Ten Miles of Bad Road (4 times)

2005-10-12T22:17:00.000-07:00

Ten Miles of Bad Road (4 times)
I had never been to New York or Adirondack State Park, which was one of the reasons that I wanted to enter the ADK 540. Also I had turned 51 years old this summer and I thought that the course record of 44 hours for 50 and older was a little long. The overall course record of 32:58 seemed very fast, but I would only be able to tell after having ridden the course. I had spent the first 6 months of 2005 in the Bay area riding the endless hills. While I was there I also rode three of the California Double Centuries, for training rides. I had a lot of fun on the bike, maybe more fun than I should have had, and thought that I was in great shape for Race Across Oregon. I started out OK but couldn’t hold down liquids after 180 mile. I rode for another 150 miles on fumes and stopped, exhausted and still unable to hold down anything. I DNF’ed at 323 miles and it was 8 hours later before my stomach settled down. While I might have been able to continue the race after a rest, I concluded later that I was suffering from over training, so it was better that I hadn’t tried to finish. I had to concentrate on resting, and not riding very much or very hard in July. August turned hot and dry and I found myself at the lowest level of fitness that I could remember for the summer period. I trained the best that I could for the time remaining before the ADK race but results did not seem encouraging. I was also determined to avoid over training this time so after my last 300 mile weekend I planned on a 2 week taper. I rode no more than 25 miles a day and no harder than tempo, plus I tried to get as much sleep as possible. Considering everything this worked well and I will use the full 2 week taper from now on.
Having never seen the course I planned on having enough time to drive the course the day before the race. ADK is well suited to this because it is a 136 mile loop that you ride 4 times to equal 544 miles. Deb, one person of my two member crew, and I flew from Seattle to Burlington, VT. Deb had crewed for a recumbent team at RAAM this summer. Jason, the other crew member, was flying from San Francisco and was supposed to arrive about 1 hour after we did. Jason is a bike shop owner and racer from Oakland, CA. He had no Ultra experience prior to this race but he’s a fabulous bike mechanic. Deb and I got the rental van and put both bikes together before Jason’s flight arrived. Jason missed a connecting flight so we put the gear together in the van. After several more flight problems it was after midnight and Jason wasn’t expected until the next day, Thursday, at 8 am. We drove to Ticonderoga to get some sleep, more than Jason got at the Philly airport, got up and drove back to Burlington the next morning. We could have slept in, more delays finally got Jason into Burlington at 2 p.m., 17 hours late, but we were really glad to see him. We had completely missed the cutoff time that would have allowed us to drive the course and still make the race meeting, so we just drove back to Ticonderoga. We made the race meeting, just. While waiting for Jason on Thursday I discovered that I had forgotten to bring my heart rate monitor transmitter belt. It was the only thing I forgot but to me it’s pretty important. Deb and I had enough time to get a replacement in Burlington while waiting for Jason. The race meeting was over, the race gear was mostly done, the bikes were assembled and tested, Jason was sleep deprived, Deb hadn’t been sleeping well, it was 8 p.m., I was stressed and the crew still had to make a run for supplies. The race was to start in 11 hours so I guess we were about as ready as we were going to get.
The weather for the start of the race at 7 am, Friday September 16, 2005 looked pretty nice, partly sunny and around 60 degrees. I had read that this race usually has rain, doesn’t get hot but can have temps down to the mid 20’s. I’m not fond of riding in the rain but I have all the gear and I’ve done commutes in temps down to 9 degrees. I have all the necessary gear to go with the experience. I hadn’t checked the weather until shortly before leaving for New York so I was surprised to see that they were having record highs. The weather forecast for Friday and Saturday was for highs of 70, lows 50 and partly cloudy. It sounded too good to be true and the weather was perfect, for awhile. Shortly after the start (500ft?) Ladislav, from Toronto, managed one of the best impersonations of a rabbit that you’re likely to see in an ultra race. I didn’t even think of pursuing, of course. It would help to understand if you could see my jersey. A local bike shop, B & L Bikes in Pullman, WA was good enough to sponsor me with a discount on parts, which is great because they are by far the best road shop in the area. I wanted to create a jersey specific to ultra racing with "Team B&L" at the top. I came up with a theme from Aesop’s Fables "The Tortoise and the Hare". I found a comic artist in Berkeley to give the idea form. There’s a turtle, on a bike, in front, one fist pumping the air and on his jersey is written "Turtles Rule". Behind him is a rabbit on a bike, collapsing over his bars, looking terrible, with a sign right beside him that says "Rabbits Drool". At the bottom is the caption "Catch Some Hare".
I was just settling into a nice pace about 5 miles into the race when the round part of the Speedplay on my right pedal came off. I had rebuilt them just before the race and obviously didn’t get the nut on tight enough. The van was parked 200 ft down the road and because it was early in the race I was able to think well enough to figure out that I needed to put the round part back on the shaft to clip out. Otherwise it would have been stuck to my shoe causing us to lose valuable time. I’m glad it didn’t happen in the last 5 miles of the race. We made an unscheduled bike change which took a little longer than a scheduled change would have, about 1 minutes v.s. 15 seconds. The bike I had been riding is a Serotta. It’s a very nice riding bike but at 22lbs, a little heavy for my 152lb race weight. It is set up with a 53x39 and an 11x23. I love to keep my speed above 40 mph on long descents with the 53x11, which I can do at a reasonable RPM. The plan is to stay on this bike because of it’s superior compliance, for everything