I’ll do my best to break down twelve days and 950 miles of riding on an indoor trainer into a readable report. Bear with me if it becomes a bit long-winded. I was quite transparent going into the event that I had no intention of racing VRAW to be competitive. I knew it would be difficult to take the week off from work as my company is still short-staffed while recovering from the hit we had taken at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, the challenge I had set for myself was to complete the 950 miles of VRAW around my 8-5 work schedule and finish within the 12 day cutoff time. Additionally, I had been experiencing some knee pain that had become debilitating on my recent long trainer rides and figured it would not be worth the risk of making that issue worse by attempting to ride 950 miles in one continuous stretch. Apparently I’m not the only one to experience such issues, as we saw one of the top ultracyclists in the world, Marko Baloh, abandon VRAW while in first place about 200 miles from the finish. He made the wise decision to save his knees for some of his upcoming non-virtual events which were a higher priority for him.
Although I did not have the goal of winning VRAW or obtaining a spot on the podium, I was taking the race seriously and had my own personal goals on which to focus. Even though my race was broken down into shorter sessions, I hoped to keep a steady race effort as if I was riding the course continuously. I also hoped to work out my nutrition and hydration strategy to avoid some of the GI and fluid retention issues that I’ve experienced in the past. And finally, I wanted to make sure I put some of my mental training to use by staying positive and working through the inevitable tough spots.
The Routine
In the few days leading up to the start of VRAW, I tried to prep as much as I possibly could to save time during the race. I bought a massive amount of groceries hoping that I wouldn’t need to go back to the store until after the race. I prepped enough meals in advance to get me through most of the twelve days. My bike, trainer, TV, charger cables, fans, water bottles, nutrition, and snacks were all set up at a permanent station in the garage. It wasn’t quite as decked out as a few of the “pain caves” that I saw a few of my fellow racers using, but it worked for me.
The VRAW “course” consisted of 83 rides on the FulGaz platform which varied in distance from 1.6 miles to 56 miles. The rides were sectioned into eight blocks which consisted of a sequence of 3-5 rides which would be repeated 2-4 times within that block. The rides had to be completed in the given sequence. I had put together a conservative schedule that would allow me to finish within 12 days while allowing enough time for for sleep and recovery so that I would be able to stay focused at work.
My daily routine on work days didn’t change too much throughout the race. I woke up at 3 am just about every day and tried to start pedaling by 4 am. Although I am very much a morning person, I always seem to need at least an hour to get myself moving. I would complete the rides I had planned for the morning, which would typically leave me just enough time to get ready for work. By the second week, I was eating my breakfast while on the bike to fit in extra ride time. I worked from 8-5 Monday-Friday and tried to spend my lunch hour relaxing and taking a power nap if needed. I was typically able to get home from work and get back on the bike by shortly after 5:30 pm. After finishing the rides on my evening schedule, I would eat dinner while using my Air Relax compression boots, wind down, and get to bed as quickly as possible without distractions. Towards the end of the second week, I started using the compression boots for about 15 minutes before my evening ride to help with some of the mild fluid retention I was experiencing. I also started taking an Epsom salt bath immediately after my evening rides, primarily hoping to alleviate the irritation in the saddle region that became progressively worse during the second week.
Looking back over my experience, I found that my VRAW experience can be broken into 3, maybe 3 1/2 distinct chunks of time.
Week 1
The courses for Virtual RAAM, Virtual RAW, and The 60 (a 12 day challenge to ride 60 minutes each day) opened at 6:00 am Pacific Time on Tuesday, June 16. About 200 cyclists representing 29 countries were all able to start riding their respective races at that moment. Because I knew the first segment would take me a little over an hour and I started work at 8:00 am, I opted to wait until after work to ride. It is possible to end a ride early and finish it later, but I wanted to ride at least that first segment all in one session. A big reason for this was because the first segment was the first 20 or so miles of the actual RAW course out of Oceanside, CA. Due to the time constraints in putting this event together, it was not possible to recreate the entire RAW course on the FulGaz platform, but they did get GoPro footage from a cyclist riding the first section of the RAW/RAAM course to at least recreate the race start, which was really cool.
