Warrenton 600k Ride Report: Riding through the night is hard, Barbie.

There's only one thing that I like, and that is whistling in the dark.

This ultracycling experience started with a decision I wish I hadn't faced.  The DC Randonneurs' only 600k ride of the year started on a Saturday at 4:00 a.m.  I needed to ride it, both to complete my first official Super Randonneur series (completion of official 200k, 300k, 400k, and 600k brevets in a calendar year), and to qualify me for Paris-Brest-Paris in summer 2015 if I choose to do it.  PBP is the grand-daddy of the 1200ks in the world, a 750-mile rolling party of 5,000 cyclists; like the World Cup, it's held only once every four years.  I'm not sure whether I'll do it next summer, but I wanted to have the chance if I so elected.

The problem was, I'd also committed to attending a wedding the same weekend as the 600k.  It started at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, i.e., 31 hours after the start of the 600k.  Considering that the average time to finish a 600k in this region is probably in the range of 35 hours, I really only had one way to make everything happen: treat the 600k like a race, and hammer it out quickly enough to get a quick nap before driving home and getting dressed for the wedding.

The plan was audacious, risky, and probably stupid; it left almost no margin for error or misfortune.  But I didn't want to decline a wedding invitation for a bike ride, and I thought a hard effort would be a helpful dress rehearsal for the National 24-Hour Challenge I'll be racing in June.

The good news is it went reasonably well: I finished in the mid-25-hour range, i.e., at about 5:30 a.m. on Sunday.  But there was a lot of very bad news along the way.  Since I was trying to move as fast as possible, I have few pictures and no video; indeed, my impression of the whole affair is a random set of fever dream-like experiential distillations of a mind long gone delirious.  Therefore, in lieu of the traditional narrative ride report, which I'm sure many others will offer, I'll recount some key impressions that have stuck with me.

NEW EQUIPMENT

After spending so long this spring riding in cold weather, I'd resolved never to be caught out again on the clothing front.  I wanted a vest -- when paired with arm warmers, it's as good as a jacket, but the lack of sleeves extends the usable temperature range by a huge margin -- but a warm one, and one with pockets.  There are very few of those out there, but the Assos iG.falkenZahn is one, and it's arguably my new favorite bit of ultracycling kit:

Like all Assos stuff, it's extremely form-fitting; a Medium is very snug on me, at 6'0" and 165ish pounds.  The inside is fleece-lined for warmth, but the back ventilates extremely well.  When combined with good arm warmers, I found it very comfortable from the mid-40s through the mid-60s, that is, all the way across the very difficult range between winter and summer wardrobes that characterizes brevets on the East Coast.  Best of all, it has three highly functional pockets, plus a smaller zippered pocket, which means there's no longer a need to wrestle clothing out of the way in order to access jersey pockets.  Highly recommended (and cheaper on sale).

The second piece of new gear was a very large seat bag, the Revelate "Pika".

I'd ridden brevets and other ultracycling events with a "trunk bag" before, and until now I'd used the Arkel Tailrider, an extremely popular choice with the randonneuring set.  My quibbles with it are twofold.  First, the mounting hardware only works on traditional round seat posts,  which makes it useless for a tri bike like I was using on Saturday.  Second, and more important, the Tailrider's many laudable attributes come with the significant downside that it alters the bike's handling.  Specifically, when climbing out of the saddle, the weight swinging left to right makes it feel like the bike is about to be flung to the ground by a malevolent deity.  The Arkel is actually better than most in that regard but I found the Pika to be even better despite its far less elegant appearance.  It expands dramatically when needed -- the back flap unrolls until it looks almost indecent:

This Pika is excited for the ride.

PRE-RIDE

My models suggest that dropping your ass would be highly efficient.

Just before my alarm went off, I had a dream in which I was sitting in the office of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.  I don't know why; I'm not an economist, and I've never met him, though I do read his NYT columns regularly.  My trepidation at his inexplicable meeting request dissipated when he revealed that he's actually an avid randonneur who that very afternoon was planning to ride from New Jersey to Vermont.

I have no idea what kind of nerd this makes me, but I will say that I was far happier chatting with Krugman about randonneuring than I was when my alarm went off at 3:00 a.m., only a few hours after I'd crawled into bed.  Reality makes me cranky.

REFLECTIONS ON THE DAYTIME LOOP

Start: 4:00 a.m.
Finish: 6:30 p.m.
Distance: 245 miles
Time: 14 hours and 30 minutes
Average speed (including all stops): 17 mph

Winning.  My first missed turn occurred 50 yards into the ride.  It was the first turn.  I was winning in the Charlie Sheen sense.

The aliens have landed.  I've often wondered what a peloton of randonneurs at night would look like to a random passerby.  I found out 20 miles in.  I'd missed another turn around mile ten (two points make a trend, you could say), which sent me a couple of miles off course.   A few miles after that, I spied on the dark horizon what looked like an inexplicable traffic jam in the middle of nowhere, a giant glowing red mass drifting silently in the night.  As I approached, the mass differentiated into clusters of individual glowing dots, which only at the last moment revealed spectral riders illuminated by the front lights of the riders behind them.  It was a little spooky.

An inscrutable portent.  I saw three turtles crossing the road today.  Three!  In my previous years of cycling, I've seen a total of zero.  Was it an omen, and, if so, of what?  Hopefully not my progress.

My precioussssss.  I was saved by the kindness of strangers.  At mile 125, Bill Beck, the ride coordinator, who had been taking pictures, was waiting for me with a gift: my control card, which apparently had fallen out of my pocket at the first control.  Another randonneur had found it and given it to Bill, who'd driven up the road to find me.  For those unfamiliar with this sport, one of the clearest rules is that you must get your control card initialed at various points along the way; if you don't, it's as if your ride didn't happen.  I would probably have been forced to drop out after 125 miles if not for sheer good karma and my apparent failure to alienate every other randonneur that day by dressing like I was from the planet TriDork.  In fact, if Bill hadn't been along taking pictures, I would have been forced to ride despondently back to the start -- about 110 miles away.

The light!  It burns!  The day was utterly, completely perfect.  It feels churlish to complain about the sun on a 70-degree day, particularly after the winter we've had, but the truth is that, riding through open plains for hours on end in the middle of the day, I was baked and suffering.  Having ridden 170 miles already that day might have contributed to that sensation.

The new food pyramid.  The second-lowest point of my ride occurred around mile 175, near 2:30 pm -- that is, 10.5 hours into the ride.  I was getting mentally fuzzy and my legs suddenly had nothing in them.   (This is somewhat expected; it's near the end of the 300k mark, and I'd had no real food to eat all day.)  Drifting into Louisa on fumes, I parked myself outside a Shell station and consumed, on the spot, everything in the store that appealed to me.  Disturbingly, that consisted of 2 Little Debbies Fudge Rounds, a large bag of salted mixed nuts, a large pack of Skittles, a 20-ounce bottle of Coke, and a 32-ounce bottle of V8 juice.  For dessert, I had a gel, a mental image of a disapproving Michelle Obama, and acid reflux.

Echoes of the past.   Riding around Culpeper, I realized I'd seen certain places before in rides years ago, back in my early days with Team Z.  I'd encounter random decrepit buildings and would suddenly be certain I'd previously viewed them from another direction.  And then, just as suddenly, my mind would associate with utterly insignificant remarks made by people I haven't seen in years as we were riding by those places.  For example, I saw a country store and immediately recalled that, while standing outside it in 2008, I'd remarked to another rider that there appeared to be something wrong with the valve stem on her wheel.  It's incredible what random things are stored in one's mind.  Ultracycling must have certain elements in common with regression therapy.  Random places imbued with memories.

James Madison did not believe in progress.  Here's my impression of the James Madison Highway, which the route seemed to cross about ten times before I lost track.

Shortly after leaving that traffic-laden artery behind for the final time, I encountered the world's longest train, which was moving at the speed of government.

Randonneuring is slow.  I know this intellectually and experientially, but it always surprises me.  I think it's common for competitive cyclists and triathletes to look at the average speeds for a randonneuring ride -- meeting time cut-offs usually requires averaging around 10 mph -- and imagine that it's easy.  In fact, though, it's incredibly difficult to make good time in these events.  The routes are almost universally challenging, and they are entirely unsupported, which means no getting bottles from volunteers or SAG drivers.  Quite the opposite, they require you to stop periodically at control points whether you need to or not, and the clock keeps running at every stop light and stop sign.  At some point you develop an irresistible craving for actual, hot food.  You're often required to ride at night.  And, finally, due to brevets' length and unsupported nature, you're compelled to laden your bike with pounds of clothes, lights, nutrition, and other supplies.  The result is moving, shall we say, deliberately.

Yesterday I was on my time trial bike, wearing an aero helmet, and trying to make good time wherever I could; the result was a 17 mph average for the first 245 miles (400k), which meant I finished in around 14 hours and 30 minutes.  That is quick by randonneuring standards -- previously, my stand-alone 400k times had been in the 18- to 20-hour range -- but compared to race splits, it's very pedestrian.  Somehow, in randonneuring events, nothing moves quickly even when you want it to.

My kingdom for a burrito.  The end of the first loop, at mile 242, brought us back to the host hotel, where most people would sleep for a few hours before heading out at dawn on Sunday morning to tackle the last 135 miles.  I hit it at about 6:30 p.m. on Saturday and had a full night of riding ahead of me.  For this, I'd devised a secret weapon: stashing the world's largest Chipotle burrito in my hotel room's refrigerator.  As I sat there scarfing it down, feeling every inch the exhausted biohazard, I tried to pretend I didn't have ten hours of nighttime riding ahead of me; it felt inconceivable.

REFLECTIONS ON THE NIGHT TIME LOOP

Start: 6:45 p.m.
Finish: 5:40 a.m.
Time: 10 hours, 55 minutes
Distance: 135 miles
Average speed: 12.4 mph (ugh)

Some roads are better than others at night.  In my experience, the nighttime portion of brevets can either be meditative and beautiful, or stressful as hell -- and not much in between.  In last year's 600k, I spent the overnight portion barreling along a relatively flat, straight country road with great pavement, bright lines on the side of the road, no traffic, and a sea of stars overhead.  It came as a welcome respite from the searing heat of the summer sun, and I later thought if it as the reward for a hard day's work.