but serious climbs of 1 mile or more. The bike I switched to is an Orbea that was intended specifically for climbing. It is a custom, like the Serotta, set up identically including aero bars, except for 2 things. This bike has a compact double. A normal arrangement for a compact double is 50x34 but Brice, the shop owner at B&L, was able to fit a 53x34 instead, with derailers for triples, front and rear, to make it work. I run a 12x25 for racing but even an 11x23 gives some great ratios without the problems that triples can give you when they aren’t working just right. The other thing is that this bike, which I call "Smoke" is just over 4 lbs lighter at 17lbs, that’s with aero bars but no water. It had been lighter when I had a 125g seat and track tires, weighing in at 15lbs, but the tires were not dependable and the seat caused serious chafing after only 60 miles. ‘Smoke’ rides so well now that I could have ridden it for most of the race. I was lucky that I switched to ‘Smoke’ when I did because I found about a dozen 10% (I have a gauge on both bikes) walls along Lake Champlain, within the first 30 miles. All of the designated climbs, which were short by RAO standards were 5% or less except for one 4 mile climb. I spent way too much time on the Serotta on that first loop with my lowest gear being 39x23. I can climb 10% grades with that gear, but for me in an ultra race, it’s suicide. If I had known the course I would have switched to a 12x25 for the Serotta or stayed on ‘Smoke’. I hadn’t planned to ride ‘Smoke’ for long distances, I didn’t know how much difference the different seat would make to what had always seemed to be a harsh ride and I didn’t think that experimenting during an Ultra was a good idea.
I caught up with Russ Loomis before Elizabethtown. He looked really good climbing. We were riding at almost the same pace but after awhile I passed him only to be passed back a short time later. I was in front of him for the left turn at Elizabethtown then I missed the right turn about ½ mile later. I knew that I should be climbing so the fact that I was going downhill did have me worried. I saw another crew van go past me heading in my direction but I was thinking of turning around when the van came back and let me know that I was off the course. By the time I got back on the course Russ was ahead of me and I didn’t see him again until the steep climb out of Keene Valley. My crew had stopped in Elizabethtown for some supplies and hadn’t warned by about the right turn before I got there. They learned at an amazing pace and never made the same mistake twice. I thought I wouldn’t need to be told where the next turn was after one complete loop, but things look different at night and when your tired. So they always warned me about every turn from then on. We all sometimes noticed new things on the same section of road regardless of how many times we had been over that section. Occasionally I would be sure that we were off course, then I would see something that I recognized. No hallucinations, just unfamiliar roads and lack of sleep.
The scenery from Lake Placid on was very pretty. Hardwood forests, interesting rock cliffs and lots of lakes. I don’t remember when I first noticed that right side of my right knee was sending pain signals. I thought it was from the lower leg where the muscle connects to the bone, if so that was a minor problem. The pain started where the "IT band" connects to the knee. I had heard of racers having this problem during ultra races but it was new to me. I had DNF’ed at RAO in 2004 because of exhaustion from going too hard for the first 350 miles, my legs were fine. Then I had DNF’ed at RAO in 2005 because of GI distress. I really wanted to finish this race but I was also wondering if I would experience a new problem during this race. I decided to slow down in order to get my heart rate back below the 144 BPM that I had set for my target heart rate, and had been completely ignoring for about 100 miles, and I was also starting to feel the beginnings of nausea. I was catching a lot of flack from both of my crew for not drinking enough water. I had developed a bad habit over the past several years of trying to get by on as little water as possible. This wasn’t helping anything but the crew wouldn’t be able to convince me of the error of my ways until well after the race was over. I had also been in the habit of making all of the decisions. I have finally found a crew that I trust to make those decisions for me, and nag me about heart rate, hydration, etc. as necessary. I decided not to say anything about my knee, hoping that the pain would just go away. It did seem to get better on the decent after the steep, 4 mile climb. I suspect that the last section of 9S before the left turn on 74 sealed the fate for my right knee. That would be the infamous section of bad road. I had read about this course in the UMCA magazine and the description included a section of bad road. I was pretty impressed by how bad it was, especially the last 3 miles, and very impressed by how long 10 miles of it was. The road was mostly old concrete, very old, with cracks at the edges of the pour. Sometimes the cracks were an inch or so but other times they would be over a foot. Some of them were partially filled in with asphalt, or not. The first time across I had to stay far to the right because of traffic, but at least I had daylight. I as trying to stand with my feet at 3 and 9 o’clock over the cracks but long before the end of the 10 miles I was feeling way more pain in my right knee than usual for an ultra race. The ride in on 74 was easy and I finished the first loop in just over 8 hours, about 60 minutes behind the first guy. This was good news, bad news. If I kept up this speed for 3 more loops I would finish in just over 32 hours, breaking the course record of 32:58. I also knew that I had gone too hard for almost 130 miles which meant that I wouldn’t be turning in anymore 8 hour loops and I might not be able to finish if my knee continued to get worse. So far I had entered 4 ultra races and finished 2 for an average of 50%. I didn’t want my average to go down but I was worried that I might be causing permanent damage to my knee. I couldn’t be sure about the damage so I started to shift more of the effort to my left leg, limited the time spent standing, decided to postpone the