That first Tuesday was not a great day for me. I was feeling a little depressed knowing that in a world without COVID, I would have been starting the real Race Across America that day. It was also a little frustrating to be sitting at work while many of the other racers were already on their bikes. Also, I just simply never feel that great when I don’t get in some form of activity before work. By the time I got on my bike just before 6:00 pm, it had been about 36 hours since I’d had any type of exercise, my legs were feeling heavy and lethargic, and I was just not in a great mood. It was kind of unfortunate, because I really wanted to enjoy riding that first section of the actual RAW route, even if it was virtual.
I was able to hold my goal effort of about 65% on that ride, but it just felt like I was working harder than I was. I tried to just let myself have fun with the ride and enjoy watching the very familiar sights of the actual race route on the TV in front of me, but it never took long to start feeling frustrated again. I was happy to finish off the ride, clean up, and hoped that I’d feel better the next morning.
Fortunately, I felt back to my normal self the next morning and throughout the week. I was holding about a 65% effort on my rides and spending 3.5 to 4.5 hours per day on the bike without feeling completely thrashed. I was tired, but definitely able to function just fine at work. I was quite happy that my knees were feeling pretty good so far. I had turned the trainer difficulty down to 50%, which simply means that the terrain does not feel as steep as it is and I don’t need to mash the pedals to get up steep climbs. The same amount of power is required as when the trainer difficulty is set to 100%. It’s basically the same as putting a larger cassette on the bike. I went into the weekend on track with the schedule I had set for myself, and felt ready to tackle the long weekend hours.
The Weekend
I debated a few options for how to get the weekend rides done while allowing myself to get a bit of a race simulation experience. I opted to sleep in a bit on Saturday to get some extra rest, ride all day, take about a four hour sleep break, then start back up again early Sunday morning.
After sleeping in a bit and spending some time in my compression boots, I finally got around to getting on the bike around 8 am on Saturday morning. I was feeling pretty good and maintaining my 65% effort for a few hours but by mid-day my power started gradually dropping as fatigue set in and I started some of the more difficult rides. I spent most of Saturday afternoon working on the longest ride on the VRAW course, “The Cheaha Challenge”. It took me about 4.5 hours to ride the 56 miles with 7,500 feet of elevation gain. It wasn’t a terribly difficult ride. It just had a lot of small climbs and was a long ride. On the plus side, we actually got a few downhills on that ride. If you read the reports and comments made by almost anyone who did VRAAM or VRAW, you will be sure to hear complaints or comments about the constant climbing without downhills. The 950 miles of VRAW included 83,000 feet of elevation gain (compared to about 50,000 feet on the actual RAW course), and many of the rides were climbs without the descents. It took me until about 9 pm Saturday to finish the rides I had scheduled for myself, and I was averaging between 55-60% intensity. The next ride on the course was a repeat of The Cheaha Challenge, and I couldn’t bring myself to ride that beast again before getting some rest.
I spent 2-3 hours winding down from the ride on Saturday night. I ate dinner, showered, took an Epsom salt bath, used my compression boots, and finally went to sleep around midnight planning to wake up at 4 am to start my Sunday ride. I was attempting to simulate a RAAM sleep break to some degree, but obviously I would skip a few of those steps before going to sleep on RAAM.
My second time through the Cheaha Challenge on Sunday morning was even slower than the first, and my power was down to about 50% or lower. It was a little frustrating, but my main focus was just to stay on the bike and keep making forward progress. I believe I was experiencing difficulty with power output because the saddle area irritation was starting to set in and it was just difficult to sit on the saddle comfortably while climbing. I took a short break around mid-day to change my kit and use my foam roller for a few minutes. I got back on the bike for a few hours of flatter rides and my power was back up to 55-60%. My coach Rachel ran over (and I mean, she literally ran 15 miles from her house) and kept me company for about an hour, so that cheered me up for a bit.
