Return to Death Valley

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans”

Woody Allen

A plan is the stairway between your vision and your goal. Each step brings you closer.

For me the past year has been one of plans, mostly interrupted or unfulfilled. Even a planned trip to see a movie the other night was cut short when everything – right down to Yogi Bear – was sold out.

Our family’s most recent plan, to visit New York City this Christmas, was foiled by that most capricious of spellbinders, the weather. The entire Eastern Seaboard was shut down by a spectacular snowstorm. The only way to have gotten into Manhattan would have been to ski in.

But plans continue to well up in my restless and ever-optimistic mind. My indoor training for my planned 2011 events is going beautifully. I have added a little speedwork to my running and I am amazed at how easily my body is adapting. It makes me think of how lazy I must have been for the past twenty-five years.

So that I do not blow my feet out before March by overtraining for my planned spring marathon, I have found another project to keep me focused: I’ve entered the Death Valley Century, the California bike event that I did back in the fall of 2008. There is also a spring version on February 26th, so I signed up. They offer distances of 100, 150 and 200 miles and I opted for the middle one, since 100 miles will not challenge me and 200 miles will seem too much like work at this point in my season. Also the double century requires night time riding, and after my experiences in RAW last June, cycling through the desert night just wouldn’t seem the same without the Scissor Sisters blasting through my walkie-talkie.

The Death Valley Spring Century will give me a non-running event to train for over the winter months plus a chance to take my terrific Cervélo R3 out on the road before getting into the triathlon season. Although the event is not specifically a race and most of the course is new to me, I would like to finish the 150 miles in under 11 hours. Unlike my marathon goals, this one is currently attainable. Yes, riding my bike through the desert does seem to be my idea of an ideal holiday, but I agree that it might not be everyone's.

To me, planning means looking forward, and I am looking forward to getting back to Death Valley. It is an extraordinary part of the world.

Daring Greatly

Over the past decades I have undertaken a variety of athletic exploits, many of which have raised eyebrows among family and friends who remember me as anything but an athlete. Despite my limitations or reputation I have managed to finish what I started in nearly every event (the painful exception being the Comrades Marathon last spring). Now, after completing half a dozen Ironmans and countless marathons, triathlons, cycling tours and other endurance events, I believe I am ready to try something more.

Cycling in the RAW
I am about to embark on a new adventure, which may end up being the eyebrow-raisingest of them all. I have signed up for a bicycling event known as the Race Across the West (hereinafter referred to as RAW), which takes place next June, 2010.

RAW is a subset of the famous Race Across America (RAAM) and is a non-stop bicycle race from Oceanside California to Durango Colorado, a distance of about 1400 kilometres. To put the effort into perspective, in September I raced in a 220 kilometre event in the Adirondacks and was pretty darned tired by the time I crossed the finish line. RAW is more than six times as long. Add being sandblasted and sunbroiled across the California desert and then climbing up the western slope of the Rocky Mountains and the whole thing seems more than just a pleasure tour. In fact, the Race Across the West is so grueling that since it began there have been only a couple of solo finishers. Mercifully, the race organizers have shortened the distance a little this year and allowed a more generous time limit.

Bringing Extra Sunscreen
I’m not sure when the exact moment was: when it was that I decided for sure I was going to ride my bicycle nonstop across all those vast kilometres of the American Southwest, but it might have been when I came across the following entry in the comprehensive rulebook issued by the race:

Rule 850(8)
Crew or Racers may not strip and dance naked for any reason outside of the support vehicle without appropriate coverings or curtains.

This was a rule that was obviously just crying out to be broken.

Team Lyricycle
In addition to the obvious physical commitment, the project promises to be vast in terms of scope and organization. In fact for me, merely getting myself and my crew to the starting line is the most daunting aspect of the whole thing. The coordination of vehicles, supplies people and so forth would be overwhelming if I had to deal with it all by myself. Luckily Team Lyricycle begins with my willing and able Crew Chief: my son Duncan, who also happens to be a bike mechanic. This is a great start.

Like so many of my other adventures, there is no guarantee of success and a strong possibility of, well...less than success. But that of course is one of the reasons I do it. As Edmund Hillary remarked, if you start out on a challenge with absolute knowledge that you are going to succeed, why bother starting?