This route was different.  Many of the roads around Frederick were distinctly busy on a Saturday night, even though they seemed rural.  When roads were sufficiently remote to avoid the traffic problem, they were so remote that they were narrow, winding, sketchy affairs through a dense canopy of trees that blocked out the moonlight.  Often there was no center line or line on the right of the road, steep hills and tight corners that made it difficult to see far ahead, and rough, broken pavement that forced constant concentration in order to stay on the road.  It was very slow-going.

One road wasn't there at all.  On Thursday night, heavy rains had swept through the region, and in several places on the ride signs warned of danger from high waters.  In fact, in a couple of places, the road near rivers was covered with dirt, a sure sign of a recent flood.  But that was the extent of it... until mile 285 or so.

Around 10:15 at night, I was winding through an odd series of neighborhoods in downtown Fredericksburg when the cue said to turn left on King Street, which was along the Rappahannock River.  Barring the way, though, was a "Road Closed -- High Water" sign.  I figured maybe it was a holdover from recent days that posed no current issue beyond walking my bike across some wet pavement, but no.  Not at all.  The road ahead simply disappeared underwater.  Doing some research after the ride ended, I realized that King Street is also called River Road, and I found a daytime picture of what I saw in front of me that night:

Do not pass go.

And so it was that I had a true randonneuring experience, sitting on the side of the road at night, pecking away at Google Maps to try to find a way across the river.  Living the dream!

A nighttime wildernesses walk.  At one point, the route took us through a battlefield in Fredericksburg, complete with signs warning that the park was closed from dusk to dawn.   Feeling quite the scofflaw, I moseyed on down the road until it ended.  And I do mean ended -- dead ended into a split-rail fence, beyond which lay a gravel path through the woods.  Checking the cue sheet with a "surely you can't be serious" expression on my face, I found that it was very serious about my continuing onward.  And so it was that I hiked for about 1/3 of a mile through the woods in the middle of the night, with my triathlon bike, wearing a skinsuit and aero helmet and visor.  Apparently this is the life I've carved out for myself.

I think I'm done with solo nighttime adventures.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but there were many times in the overnight portion of this ride that I would have very seriously considered quitting if I'd had the option.  (I didn't; I had to get home in time for the wedding.  Heck, there was only one way to get home, period, and that was to keep going.)  I realized at about 1:00 a.m. that I was utterly alone, miles from anywhere, on roads with cars likely driven by people heading home from bars, with a single headlight.  I realized that if the headlight failed, or fell off my bike and broke, or if I got side-swiped, it could be an exceedingly long time before any help arrived.  I'd been alone on my bike for more than 20 hours, and I still had 70 miles to go.

Not only that, but I felt like I was struggling to get the ride done.  My odometer was completely inaccurate by then due to various electronic mishaps, and there were long stretches of roads without turns, which meant that I had no idea what my true mileage was.  That was tragic insofar as we were forced to find "information controls," i.e., signs on the side of the road at certain mileage points -- but, on several occasions, I realized that due to my wonky odometer, I was unsure whether I'd missed a particular sign or whether it lay ahead.  On at least one occasion I convinced myself that I must have passed the sign miles before, but due to my slow progress, I didn't think I had time to go back and look for it; I resigned myself to failing to complete the ride's requirements and not getting credit for it.  And then, several miles later, I came upon the information control I thought I'd missed.   It was a bewildering and disheartening process.

I realized at some point that I was no longer having any fun at all, not even in the "embrace the challenge" sense.  I just wanted to be done, to go home, to have a hot shower and solid meal, and to get myself off the road in a safe place.  I felt like I'd be lucky to escape the situation, and I decided at that point that I don't think I'm going to do a ride like this again.  I don't mean that I'll never do a 600k or nighttime ride; many events I'm targeting require riding at night.  But riding alone, at night, in very rural areas, with no support anywhere to be found, seems to me to be an unacceptable risk at this stage in life.  There's no reason to put myself in that situation again.

No soup for you!  There are several types of controls in randonneuring rides.  The most common is a normal control, which is a designated commercial establishment, often a gas station, where you're required to have your control card initialed and time-stamped by an employee.  There's also the aforementioned "information control," which requires you to describe something on the route to prove you traversed it, and the "secret control," which is an unannounced control on the side of the road staffed by a ride official.  Finally, there's the "open control," which requires you to get a receipt from a business somewhere in a designated area; usually they amount to, "get lunch somewhere in this town and prove you did it."

The last two commercial controls on the route were at a 7-11 at mile 284 and an open control in Spotsylvania at mile 317.  (The total ride distance was 376 miles.)  I knew of no businesses between miles 317 and 376, so, at 12:30 a.m., I was exhausted and desperately looking forward to some light and warmth at the last open control at mile 317.  The cue sheet suggested the Fasmart at the Valero station.  Here's what I found when I got there.

DOH!!!

Incredulous, I rode up and down the street in Spotsylvania (there's only one) several times, thinking that surely I must be missing the Sheetz, 7-11, or other all-night establishment.  But I wasn't.  Spotsylvania was dead to me, and I to it.  In my despair, I stopped for a minute and doodled a self-portrait.

I also took a few pictures to prove I was there; I wouldn't be able to produce the receipt required from open controls, but I figured that if I were DQ'd on that cruel basis, I'd just write the ride off and drink heavily at the wedding.

It turned out that, as I feared, there wasn't a single open business the rest of the ride.  And so it was that, at the end of an absurdly long day, I didn't refuel or see another human being between miles 284 and 376 -- 92 miles, and about 7 hours.  Yet another "character-building experience," I suppose.  All I wanted was a bag of Fritos, some water, and maybe a cup of coffee; I'm a simple man.  But no, the world denied me even those basic things.

Make it to the church on time! After one of the longest and loneliest nights of my life, I found my way back to the host hotel at around 5:30 a.m. -- 25 hours and 30 minutes after starting the ride the previous morning.  Including bonus miles for navigation issues, I was nearing 390 miles, and it had been a long time since I'd had anything to eat or drink.  Happily, in the last couple of miles, I passed a steady stream of randonneurs who'd slept for several hours at the overnight, and who were then heading out on the final 130-mile stretch I'd just completed.  I even saw Mark about 50 yards from the hotel, and wished him well.  What I didn't say was, "Good luck -- I really hope you don't suffer as much as I just did."  I figured that might not be the most supportive advice to offer at the moment.

My time of 25:42 wound up being pretty quick as an historical matter.  Here's a graph -- albeit a couple of years out of date -- showing the historical distribution of finishing times for DC Randonneurs, as well as for American randonneurs more broadly.  The average is about 36 hours, and the top 25% cutoff is 32 hours or so.

After spending a couple of minutes chatting with the brevet officials in the conference room and enjoying a bowl of chili, I headed upstairs and walked into my shower fully-clothed, where I proceeded to sit under a stream of warm water for about 10 minutes in a cleansing of body and soul.  After a quick hour's nap, I made my way home and enjoyed a gorgeous outdoor wedding in Glen Echo Park, sipping Bellinis and wearing my sunglasses as much as possible so as not to disturb anyone with evidence of what I'd just been through.

CONCLUSIONS

Looking back on it with a couple of days' perspective, I'll say this: the ride was utterly gorgeous and immaculately managed.  The weather was impossible to beat.  But riding solo, and hard, for 25 hours straight was one of the most difficult things I've ever done, particularly mentally.  There were many times in the middle of the night where I would have very gladly stopped had I had any opportunity to do so; I was exhausted, famished, lonely, and felt totally exposed.  At those times, it wasn't remotely fun and I just wanted out.  I think the only sane way to do these rides is to sleep through some of the night and leave at dawn on the second day, or to ride through the night with others who are on a similarly aggressive schedule.  I'm glad I emerged unscathed, but this one's a learning experience for the ages.

"The Tartar Steppe" -- A great read for athletes and beyond

No one will be surprised to learn I read a fair amount about endurance sports.  Sure, there are lots of "Get Psyched Up!" ghost-written biographies out there that amount to, "Me train hard go fast.  You no go fast; that ok."  Some of them are decent, but they do tend to blend together.

The thing is, I'm only modestly interested in hearing tales of glory recounted.  I'm more intrigued by the psychological side, specifically, why endurance athletes are driven to be weirdos.  They do objectively unreasonable things at great expense along every relevant dimension -- physical, financial, and interpersonal. And, when you ask many of them, they'll have a hard time telling you why; they'll often admit that training can dominate their lives and races are often stressful, but somehow putting those two negatives together creates a positive, and an addictive one at that.  Why?

Endurance athletes' biographies are largely unhelpful in answering this question, although it's really the reason that their books exist.  Behind the hand-waving, mostly it seems to boil down to (i) proving something to oneself or others, (ii) the desire to set and meet goals, and (iii) the search for meaning that's so often missing from life in a cubicle.  Fair enough, but it sort of begs the central question: When the point is proved and the goal is met, does that lead to happiness over the long term?  Is the searched-for meaning ever found?  I suspect that, for many people, it might be painful to think honestly about the answers to those questions.

I've struggled a great deal with this stuff, sometimes publicly.  My posts here, here, and here ruminate explicitly about it.

In the past few months, I've been pleased to discover a few books that are helpful in thinking about why endurance athletes do what we do.  The thing is, the most insightful books on endurance sports I've found haven't been about endurance sports at all -- at least not literally.

Here's one of them.

Although it's a bit obscure, several creditable lists identify The Tartar Steppe, written originally in Italian, as one of the best novels of the last century.  The dust jacket accurately describes it as "a meditation on the human thirst for glory."  A young military officer, Giovanni Drago, is posted to a remote fort in mountains that overlook a vast desert.  He intends to leave as soon as possible, but gradually becomes entranced by the romantic notion that an invading army will someday materialize in the mist-shrouded distance to allow him to achieve glory on the battlefield, and his life will then be purposeful.  Drogo dedicates himself and his life to visions of this distant dream, only to find in times of doubt that he no longer has any choice but to continue, as his years in the fort have rendered him lost anywhere else.  When at last the enemies amass at the gate, Drogo is old and infirm, and he is transported from the fort in preparation for the dreamt-of battle.  Having dedicated his life to the pursuit of a vision, he finds that it has materialized too late.