decision to DNF and started asking for ‘Smoke’ when I knew there were steep rollers ahead. Then it started to rain. I put on my Gortex rain jacket and had Jason change the bikes to my "rain tires", Bontragger Hardcase. I thought it was going to be a short shower, in the mountains, so I declined the offer for more rain gear. In Oregon that would have been a mistake but it never really got cold here. Later that night I added toe booties but nothing else and never really got cold, just very wet. I don’t remember that much about the second loop. It was either raining, sometimes very hard, or the road was wet for the entire loop and longer. I had a very difficult time seeing the road because the wet asphalt soaked up the light, my glasses were beaded with water as were the speedometer and heart rate monitor. On the descents the glasses would fog up as well. I tried pulling the glasses down my nose but that only worked for short periods. In every past ultra my left cornea had dried out enough that my ability to see out of that eye was almost gone. Between the rain and the humidity my eyes were not dry the entire time we were in New York. I don’t remember the 2nd time over the 10 miles of bad road too well. Just that is was dark with shadows from the van lights. I thought at the time that I could make it through the third loop but I wasn’t at all sure if I could survive the 4th loop, at any speed. The time check log at the end of the second loop said that there were three ahead of me, one of them only 8 minutes. My crew might have been worried that I would go too hard to catch someone if I knew that they were close but the truth was that I couldn’t stand, was down to about 50% of the strength in my right leg and in way too much pain to even think about hammering. The third loop started at about 2 am. I think that my knee didn’t seem too bad at this time because it had been cold and rainy, which limited the swelling. I couldn’t see the swelling in the dark anyway. The 3rd loop was much like the 2nd, dark and wet. I hadn’t seen anyone or a van for a very long time, except for the one guy, so it was a surprise to see a van parked off the road about 10 miles before Wilmington. It was Ladislav, sitting in the back of the van, taking a break, he had had a tough night. He caught up with me just as we were pulling into the time check motel in Wilmington. Then he took off up the road at a considerably higher rate of speed. I hadn’t expected to be anywhere near first position after my knee went south, and oddly enough didn’t ever get better. Thirty miles later John caught and passed me. He had had a serious mechanical, a broken wheel, on the first loop. The spare wheel set hadn’t made it into the van so he must have lost serious time while the trip and repairs were made. I made the steep 4 mile climb the 3rd time by riding the aero bars with a death grip. At the end I discovered a blister on my right hand from using it to counter my left leg which was doing about 70% of the work on the climbs. Mentally my lowest period had been at dawn or just after on previous ultras, so it was good that it got light about 30 miles before the "Bad Road". I had developed a technique of putting my left foot at 6 o’clock when approaching a rough part in the road. That would protect my right leg from most of the shock. The problem was that several places in the ’10 miles’ had cracks too close together to coast. I was past thinking about quitting and very much into feeling sorry for myself on the third time through the rough section. The pain seemed far greater, and now I could see the swelling (about the size of my palm) over the entire right side of my knee. I was crying out at every bad crack, but I was still moving forward, just not very quickly. Turning onto smooth road was a huge relief but I assumed that I was completely out of contention for the race. The pain and the swelling had me thinking that getting to Ticonderoga would be good enough. The sun came out, it was warming up, actually it was warmer than it had been so far. I stopped to make the left at Ticonderoga and Deb said that John was in the hotel, putting me in second, and Ladislav had just disappeared from view. OK so maybe I wasn’t out of contention and even though I was able to do the math in my head, no small feat, to figure out that I wouldn’t be able to make it back to Ticonderoga before it got dark, again, I should still be able to break the 50 and older course record of 44 hours. In other words I couldn’t stop now, maybe later. I also decided to start taking Tylenol on a regular schedule. I’m a pharmacist so I calculated dose and frequency, in my head ( just amazing), to maximize the amount of Tylenol without going over 4000mg/24hrs. This required me to estimate how long it would take me to ride the last loop, a wild guess really. I estimated about 10 p.m. which was only a little short. The Tylenol did help although it really only took the edge off. An article in the UMCA suggested not using Advil or Naproxen during the race because of potential side effects and because the anti-inflammatory effect wouldn’t kick in during the race. This all made sense to me and since I read it after a DNF due to GI distress I thought that avoiding anything which might irritate my stomach would be smart. I didn’t have any GI problems after that first loop and probably would have done even better if I had been hydrating properly.