After finishing the flatter block, I had a few hilly rides that I planned to finish before the end of the day. My power output was back down to around 50% on the climbs due to the saddle discomfort. As I started the second of the three rides, I realized it was going to be at least 8 pm by the time I finished and was contemplating whether I would be better off trying to make up the last ride on Monday. About halfway through the second ride, my rear derailleur cable blew out and I had to spend time changing bikes. By the time I finally got the second ride done, I had spent over 13 hours on the bike on Sunday and 24 hours over the course of the weekend, so I decided to play catch up during the week.
Week 2
On Monday, I managed to make up the ride I missed on Sunday by spending almost six hours on the bike before and after work. That was probably the roughest I felt throughout VRAW, stumbling around at work like a zombie all day. But I realized that if I stuck to the conservative schedule I’d been following, I would put myself in a position to have an even longer Saturday ride on the final day before the VRAW cutoff on Sunday morning. I started advancing my schedule to get ahead, preferring to put in more miles during the week to avoid another long day on the trainer on Saturday. Rachel came over again on Monday after work (in her car this time) to pick up the bike in need of service and also brought me an awesome dinner.
Even though I was spending more time riding the second week, it was at a much lower intensity than the first week (mostly around 55%) so I felt like I was actually recovering throughout the week. I wasn’t feeling sore or terribly fatigued, and by the end of the week I was able to start increasing my power again. I was amazed that my knees were actually feeling better than they did before I started VRAW. The only discomfort I was experiencing was in the saddle region, as I mentioned earlier. This primarily affected my power output on the climbing rides, but I was able to adjust my position and cadence more easily on the flatter rides to work around the discomfort. Also, many of the climbs had a constantly changing gradient, requiring me to shift gears every few seconds, which just became fatiguing both mentally and physically. As soon as I would shift gears and adjust to a 6% gradient, it would suddenly jump up to 10% and I would have to shift and adjust again.
On Friday morning, my legs were feeling stronger again and my power was back up to about 60% for a couple of easier rides. After my morning ride, I figured I had about nine hours of ride time left to finish the race. My plan was to eat a light meal after work before getting on the bike, then pull an all-nighter to finish it off.
The first two rides were difficult climbs, then the remainder of the course was pretty flat. I struggled again through the two climbs as I had the night before. My overall feeling was pretty crappy by the time I got done with them, so I decided to take a two hour sleep break before taking on the final stretch. It was not easy dragging myself out of bed and back onto the bike, but once I started pedaling I felt great. I was able to bring my power back up to 60% or higher for most of the final block of rides, and powered through the last six hours or so with hardly any breaks. It felt great to be able to push myself again and see my heart rate higher than it had been in a few days. During the last hour I was even starting to feel my legs on the verge of cramping up.
During the last 10-15 of the ride, I went live on Facebook so that several friends were able to watch me finish the race and send some encouraging comments. It was definitely an odd feeling to cross a “virtual finish line” while sitting on a trainer in a garage by myself. I managed to get it all done by 7:30 am on Saturday, almost a full day ahead of the cutoff, and leaving myself most of the weekend to rest and recover before going back to work.
Mental Miles
Anthony Gordon, the creator of this sadistic event, used the tagline “mental miles” in reference to its goal of creating awareness that regular exercise is one of the most important elements of a healthy mental health profile. The tagline just happened to be an appropriate description of the course for anyone who opted to take on this challenge.
Most sporting events, and most certainly ultracycling, require a solid mental strategy for success. Even more so in a virtual ultracycling event in which one has the ability to jump off the bike at any moment and have immediate access to a shower, food, and bed. Then there’s the monotony of sitting in a garage for hours on end without any air movement or ability to coast or recover on downhills. How does one continually convince oneself to stay on the bike for all those miles?
I spent the majority of my weekday mornings in the winter training indoors the last two years, and would often listen to podcasts and occasionally audiobooks. For longer trainer rides, I occasionally watched movies. My goal isn’t to completely distract myself, as I do want to stay focused on my ride, but it does help to have some background noise and entertainment. I did listen to a few podcasts during VRAW, but I eventually found that movies and documentaries were a little more helpful. As I promised at some point, I’ll give a rundown of what I was watching throughout VRAW (to the best of my recollection).
