even more ending his five-hour shift) comes up for the exchange with NOTHING left in the tank. That man will destroy himself to put his final strength on the road for the team. Due to my poor execution I was terrified to hear Jeremy screaming "slow down!!!" at me.
As our wheels finally crossed I muttered to him "oh **** man I blew that." He took his last breath to say something about it being alright. Today, Jeremy does not even remember the exchange. You go to deep and unconscious places during RAAM. Now I know.
Heart Rate Primer: the unscientific sort
Most riders wear heart rate monitors or less common power meters which are used as benchmarks for proper exertion. These things are particularly useful on RAAM because you are riding unfamiliar roads under variable wind, surface and elevation conditions. Also, when you ride in darkness you are deprived of your normal visual markers which you might use to gauge your effort in terms of speed or even whether you are climbing a hill. For this, the heart rate will tell a rider if they are working hard or, perhaps, too hard or in "the red" (which means beyond your limit) in a way which will soon cause collapse and a serious loss of power.
I am a modest "stat geek." While I believe some data is helpful, my interest in riding could be quashed were I to analyze each pedal stroke. My teammate Ryan Denner is a good example of someone who took his preparation very seriously and successfully used a coach, power data and a methodical approach to get ready for RAAM. I use some science and the rest is METAL.
Over the years, I have found that a Heart Rate of 165 Beats Per Minute is likely my lactate threshold. This is entirely unscientific but it is really relevant to me as a rider. If I'm riding at 150 there is more power to be had. 185 means death shall soon come and I am riding waaay over my head. I mention this because as I go through the race I'll tell you my HR at the time and you will know how close to snapping I am.
My First Pull: that horrible sound
After my bungling start-stop-start exchange with Jeremy, I pushed the pedals in anger for the first time in RAAM. It was around 90 degrees, dry gusts and lots of suspended dirt in the air, my lungs were burning within 20 seconds.
I was riding my Time Trial bike and I gave it all I had to get up to speed and then settle into a hard rhythm which I would hold for 15 minutes. My heart rate was 185! Too high. This pace was not sustainable, I was now alone with my thoughts. Questions flooded in: Could I have trained more? Will I let the team down? Why am I riding at 185? I did not have long to consider these doubts.
My rear tire flatted with a loud crack much like a gunshot! A cyclist nightmare. I've been riding seriously for more than 20 years so I knew what to do, it was a question of how fast. I instinctively raised my arm high above my head to indicate a problem to any ViaSat entity that might see. Out of pure luck, the follow vehicle was right there. I screamed "rear flat!!!" into the follow vehicle and saw Veronica Acosta (ViaSat Media) eyes' were as big as saucers. This was the first of two times I screamed in her direction and caused this reaction.
Barry (crew member extraordinaire) was on the spot, fast, with a spare rear wheel in hand. He was calm and professional and this caused me to come back to earth and get down to the business of changing the rear wheel. My TT is peculiar (with rear facing dropouts) so a wheel change requires particular care and attention. Lousy work could result in a dragging rear brake or a misaligned wheel dragging on the chain stays (frame). I took a moment to make sure the new wheel was properly seated and it was again 'go time.' The crew had saved the day here for the entire operation, it was the first of many times this would happen. We lost a few minutes but avoided a disaster. That's RAAM in a nutshell.
After this initial shock, Tobias and I settled into a very fast series of pulls. We were flying across the desert, regularly cruising near 40MPH with a nice tailwind. This was really cool because if there is one thing I relish its the chance to make people trying to figure out where to exchange riders have to re-think because you are simply tearing up the course and obliterating "projections" as you rocket down the road.
Poor Ed was trying to give us 15 minute pulls but we were hauling so fast (remember 30MPH means you are clicking off two-minute miles) he was struggling to get in front far enough in front of the active rider to set up for exchanges. Ha Ha.
In a similar vein, when you ride at night, the follow car has to stay within 30 feet of the rider meaning they must be "one unit." This means on a dark winding road where a rider can readily hit 45 miles an hour there is a poor soul driving the follow car trying to stay on the rider, negotiate corners and "not break the speed limit." Once again, Ha Ha.
This is my flatted wheel moments after I took off being discussed by Ken, Jeremy and Barry
Here is Ken mentioning my flat
Battle in the Desert
Team Surf USA is a four man team headed by celebrity big wave surfer Laird Hamilton. Once we hit the right turn at Salton Sea we began a back and forth battle which went on for, seemingly, hours. We heard Laird got sick at Lake Hensaw so we never saw him. It could be this was their intended rotation and it was Laird's turn to rest. So it was three Surf USA's against two ViaSat and brutal combat was on the menu.