A "meditation" is the right description here: The Tartar Steppe is a novel that compels one to think.  It's an enigma.  For most of it, almost nothing happens, but that "nothing happening" is largely the point.  In literal terms, the book has nothing to whatever to do with running or riding a bicycle, but I think on some level it has everything to do with those things.  How often do we, as endurance athletes, sacrifice aspects of our lives in pursuit of a distant vision of glory?  How often do foresake opportunities to do memorable things, all because we're "training with dedication"?

So once more Drogo is climbing up the valley to the Fort and he has fifteen years fewer to live.  Yet he does not feel that he has changed particularly; time has slipped by so quickly that his heart has not had a chance to grow old.  And although the mysterious tumult of the passing hours grows with each day, Drogo perseveres in his illusion that the really important things of life are still before him.  Giovanni patiently awaits his hour, the hour which has never come; he does not see that the future has grown terribly short, that it is no longer like in the days when time to come could seem an immense period, an inexhaustible fund of riches to be squandered without risk.

Will we be faster next year?  Will we go farther?  The year after that?  Then what?

Frederick 400k Ride Report: Lesson Learned

Beautiful scenery.  Off-screen to the left, something wicked this way coming.

Bad Idea Bicycling

I'm discovering that, for me, there's a diabolical sort of momentum to any particular endurance sport, and it goes something like this:

Anxiety --> Familiarity --> Laziness --> Spankage

It's certainly been true of Ironman racing.  For my first couple of races, back in 2006-2007, the sheer intimidation factor of the distance ensured that I completed virtually every workout, and I obsessed over the details.  Then, as years passed, the distance itself stopped being daunting; it was about getting the best time I could, but I ceased to sweat the small stuff.  I reasoned that missing workouts here and there wouldn't matter much if there were something more interesting on offer, and I found that I was no longer planning meticulously for the events' logistics.  I'd show up to races without goggles, and often I'd find mechanical problems with my bike moments before the races started.  I'd ride 1200ks only weeks before an Ironman, which is pretty much the worst possible time.  Many winters I'd take half a year off of swimming, knowing that I could get back to "good enough" swim shape with only a couple of months of hard work.  In other words, I was half-assing triathlon, and my results eventually reflected that reality.

Saturday's 400k (250-mile) brevet has me thinking that I need to start paying more attention on the ultracycling front, because I'm starting to take for granted that I can just roll through these things as long as I eat and drink enough.  In reality, it takes a little more than that.

For the first few years of my ultracycling career, I'd roll down the road prepared for anything short of Biblical plagues.  I'd carry 5 pounds of bars and gels despite having refueling stops available every hour or two, load myself down with doubly-redundant backup batteries for my lights, and carry a trunk bag stuffed with enough spare clothes to weather an unexpected ice age.  Invariably I'd use almost none of it, which meant I'd spend 20 hours or so waddling down the road like a constipated bison while my riding companions zipped along without a care in the world.  It was irksome.

This year I've taken a more minimalist approach, basically setting out for brevets like I'd do for a local shop ride, with the exception of putting a little bit more nutrition in my jersey pockets.  In the 200k brevet about a month back, the weather promised to be disastrous, so I put on my rain gear at the start and kept it on all day -- no problem there.  Similarly, on the 300k in mid April that I'd ridden with Mark (link to Mark's excellent ride report), the weather was forecasted to be spectacular, and so it proved; the temperatures were supposed to be in the 40s at the start, so I put on a light vest and armwarmers, reasoning that I'd just be a little chilly until sunrise.  And, indeed, things went off without a hitch, and I felt sorry for the guys with overstuffed sacks affixed to their bikes while I played in the sunshine.

400ks, though, are tricky beasts.  This was to be my third, and the first two involved considerable drama.  First, in 2012, a buddy and I tacked a 400k brevet in the Fingerlakes region of NY.  Unfortunately, the first six hours of it were spent wading through an extremely cold, soaking rain, meaning that we spent a considerable amount of time huddled in gas stations, trying desperately to drink enough coffee to keep ourselves from shivering.  Needless to say, that's not really ideal for a 20-hour day.  Then, in 2013, we tackled a 400k closer to home, only to find that when dusk fell on us with 35 miles remaining, almost all of our lights had inexplicably died, as had our routing computers, which meant we spent a solid three hours picking our way uselessly along pitch-black country roads, all while getting profoundly lost.

400ks are challenging, I think, for two main reasons (apart from the 250-mile distance, which is considerable).  First, they take place in springtime, which is to say that you really don't have a clue what the weather will be from one moment to the next.  Second, unless you're scorchingly fast, they involve two significant chunks of nighttime riding: one from 4:00 a.m. until sunrise, and the other from about 9:00 p.m. through whatever time you're done (the average being about 1:00 a.m.).  In other words, there's a lot of time and opportunity for things to go wrong.

My mistake on this occasion was using the promising weather forecast to pack lightly -- just a windbreaker vest and light arm warmers.  I figured the first couple of hours would be chilly, but after that it would be smooth (and light) sailing.

Social-lite

My goal for this ride was only to finish it; I figured I'd ride with Mark, who was attempting his first 400k brevet, enjoy the scenery, and get to know some fellow riders.  I've recently been on a kick of not finishing each ride exhausted from racing up every incline, and I was optimistic enough to think I might finish this ride without getting too beaten up.

Because I slept in my own bed the night before (rather than driving an hour to the ride start and staying in a hotel), my alarm went off at 1:45 a.m., which is pretty perverse.  Driving out of my parking garage at 2:00, I noted that pretty much everyone else in Logan Circle was awake; it's just that they hadn't gone to bed yet.  On the upside, waking up that early is basically the equivalent of just taking a nap -- it's too early for your body to get indignant, because it doesn't understand that that's all the sleep it's going to get.

Turnout for this ride was pretty amazing -- 45 riders, give or take.  Just a few years back, there would have been less than half that number.  The number of crazies is growing!

The first couple of hours, riding through downtown Frederick and the countryside in pre-dawn hours, was as surreal as always in these events.  There's nothing quite like a 40-person peloton, each bike with blasting headlights and glowing red taillights, and each rider festooned with reflective clothing, to make passersby believe in aliens.

Mark on the left in downtown Frederick.  Photo credit to Bill Beck.

After a couple of hours of rolling along to the sounds of morning birds, whirring tires, and clicking shifters, dawn broke and we made our way over a couple of long, grinding climbs out of Thurmont and into southern Pennsylvania.  The roads were spectacular, often lined with trees bedecked in their vernal finery.

Photo credit to Bill Beck.

My progress through this portion was constantly interrupted by my need to find a private tree seemingly every 10 minutes.  I didn't get it; I'd had all of one espresso to drink that morning, but I seemed to be a miracle of modern science.

As we made our way further into Pennsylvania, the forested climbs gave way to never-ending, rolling fields of the sort of electric green that one associates with the British Isles, not the mid-Atlantic.

Fields of glowing green.  Photo credit to Bill Beck.

We made terrific time through this section, and who wouldn't -- lightly rolling hills through beautiful countryside, with descents that snaked off into the distance in a way that invites one to pin the ears back and let it fly.

It's impossible to go slowly here.  Photo credit to Bill Beck.

The happy warriors!  Photo credit to Mary Gersemalina.

The scenery was post-card perfect.

This is why we ride bicycles!  Photo credit to Bill Beck.

Cruising merrily.  Photo credit to Mary Gersemalina.

Mark and I reached the first commercial control a little before noon, having been on the road for about 8 hours, and having covered a leisurely 110 miles.  Somehow, in the course of those 8 hours and 110 miles, I'd consumed only two bottles of water, which seems absurd, but every step of the way I'd felt extremely hydrated, so far be it from me to understand the mysteries of the world.  All I knew was, I was damn hungry.  So pizza it was, and pizza I did.

Pizza #1 of the day.  Photo credit to Bill Beck.

After a leisurely lunch, it was back on the roads, where we headed east through central PA, basking in the early afternoon sun as we followed rivers to lands unknown.

Trout fishing anyone?  Photo credit to Bill Beck.

During this stretch, from miles 110 through 130 or so, I found myself wondering why so often, as cyclists, we feel a need to hammer through a ride as fast as we can, with each turn of the pedals being a war of all against all.  I'm as guilty of it as anyone -- my Big Wild Ride solo effort is evidence of that -- but lately I've taken real pleasure in just enjoying the journey, knowing that I could go faster, but instead choosing to strike up conversations with cows.  And Mark.  But the cows laughed harder at my jokes.

Mark and I rolled through the 200k point (halfway) in 9 hours and 30 minutes, which was a pretty solid time for a ride with front-loaded climbing.  In fact, I think it was close to Mark's fastest time for 200k, which was pretty audacious for the first half of a 400k.  That pace seemed no problem to sustain at the time, but the third 100k -- from miles 124 through 190 -- came with no planned breaks, and that part of the ride is always a slog.   You've been riding for 12 hours after getting very little sleep, it's the hottest part of the day, and the end is nowhere in sight.  Psychologically, I think it's definitely the hardest.  Mark seemed a little less chipper than he had been earlier in the day, so I did my best to pull when I could and otherwise didn't badger him too much.  The objective was simple: to get to dinner, which was at the 190-mile point.

Well, we almost made it.  The weather had never been convincing, with the morning chill giving way to real warmth only for an hour or two around noon.  The afternoon had been overcast and blustery, and as we approached the dinner stop, our luck ran out.  Suddenly we were fighting to keep our bikes on the road as we were battered by driving gusts from the west, and what little sun there had been gave way to this:

Ah, yes -- that's the sky I associate with my long rides.  Photo credit to Bill Beck.

And soon thereafter, we were being soaked to the gills.  I'd put my vest back on, but when you're drenched and rolling down the road without putting out real power, it gets pretty miserable.

We finally arrived at dinner -- another pizza place -- and sought refuge from the cruel world.  Depressingly, they ran out of the corn soup just as we arrived; I was close to tears.  So, Mark and I took solace in a meal that can only be described as a Fat Fest: salted peanuts, potato chips, fried mozzarella sticks, and a large pizza.  Disgusting, but so tasty.  Mark had remarked a couple of times that he didn't understand how, in a previous long ride I'd done, I'd single-handedly eaten a large pizza.  But I think he finally got it.  I'm not sure if that's comforting or troubling.

The pizza place didn't have coffee, so I asked the waiter to keep bringing me large cups of hot water, all in an effort to keep my soggy self from shivering through dinner.

