HHH: My Cookies!

I’ve heard the HHH rest stops are great.  Lots of food, fun times, helpful people.  I assume all of this is true as I didn’t get to spend much time at any of them before Hell’s Gate and by the time I got to the ones after Hell’s Gate, they were in the process of shutting down.  All of us there knew we were in the last group of riders, and I know the volunteers had been there for a while, but it would have been nice if they had at least pretended like they thought we had a chance to finish.  Overall though, they were fine-with one notable exception.

At the 80 mile rest stop, there was a “carb station.”  I use the word “was” because it was completely gone by the time I got there.  The table was still up, along with the “carb station” sign and another sign for “cookies.”  Considering that I had only eaten a smoothie and pieces of oranges and bananas, I was seriously in need of something more substantial.  I asked one of the volunteers at the drink station if they were really out of cookies.  Just as she turned around to ask someone else, I noticed a volunteer who could politely be described as extraordinarily large in weight and slight in stature who was sitting on bench under the drink station tent shove an entire tub of enormous oatmeal cookies into the bag sitting next to her.  Normally, I would have just moved on, but I was not exactly thinking clearly and as far as I was concerned, those were my freakin’ cookies.  I earned them.  Hell, I paid for them.   Just as the person turned back around to me to say that they were all out of cookies I started to point and stammer something about the fat woman in the back, but before I could say anything he said “Don’t worry about it, I’ve got some extra stuff on my bike.  Come with me.”  He must have seen what I saw and sensed my desperation, so I stood there, half pointing in general direction of cookie thief, completely blindsided by this man’s generous offer and said “Really?”  I know, very eloquent.  He hooked me up with some hammer gel and a Clif Bar.  I have never been so grateful for the equivalent of $1.25 worth of food in my life.  Also, I think he might have saved me from getting banned from the HHH for life.  So really, I’m indebted to this man.

And that’s it.  Those are my stories of the HHH.  A week after the ride, I did a triathlon sprint with my dad and it was disastrous.  My body had clearly not even come close to a full recovery, and I posted my worst time ever.  Lesson learned.  Now, whenever things get hard in my life, I can just keep my race day slogan in my mind: Winning means never having to do this crap again.

HHH: 100-70≠30

The longest distance I had ever ridden at any one time prior to the HHH was 30 miles.  That’s right, I set out to more than triple my previous best.  I didn’t tell too many people about this before starting because it just sounds really arrogant.  I mean who does that?  What idiot thinks they can just set out to ride 100 miles under grueling conditions with minimal preparation.  This idiot, apparently.  On a related note, I saw someone with a shirt at the starting line that said “Bad decisions make for good stories.”  Uh, huh.

And see, here’s the thing about riding 100 miles when you’ve only ever done 30 before, when you get to mile marker 70, you still have to cover the equivalent of the longest ride you’ve ever done except that you are now hotter and more exhausted than you’ve ever been.  It was, how to say, “unpleasant.”  Overcoming this mental obstacle was by far the hardest part about the race.  Every time I thought to myself “Oh, I’m halfway there,” or “Hey, look, I’ve covered 75 miles already” I would be immediately reminded that I still had A LONG FREAKIN WAYS TO GO.  But I would not allow myself to be beaten down mentally.  I kept thinking “If I can deal with a dissertation and certain people who brought certain unpleasantness to my life throughout that process, then I can surely keep pedaling for another mile or two.”  And that’s what I did.  Starting around the 70 mile mark I would ride for 3 or 4 miles and take a break wherever I was, get the cramps out, get the blood flowing, stretch my neck, and back on the bike for another (2 or) 3 or 4 miles.

HHH-Call AAA-pt. 2

I didn’t quite make it to the next rest stop before it became apparent that I was going to need some more air somehow.  Fortunately, a man and his son rode up next to me, and we started to chat about how far it might be to the next rest stop (the signage on the course was terrible).  Neither of us had any idea, but he noticed that my tire was flat (I could feel that I was hitting the rim on every bounce in the road) and told his son to stop and pump up my tire with the pump on his bike.  I was so grateful.  They even hung back for a few minutes to give me a headstart so they could make sure I’d get to the next rest-stop and the mythical mechanic.  Unbelievably nice and thoughtful.