The 4th loop was really hard. In addition to the Tylenol I started pouring ice water on my knee to reduce the swelling. I don’t know how much it helped but one side effect was that both the cold water and lack of motion while I poured it caused it to stiffen up. This would make the next few pedal strokes agonizing. I was getting tired from riding that far and long and from the effort of counteracting the pain. My upper body was starting to fatigue from the uneven pedal stroke. I evened it out whenever I could, which wasn’t too often. My crew was determined to see me finish and they came up with all sorts of things to motivate me and to keep my mind off of the pain. Deb made some Pom Pom’s to cheer me on. It really helped, but it was a bad stretch. They had told me that Russ was having trouble keeping anything down, this was during the 2nd loop. The route is like a circle that pinches together to make the shape of a figure eight, but you always ride counterclockwise. I had studied the route on GPS software, so I knew that we re-crossed the same 2 mile section of road where the circle pinched together. Jason and Deb didn’t know this, and weren’t convinced of it until after the race was over. We were all a little surprised to see Russ, riding the other (wrong?) direction on the last loop. He had recovered from his GI problems and was looking good at that point. By the time the 4 mile 10% climb came up, for the 4th time, I knew that I had to stop. I asked the crew to give my arms and shoulders a massage. I had been using my upper body, especially my right side, to counter balance my left leg for 400 miles and the toll was causing serious fatigue. The next climb would be the hardest thing I would have to do to finish and I would have to use a lot of upper body strength to make it. When I stopped I found out that my right leg wouldn’t support me when I got off the bike. I also discovered that I was feeling the beginnings of exhaustion. I was familiar with the symptoms of exhaustion from Race Across Oregon 2004. Strangely I wasn’t too concerned about not being able to continue because of this problem. Deb had seen exhaustion before, during RAAM 2005, but Jason had not. I had to spend about 15 minutes in the back of the van before I felt good enough to continue. Deb told me later that Jason was pretty shook up when they got back into the van. Not only did Jason recover but his verbal coaching over the next 40 miles was one of the main reasons that I made it to the finish. I knew that I could say good bye to that climb, as we had been saying to landmarks all along the 4th loop, when Jason said that the hostilities were over, at the top. That just left the 10 mile stretch of bad road to cover, in the dark, again. By this time I was very adept at putting all of my weight on my left leg, while standing, when riding over a crack in the road. Jason began making comments, coaching comments, about how to ride on rough roads. He was telling me to ride in the center of the road, to pick a line in the middle. It was dark with almost no traffic. I was veering often to find the smoothest spots. Jason said that the worst that could happen crossing a crack would be a pinch flat but a sudden change of direction could cause a crash. I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t see the wisdom of this advice even though I had never followed it in the past. Then he said to look down the road, past the rough spot, not at it, lift off the seat and center the weight over the cranks. As the bike is going over the crack in the road you mind is already focusing on the next hazard. It worked. It worked so well that the 4th time over the 10 miles was the best, and maybe the fastest. Getting to the turn onto 74 was almost as good as getting to the finish, smooth road. I made the mistake of taking off my rain jacket at this point because I remembered that at every other loop the temperature stayed the same or went up. However the skies had cleared and the temperature was dropping. I might have stopped to put the jacket back on but the last several times I had stopped I had had a very hard, painful time clipping into the Speedplays. Jason started giving a visual dialogue like you can experience in a spinning class when the instructor describes a ride, to portray a mental image. While I had experienced this many times in spinning class this was the first time I had seen it put into effect outside, in real time. It was amazing. He focused my attention on visual cues as far down the road as we could see in the dark, describing the next cue when it became visible. Deb’s job was to spot and identify each and every vehicle that came up behind us so that Jason could let me know what was coming, a car, truck or motorcycle and when it was beginning to pass. At this time I had been racing for about 39 hours. My left leg was fine, as it had been for the entire race but my upper body was pretty badly fatigued. The last 2 mile climb was not very difficult but I was worried about the fast 2 mile descent that would follow. I could tell that I had just enough strength to make it down the descent but not enough to control the bike at 45 miles per hour in the dark. I told the crew that I would have to brake to be certain that I would make it without crashing at speed. Jason warned me shortly into the descent that I couldn’t brake all the way down because I had carbon fiber wheels and tubulars. The wheels would heat up, transfer the heat to the glue on the tubulars and then the tire would roll off. That didn’t seem like a very good way to end the race so he had me let go of the brakes periodically so that the wheels could cool off. Under those conditions 25 miles per hour felt like 50. I made it to the flat and didn’t have too much trouble pedaling to the last intersection. However the crew decided to stay behind me all the way to the motel instead of driving ahead to stretch out a toilet paper finish line. It was a good decision because I had never actually ridden from the intersection to the motel and left to my own devices I would have turned into the McDonald’s lot which doesn’t connect. We arrived back at the start hotel at 11:24 p.m. for a total time of 40:24. Second place was 2 hours ahead and first place was 3 hours. At that time I was the first person over 50 years of age to finish and I set a new over 50 course record of 40:24, the previous was 44:43. Ultra lore says to not DNF for anything that will heal within 2 weeks. I didn’t know if I was causing permanent damage to my knee or not, during the race, but 4 hours after I finished my right leg was able to support my weight. Around 2 weeks later the chafing from the saddle, made worse by wet conditions, and my knee were back to normal. I feel that I may have experienced ultra racing the reverse of normal by having my easiest race first and my hardest race this fall. I definitely learned the most from the hardest race. Primarily what I learned was to find a crew that I could rely on, I have found that crew, and then rely on them. I feel that the only thing that could decrease my ability to compete throughout my 50’s would be lack of motivation to train. I have some ideas that should help in that area. I look forward to the next adventure, probably at Race Across Oregon, my favorite.
Bruce ‘Almighty’ Carroll