As the miles increase, so do the pizza sizes.  Photo credit to Bill Beck.

Sitting in the pizza place and contemplating the rest of the ride, I recognized that I was in a uniquely moronic position.  Pretty much everyone else who came in the door was sporting full-length jackets and tights, and many of them had rainproof caps.  I had nothing but my rapier wit, which turns out to be less useful than one would expect.  Perhaps sensing and enjoying my discomfort, Mark headed out to his bike, then to the restroom, and emerged remarking that it was really a good thing he'd thought to bring a dry pair of socks.  Dem's fightin' words.

Setting out from dinner at mile 190, we had 60 go.  It really says something about the size of an undertaking when 60 miles can be considered tying up loose ends, but that's what I hoped it would be.  Unfortunately, there was a big problem: it was still raining, I was soaked, it was getting colder, and I couldn't think of how on earth I was going to ride another 5 hours without falling off my bike with hypothermia -- at nighttime, nonetheless.  Plowing through the dark, we'd cross fields where suddenly the temperature would plummet ten degrees, and then jump up again only after making life thoroughly unpleasant.

I realized that I couldn't keep riding at Mark's pace, as much as I wanted to; he was better prepared for the conditions, whereas my only play was to work hard enough to generate body heat.  Doing so, of course, would mean pulling away, which I didn't want to do.  It's safer to ride together at night, and that had been the plan all day.  So, I struck upon the approach of letting Mark ride ahead for a few minutes while I stopped on the side of the road.  Then, I'd sprint as hard as I could to catch him, which would get me warm enough that I could ride with him for a few minutes before doing it again.  

That "randonneuring as intervals" approach worked for 10 miles or so, but it was a losing battle.  Eventually, it got too cool to just stop by the side of the road, so I found myself doing sets of pushups and burpees before taking off after Mark again.  

Eventually around mile 210, I realized that, at the pace we were going, it might well take us 3 hours to ride the final 40 miles, and I had no idea how I'd make it that long.  I just needed to get myself to the finish as fast as I could.  So, I apologized to Mark profusely, and he graciously agreed that it made sense for me to ride on ahead.

With that dispensation, I set out like a man on a mission: hammer to the finish.  And so it was that I ripped off a 40-mile solo time trial starting a little after 10:30 at night.  As it turned out, it was uncomfortable weather for riding, but it was perfect for racing, and I was happy to find that I felt as powerful at mile 220 as I did at mile 20.  Every now and then I'd encounter another randonneur who'd set off from dinner ahead of us, and I'd blow by with an apologetic explanation that I was just trying to salvage my situation.

Happily, I navigated successfully and found myself rolling through the broken social scene of downtown Frederick after midnight on a Saturday night.  I clocked into the finish at about 12:30 a.m., 20 hours and 30 minutes after we'd started, and 23 hours after I'd woken up.  I chatted for a few minutes with the other riders hanging out at the finish, then shot a text to Mark explaining that I had to hit the road in order to get home before I passed out.  He wound up finishing about an hour later, having fought through a very challenging first 400k, and having set a 60-mile personal distance record for a single ride. 

Final thoughts

400ks... bloody hell.  I've done three, and each one has reared its head in ugly fashion.  This one posed the question: "You're exhausted, shivering, have no more clothing, have been riding for more than 18 hours, and have 40 miles to go.  Discuss."  In that sense, it was a "brick in the wall" ride, so to speak -- the kind of experience you can draw from in future challenging situations.  And, in a real way, I think it was a useful kick in the ass, one that will ensure that, in future rides, I always carry some contingency clothing, regardless what the weather forecast says.  I even ordered a new, warmer vest with pockets, all because of this experience.

I'll get a chance to test the new gear in two weeks, when I'll take on a 600k (375 miles).  That ride will be a real trick, as I'll be attending a wedding only 31 hours after it starts -- the time limit for finishing the ride is 40 hours.  Basically, I'll be forced to treat it like a 375-mile unsupported race, which promises to be eventful.  But hey, that's how amusing stories happen!

To RAAM, Or Not To RAAM?

The 2014 Race Across America route (~3,000 miles)

Long before I began dabbling in randonneuring, I knew of the Race Across America (RAAM), upon which Outside Magazine has conferred the title of  "The World's Toughest Sporting Event."  In its 30-odd years of existence, only 200 or so riders have finished it solo.  About 10 times as many people have summited Mt. Everest.  It's a 3,000-mile bike race that, in its present incarnation, begins in Oceanside, CA and ends in Annapolis, MD.  It involves over 100,000 feet of vertical elevation, including stretches below sea level in the desert and mountain passes approaching 11,000 feet.  Temperatures in the day can reach 100 degrees, and at night can plummet to near freezing.

Racers have about 12 days to complete the journey.  By contrast, Tour De France riders travel about 1,000 miles less, and take twice as long to do it.  (Of course, they are going pretty freakin' fast.)  At root, the question is: can you ride 250 miles a day, on average, for 12 days in a row?  The distance is obviously unfathomable, but the even bigger challenge is the lack of rest.  Last year's winner, Christoph Strasser, apparently was on his bike for about 23 hours and 15 minutes a day, for just under 8 days.  That is, he slept less than an hour a day while riding about 400 miles a day, on average.

There's nothing healthy about it.  Hallucinations and profound confusion are ubiquitous, and there's a medical condition, Shermer's Neck, that exists nowhere else on earth.  It involves certain riders' neck muscles becoming unable to hold their heads up any longer -- they simply give out, and riders' heads flop around like a rag doll's.  Not that this is enough to stop victims, as many times they prop their heads up so that they can continue riding.  (The condition can last a couple of weeks.)

In all, despite extremely demanding qualification standards (for example, riding 400 miles or more in a 24-hour race), each year there's about a 50% DNF ("Did Not Finish") rate.  For a great insight into the challenge and the motivations of those who do undertake it, the award-winning documentary Bicycle Dreams is well worth checking out.

Each summer for the past several years, I've followed the event pretty closely. Live GPS tracking is available online, and certain online forums provide regular insight.  The race is always an object of fascination to me.  RAAM is to competitive ultracycling what Ironman Hawaii is to triathletes.  It's the best of the best, taking on an unfathomably difficult event -- one as difficult mentally as it is physically -- in which there's no prize money and precious little press coverage.  Only a couple of people in the world are able to make a full-time living off of RAAM and other ultracycling events.  For the great majority -- not that there are many to begin with -- it's a labor of love that they undertake in addition to full-time jobs, commitments to family, and the like.

In short: RAAM is the sort of thing that, if you have to ask why people do it, you'll never understand. It's climbing the mountain because the mountain is there.

For as much as I've followed RAAM over the past few years, until recently, I've never really imagined it as something I'd want to do, much less something I'd be qualified to undertake.  It was only in the summer of 2012 that I rode more than 200 miles for the first time, and that was in a brevet, which isn't competitive or time-pressured.  I remember when, in 2011, a close friend told me he was attempting the inaugural 1200k (750-mile) Big Wild Ride in Alaska, and I thought he was utterly nuts.  I'd long loved extremely challenging all-day rides like Mountains of Misery and the Diabolical Double, each of which is 125 miles of insidious mountain climbing, but I'd never reached the end and had any desire to keep going for another 11.5 days.

In the past couple of years, though, I've begun to dabble in longer cycling events, and for whatever reason, I've yet to hit any sort of wall.  In my first 12-hour time trial, in Saratoga, NY in 2012, I was hoping for 220 miles or so, but I wound up with 256, which was a little beyond the old course record (although I took second to Matt Roy, who set a new one).  Last year, I completed my first 600k (375-mile) brevet, a solo effort, and then took on the Big Wild Ride 1200k (750-mile) Grand Randonnée.  Each event was crushingly hard and took absolutely everything I had in me, but I finished each well ahead of the cutoffs.  Most recently, I competed in my first 24-hour time trial at Bike Sebring, and, despite being monumentally undertrained, somehow did well enough to come within shouting distance of an AG course record.  I wound up with 441 miles, which was comfortably more than the 400 required for RAAM Qualification.   I also wound up ahead of several riders who have finished solo RAAM in the last couple of years.

THE PRESSURE OF STRANGE PEERS

I've long observed that the triathlon social scene -- for better or worse, but probably for worse -- has a subtle but distinct pressure to it.  For most (privileged, first-world) people, attempting a triathlon is a worthy ambition.  Those who do it, though, and decide to stick with the hobby, quickly come to find that there's a pressure to go longer.  There seems to be a subtle assumption that everything short of Ironman is merely a prelude to the real challenge.  (For the record, I think this is completely insane.  I have huge amounts of respect for those who work hard at the extremely painful task of going faster at shorter distances.)

But it turns out that doing an Ironman's not the end of it, either.  Sure, it may start as a once-off "bucket list" item, but it often doesn't stay that way.  Crossing the finish line of an Ironman is a singularly intoxicating experience.  There aren't many times in life when we're surrounded by crowds cheering a huge undertaking, and the glow is real.  Regardless how well one does, though, the glow inevitably fades, and one's left with a firm conviction:

I can do better.  I can go faster.  I have more to give.

And there's certainly pressure to try.   The more time one spends training with the tri crowd, the more it becomes one's social scene as well.  That's a great thing in many ways, but it can become a cycle that robs one of perspective.  You come to realize that the conversations are no longer, "you're doing a triathlon?" or even, "You're doing an Ironman?  Crazy."  Instead, they are, "Cool, which ones have you done?  What's up next?"  Twice-a-day workouts become the norm, and the pattern of one's life comes to revolve around an event or two each year.  It's a metaphorical treadmill that's every bit as real as one upon which one might train for a winter marathon, and it's hard to get off without worrying that life will lose its momentum and meaning.

There are at least three problems with this.

First, the endorphin rush of endurance racing is an addictive drug.  The drug may be benign compared to some alternatives, but it's every bit as real.  The first rush of an Ironman finish line is an amazing high, and one wants more.  Years down the road, though, it becomes clear that the thrill of finishing is no longer enough -- the question is whether one is getting better.  If you're disappointed in your performance, you want to avenge it the next year.  If you're thrilled, that's great, but it doesn't last, because you suspect you can do even better the next year, and you start to associate your self-image with being an athlete of a certain caliber.  From that perspective, to cut back is to regress, to fail, to die a little bit.  The shape of one's life begins to coalesce around racing and training -- where you can work, whom you can date or marry, and the rest of it.  The phenomenon of triathlon divorce is very real.