We first encountered these guys on my pull. Now that it was dusk the lights from their Team Vehicle was a carrot and I jumped into the Pain Lake to close on them. For "Night Riding" RAAM imposes many safety-based restrictions such as staying on the follow vehicle's headlights and such. Violations carry big time penalties and this was my first few hours as a RAAM rider.
Once I reeled in Team USA, I did not pass them because the road looked like a freeway and rules state there is no passing on freeways. I was pretty annoyed as I watched my heart rate drop and realized I would not get to go all out. At this point Barry, crew member extraordinaire, saw me letting up and cracked through on race radio, "Andrew...this is NOT a freeway..." and something to the effect of 'pass if you can.'
With a surge of adrenalin and all the power I could muster it was time for a full-gas attack. I had no trouble getting around the car and rider, it turns out Don Wildman was on the road for them. That guys is awesome, he is in his 70's and he was really pulling out there. I had work to do now. I did my best to put a demoralizing gap on those guys so MY car would not become their carrot. This was too much to ask for two main reasons. First, now that it was completely dark, riders could see for miles up the road. Second, Team USA is loaded with tough-as-nails competitors who would not lay down for anybody. Game on.
We put in some good hard pulls and I hoped we'd dumped those guys for good when one of those RAAM moments came up. The Follow Vehicle needed to stop for gas and needed to backtrack as we were now in the desert. This meant Ed had to convert his Support role into a Follow role, the real simple issue here is that rolling exchanges are not permitted at night with only one Vehicle. So now, every stop required the rider to fully stop while the other rider jumped out and ran up into the beams so he could take off. While we got pretty fast at it, dead stops are not a recipe for speed and Team Surf USA came roaring back.
This time a crazy cat with long hair and no shirt comes tearing across the desert. Once again, I closed but this guy was strong as an Ox. I was pushing 90% to catch him and ended up pulling along side of him. At this point the most exhilarating spirit of true competition kicked in and Jason and I started hooting and hollering about how awesome it was to be out there in the desert going all out mano-y-mano. Unexpectedly, there was an instant bond. He told me they were doing 45 minute pulls. We were doing 15's so our more frequent exchanges and their longer pulls meant a sea-saw battle was on tap. I would yield nothing but hold no grudge if he could drop me.
With the pace already high, I silently wondered if I could stick around. Would I be the guy who let them go?
Well, it may be my first RAAM but I've been riding my entire life. I held his pace but searched for ways to relax, places in my body which should be shut down. Was I squeezing the bars, flexing my arms, up too high into the wind? I reduced my entire effort the dead minimum required to mark my rival. I was holding him as my HR came down and some spring came back into my flaming legs.
As before, I did not want a gradual increase in speed. Rather, I jumped back up to 100% effort and tried to give both the impression that I was not working any harder and showing a kick that would require the other rider to wonder if HE could sustain the increase. It is a game a chess, because I clearly cannot go 100% for long. My mission was to get rid of him and find a way to smoothly ramp down to a sustainable fury to prevent him from creeping back in.
My last encounter with these guys was the most surreal. The follow vehicle has bright lights which casts two major shadows of you onto the road. You always see a "V" shape on the ground which means everything is good. I had just taken over from Tobias and I saw a faint second V dart on my left side. You rarely look back at night as you'll gain nothing but temporary blindness and a loss of speed. Something was going on back there so I decided to up it a little. A couple minute later the V was back this time on my right and more distinct. I looked to my right and, naturally, bass player from Rage Against the Machine was there. Naturally.
Tim Commerford is a beast. The guy is ripped and covered in tats and he rides with power. I assume he saw us do an exchange and went all out to close the gap. Well this would be the last we saw of these guys because the table had turned. We had just had a big gap on these guys and now they had caught us from behind. Next, the terrain had turned to rolling hills and Commerford looks to be about 180 pounds of solid muscle. Finally, I had been pushing along at 85% and had a nice burst in me to try and dump him. Given his big pull to catch us, heavy muscles on hills (not a problem for me at 145 pounds) and that my hair was not flaming I felt good about ending this battle for good.
The Commerford Battle was unnerving and fascinating. I never looked at him, nor did we exchange any words, this was just a battle of strength and wills. Given his apparitional shadow appearances and silent arrival leaving him behind for the night was the only way to leave this strange dream state in between days and worlds. I rode the rest of the night like that guy was coming after me with a chainsaw and hockey mask.
