Friends in town… what’s that, you want to ride the Arizona Trail, through Colossal Cave and Pistol Hill?
Let’s see…… 70 degrees, sunny skies, calm winds.
I guess… if I have to! Twist my arm whydoncha!
Greg the photo wizard. Just his presence got me back into photo happy mode.
Trina being escorted by speedy trail dogs.
Smiling?! On this trail?
New line! It looks like Greg is headed for a bit of pain, but he rode it out. I rode it the other direction too, and it’s a classic one that forces you to kill most of the speed you thought you needed to get up it. Why? Because it looks like you’re riding into a wall, not something a bike can go up. But it does roll out! Too cool — can’t believe I didn’t spy it before — Greg was the one to suggest it.
I heart saguaros.
In all their twisted beauty.
Wow did it ever feel good to get out and get cooked a bit by the sun. My legs still don’t take kindly to walking or general maneuvering, but they want to ride!
I think I was unprepared for how much fun Old Pueblo was going to be. You might say I was a little unprepared in general. I didn’t know I was doing the race until three days before the start. Half of 2-Epic was sick, and for some reason the guy from Tucson with almost no 24 hour race experience seemed like a good choice to fill in.
I’d have been a fool to say no. I’ve been looking for a good team to race with at Old Pueblo for a while, and I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. Lynda is the current solo singlespeed national champ, and absolutely killed Old Pueblo last year, riding 16 laps in the singlespeed category. She knows a thing or two about these things and is one of the best 24 hour racers, period. I knew I’d learn a lot from her and that we had a good shot at the win — if I could just keep it together and limit my mistakes.
I showed up Saturday morning, with a surprisingly easy drive in and made my way to Lynda’s ‘circus’ tent. She and Dave Byers had quite the set up, and I felt totally spoiled throughout the race.
We talked strategy a bit, and both of us were pretty relaxed. Maybe a little too relaxed — I was almost late to the start. I was walking and talking with Jonesy up the road when someone said, “you guys doing the first lap? Two minutes to start.” We started jogging, which was a good warmup. I shook Todd Sadow’s hand, thanked him for the race, then stood next to Fuzzy (thanks Fuzz) right on the front, with about 30 seconds to go.
I am emphatically not a runner. Running does evil, nasty things to me. My weak little body just can’t handle it. It might be why I’m so impressed by people who can run and run so well (Paula!!!).
I knew I wouldn’t be super fast, but I figured I could handle something so short as the “Le Mans” run to the bikes.
Oh how wrong I was. If you could zoom in enough on my legs you could see millions of muscle fibers tearing. Just looking at that pic makes me a little ill. It’s Wednesday and my legs are still stupid sore… all from that run.
At the time it was super fun though, all adrenaline and guts. Reality sunk in on the uphill and people started passing me big time (even the guy carrying the pirate flag!). I got on my bike in ~50th with a heart rate of 183 and it took forever to recover from it.
The only good part was that it kept me from going out too fast. With my legs aching and my heart pounding, there was little worry of that. Chill was the word, and I knew that any effort I put into pedaling hard was not at all worth it. I was worried that after taking my first lap off, my legs would lock up and I wouldn’t be able to ride at all.
That pic is from lap 1. Do I look like I’m chilling or what?! I was trying to talk to people, thanking volunteers, cheering on people that stopped for whatever reason. It took a while for me to realize I was pretty much the only one doing that kind of thing.
It really took me several laps to get into 24 hour race mode. It’s not a self-supported enduro with a handful of people, many of whom are your friends. I had to constantly fight the urge to stop or ask people if they were OK when they were on the side of the trail. Had to remind myself that there were hundreds of people around to help. I eventually settled on saying something encouraging, and then finally moved to not saying anything at all, which felt strange for a while. I even stopped trying to make dumb jokes and chat with people. I even learned how to be a little more aggressive with passing! It’s an interesting phenomenon, racing around in circles with so many people.
Super fun though, as I would learn as the race wore on. My eyes usually glaze over when I start reading a 24 Hour race report that breaks down the laps, so apologies in advance if you are the same as me!
It totally felt like cheating to be able to stop racing and attend to whatever needed to be attended to. (Lynda and I traded off every lap). After the first lap I was very glad to be off the bike so I could assess the damage to my legs. Yep, they are sore beyond repair, and I would just have to deal with it for the rest of the race and beyond. At least they were not cycling specific muscles, so shouldn’t slow me down too much? I have to say that it wasn’t very inspiring to have trouble bending over, or putting on my shoes… knowing that the race had just started.
