From Dave. After end of my race.

I want thank everyone for the well wishes, both on the blog and privately. I will respond in due time, but am posting this before I have been able to read them.

I gave it my all, but again came up short in this difficult event. I went 308 miles at which time it became apparant I would not have time to finish the remaining 200+ miles before the end of the event..

My day started fine, I rode comfortably, conservatively, and felt good. My plan was to go very easy the first day, to be strong in the night and second day. I did that exactly as I planned. By mile 70 or so, I was feeling some weakness in my legs, which I attributed to almost continual headwinds. The whole first day, into the night I was fighting headwinds that were draining my energy.
It was also very cool, then very cold at night. I train almost exclusively in Florida heat, usually the hottest part of the day, and this cool air had me coughing and hacking with an asthma like cough. I literally could not take a full breath.

At mile 200, I managed to climb 5000 foot Townes Pass, bundled up in all the clothes we had and started the 18 mile descent about 2:00AM. Toward the end of the descent, I was falling asleep on the bike. I was dozing off, and would wake up veerying across the road.
Traveling 35-40 mph. Steve and Willy were wantiing to stop me, but were afraid to pull up beside me with my erratic driving. I did make it down, and we agreed a nap would a smart thing for me.
We took a long break, but at this point, were getting dangerously close to putting ourself into a position where it would be impossible to have enough time to finish.
I had the help of a partial tailwind heading south through Death Valley, but my legs were not strong. By the time we arrived at Furnace Creek, I told my crew my calculations were putting a finish out of reach. They disagreed and convinced me to continue. 18 miles later at Badwater, we stopped, and again I explained I did not have the strength to do the remaining 235 miles at the pace needed. After some debate, I was back on my bike.
Three miles later iI stopped and told them I was done. A friend of mine crewing another racer, saw that something was going on, stopped. After a talk with him, I removed my bike computer watch, an all time/distance tracking devices. I would get back on the bike, and just ride. Ride hard, enjoy the scenery, be happy to be in the California Desert. I got on my time trial bike and cranked the next 30 miles of rolling desert at 24-26 mph average. As I started the climb out of Death Valley, I started throwing up, then dry heaving.. I stopped and ate, recovered, and continued climbing. I worked hard for another hour to climb Jubilee Pass. I got to the top made the short descent after it, but my pace was slow. Eventually, we all realized that it was impossibe to complete this event. I saw no honor in prolonging the suffering, just to say I rode 350 or 400 miles before the end of the race if a legitmate finish was not possible..

We packed it up, and started driving the 200 miles to the finish line. We stopped and tallked with many racer/crew friends on the course. Stopped and gave additional inner tubes to a Dutch team that had had multiple flats, and was out of spare tubes.

I honestly do not know what went wrong on this day. My bikes performed perfectly, my crew was perfect and never missed a beat, I rode exactly the way I wanted early on, and my training has been SO good. The headwinds and cold contributed I’m sure, but for some reason, my body just wasn’t performing at 100%.

I’ve attempted this race twice now, and both times come up short. I do these crazy events to find my limits, and in this case, I’ve found it. It was an adventure, but not one I’ll be repeating again. Thanks so much for all the well wishes!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.