Sundance Dozen

Sometimes you plan, strategize, prepare, and then execute on that plan. Sometimes, you just do it.

I built a new bike this week - a Spider 29er. Yup, pretty similar to the one I borrowed from Revolution two years ago. Friday I Stans'd the tires and rode it for 5 minutes.

Bp and I talked a bit Friday night about his plans to race the Sundance 12 Hour race the next day. I assured him I had no plans to ride up and down a 45 minute loop all day. Somewhere Kim heard Reed had decided last minute that he was planning to do it, and had registered on Friday.

I woke up at 5:30 on Saturday, looked at my watch, and decided I'd regret skipping it and thought I might make it, so I threw my stuff in the car and took off for Sundance and the 7am start.

Bp looked to me like was going to take the race seriously. I figured I'd break the new bike in and see how things would progress, not feeling very committed to even finishing.

The first few laps, it seemed like lots of little things were going wrong.

I hadn't looked at start/finish area ahead of time, and had some problems getting my bottles, etc. at first. Carl from Revolution was there and volunteered to help, and that really smoothed that out in future laps.

There was a swarm of angry wasps at a point on the climb, and every lap they were stinging everyone that rode through. I wondered how much stamina those wasps had. I was fortunate and sustained only one ankle-sting, but Reed was stung at least five or six times. Some poor guy from Sundance finally cleared out the nest and was stung 10 or 20 times as he did it.

On the second lap I took a wrong turn on the pavement and did a little detour, and then the next lap some guy parked his truck and trailer on the road and removed the tape marking the turn so that I rode past it. Neither of these cost much time, but they were frustrating.

On the next lap my chain jammed between my middle and small chainrings, and it took a minute to pull it out.

My freshly Stans'd tires were both loosing air, and when I stopped to have Carl air them up they were down to about 12 psi. They held pretty well after he pushed them back up to 35, only adding air to the rear again near the end.

Each time something would happen, I'd fall behind Reed and then catch back up so we could keep riding together. I wanted to ride with him as long as possible.

By hour 4 I was starting to feel sick of the whole thing. My legs didn't feel bad, but I wasn't enjoying it and definitely didn't relish the idea of another 8 hours on the bike. I told Reed I thought I was done, but figured I'd finish that lap, call Kim and tell her not to come, then ride a few more laps and see. I did rest after that lap, put on my mp3 player, called Kim, and started off again, thinking about at least finishing six hours.

When six hours hit, I started thinking about eight since that would be longer than I'd done last week. About this time I noticed I was starting to get pretty dry. I tried drinking a little extra in the feed zone, but I was still emptying my one bottle every lap (a problem I plan to fix on the new bike -- one bottle cage). I felt reasonably good at this point.

I felt pretty OK about the time Kim and the kids showed up:

Kim and the kids didn't get my message and did come, and I was glad to see them. By the eight hour point I knew if I continued to hour 10 I'd never quit, so I kept going. By then I was really dry and starting to get sick. I was having a lot of trouble breathing and was falling apart. Kim had brought a scale and I weighed myself, and had clearly lost a lot of water weight. Reed had slowly turned all red from the wasp stings, and decided to drop out. His legs had started slow, but he had been speeding up each lap for several laps, so it was disappointing he had to stop.

Reed contemplates his stinging loss (look at his blotchy, red face from the stings):

The only highlight of this part of the race was watching Bp lap me. Kenny had gone by much earlier, but he was fading so badly that we were going about the same speed until my breathing problem, and it was immediately clear the Bp was headed for the win. Pete McMullin also lapped me and looked to be finishing strong (which he was -- he finished 3rd).

Someone loaned me their asthma inhaler and I got out my Camelbak (should have done this much earlier) and doubled my drinking rate, along with more salt. By the end of the race I would gain back 5 lbs of that water I had lost.

All of the sudden, at about hour 10.5, the system came online again and I was feeling good. The weather had cooled and they hydration had come back to me. Up to this point I had been desperately hoping to come in just after the cutoff point so I wouldn't have to do another lap, but I cut 10 minutes off from my previous lap time and came in before the cut-off. Not only that, but I was actually glad to be doing another lap because I was enjoying the riding.

After two minutes of filling my Camelbak and changing to clear glasses, my last lap was my fastest lap all day, cutting off another 6 minutes.

Honestly, my position at the finish was pretty disappointing, but I've only done 3 long races and seem to be learning. In the other races, I never recovered once dehydration set in. For whatever reason, I sweat a lot when riding (though curiously, not when just hanging out), and I haven't quite got this nailed. It was great to finish with a couple good laps see Bp win before his deportation back to Canada.

This time of year, it gets cold quickly up there after the race: