The Longest Day: E-100 12 Hour

Yesterday began early for both Kim and I. I got up at about 4:15, and Kim was already up and getting ready. It was a double-header.

Provo Triathlon

Kim was headed to the Provo triathlon. There are three separate locations around Utah Lake that I've seen her do races. Saratoga is a location of natural hot-springs and so they don't actually swim in the lake for that one. Lincoln Beach near Benjamin was the site of last week's tri, and this week's Utah Lake State Park.

Utah Lake took a lot of criticism as a location for a Triathlon in 2002 when the Ironman series came to compete and strong winds pushed big waves that scared the less experienced swimmers. To make matters much worse, one of the athletes died during the swim. At the time everyone assumed, and it was widely reported, that he had drown due to the weather. It was later discovered he actually died of a heart attack, but the damage had been done. The next year they held the race again, with a new sense of hyper-sensitivity that led to ultimately canceling the swim. Many of the athletes were disgruntled as they had traveled great distances to the race only to hold an Ironman duathlon, if you could call it that. The race was moved to Idaho after that.

It is too bad, because this is a pretty good location in a lot of ways. It is a great spectator location, it is easy to get to, easy to find lodging, and the swim is straight-forward so people can't accidentally short-cut, or even get especially far off course. The only downside to the swim is they have to swim through some reeds and the olympic athletes do two laps, so they get out of the water and back in.

So for Kim this was a pretty good race. I didn't see any of it, but she scored a third-overall finish in the women - a great result.

E-100 12 Hours

Meanwhile, Scott and I rode over to Park City with Brad Pilling to compete in the E-100 12 Hour race. Scott came to provide support. We set up a substantial pit area with 3 canopies and Carl from Revolution (who did a super job) to wrench for us and several other riders from or related to our team.

I won't say too much about the race. Each lap is about 9.07 miles with 1355 feet of climbing. The goal is basically to do as many laps as you can in 12 hours around the dusty, rocky course. I rode in 2nd-4th place most of the day, but the last few laps were really slow going. My last lap left me one lap short of truly finishing, but I had nothing left to give. Legs were OK, but I was dizzy, and having trouble breathing. 12 lbs of water is just too much weight to loose for a 150 lbs guy. My stomach was very uncomfortable for well over half the race. In total, I did 100 miles with almost 15,000 feet of climbing.

I'd like to say I had fun, but I didn't. I rode Monday and thought I had the stomach thing worked out, but I was obviously wrong and it was just suffer, suffer. It was much cooler Monday, which must have been the real key. After the race I was dead. It took me a long time to get to where I could even walk. The crazy thing is, today all I can think about it how to fix my stomach issues and do better (while I try to get rehydrated). Clinical.

The only real bright spots for me were 1) Brad won the race. I expected he'd beat me, but I admit the win surprised me. 2) Support. Scott and Bob provided support through the day. In the afternoon Toni and then Kim showed up when I was dying and provided a boost that kept me going a few more laps. Carl kept the bikes running, set up and tore down camp, and even racked my bikes on the van after the race since I couldn't really do it. 3) I've never done 100 miles off-road before, and this is real mountain bike terrain, a lot more difficult than for instance the White Rim in Moab.