Mid-season, first blog

2005-04-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

It's now mid-season here in occassionally sunny central California. I moved from northern Idaho to the Bay area expecting to have wonderful weather in the winter for some extended training and Moscow has one of the nicest and driest winters ever. Still I have to report that it hasn't snowed here, not even once. My wife is on a 6 month sabbatical at UC Berkeley and I came along, to keep her company. It's been tough trying to get licensed, as an intern (long story), not a pharmacist, longer story, and then transferring my employment status with Rite Aid in order to work here, even longer story. It's taken just over 3 months but I think I'm finally there, or at least I can believe that until the next snag comes along. In the meantime I have managed to resist getting depressed about not being able to work, which would seriously harm my training, and have been spending my time training, cooking and eating. I was worried that I wouldn't like living in California. I haven't been worried about that for awhile. We have seen a Reuben's exhibit, took the monorail (BART) to the city for dinner, and visited a famous jazz club named Yoshi's to hear Marie Muldaur... And the cycling is almost as good as riding in Tuscany. There are so many cyclist in the area that you never go out without seeing other cyclists, sometimes lots of them. Well except for that 90 mile ride in early January when it was a cloudy, cold (OK it was in the 50's but it felt cold, sort of) and rainy day.
I rode in a double century, the Solvang Double on March 26th. That's the earliest double I've ever done. I started with the fast guy's at 7:30am. I managed to stay with them for about 15 miles, just 180 to go. Ordinarily I don't start that fast or go that hard but I thought it would be good training. I hope it was worth it, I'm still not sure, because I finished over 2 hours after the 3 fastest and was really, really tired.

Bruce Almighty

Almighty RAO

Ten Miles of Bad Road (4 times)

Mid-season, first blog