I kept the same average heart rate for my first three laps (seriously, the average was exactly the same) and I got faster on each one. 1:13, 1:12 and 1:09. Other than feeling the soreness in my legs on all the “rough” sections (thank goodness for the 4″ Lev) all three felt pretty reasonable, a pace I could sustain indefinitely, but I knew night time and long term fueling would change things up.
Meanwhile Lynda was consistently churning out the same or faster lap times than me. That was pretty inspiring right there. You definitely feed on the energy of your partner, even though you only see them for a second.
Paula found our tent before my first night lap, which was great because the night transitions are more critical, or harder. She helped a lot, especially since the dumb soreness made it more difficult for me to move around and find things. My pit setup was also anything but dialed… unlike my pit mates who were so well organized and efficient it was almost scary. I got to talk to Dave B. during a few transitions as he came by our tent, and man was he focused and smooth. I wasn’t surprised later when I heard he had moved into 3rd place solo.
My first two night laps were super consistent and again I felt better with each one. Despite being a local, I don’t know the course, given that I only ride there during the Antelope Peak Challenge, and only in 2008 did I do the bonus 24OP lap. So I kept the speed reeled in for the first two laps as I learned the lines in the dark. Luckily I had the best lights of anyone out there, courtesy of Mr. Harris, the light wizard. As I transitioned for my third night lap I was planning on finally pushing the pace and going for fastest night lap. We were halfway through the race and it was time to let loose a bit.
Unfortunately, I got a little excited about how easy it was to fuel between laps. Throughout the race I ate almost nothing on the bike, and instead drank and ate on the transitions. And it was working really well until I overdid it and ate too much. Usually getting enough fuel is a challenge for me, so Paula was eager to feed me, and I was eager to eat. Pasta, veggies, hot chocolate, an apple, some gatorade? Yum yum.
Standing in the transition tent the burps started. Oops. After a few minutes of pedaling it was clear my stomach was unhappy and this was going to be a slow lap. I bordered on the edge of nausea most of the time, but I’ve ridden through much worse. I focused on using energy where it mattered, and kept it easy otherwise. For some reason I would always get stuck behind people on the His/Hers trail. There’s nowhere to pass and people really get limited by their skills there. But it’s also the only ‘rough’ section of the trail, and I learned that taking it easy there led to a much faster/easier climb to round out the lap.
The lap of a thousand burps came in respectably for being in the wee hours of the night, but I couldn’t eat anything on the next transition, or the next lap. Again the slow down was not significant, though these two laps were definitely the hardest.
Luckily Lynda was still going strong, and had moved us into the lead. It was a very close race, with 2nd (with Jeny on the team!) and 3rd right on our heels.
photo by Lynda Wallenfels
Sitting back in the transition I felt super lucky to have the tent, a space heater, lights, dry clothes and a comfy chair. I was a total wreck. I shivered for almost an hour, dehydrated and hypoglycemic. My toes would not come back no matter what I did, and the thought of riding another lap made me nauseous. “I’m so sick of riding that course and passing people all the time,” I thought.
It’s not a good race unless you think about dropping out at least once. So, there it was.
I have pulled myself back together from much, much worse, so I just stayed focused on what I needed to do to recover. I made it to the transition tent more than five minutes before I expected Lynda to be there. As I walked in I heard, “Team 224!” Wooooo, just in time.
“Lynda just rode a 1:12!!” I heard someone say. I didn’t process it until I was on the bike again, and at the same time it was clear that I was reborn. Let’s get this thing going, maybe I can match the 1:12!
Once again feeding off the energy of my partner, I kept the pace comfortably high and had a blast ripping around the course. I still had to keep it easy in a few places, so as to not activate my roasted supporting muscles, but on the ‘high point’ climb I really laid into the pedals, and it felt oh so good. This is what racing bikes is all about.
It wasn’t enough to match Lynda’s smoking lap, though. But we were suddenly looking at the possibility of 20 laps. Previous record for co-ed duo was 18. We had enough of a lead that 19 would do it, but the prospect of 20 was pretty exciting.
Both of us would need to ride comparable (1:12-1:13) laps to what we just did, and even then it was going to be close. I felt like I could do another 1:13, but even that would put it down to the last minutes. (We had to finish our 19th lap before noon in order to head out on a 20th lap).
I kept checking the clock and looking for Lynda. She came in with a 1:13, leaving me the cushion (I had ~1:17 to finish the lap). I grinned and asked her, “do you want to do another?” Of course she did, so I got to it.
The wind was pretty murderous heading east, and I feared I was going too slow. Despite this being my 10th lap, I had no concept of the splits, or how fast a 1:15 lap really was. All I had was the clock on my GPS, telling me that twelve noon was coming fast. I really pushed it at the end, and I finally figured out the most effective way to let people know you are coming — grunting. Whenever people heard me suffering they’d clear out of the way before I got anywhere near them! Too funny.