Second, endurance athletes can sometimes become monomaniacal and forget the concept of opportunity cost.  The pursuits take so much time that it's difficult to maintain other hobbies.  And, when one's recreational satisfaction comes primarily from a single pursuit, that pursuit has to be maximized.  Put simply, if a meaningful part of one's happiness is triathlon performance, it's important to keep on the trajectory of performing better.  But the law of diminishing returns applies here: going a couple of hours faster in an Ironman might require doubling one's training time.   It may in fact be true that one would be happier with three hobbies, each of which one does less well than one might with exclusive focus on a single pursuit.  But it can be hard to see that forest from inside the city walls.

Third, there's a telling pattern in my mantra above: I can do better.  I can go faster.  I have more to give.   The common word is "I."  One's performance is inherently a self-regarding thing.  Going faster, going longer, and doing better makes no one but the athlete better off (and the athlete part of it is questionable).  Past a point well short of Ironman, racing triathlons doesn't improve the world; that 8th Ironman probably doesn't provide much additional inspiration for one's sedentary friends to get off the couch.   In fact, it turns out that the field of positive psychology explains why such a pursuit rarely leads to meaningful long-term happiness: helping others is more important to one's happiness than focusing on one's self.  It's important to be healthy, but no reasonable person can argue that training for Ironmans for years on end is necessary to achieve that.

In short, I've come to think that Ironman triathlons are fundamentally self-regarding endeavors.  To be clear, I don't think that, by any stretch, Ironman athletes themselves are generally self-absorbed.  I mean only that -- in my opinion -- for people with other responsibilities, such as commitments to a "civilian" family, Ironman training falls far beyond what's necessary to be a healthy companion and role-model.

ULTRA-DISTANCE BIKE RACING IS EXACTLY THE SAME

Why all the talk about triathlon?  It's what I know.  I signed up for my first Ironman in the fall of 2005, thinking that the race in 2006 would be a one-off, Herculean adventure.  But I did better than I thought I would and wanted to give it another go.  My brother passed away at the the same time, and triathlon became an indispensable part of my coping strategy.  Somehow, in 2013, I found myself having founded a triathlon team, and I was toeing the line at my 9th Ironman.  In all those years, I had trouble finding a relationship that was happy for more than a few months at a stretch, and I found myself thinking of career opportunities and romantic prospects in terms of whether they'd be compatible with training for 20 hours a week.

Over time, it has become clear to me that that isn't the future I want.  It isn't how I was raised.  My parents made huge professional sacrifices in order to spend more time with me and my brother, and when he passed away in 2007, it was obvious that they felt they'd chosen wisely in spending every moment with him that they could.  I want that same relationship with a family, and for me at least, Ironman training is largely incompatible with that vision.  At some point, one has to get off of the treadmill, and I've found something of an alternative in long, meditative cycling events.

As it turns out, though, ultracycling has the capacity to be an "out of the frying pan, and into the fire" proposition.  If one completes 200k and 300k brevets, it's very difficult not to dream of the epic adventure that is a 1200k -- it certainly happened to me.   One can complete a 1200k with much less training than Ironman requires, but if you happen to be on the faster end of things, people notice.  After my strong performance at the Big Wild Ride 1200k, my ride report made its way through the local ultracycling community, and I began finding myself on local rides with people I'd just met telling me that they'd read it, and opining that "RAAM is clearly in your future."  I took it as a compliment, if not very seriously.  But with each success in ultracycling events, the pressure and allure grows.  The ultramarathon bike racing community is a very small one.  Everyone knows one another, and the annual reunion of the most talented people is at Race Across America.  RAAM is the ultra-racing pinnacle, where the best of the best come out to do battle with the impossible.  For those who finish it, there is nothing more to say and nothing more to prove -- you're in the books for all-time, and much as one can always call oneself an "Ironman," one will always be a "Solo RAAM finisher," a finisher of the toughest race in the world.

I'm not going to lie: there's very serious appeal to that notion.  For whatever reason, I seem to be good at this whole ultra-marathon bike racing thing -- I'm competitive with people who have finished solo RAAM multiple times.  Although Sebring intimidated the hell out of me, there's no question that I belonged there, so to speak.  Heck, had I ridden my bike for the last hour, I'd have broken the age group course record.   As a result, I have a "golden ticket" to compete with the best in the world in a sport I'm passionate about.  Such opportunities are vanishingly rare in life.   It's extremely tempting to get swept up in the enthusiasm, and to plan my life around RAAM in 2015, with the idea that it's a "once-and-done, once-in-a-lifetime" adventure that I have to try before life obligations make it impossible.

And yet, and yet... well, that's exactly what I said about Ironman in 2005.  I wanted to do (what then seemed to be) the impossible by finishing that absurd event, figuring that life would make more sense on the other side.  In fact, merely more Ironman races lay on the other side.  RAAM is just the same: many, if not most, of those who finish it come back in successive years to try to improve on their performances.  They're RAAM finishers -- they're somebody, the few, the anointed -- and, from there out, their race results are often described in terms of "Solo RAAM finisher So-And-So."  So few people in the world know what RAAM is, much less appreciate it, that it seems (from my current perspective on the sideline) that it would be difficult to leave that world behind once one's crested the summit.   It would be hard to return to civilian life afterward.

There's also this: entering RAAM is phenomenally expensive -- the effort would cost $20k-$30k, most likely -- and it takes a village.  You're required to have a crew; in practice, you need 6-9 people who will agree to take 12 days off of work to follow you across the country very, very slowly as you gradually become an insane nightmare of a human being.  To the extent I've described Ironman as narcissistic, RAAM turns the volume to 11.  I wouldn't even know how to ask people to do such a thing without feeling like an ass.  And you have to be willing to commit a very serious amount of time to training in the six months leading up to the event.  Not as much as some people like to pretend, but it's a very real undertaking, and I would never dream of entering RAAM without being committed to finishing it and doing well.

SO HERE'S WHERE I AM

Having written far too much already, here are my present thoughts, in no particular order.

(1)  I'm presently interviewing for a couple of jobs that would require substantial travel commitments.  If I get one, it may be difficult to prepare adequately for RAAM.  If things work out that way, it'll be okay; there are plenty of ways to get into trouble without finding reasons for my neck muscles to disintigrate.

(2)  If I don't wind up accepting a position that would make adequate training impossible, I will assess the situation toward the end of 2014.  This year I'm planning another 24-hour race, another 1200k, and very likely an attempt at the Furnace Creek 508 (a 500-mile race in Death Valley in October).  Furnace Creek, which is a "mini-RAAM" with a massive amount of climbing, would give me a much better sense of whether I have a realistic shot at RAAM.  A flat 24-hour race gives one vanishingly little information; Sebring is not in the same galaxy as RAAM and the sheer physical and mental fatigue that it entails.  From everything I know, solo RAAM finishers tend to think that qualification based on a 24-hour race is a dangerously misleading thing.  It's like running a good 10-mile race and thinking oneself qualified to race the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile Bataan march across Death Valley in July.  The 750-mile Big Wild Ride, in which I got 3 hours of sleep in the course of my 67-hour solo voyage, is a little more analogous, but at the end I was in no condition to keep going.

(3)  Regardless how enthusiastic I may be about RAAM, and regardless how well prepared for it I think I could be, I will not consider racing it if I am not utterly confident in my ability to lead a balanced life while preparing for it.  To be specific: if preparing adequately would require real sacrifices at work, or would require that I be anything less than a good and present significant other and friend, I won't do it.  It isn't worth it.  End of story.  There are other ways to have fun.  In fact, if my significant other isn't on board with my making an attempt at RAAM, I won't do it.  It's a team effort or nothing.

(4)  I would only consider entering RAAM if I had a crew of volunteers who are truly enthusiastic about the undertaking.  It requires a massive commitment.  If I have friends who think of it as an appealing adventure, terrific; if not, then not.  Friends should not have to make unwilling sacrifices in order to perform unreasonable favors.  Narcissism must know a limit.

(5)  If all of the above considerations somehow point to "yes," I'll think very seriously about racing in 2015, with the absolute understanding that, no matter what happens, it would be a one-off attempt.  Regardless whether I were to DNF in the first 10 miles (hopefully not) or win the race (*snort*), that would be it.  I want things in life that are incompatible with a lifestyle of perennial RAAM racing.  The idea would be to take the opportunity to toe the line with the best in the world and then to move on without regret, come what may.  And, if everything did line up in such a way that an effort at RAAM happens, I would be damn well prepared, and would head into it ready to put in a performance commensurate with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

So that's where I am.  However things play out, I'll continue to think RAAM is a phenomenal undertaking without parallel, and I look forward to following my new friends as they do battle across the country this June.

Race Report: 2014 Bike Sebring 24-Hour Time Trial

"Ours is not to reason why.  Ours is but to chafe and cry."

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson-ish.

I don't get nervous about long bike rides very often.  After my 1200k adventure in Alaska, a couple of 12-hour time trials, and a slew of challenge centuries and double-metrics, I'm pretty confident in my ability to keep the pedals turning.  Usually.  The problem is, as I discussed in a post a couple of weeks ago, my training for this event had been utterly inadequate.  Life circumstances and burnout had conspired to leave me almost completely untrained until mid December -- i.e., the holiday season -- which is about the worst possible time to figure out how to prepare for a bike endurance event in mid February.  Worse, this winter has been unusually cold and icy, which meant that my training for this 24-hour race had been done exclusively indoors on my Computrainer, using ErgVideos.  And since my racing bike is fit so aggressively that I can't see anything while I'm on it, I'd trained on my older, more relaxed bike so that I could relive the oeuvre of Freddie Prinz, Jr. while I sweated buckets

In short: I was racing an event more than three times as long as my longest training ride, in the middle of winter, and I was riding a bike I hadn't mounted in five months.  Why?  Because I live to entertain, and my cycling adventures would offer no joy whatever if misfortune didn't stalk them like a Florida alligator on the make.

