Last weekend Justin and I rode our guts out in the heart of the New Hampshire White Mountains. Our team name: The Rockwallers. Our main rivals in the two-man single-speed category was Billy and Nate of Team Mullet. Both Billy and Nate are great riders, and were a blast to camp next to. All race long we trash-talked.
The course was 1/2 gravel road with some steep climbs and 1/2 single track. The single track varied from mellow flowing courses to extreme mud and slick rooted hike-a-bike. Some of the best 4-man teams could manage to ride all or nearly all of the technical sections and make up big time. Energy demands and riding skill required strategic choices as to what sections to try to ride. For my lowly technical bike handling skills, I opted to hike more sections and save some energy.
After a Lemans start run around the pond we rode lap for lap, Justin posting the fastest lap time of our category on his second effort out the gate. After trading laps through the afternoon, we switched to two-lap turns. This gave a bit more rest time to eat and clean the bike for the non-riding teammate. Once the sun went down things got interesting. After maxing it all day, you start running on the food you ate while riding. You can't burn the candle at both ends forever. You have to find a new equilibrium of calories in, miles out, all the while your motor wears down slowly over the night. For some reason everyone epics a bit at night. After Justin's late evening set, I took the first three-lap graveyard shift 12:30-4:00 am. In the deep darkest of night you can ride ok. I was not sleepy per se, but I was slowing down a lot. Most of my lap times were under an hour, but after 12 hours of racing I was wearing down, posting 1hour+ laps, stumbling through the dark single track with a head lamp. Comical to watch I am sure. I was glad to get my three laps done first, so I could go to bed for a few hours knowing the big trauma was behind me.
Or so I thought. Stacey woke me up at 7:00am mountain dawn. Again, sleepiness was not my issue in so much as pure gut-wrenching fatigue. While I never puked on course, that dawn lap took me to a dark sickening place. I got real slow. The negative thoughts took over. My whole of life, it seemed, was a disturbing folly. The thing is though that these thoughts were familiar. They tend to pop up at times like these. I had been there before and succumbed to them. But experience can make you wiser. Finishing endurance tests like this race they say is very mental. Such platitudes like that get thrown around a lot, but its hard to appreciate till you actually experience it. Its not just about being mentally persistent. Quite literally, when you exercise too much, your brain squirts out too much bad negative awful neurotransmitters or something that induces an acute chemical depression. Its the only way I can describe it. Anyway, once you realize that it is a chemical aberration, your reasoning faculty can deal with the negativity better. You tell yourself that whatever you are feeling right now, you have to actively fight against it. On my second dawn lap, the fog lifted. I sped up a bit, and got my psych back. After another rest, I got altogether giddy. I did two more laps and the mid morning was over and I only had one more to do to launch Justin off to the finish. On the last lap my legs came alive. My lap was almost as fast as my first ones. I relished every minute of it, and even rode some single track sections that I hadn't cleaned all day.
I had a great time. Through the whole race we never caught Team Mullet, but we were going lap-for-lap with them, and at the end we closed the gap to eight minutes. My hat is off to the great effort by Billy and Nate. The little race we had going was super fun. And special thanks to Stacey's pit crewing and cooking, especially that awesome burrito you made, made all the difference.