I really enjoyed catching up with the live RAAM show that George Thomas and Rick Boethling recorded each morning throughout the twelve days of VRAAM. On weekdays I was working during the live recording so I would start my evening ride watching the recording from the morning. I didn’t typically have time to stay caught up on social media throughout the day, so it was nice to get a quick recap of what was going on in each virtual race and to hear from several folks in the ultracycling world. I even got to make a quick appearance myself while I was riding on the weekend! It was really cool to see ultracycling racers and fans from all over the world coming together virtually to follow these events and continue the tradition of following RAAM each year as best we could.
I believe the first movie I watched was Top Gun in honor of Phil Fox, who took 2nd place overall in VRAW and was the first American finisher. I noticed that he referenced the movie several times in his social media posts and when he appeared on the live show, so it got me thinking it was time to watch that classic again. And it was situation-appropriate as the movie is set near the RAAM start in Oceanside, CA. I believe I watched Top Gun during my first Friday morning ride, and was surprised at how well it kept me entertained, so I planned to keep finding more stuff to watch over the weekend.
On the first Saturday, I found myself going through all the RAAM documentaries I could find. Even though I’d seen almost all of them at least once or twice, I still found them to be motivating. I watched all of Anthony Gordon’s movies (More Than Miles, 3089, and RAAM Bam Thank You Mam). I also watched Race Across America, Godspeed, The Longest Journey, and Bicycle Dreams. Most of these can be found on Amazon Prime Video. I believe I also fit the classic cycling film Breaking Away in on Saturday before wrapping up.
For some reason, I’m drawing a blank as to what I was watching on Sunday. Even though it was my longest day on the bike, I don’t believe I watched many movies, if any. I think I listened to some podcasts, appeared on the live show, and had Rachel keeping me company for at least an hour.
During the second week, I watched the movie Patton one morning simply because it was a movie I’d been meaning to watch for awhile. While I am rarely able to sit through an entire movie off the bike without getting distracted, I was finding them much easier to watch when I was on the trainer in need of distraction. The next few days I switched to sports-themed movies for inspiration and watched Rudy and A League of Their Own.
For my final stretch of riding on Friday night into Saturday, I found myself going through a bunch of documentaries on Amazon Prime Video related to sports and endurance. These included Fully Charged, Shackleton’s Captain, Boston, The Ultimate Triathlon, Touch the Wall, and a Bille Jean King documentary. The documentary about the Boston Marathon was probably my favorite of the bunch.
Nutrition and Hydration Strategy
As I mentioned above, one of my personal goals in doing this event was to dial in some nutrition and hydration strategies to carry into my future training and races. Over the last few decades, the industry of sports nutrition and hydration has been very successful in marketing to endurance athletes. The importance of staying ahead on hydration and never allowing glycogen stores to be depleted has been drilled into our heads. For those of you who have participated in endurance events lasting several hours or longer, how many times have you experienced GI distress that has prevented you from performing at your best? It could be as severe as a crippling bout of diarrhea, or simply an upset stomach that prevents you from maintaining your race effort. In ultracycling, fluid retention seems to be a very common problem. I experienced pretty severe edema on two occasions last year – first during my weeklong pre-ride of the RAW course and then during and after racing RAW. Additionally, I’ve experienced milder issues with edema, fluid retention, and GI distress during both indoor and outdoor long rides and have been trying to isolate the cause and find a solution. Combining some reading and research with my own personal experience, I’m convinced that I’ve more often than not been overhydrating and taking in way too many of those electrolytes that we’ve been told are so important, especially when I’m working at a lower intensity. One of my goals with VRAW was to take the opportunity of doing a long event in a low-stress, low-consequence environment to pay more attention to my physical sensations to guide me in my fueling and hydration. Additionally, with so much time spent off the bike in comparison to other races, I was careful to stick to clean nutrition between sessions and tracked my nutrition as closely as possible.
For hydration, I used primarily water and only occasionally supplemented with electrolytes when I was working at a higher intensity. I drank when I was thirsty and didn’t obsess over staying hydrated while I was at work and between sessions on the trainer. I was pleased that I only noticed some mild fluid retention on a few occasions throughout the race, and it was typically at the end of the day when I got home from work. During the second week, I tried cutting back on my salt intake and that seemed to help. I’m still trying to find the right balance when riding outdoors and taking different temperatures into consideration, but I feel like I’ve made some progress.