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.”
Theodore Roosevelt.

Ultra Cycling in the High Peaks

The Adirondack 540

Since 2003 when I did my second-ever Ironman, I have always loved racing in Lake Placid. At its best, the weather is clear and crisp and the high peaks stand out so sharply against the sky that you’d swear you can pick out every branch of every tree from miles away. Cycling up and down the Adirondack Mountains is as thrilling as it is challenging, with thigh burning climbs and screaming, white-knuckle descents.

Looking for an endurance event that would test me without requiring my injured feet to run, I found the Adirondack 540 , an ultra bicycle race held over the third weekend in September. The race, as its name suggests, is just over 540 miles – or 880 kilometres - long, consisting of four laps of 220 kilometres each. Luckily for those of us without the legs to pedal for two straight days and nights to cover 880k, there are options to do one, two or three of the laps as well. I modestly and realistically opted to do the one-lap race, nicknamed the Bronze Blast.

The course describes a sort of figure eight, part of which follows the Ironman bike route. It begins in Wilmington, passes through Lake Placid and continues through Keene. At this point cyclists head south to the halfway point at Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, then back through Westport, Elizabethtown and Keene to Wilmington. Before the start, Race Director John Ceceri warned us that even though the fiercest climbs were early in the race, we were not to underestimate the challenges of the second half. His words would burn through my head many hours later.

Race morning was clear and frosty with a significant wind from the north. I joined a small number of dedicated riders, bundled in layers, as we straddled our bikes in the parking lot for the 7:00 am start. As the only obvious tri-geek in the group, I received the expected jibe about my carbon fibre Cervélo P2C, and vowed not to show up at one of these roadie events again without a proper road machine.

We separated from one another almost immediately after the start; not much danger of drafting with only a couple of dozen of us in the race and 220k of state highway along which to spread out. The first 30k or so were very well known to me, having ridden the Ironman course many times. After the familiar breathtaking descent into Keene, I turned right down Route 9 into unknown territory. Most of the highway was bereft of traffic and the tall pine trees towered overtop like a cathedral ceiling. There were some rough spots in the road, but for the most part it was a smooth and enjoyable ride. At about kilometre 115 I stopped at the Super 8 motel in Ticonderoga, the halfway checkpoint. A highlight of this checkpoint, aside from the extremely friendly and helpful volunteers, was the presence of Fred Boethling, Director of the Race Across America. I got the chance to chat with Fred during my short break, picking up some intelligence on the chance that I would ever decide to do RAAM. I do try never to say never.

Coming from Elizabethtown to Keene, at around 180 kilometres, in what I thought was nearly the home stretch I encountered a section of road that the cue sheet had called innocently, “4 mile climb”. It was not so much a climb as it was a 45-minute torture session. The grade is not steep, but it is long and relentless enough to make you feel like you’re going backwards. By this point I was also bonking due to sloppy nutrition practices earlier. So my mood was anything but cheery. The words of the Race Director boomed through my ears with every pedal stroke: don’t underestimate this part of the course. I had, and I was paying. However, this too passed and eventually I zoomed down into Keene, through Upper Jay, along the Ausable River and up route 86 to the finish. This part would have been more enjoyable if I had not left everything I had on the gentle “4 mile climb”.

As I wheeled into the parking lot of the motel at the finish, I had the familiar feeling from my early Ironman days of being the last living soul left in the race (actually it turned out I was fifth out of eleven finishers in my category). My time was around nine hours and fifty minutes for the 220 kilometres. This is a glacial pace for me nowadays, but I had entered the race at the last minute with next to no training under my belt, and I was ecstatic just to finish. The good news was that my legs felt strong and I could have gone for a run if I had wanted. Let’s see the roadies try that.

That evening, comfortably rested, showered and fed back at my motel in Lake Placid, I strolled a ways down Route 73 and noticed a well-lit-up cyclist ride past me in the gathering darkness, perhaps a 540-miler starting his last lap with another eight or nine hours of riding ahead of him. They are made of different stuff, these ultra distance people and I was intrigued to be in their company on a couple of occasions this season. There is a step – a leap – I need to make before I can truly consider myself one of them. Defining that step will be my next challenge.