The last few weeks have included a few misadventures that led me to think of Thomas Edison’s quote: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
I (hopefully) have two actual, real events coming up in the next month or so and am looking forward to my first chance to attend a non-virtual event in about six months. I participated in both events (HooDoo 500 and the 24+6 hour time trial at the 6-12-24 Hour World Time Trial Championships) last year with less than awesome experiences. As my coach Rachel reminded me a few times, hopefully the bad stuff has already happened in training and now I’m set up for some great race experiences.
With a bunch of events going virtual this year, I’ve enjoyed taking the opportunity to use them for training and working out race and nutrition strategies in a low consequence environment. Last weekend, I planned to tackle the Southern Inyo by Moonlight Double Double Century (double centuries on back to back days). Weeks earlier, I had what seemed like a great idea in theory. I booked a couple of nights in Borrego Springs and planned a massive training weekend that would work for both HooDoo 500 and the 24 hour time trial. I would do both rides at night to stay out of the heat and also allow me to get more experience riding at night. I mapped out a modified version of the challenging Borrego Double Century for one of the rides, then planned to do loops on the 18-mile time trial circuit in Borrego Springs for the second double. Perfect, right?
As anyone who lives in Southern California knows, we’ve been hit with a massive heat wave the last couple of weeks along with horrible air quality from all the wildfires. The desert is probably the last place I should have been riding, even at night. But I stuck to the plan. I drove out to Borrego Springs after a half day at work on Friday, dropping off a couple of water caches on my way. After unpacking and getting my bike ready, I rested for a bit and waited for the sun to go down, which brought the daytime temperature of about 120 degrees all the way down to 111 degrees. Figuring I’ve always done pretty well in the heat, I just need to get myself up Montezuma Valley Road (the Glass Elevator in RAAM-speak) at an easy pace, then it should be cooler for most of the ride.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. The heat, horrible air quality, windy conditions on the climb, and a body that just didn’t want to cooperate quickly led to a DNF. I’d started to get a headache earlier in the day and had to take my migraine medication, which is never a good way to start a big training weekend. As I made my way up the climb, my head started to feel heavy, my knees started hurting, then my back started hurting, then I just could not shake the feeling that all I wanted to do was get back to the bed in my hotel room and go to sleep. There really was no easy spinning on the climb with the conditions and the way my body was feeling, so I was working a lot harder than I wanted to be. I started texting Rachel, who agreed with my assessment and “gave me permission” to call it and head back to Borrego Springs. I’d been on the bike about 90 minutes and was fairly close to the top of the Glass Elevator.
I figured I’d get a good night’s sleep and stay inside during the heat of the day on Saturday and try again the next night. I had taken Monday off from work, so I figured I could still get in the double double if I extended my stay an extra night. Around mid-day Saturday, Rachel encouraged me to change plans and just do the loops on the Borrego time trial circuit Saturday night to build some confidence. Unfortunately, spending all day laying around and “over-resting”, with too much time to think and allow second thoughts to creep in led to me not feeling spectacular about heading back out into the heat by the time I was planning to get started again. I ended up compromising with a very early start to an easy century ride on the time trial course and managed to finish just before the temps hit the triple digits on Sunday morning. I headed home discouraged, but fairly certain I’d made the right call.
I spent the week very much looking forward to my plans for this weekend. Rachel has been working on building her running mileage up over the summer with a goal to run 100 miles solo from Temecula to Long Beach. I offered to be a bike escort during the night hours. After getting home from work, I quickly got ready to ride and raced over to Rachel’s house just in time to start with her at 8:00 pm. Her husband Nate ran with her for a few miles before turning around to head home and then get in the car to SAG for her through the night. After a couple of hours, we were joined by our friend Sarah in Murrieta and she ran with Rachel for 15 miles through Wildomar and Lake Elsinore. Then we had about 25 miles to cover before meeting up with her second crew at the Santa Ana River Trail (SART) entrance at Green River Road at about mile 55.
Rachel had similar luck in picking the date for her run as I did with my double-double. The weather and air quality was not optimal for an ultra-distance run. Even at night, the temperature hovered around 75 degrees with humidity, so that she was sweating a lot more than she should have been and was struggling to stay cool by the time we hit about 30 miles. She tried icing herself down, showering herself with the water from her Camelbak, and eating popsicles and icees. We were looking forward to the sun coming up so that she would feel more awake, but knew that the sun would bring more heat. We were hoping that getting closer to the coast would mean cooler weather.
I dropped Rachel off with her second crew around 8:00 am and rode back home. The rest of the crew was surprised that I didn’t take Nate up on his offer to drive me home, but I knew that I needed to do some actual riding (as opposed to rolling alongside Rachel at 5-6 mph). I also knew that pushing myself in my fatigued state would be some of the best training for ultra races I could get. I actually felt pretty decent for the first couple of hours and got a PR on the big climb up Foothill through Corona (after convincing myself not to detour around it and take a flatter route). I was running on fumes by the time I got home. I managed to shower and inhale a quick snack before falling asleep.
Unfortunately, the heat and humidity never let up for Rachel and she made the difficult choice to finish her run at 81 miles. Much like my choice in Borrego Springs, it was the right call and I’m happy that I got to participate in the effort.
Also on the topic of finding ways that won’t work, I’ve been struggling to find a nutrition strategy that works for me for ultra distances. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m trying to keep my sugar intake low, which eliminates a lot of sports nutrition products on the market. I thought I had something worked out during VRAW, but have found in the last couple of weeks that my stomach just won’t tolerate the current regimen. With my two events coming up quickly, it’s a little discouraging to go back to the drawing board, but I’m confident that I’ll figure it out.
As for the upcoming races, I’m excited to go back to both events. I’ll be heading to St. George, Utah with my friends Dee, Rob, and Phil to take on the HooDoo 500 route as a four-person relay team, along with our crew members Curtis and Megan. It should be a fun weekend, and the relay format should be better training for the 24 hour time trial (as opposed to racing solo). My workouts since VRAW have been targeting higher power intervals, which has been fun but exhausting. Hopefully all that work will pay off in the next few weeks.