For nutrition, my goal was to stick to a low carb regimen off the bike and to limit my intake of sugar. I’ve used so many sports nutrition products loaded with sugar over the years and just find that they’re inflammatory and cause me to crash if I don’t keep taking in more sugar, which leads to GI issues on longer workouts and races. I instead used foods and products with carbohydrates in the form of starches rather than sugars. As I mentioned, I did my best to track all of my nutrition on and off the bike for the entire twelve days. The ratio and amount of carbs was a little higher on the days I spent more time on the bike, but I took in a daily average of 170 g of carbs, 122 g net carbs, 40 g sugar, and my average macronutrient ratios were 17% carbs, 18% protein, and 65% fat. I consumed an average of about 3,800 calories per day. Looking back over the data, I realize I probably could have balanced that out a little better by eating a little more the first week and a little less the second week. I’m not sure I have an accurate measure of how many calories I burned, but I’m about 10 pounds lighter than when I started VRAW, so obviously I burned more than I ate. I never felt depleted of energy either during the rides or while I was at work (aside from the one day that I mentioned after the weekend long rides).
I still need to work on fueling and hydration for events in which I will be on the bike continuously, but this seemed to work really well for me. My key takeaway from this was that nutrition and hydration needs are going to be different for everyone, and will change for each person in different environments. It’s important to experiment to figure out what works for you.
Post-Race Wrap-Up
My official finish time was 10 days, 13 hours, 47 minutes, and 29 seconds, which obviously included many hours spent off the bike. My total time in the saddle was 70 hours, 44 minutes, and 48 seconds for an average speed of 13.4 mph.
There were both pros and cons to participating in this virtual version of an ultracycling event. The costs and logistics of a virtual event are obviously much simpler than with an actual race, which led to a large number of people from all over the world being able to participate in both VRAW and The 60. There were only a handful of people interested in taking on the entire VRAAM course, and I tip my hat to those who managed to continue riding for all 12 days, whether they were official finishers or not. Aside from the need to keep my race area well ventilated, there was no need to worry about adverse weather conditions. With the exception of my long weekend rides, most of my riding was done early in the morning while it was still cool or after work as it was cooling back down. The virtual event also created an environment with a lot less anxiety and sense of urgency than an actual race, at least the way I was doing it.
On the downside, without that stress and urgency of the real event, it was a little tougher to stay motivated for a virtual race. It also would have been nice to have a virtual version of the actual RAW course as opposed to a long list of random rides strung together, but I can appreciate that this event was put together out of necessity in a very short period of time and applaud the efforts of Anthony Gordon, Revolve 24, and FulGaz for the work they put into the race. And finally, while a bike saddle is never going to feel terribly comfortable after riding on actual pavement for several days straight, it’s even worse when those hours are spent on a trainer. You have to pedal almost constantly so it’s difficult to coast to alleviate pressure. You can’t move the bike like you can on the road to change the muscle groups you’re using. The lack of air movement makes it impossible to keep the saddle area dry so I feel like saddle sores were more of an issue than they would have been in an event on the road.
Overall, I’m very happy that I went ahead and participated in VRAW and am excited about what I got out of the experience. I was able to gain some insight in my nutrition and hydration needs as described above. The physical and mental stresses involved were certainly different from racing RAAM, but I felt like I was giving myself at least some degree of a simulation of the fatigue of RAAM by stretching the miles of RAW over the RAAM timeframe while working full-time. I would have liked to have been able to keep my effort level a little more consistent, but I was pleased to find that I was still feeling pretty decent by the end of the twelve days. I took off some unnecessary weight and rode myself into a level of fitness that I hope to maintain for some events that will hopefully be able to go on later in the year.
So that wraps up a pretty detailed account of my VRAW experience. Thank you for reading it if you made it this far. And thank you to everyone for their encouraging messages and comments on my daily updates. For some reason, it was surprising to me how many people realized the challenge I was taking on by doing this race around my full-time work schedule. I certainly underestimated myself how grueling it would be when I signed on.