MY FLORIDA: LIKE EVERYONE ELSE'S FLORIDA, ONLY WAY CRAPPIER

If there's one thing I've firmly established, it's that I have powers over weather that would qualify me as an anti-hero only Mike Myers could love.  Or, maybe it's most accurate to style me a meteorological apostle, since any race I enter invariably takes on Biblical overtones.  I've lived through the floods of Ironman USA in 2008, the mosquito plague of Ironman Cozumel 2009, the tropical-storm winds at Ironman Wales in 2011, the river of sewage at Ironman Cozumel in 2011, and a violent lightning storm while alone on a remote mountaintop, in the dark, during a 600k ride.  Most recently, in September 2013, I'd been a crash-test dummy in Ironman's first race at Lake Tahoe, where it snowed on our bikes the night before the race, and where the swim took place in 28-degree mountain air.  Enough -- this stuff's supposed to be fun, and this year I resolved to focusing on events where it was possible to enjoy the outdoors.  Like Florida in February.  Right?

As I packed my things on Thursday night, the raceday forecast had a suspiciously pleasant ring to it: 50 degrees at race start, rising to about 70, and then decreasing only to 50 again during the nighttime portion, all with the lightest of breezes.  I nearly left the knee warmers behind, but a sense of paranoia gnawed at me as I left my apartment, so I turned around and stuffed some into my bag, along with a light jacket and full-fingered gloves.

My parental support crew and I reached the race site just after dark on Friday evening, which meant that, after registering, getting dinner, and rebuilding my bike, it was basically time for bed.  I was feeling anything but confident; in fact, I was more nervous than before any bike ride I could remember.

The least sincere smile in the history of photography

Some people wake up race morning raring to go -- it'll be a sunny day of accomplishment, full of cheering fans and the wind in the hair, and all that.  I don't really have hair, but even if I did, that wouldn't be me.  In fact, the 5:00 a.m. wake-up for Sebring found me in a diabolical state -- I was so nervous that I was utterly sick to my stomach.  Forget plans for a big breakfast; I gnawed on a couple of Gu Chomps and tottered about gingerly, wondering why the hell I had signed up for a massive endeavor for which I couldn't train properly.  I was about to attempt to stay on my bike for an entire day, all the while flogging myself to go faster and hoping not to bleed to death via chafing.  I reasoned that, one way or another, it would be memorable, but that was cold comfort on a chilly morning.

Seeking to cheer myself up, I checked the weather report one last time to confirm the balmy forecast I'd seen the day before -- the one that had convinced me to make the trip to Florida in February.  Anyone who knows me knows exactly what I found.  The day before the race, the overnight low on Saturday night (the nighttime portion of the race) had been projected to be 52 degrees, which is just about perfect, if a little cool compared to the seasonal average.  By race morning, however, someone had noticed my registration and made adjustments accordingly, because the lows had plummeted to 37 degrees.  15 degrees may not seem like a lot in the abstract, but that particular 15-degree range makes all the difference in the world on a bicycle.  It's the difference between mildly cool and nearly freezing -- not what you want to face after being in the saddle for 18 hours.  The same weather front also had brought with it the promise of feisty winds, which, with my Zipp 808 front wheel, disc rear, deep-tubed frame, and assorted bottles, promised to keep things lively.  With race start temperatures in the mid-40s, I decided to start with my long-sleeved TT jersey, a windbreaker vest, and light wool knee-warmers, with the plan to ditch the vest as the going got gotten.

The start of a very long day.

READY, SET, MECHANICAL FAILURES!

The scene at the starting line was a bit surreal.  Unlike the 12-hour race I'd contested in Saratoga, this one had a real field -- something on the order of 150 riders in all.  But they were divided among four concurrent races: a century, a 12-hour TT, a 24-hour draft-legal TT, and mine, the 24-hour non-drafting Race Across America qualifier.  There also were recumbents, which are notoriously fast on flat ground, and I had no idea who anyone was.  In other words, anyone I saw could be an inexperienced athlete there to enjoy the sunshine for 100 miles, or a veteran of multiple solo Race Across America voyages.  It made tactics challenging: those racing the shorter events were likely to go out far faster than I wanted to, but I couldn't tell who they were.  And, even if I could, someone high-tailing it from the start in the RAAM division could be naively charing to his doom, or could be an outrageously strong athlete who knew exactly what he was doing.   I knew certain RAAM guys had put in 3-4x the training volume for this race that I had; my goal was to make steady progress, and, if possible, to stay in the leadership conversation for a good portion of the day.  With Chris Hopkinson -- a 2-time RAAM finisher, last year's Sebring winner, and the 2013 Ultracycling 24-hour TT world champion -- in the field, I knew I was almost certainly outgunned, but anything can happen over the course of a day this long.

Milling about in anonymous nervousness.

Being photobombed by a team of diabetic athletes.

As I peered about wondering why everyone else seemed so chipper, I ran through a last-minute bike check, and found a problem: my front wheel was rubbing severely on the brake pad.  Normally fixing that is a simple matter of loosening the skewer, repositioning the wheel, and re-tightening the skewer (the integrated brakes on my bike being about as easy to work with as Vladimir Putin).  Unfortunately, my problem was more severe: somehow the flanges on the hub of my wheel had become offset 90 degrees from one another.  I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about wheels to know how to fix the problem, much less how to do so with 3 minutes remaining before the race.  And, with the asymmetric flanges, it was difficult to mount the wheel securely -- one flange or the other always seemed to force it back out of alignment.  I tightened things down as best I could, and took the bike for a quick spin.  It seemed ok, but it was hard to tell.

And then it was time to take off!  I turned on the beams and sauntered up a bit closer to the front line.  All systems seemed were go, aside from me and perhaps my bike.

One last picture for the side of the milk carton.

A broken social scene.

The party gets started!  I'm on the left, past the guardhouse.  Not winning!

The first ten miles of the day comprised 3 laps around the Sebring International Raceway.  For many of the riders, this was all they'd see of the Raceway -- only the 24-hour riders would get to experience it in "mood lighting mode" during the nighttime portion.  I'd been warned that the opening few laps could be ridiculously fast, but I was still sick to my stomach and didn't know the Raceway nearly as well as the vets, so I took it easy and tried to get the hang of my voice-controlled earpiece, which I'd use to coordinate with my folks throughout the day.

Dawn breaks over the Sebring International Raceway.

Asst. Crew Chief Bill Taaffe waits for me to finish the three morning laps.
To the right, the pits, where crews would be stationed during the overnight portion of the race.

Almost immediately the front peloton dropped me.  I wasn't worried -- it would be a very long day -- but the speed was pretty startling, and it wasn't that I was taking it easy per se.  In fact, it was kind of the opposite: despite the chilly 45-degree morning and the fact that I was wearing only a light vest over my jersey, I was dripping with sweat after the first ten miles.  My visor was fogged over on the inside, and it felt oddly like one of D.C.'s swampy midsummer mornings.  And, despite it all, I was nowhere near the pointy end of the race field.  This didn't bode well.  I shed my vest and took off for the long loop through the orange groves of central Florida.

The 90-mile long loop, which proceeds counter-clockwise from the Raceway.

Central Florida is pretty damn flat.  It's not as flat as the Raceway, but flat enough that each minor grade feels like a blessing, in that it gives you a chance to get out of the saddle and change things up a bit.  The upside to such boring topography is that speed comes pretty easily, or usually it does.  For me, it wasn't happening at all.  My tentative race plan was to hold about a 21 mph average for the daytime portion of the race, which usually requires a pretty relaxed 190 watts.  Unfortunately, holding anything close to 20 mph felt like flat-out time trialing, and my power meter confirmed that something was wrong -- I was pushing much harder than I wanted to be, up in the 250-290 watt range, but I wasn't going anywhere.  Cue frustration.

What made things worse is that no one else seemed to be working nearly as hard as I was.  Individual riders would cruise past me on their road bikes as I powered along in the aero bars, but I rationalized that they were probably century racers pushing aggressively.  Then, however, a woman cruised past me; I remarked that she was looking very strong, and asked what race division she was in.  She said she was in mine -- the 24-hour RAAM Qualifier -- and that she'd actually been the only woman to finish solo RAAM in 2013.  (Hello, Cassie Schmacher!)  I thought, well, damn -- clearly she's a ridiculously strong rider, and apparently I'm even less prepared for this race than I suspected.  But then she remarked that she was just keeping a steady pace in the daytime, and planned to pick up the effort once evening fell.

At that point I knew something was wrong.  I had no thought that I was the strongest rider in the field, but if I'm putting out 290 watts and getting dropped by a female riding at a relaxed pace, things just weren't adding up.  And then I remembered: my front wheel problem.  Oh, crap.  I pulled off to the side of the road and, sure enough, I could barely get the wheel to turn with my hand because it was rubbing so much on the brake pad.  I realized that I could recenter the wheel, but that, due to the hub alignment problem, it might not stay that way.  Might as well give it a try.

The good news is that suddenly I felt liberated, like I could finally breathe after having my face covered with a pillow for the first hour of the race.  The bad news is that, in the first hour, I'd been pushing at half-Ironman effort, but I had only an 18-mph average to show for it.  I was already miles behind the leaders, and the effort had made it impossible for me to eat as much as I'd planned.  An hour into a 24-hour race, and I was already in a deep hole.

MAKING IT WORK, OR MAKING  A TWERK?

Most of the second hour proceeded fitfully.  I'd reel in a steady stream of riders for 10 minutes, only to find progressively that I was working too hard for the speed I was holding.  So I'd stop, curse as I futzed around with my wheel, and then start up again.  It was extremely difficult to get into any sort of rhythm, I was getting frustrated, and I wasn't sure what to do about it.  The problem is that, any time I got out of the saddle, the torque would throw my front wheel against the brakes and I'd have to fix it.

Overall, by the time I reached the turnaround at the 50-mile point, I was fully six miles behind the leaders, with an average speed of only 20 mph or so, and I hadn't stopped to refuel at all.  The speed itself wasn't disastrous in the grand scheme of a 24-hour race; the problem was that I'd worked far harder than my speed suggested.  I'd somehow managed to blow myself up while going very slowly.

Just after the turnaround, I met my folks to refuel, and debated swapping my front wheel out.  I'd managed to go a few miles without any problems by clamping the skewer down to a massive degree, and now that my crew was in the vicinity of where I was riding, I decided I could give it a few more miles to see if I'd fixed the problem.  I definitely wanted the 808, rather than the shallower wheel; the only question was whether I could make it work.

Finally, nearly three hours into the race, I was able to set into something of a rhythm, put my head down, and start cranking out the miles.