I wasn’t sure I’d make it even as I was getting close to the high point on the course. I don’t know how long the descent takes! Without a GPS track and TopoFusion to tell me, I’m useless. I was totally surprised to see I had five minutes to spare when I entered the tent to lots of cheering. Lynda was off on lap 20! Yeah!
That’s the only pic I took, of Lynda finishing lap 20 in style!
The race seemed too short — though I had killed it at the end of my last lap, I was still just getting started, getting dialed in, and wanted to ride more! Was that really 24 hours? The sun is still up and it’s beautiful out!
photo by Paula Morrison
But I guess you gotta go stand on the podium sometimes.
What an awesome time! It was too fun to be Lynda’s teammate. Paula was awesome on support — always encouraging, checking times and helping me immensely during all the transitions. Dave Harris’ advice and lights (and by extension, wealth of experience) sure helped a lot too. Thanks a bunch guys.
Here’s an article on Mountain Flyer that quotes me saying something I don’t remember saying, but is definitely true:
And finally, here is something kinda fun. A TopoFusion comparison of my laps:
Red dots are day laps, black are night. Unfortunately I lost the GPS data for my first two laps due to using Paula’s GPS which was set to record a point every second. So much for being the GPS expert, but it did record my average and max HR for each lap.
It’s pretty cool to see how fast laps 9 and 10 were, and even how solid a couple of the night laps seemed. The wind on 9/10 is very evident as well — major slow down whenever heading east. I’m totally geeking out on the TF playbacks these days, having done a number of SPOT replays for Yukon Quest and other events we are tracking.
Thanks for reading and granting the indulgence of another long blow-by-blow race report.
I got drafted for a 24 Hours of Old Pueblo Team, much to my delight, as I am in race mode and have energy to burn.
Lynda Wallenfels is my partner in the Co-ed Duo category, and she’s as fast and experienced as they come, so if anything the author of this diary will be the weak link. Her usual speedy partner, Dave Harris, is sick.
Looking forward to finally getting back out to Old Pueblo. Been too long. Hopefully I can keep up with the lap racing learning curve. (You mean I don’t have to carry all the food I’m going to eat during the race?! Whaaa?) It should be fun!
Man, I love winter time in AZ. Beautiful weather, minus a rainy day here or there, and trails are almost always dry.
Even better, the dry trails and radiant sun attract friends from afar.
I got to sneak in a chill Sweetwater ride with Tom Purvis, Gary Blakley and their friend Jake (who lives in Tucson).
Didn’t take much to convince Tom to ride this line, which is much trickier above where he is. “That was as good as a cup of coffee,” he says. Woke him up!
Gary and Tom had ridden the Ripsey “lollipop” of the 115 APC yesterday (about an eight hour ride), so they were a little worn down.
As was I, so Sweetwater was the perfect way to spin out the legs and enjoy some desert 1-track while catching up.
I blame it on Lynda. When I rode with her last weekend she made singlespeeding look so fun. More fun than it has ever seemed to me.
She was riding a shiny silver Lenz singlespeed. Perhaps coincidentally I had just picked up a shiny silver Lenz frame from Mike on the Kaibab.
As I was drifting off to sleep on Monday I was thinking about transferring my old parts to the new frame when it hit me. Why not leave the shifters off? It’d save me some setup time and Dejay’s “Singlespeed USA” was coming up. Plus Chad had a new YESS tensioner that was rumored to work well on full suspension frames.
Though I had no place asking him for it, given that I had chided him for even thinking about turning his Leviathan into a singlespeed (!), he hooked me up with the tensioner, a cog, some spacers and everything else I needed to turn my shiny Lev into a single. (Thanks Chad)
And so, for the first time I had a legitimate entry and chance at Dejay’s singlespeed race. (Previously I had both “won” the race by cheating on a geared bike and also been completely decimated on a borrowed rigid SS).
course map, a classic Tucson loop
Dejay had a little surprise for us at the start. Front wheels were removed and bikes left on the side of Redington Road. I have one of these:
DT 9mm non quick release skewer. Great for descending Milagrosa and hucking ledges on upper Chiva. Not so great for quick transitions. It really only takes a few extra seconds to tighten down. But I fumbled with it, almost left half tightened, then stopped to twist it some more.
So I started 50 or 60 riders back and the leaders were already out of sight. Fiddlesticks!
I clawed my way into the top twenty relatively quickly, but the price was high. The leaders were well ahead and WAY above, which was not inspiring. I took time benchmarks and surmised that they were not riding any faster than us, they were simply ahead. I planted that (perhaps untrue) thought in my head and kept focused… just a bad start.