Tobias Ed and I settled into the rest of our shift that would end up just short of the Colorado river and Arizona border in a town called Blythe. RAAM had one more surprise before our 1AM hand off to Ryan and Larry.
As I was ending a pull, I threw my front shifter into the small chainring and skidded up to Tobias for our night exchange. Night time rules require exchanges to happen in the headlights of the parked vehicle with its lights angled onto the road. This means you scream up to the exchange point 25-35MPH and slow down to 2-3MPH...fast. I jumped into the truck to be driven up the road for my next exchange. Only when I emerged to take over for Tobias did I find a problem with my bike.
I had "thrown" my chain off the front rings ending my previous pull. Tobias is screaming up the road for the exchange and I have about 1 minute to fix it. Normally, riders pride themselves on restoring thrown chains fast and (ideally) with no touchy the chain. Its an honor code thing. Well, my TT bike is no regular bike, in fact the rear brake is located behind the bottom bracket to reduce aero drag. It also means a thrown chain gets sucked up into the brake and can be a bear to remove. Tobias, still digging for the line. Here, John Tyner (Crew Cheif) jumped in and helped extricate the chain but all the bike wrestling caused my SRAM link (special link that can be opened without tools) to open and my chain was now an oily string of metal hanging off the bike.
I jumped in with both hands, hands totally greased and gritty and managed to get the chain back on with around 10 seconds to spare. Here is the RAAM miracle of the night. If you think of a chain as having two pins that each touch the chain in two points, you have essentially a metal square. As soon as Ed and Tobias screamed past me to head five miles up the road I noticed my chain was acting strange.
I had shoved the chain back together improperly and each pin was only connected once. In short, it was hanging by a thread and it it went Ed and Tobias would have to back track and we would lose bunches of minutes. I signaled to the team car I had a problem but apparently waiving arms around and pointing at the read end of my bike does not convey the chain condition mentioned above. I held my breath and decided I would look at the chain and give a little gas intermittently and try to avoid asking two much of the hosed up section. I was averaging 25MPH but this was about 10MPH below full-gas due to the nice tailwind. I limped along and the thing held together, Tobias did his last pull and we were done.
Big night. Its 1AM and we would now drive to Flagstaff Arizona to meet Ken and Jeremy in 15 hours. During that time I had to change a tire, address my mangled chain, pack in/out of the hotel, eat, sleep, get clean and be ready to race all-out again. Wow.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Opening Ceremony
Before diving into the Opening Ceremonies I should fill you in on some details about this race.
RAAM is a bicycle race formally known as the Race Across America. It is 3000 miles in length with a start in Oceanside California and distant finish in Annapolis Maryland. I am a rider on Team ViaSat which is an eight man team. While teams are free to devise whatever division of labor is fastest my team has chosen to break the eight men into 4 working subgroups.
Each sub-group (hereafter "Teams" 1-4) rides for 5 hours and then has 15 hours "off" to race up the road in a car and position themselves for more bike racing. In short, a 20 hour racing cycle which continues 24 hours a day until we complete the 3000 mile course. Sound confusing? At first, it is. I'll bet by the end of this it will become second nature.
The opening ceremonies for RAAM were held at the Oceanside Pier on Saturday June 20, 2009. To make things interesting, I threw my hat into the ring to play the National Anthem before the riders took off. All the RAAM officials were completely cool and seemed to "get" my take on the event. I would play my version on the electric guitar and wanted to make it an event nobody would soon forget.
RAAM is a bicycle race formally known as the Race Across America. It is 3000 miles in length with a start in Oceanside California and distant finish in Annapolis Maryland. I am a rider on Team ViaSat which is an eight man team. While teams are free to devise whatever division of labor is fastest my team has chosen to break the eight men into 4 working subgroups.
Each sub-group (hereafter "Teams" 1-4) rides for 5 hours and then has 15 hours "off" to race up the road in a car and position themselves for more bike racing. In short, a 20 hour racing cycle which continues 24 hours a day until we complete the 3000 mile course. Sound confusing? At first, it is. I'll bet by the end of this it will become second nature.
The opening ceremonies for RAAM were held at the Oceanside Pier on Saturday June 20, 2009. To make things interesting, I threw my hat into the ring to play the National Anthem before the riders took off. All the RAAM officials were completely cool and seemed to "get" my take on the event. I would play my version on the electric guitar and wanted to make it an event nobody would soon forget.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)