Something lonely this way comes.

Not really a 24-hour TT bike position.  To me, Florida looks like my front wheel.

One of my big concerns heading into the race was my bike position.  Calling it aggressive might be to understate the matter.  It is comfortable enough as far as it goes, and it's almost certainly more aerodynamic than that of any other upright rider in the race field, but it is not designed for long races.  I'd managed to hold it together over the course of my 12-hour TT in Saratoga, NY in the summer of 2012, but that was during the height of race season, and I was basically a mess by the end of it.

The problem with an aggressive bike fit is twofold.  First, it puts a lot of weight on the arms and shoulders, and that really adds up over time.  Second, my arm pads are so far below my saddle that, if I hold my neck in a natural position, I'm staring almost straight down:

Good head position for reading.  Seeing where I'm going, not so much.

Therefore, in order to see where I'm going -- which is useful now and then -- I'm forced to "sight" like one might do in open-water swimming.

Sneaking a peek.

Craning one's neck upward constantly for 24 hours is not a recipe for happiness.  In contrast, here's the bike position of Chris Hopkinson, last year's Sebring winner, and the winner of the worldwide series of 24-hour races for 2013.

Pilfered from Hoppo's Facebook page.  I'm sure he won't mind the publicity!  :-)

Unless I'm mistaken, Chris has competed in more than 20 separate 24-hour races, and he's a 2-time solo RAAM finisher, so the comparison is a relevant one.  My back is flatter than his, and I'm more aerodynamic without question, but his position is a lot more practical than mine, and he puts out a lot more power than I do.

The good news was that I was finally making decent progress, although I certainly wasn't reeling in the leaders.  Toward the end of the long loop, I cruised through the century mark in 4:48, which was 20 minutes behind Hopkinson -- the leader once again -- but it was far from disastrous, given that I'd lost at least 5 miles due to my brake issues.  My average speed was creeping up to 21 mph or so, which is where I'd hoped it would be by that point.  And I was in relatively good cheer, since I felt like I'd finally wrestled my mechanical demons into submission.

Unfortunately, as I turned back west toward the Raceway, where we would finish the long loop and begin the shorter daytime loops, a weather front rolled through that was pretty brutal.  It was spitting rain for a few minutes, but the bigger problem is that suddenly the winds kicked up to just over 30 mph, and they stayed that way.  I'm not a small rider, but with my disc and deep front wheel, I was being tossed all over the road, and the end of the long loop required plowing straight into that gale for 7 or 8 miles.  It was unbecoming.

Eventually, slightly more than 5 hours into the ride, I reached the Raceway once more.  Only 19 hours to go! (Yeesh.)  At the entrance to the Raceway, the crews, including mine, were set up alongside the road in a sort of block party in celebration of the fact that their life choices hadn't led to their being on their bikes just then.  Tents were blowing over, styrofoam containers were flying across the road, and I was in the middle of it, because of course.

If wind were visible, I wouldn't be.

CIRQUE DU CYCLEIL

My plan had been to eat as much solid food as I could in this event, reasoning that a constant influx of sweet liquids and gels would catch up with me eventually.  Unfortunately, due to my unintentionally hard effort in the first couple of hours, I'd taken in exactly zero "real food" calories in the first five hours.  Instead, the main things keeping me going had been constant bottles of Skratch Labs drink mix and Gu Roctane gels.  My reward for finishing the first century was a bottle of Coke, which I downed immediately over the course of about 100 yards, and a couple of bars that my mom foisted upon me in the hope that I'd find my way back to the nutritional plan we'd discussed.  I was skeptical, but I took them anyway.

The afternoon portion of Bike Sebring comprises an 11-mile loop, beginning and ending at the Raceway, that competitors ride until 6:30 pm (for 12-hour racers), darkness falls (for 24-hour racers), or you fall of your bike and are eaten by an alligator (the category into which I tentatively placed myself).

The 11-mile Sebring short loop.

The counterclockwise loop is great for an event of this nature -- all right-hand turns, no stop lights, and only a couple of stop signs that pose little risk from traffic.  You also revisit the Raceway (and your crew) once every 30-40 minutes, depending on your speed, so refueling is easy and there are frequent doses of motivation.  It's not quite flat.  The first few miles, heading west, are up a false flat and directly into a strong headwind, which can be exhausting and morale-sapping.  The wind takes a break when you turn right to head north, although here, there are a few chippy rolling hills to contend with.  Happily, though, it's one of the very few stretches in the entire 24-hour race when you have an excuse to get out of the saddle and hammer a bit, then rest on the downside.  I appreciated the variety, as well as the gigantic manatee mailbox.  The sharp right turn to head back southeast provides the reward for the previous hard work, as it's slightly downhill with a wind at your back, more or less.

Toward the beginning of my first short loop, heading west into the strong wind, I was feeling pretty good -- the early drama of the day had faded, there was a seemingly infinite distance to go, and I was resolved not to fight the wind too much.  I was spinning steadily when I saw a flash of yellow to the left, and mentally heard a "Meep meep!" a la The Roadrunner of Disney cartoon fame.  Swiveling my head, I was greeted by this thing, cutting into the wind like it ain't no thing:

He is more aerodynamic than you are.

I'd never seen one of these before.  Technically it falls into the "HPV" category, which is short for "Human-Powered Vehicle."  Note that it's not a bicycle.  Note also that, depending on how frustrated about the wind you're feeling at the moment, it bears a strong resemblance to either (a) a banana, or (b) a part of the male anatomy not normally actively implicated in bike racing.  From what I could tell, the guy may well have had a sofa, espresso machine, heater, and home theatre in there.

Meep-meep!  I want to kill it.

Doing some research afterward, it appears that this thing is actually not a bicycle or trike at all.  It's a Bluevelo Quest Velomobile.

Here's what the ride is like, apparently.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure how I feel about entering a vehicle featuring "recline adjustment" in a bike race.  Actually, I did know how I felt at the time: like the thing was mocking my pain.  I didn't know whether I wanted to scream at it or buy it.  When you're shivering, your neck and shoulders are aching badly, and you're getting thrown all over the road by wind, these things aren't helpful in lifting spirits.  Sigh. I finished my first short loop in 33 minutes or so, navigating the turnaround before greeting the parents with a look that said it all.

A menagerie of misguided souls.

Me want Coke.

Once more, my mom tried valiantly to get me to eat some solid food, so I took a couple of cookies and a Bonk Breaker, which I eventually managed to choke down against the sentiments of my gag reflex. Happily, after the first couple of short loops, I began to settle in -- my average speed was holding constant at about 21 mph, just where I'd wanted to be despite the early setbacks, and I didn't feel like I was working too hard.  The loops took on a rhythm: steady into the wind, turn right, go faster, stand-hammer stand-hammer, coast a little, sharp right, tailwindgofast!, and back to the Raceway.  My parents worked out a system of calling me every 25 minutes or so after I'd departed, which allowed them to prepare whatever nutrition I needed at the next handoff.  It worked very well -- a new bottle of Skratch virtually every loop, interspersed with Coke, gels, the odd solid nibble, and very concentrated bottles of CarboPro.

 After my second or third loop, I found myself trading off with a solidly-built guy with untamed blonde hair. He was sporting knee-length athletic socks and in general wasn't nearly as color-coordinated as most riders out there, but I sure wasn't putting any time into him.  Quite the contrary, I'd pass him here and there, and sure enough he'd come right back a few miles later.  Eventually I realized that he was basically a perfect pacer -- we were riding almost exactly the same speed each loop, and his style (easy into the wind, out of the saddle over the hills, etc.) perfectly complemented mine.  I spent 40-50 miles or about 20 yards behind him, just turning my brain off and letting him dictate the pace.  Eventually I struck up a conversation with him, remarking casually that he'd clearly done this before, and it turns out that, yes: he (Kurt Searvogel) held the Sebring course record, and had been the top solo American finisher at Race Across America in 2012.  He also was racing in the 12-hour division, and was a full loop (11 miles) ahead of me at the time.  Clearly, this wasn't someone with whom I had any business dueling it out, which was pretty liberating.  It just goes to show about this race, though: many people there were very serious business, even if it's sometimes not obvious who they are at first glance.

Eventually Kurt dropped me, which was just as well, and close on his heels came Chris Hopkinson, last year's winner, who cruised past me with a friendly nod like it was nothing at all.  I felt like I'd found my home, which was something like, "doing just fine, but getting my butt kicked by people who aren't completely bluffing their way through this."  Seemed about right.

Chris "Hoppo" Hopkinson, beating me like a drum and having fun doing it.

One would think it's easy to keep track of what 11-mile loop you're on; after all, you have nothing else to think about.  But after awhile, I really couldn't -- was it loop 5, or loop 7?  No idea.  My mental capacity wasn't able to cope with much more than singing along to "Footloose" and vintage Queensryche.  Eventually my goals in life coalesced into a single objective: stay on my the infernal short loop (headwind-turn-hills-turn-tailwind-phone crew-refuel-repeat) until 5:30 pm, give or take, when at least something new would happen, i.e., we'd be routed onto the Raceway, where we'd have another 13 hours to ride.  Good grief.  After what turned out to be 11 short loops (121 miles), I was gratefully routed over a steep bridge, through the pit area, and onto the Sebring International Raceway, where -- for reasons I'd once thought I understood -- I was supposed to stay on my bike until breakfast time the next morning.

"DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY!" -VAN HALEN

The 3.75-mile Sebring International Raceway, with its 17 turns.

The unique aspect of Bike Sebring is, of course, the Raceway.  Most of the time it's dominated by F1 cars blowing around it at 200 mph, but once a year they let the true crazies play on it overnight.  It is the flattest thing one will ever ride on.  The pavement is very good, apart from about a 1/2 mile stretch around pit row and the first turn thereafter, where the Raceway's origins as an airport are evident as the concrete slabs have significant joints between them, and are broken up in many places. I sauntered onto the track and found my parents, who, with the other crews, had been relocated from the Raceway entrance onto pit row, where they'd spend the night under the lights watching their friends and loved ones steadily decompose on their bikes.  I swapped out my mirrored visor for a clear one, fired up my light, and turned a few steady loops at a relaxed pace, just trying to get a feel for the lines through the corners.

Sunset at Sebring.

Party on pit row!

I was extremely tired, but after 12 hours, I was halfway there, and against all odds (undertraining, spotty nutrition, mechanical issues, wind, etc.), I was almost exactly where I wanted to be -- about 245 miles in.  RAAM qualification would require "only" 155 additional miles in 12 hours on flat ground, which seemed pretty straightforward compared to what had come before. In many ways, Sebring is the ideal place to ride the overnight portion of a 24-hour race.  It's closed to car traffic, the pavement is generally good, it's short enough that you see your crew a few times each hour, and, should anything go wrong, you're not far away.  But it's not all puppies and rainbows.  As great as it is to pass your crew every 12 minutes or so, it means that you're regularly afforded an inviting opportunity to stop, check in, have some food, take a nap, talk with a human, or do any of the things that well-adjusted people do on a regular basis.  Having that opportunity constantly present is like a slight but significant tax on one's motivation, but giving into it is toxic to results: to stop is to go infinitely slowly. "Stay on your bike at all costs" is the mantra.

One thing I didn't expect is that the track is pretty much shrouded in darkness.  The race website said that the course would be illuminated, and I'd seen a lot of pictures of the lights on pit row, which seemed plenty bright.  What's more, the race only "suggested" -- i.e., it did not require -- bike lights.  I erred on the side of caution by bringing my extremely powerful Exposure Strada headlight, and I'm utterly glad I did, because it turns out that most of the course is completely dark.  Before darkness fell completely, race volunteers circled the track in a car, and every 100 yards or so they'd drop a red bike light in the middle of the course.  That was it.  Those were certainly more helpful than nothing, but the overall effect was to make Sebring look like the airport it used to be.  Note to anyone attempting this race: bring a damn good, randonneuring-quality headlight.

A couple of weeks before Bike Sebring, I'd read a very helpful guide that should be considered required reading for anyone new to this event.  It observed that riders will commonly go 20% slower during the overnight portion than during the day.  This struck me as something of an exaggeration -- at night the winds are lighter, you're circling a perfectly flat track, and the end is in sight, metaphorically speaking.

Well, I'm here to say, the guide is absolutely spot-on.  Until 11:00 pm or so, things went very well.  I was whipping around the track contentedly, coordinating with my crew to grab a new bottle every 30 minutes or so.  In fact, I even got a couple of calls from my gf, who was in Chicago for the weekend.  Those opportunities to have a conversation were invaluable, but even so, the witching hour brought the pain with it.  My neck was killing me, my shoulders were aching, my knees throbbed with every turn of the pedals, and the less said about my chamois, the better.  I'd ridden about 350 miles, and I was not having fun anymore.  RAAM qualification was 50 miles away -- about 13 more times around the track -- but at that moment, I honestly didn't care too much.  I was done, and I thought of all of the excuses I'd have for stopping.  It's at moments like that that the crew becomes absolutely indispensable.  It's their job to remind you that your job is to stay on the bike and that you entered the race for a reason.  If I'd have been racing this event unsupported, there's every likelihood I'd have stopped right then and ridden the half mile back to the warm shower in my hotel room.

The overnight scene on pit row, the only illuminated portion of the Raceway.

Thankfully, my parents insisted I keep going, which I managed to do, but in the early hours of Sunday morning it was distinctly scrappy business.  I was only able to be in the aero bars about half the time, and I was out of the saddle far more than I'd have liked, just doing everything I could to keep going.

In a race this long, on a track this short, you get to know every inch of the pavement.  There was a very gentle breeze out of the west, maybe only 5 mph or so, but it was noticeable -- our speed would be 1-2 mph faster on certain parts of the course, and correspondingly slower on others.

Also, the temperatures were dropping quickly, down to about 40 degrees, and I was succumbing to it very quickly.  I'd lost the ability to ride hard enough to keep myself warm, and my wardrobe was patently inadequate.  Eventually I prevailed upon my parents to retrieve everything that might be helpful from my hotel room, and I put it all on -- jersey, vest, fleece pullover, windbreaker jacket, and long-fingered gloves.  In fact, I was so cold that they retrieved a towel from the hotel bathroom that they stuffed around my neck as a sort of redneck balaclava.  It worked, barely, but every time I stopped, it was harder to get moving again.  And, as the night passed, my average speed was steadily creeping downward.

One decision my crew made pretty much saved my race.  About 1:00 a.m., my mom told me that the concession stand had chicken noodle soup.  ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY.  I had them fill a bike bottle with warm soup and noodles, and they handed it to me without a lid.  For half a lap, I was gratefully slurping salty goodness.  It wasn't perfect, because eventually I was left with a huge clump of noodles and chicken in the bottom of the bottle, but I didn't care a whit -- I just tilted the bottle up and choked it down, regardless of the splattering all over my face.  It was the happiest I've ever been to have a chunk of chicken up my nose.  I also stopped briefly for a hamburger, which was divine.

Lesson: next time I do an event like this, I have to plan for what will actually be appealing 12 or 18 hours into a ride.  As it turns out, the answer to that is salty solid food, not bars or anything "performance" oriented.  In fact, a plate of stir-fried rice may be the perfect thing.

At about 3:30 a.m., 21 hours into the ride, my odometer ticked over to the magic 400 miles -- I'd qualified for solo RAAM at the first time of asking.  What an utter relief, and what a sense of accomplishment.

RETURNING HOME WITH A BROKEN RECORD?

Anything from here out was gravy, but there was one particularly attractive gravy boat floating in the distance: the age group course record, which was 449 miles.  49 miles in 3 hours seemed to be feasible, just a 16 mph average or so.  The catharsis of qualifying for RAAM gave me a temporary boost, and for awhile, it seemed like the record was mine for the taking.

Unfortunately, it just didn't seem like I had it in me.  The wheels were coming off rapidly -- I was standing fully half the time, my hands were going numb, my entire body ached, my bike shorts felt like sandpaper, and I was just demolished.  I flogged myself as best I could, but as 5:30 a.m. drew near, I was forced to admit that I just couldn't make it.  My odometer said 431 miles, which meant I was 18 miles short of the record.  It seemed impossible that I could hold 18 mph for an hour just then, but what's worse is that Sebring doesn't give credit for partial laps, meaning I'd have to ride 18 miles plus 3.75 miles in order to break the record.  That was simply impossible.

Taking a broader view, I realized that nothing I could do in the last hour would achieve anything.  I was 15 miles behind Hopkinson, who was in first place, and I was a good 30 miles ahead of the rider in second place.  I'd met my goal for the day despite difficult conditions and a dose of bad luck, and I felt like I was simply falling apart on the bike.  I couldn't keep from shivering, and my knees were screaming that I was doing more damage to them by the moment.  To top it all off, I had an important job interview less than two days later.  I decided to be rational for once in my life, and I called it a day at 431 miles, with an hour to go.

WOULDA, COULDA, SHOULDA?

After heading back to my hotel for an exceedingly long shower (note: dried blood stains inside bike shorts portend an uncomfortable cleansing experience), I finally managed get warm enough to head back out for the awards ceremony.  I turned in my chip and wandered over to see the results, where I found a surprise: the official tally had me at 441 miles, not 431.  I have no idea what led to the discrepancy, but the fact is, I'd stopped with an hour left and the record a mere 8 miles away.  I'd needed only to ride 3 more loops to own it, and no matter how awful I'd felt, I'd been capable of handling that task.  But I didn't know -- I'd acted on the best information available to me -- and that was that.  Lesson learned: a 24 hour race should be ridden for 24 hours.  Next time, Gadget.

How far is 441 miles?  It's the distance from Washington, D.C. to Boston:

D.C. to Boston = 438 miles.

And it's about 60 miles more than the trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles:

San Francisco to Los Angeles = 381 miles.

Viewed from any reasonable perspective, my day was a huge success.  I took 2nd overall and 1st in the age group with a distance that would have won the race the prior year.  Chris Hopkinson beat me handily to win, chalking up 468 miles, but then again, he was the world champ at 24-hour racing last year.  Had I not lost 5-6 miles to mechanical trouble in the first hour, and had I forced myself to gimp 12 miles in the last hour of the race, the margin might have been only 10-12 miles.  I couldn't have won -- he was by far the stronger athlete on the day -- but it was a much closer race than I'd have thought, and it suggests that I have more to give at this distance with proper preparation.

Do well at pie-eating contest, win more pie.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Sebring is a terrific and unique event.  It's run seamlessly, and the opportunity to race on an internationally famous Raceway is hard to pass up.  I definitely plan to return -- maybe to make Hopkinson work a little harder for it next time!

24-hour races are interesting beasts.  The psychological demands are notably different, and greater, than races of a set distance, because no matter how quickly or slowly you go, the finish line comes to you.  In the back of your head, you're always aware that there's no such thing as a "Did Not Finish" result -- everyone who starts automatically finishes 24 hours later.  For that reason, unlike in a race of a set distance, an hour off of your bike brings you just as much closer to the finish line as does an hour of flat-out hammering.  When the going gets tough, as it inevitably does, the urge to slow down or stop becomes a siren song that is monumentally difficult to resist.  In some ways it's more humane to race a set distance, because there you know that it's a "pay me now or pay me later" situation, so you might as well keep going.  It's much more difficult knowing that, whenever you like, you can stop, have dinner, shower, rest, and return to your bike to find the finish line closer than when you'd stopped.  It is a mental war.

It's also the case that, in a 24-hour race, a rider is utterly dependent on his crew.  I got myself through a self-supported 12-hour race, which was suboptimal from a competitive standpoint but feasible on other levels.  Not so in a 24-hour race.  My experience here convinced me that I'll never enter such an event without a crew.  I cannot imagine how I'd have survived the night without my crew hunting down spare clothes, discovering a well of chicken soup that I didn't know existed, handing me cups of hot coffee, and urging me to keep going when I wanted nothing more than to stop.  My parents kicked unbelievable amounts of ass.  I might have been the only one competing in the race, but in fact, this was a team event from beginning to end. I don't think it's possible to do it any other way.  For anyone considering crewing for this sort of event, know that you're a huge part of the rider's success.

I definitely plan to race more of these events in the future.  My next planned 24-hour race is the National 24-hour Championships in Michigan in mid-June.  I may pick up a 12-hour event before or afterward.  The California Central Coast 1200k looms in August, and who knows what may happen after that?

As for my RAAM qualification, for now, I'm simply delighted to receive it.  I've written a little more about my thoughts entering that event here.