I slowly picked a few people off, but it was hard work. I found it almost impossible to bridge up to the chase pack on the singlespeed (spin spin! tuck tuck!), but I did everything I could, and finally passed a Durango rider just before the singletrack. Several chasers were visible ahead on the singletrack, and I knew I had an advantage on the next section of trail, so I backed off and tried to recover. There wasn’t much recovering going on, but I caught the group of 4-5 riders, and Beto was there to clue the others that I knew where I was going. “Follow Scott, he’s GPS man!” At which point they were stuck on me like glue as we made our way down the vague “trail.”
The upper chiva loop is full of steep ledgy climbs. Just rideable on the SS, but I knew my legs held finite strength to climb such things. And that strength was much less than the guys around me. So I walked early and I walked a lot. And I didn’t really lose much time. My entire body was coming unglued, though. It had never really come down from the ferocious start.
The entire race was really fun for me mentally. So many things were new that I had to constantly flex my brain as to how to react and what was “fastest.” I am not used to starting so far back in any race — I’ve always thought that it was hard to deal with mentally and that the urge to give up is too great. But it wasn’t today. I took it as a new challenge and it was super fun. I had plenty of new challenges, so what’s another?
I was a little puzzled that I couldn’t catch anyone on the high chiva descent. It’s easily as techy as anything on Milagrosa, and I was riding aggressively and hucking ledges. Then one of the guys was on the side of the road with a flat.
I could not shake one of the Durango riders, no matter how hard I tried. He admitted to being in survival mode, and I responded by singing the “I love hike-a-bike” song as we pushed our bikes up “the Chute” on chiva, even though I was most definitely in survival mode as well. We kept the pace high on Redington and learned we were in 10th and 11th from other riders on the route. We chatted about the trail ahead and riding in Durango, and though we were talking we punched all the hills, to which my quads responded with the quiver of cramping.
Crud. Cramping is rarely an issue for me, but then I don’t normally ride this fast, nor do I ever ride singlespeed. I figured it was from torturing weak SS-specific muscle groups, not other causes. I tested that theory several times over the next hour, discovering the limits of what I could and could not pedal. It became a game of seeing how much I could get away with, running just up to the edge of cramping, then backing off. If I had been descending a bunch I was good for several bursts out of the saddle. Otherwise there was no choice but to walk.
Learn and adapt. But most of all, keep moving.
I went from 11th to 8th by riding self supported and skipping the “comfort station.” Out of sight, out of mind. I attacked weakly, but one rider who was at the aid station (Tim Allen) pulled me back in. I trailed behind him as I continued to teeter on the edge of shutdown. We caught up to Fuzzy all too quickly. He muttered something about doing a big race just recently, then I pedaled around to continue hunting Tim.
I pedaled on the nose of my seat instead of standing and found that my legs held energy. I just couldn’t access it. Not on this bike and in this terrain. I reeled Tim in on the dirt road climbs just before Milagrosa. I figured the advantage was mine, with all my suspension. But boy was I wrong. He absolutely rocked the trail, start to finish. On an 18 pound rigid bike! Going into the gauntlet I was very curious to see how much he would ride, thinking my trail knowledge and supposed skill would finally give me the break I needed.
But he rode just as much as I did, and when I clipped back in before the first switchback, my calf cramped. Ooh. Had to let that settle down before attempting to navigate the rest of the rock garden. Tim was well ahead by now. Awesome.
I closed in on the straight/fast/rough sections, though I think I was just as rattled as he was, or perhaps more so. Despite my complete lack of composure, I remember several moments of “wow, I love this bike”, flying off a ledge or maneuvering around some tricky obstacle.
I spied Beto ahead, and when I passed it was clear he was either spent, spun out or didn’t care. Maybe a combination of all three. I quickly spun up to Tim as we exited the singletrack onto neighborhood roads. “I guess it’s going to come down to a sprint finish”, he said. “Yeah, kind of lame to sprint flat pavement into someone’s driveway.” But so it was, and after yoyo-ing back and forth a little, I motored on ahead and signed the finish sheet fourth. I don’t really know what place I was (probably 5th because someone didn’t sign in?!), but it doesn’t matter. I’m just happy I was able to ride anywhere near these guys and was able to hold together a solid SS effort. I had an awesome time out there, riding hard, learning and pushing limits. Just another great day on the bike.
I am looking forward to more rides on the SS Lev, for sure.
And, trackleaders.com is getting slammed by Yukon Quest and Kiwi Brevet fans. Had no idea both of these events were so popular. So far so good on the tracking side of things.