As you can probably guess by now, there was no mechanic at this stop, but I was promised that there would be one at the next stop.  I was also told that the next stop was only about 4 or 5 miles away.  Okay, I could do that, I thought.  I got a couple of miles out and saw an old lady (who was kicking my ass) if I could borrow her hand held pump for a few minutes.  She was nice enough to oblige.  I figured I’d just need to go another mile or two before the professionals would take care of me.  As I’m sure you can guess again, the next stop wasn’t only 4 or 5 miles away.  It was more like 8 or 9.  When this became clear to me, I decided to pull over and change the tube myself.  I didn’t have any air, but I did have a tube.

See, I had been reluctant to do this from the beginning because, although I know how to change a tube, it takes me about 20-25 minutes and a good deal of energy to do it in my garage on a cool day.  I had no idea how long I was looking at out in the open sun after 6 or 7 hours.  But the time had come.  I figured I could find someone with a pump after I got the tube on.  I took the wheel off (back one-go figure) and proceeded to strip the old tube out.  I took the new tube from my busted up saddle bag and started to thread the stem valve through the hole in the wheel only to find out that while I had the right size tube, I had the wrong stem and it wasn’t going to work.  I sat there, dejected, wondering what I was going to do when a couple rode by and asked if I had everything that I needed.  I explained the situation and they graciously handed over a tube.  God bless them.  Just after they rode off the roving assistance trailer showed up-good fortune smiling all over me.  This truck was pulling a trailer with about a half dozen riders and bikes who had been forced to quit due to either exhaustion or mechanical problems.  He asked if I needed anything and I said I needed air, and that some CO2 would be great.  “All out of that,” he said, “but I got a pump.”  Crap.  Even in my weakened mental state I was able to surmise that this meant that all of these pissed off riders who had been forced to quit due to either a bike failure or cramping or something similar were going to have sit there and watch me-Amateur McKnowsNothing-try and change a tire in a blistering hot parking lot with no shade.  Fantastic.

About the time I finally get the tube on and start working the tire around the rim, another guy rolls in on the other side of the parking lot and begins to change his tire.    10 minutes later, I’m still struggling (e.g., see the 1:00 mark of this video), and the other guy has finished his whole tire change.  “You can go help him,” I say “I’m still gonna be a few minutes.”  By the time the guy with the pump gets back, I’m finally ready to be aired up.  I fully expected some sarcastic applause from my audience but they were nice enough to hold them in.  The guy begins to put 100 psi into the tire and around 85ish it starts getting difficult.  He keeps going, and on the very last pump just as he presses down, the plastic pump handle breaks and he hits himself in the face with the pump.  I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or apologize, but he thought it was hysterical, so I laughed along with him and the rest of the people in the trailer (who I’m sure were just laughing at me). As there was no trashcan I picked up the two discarded tubes (one of which was perfectly usable) stuffed them into the back of my shirt (because the saddlebag was beginning to break even more) and rode the five or so miles to the next rest stop where there was, you guessed it, a mechanic just waiting to do maintenance and change tires free of charge.  Lovely.

HHH-Call AAA-pt. 1

Somewhere around mile 40ish (for reference, the rest stops are roughly every 10 miles for the first 60 miles and about every 8 or so after that) we noticed a slow leak in my tire.  Not a big deal since there’s (supposed to be) mechanical support throughout the event.  We put some air into the tire with a CO2 cartridge and rode on to the next stop where hopefully someone could change my tire for me.  When we got to the next stop we found out that the mechanics had moved on already or never showed.  Since time was becoming somewhat of an issue by this point, we decided to soldier forward.  The tire wasn’t too bad at this point, but it was definitely starting to take it’s toll on my speed.  If you’ve ever ridden with a partially deflated tire, you know it’s like riding through beach sand.

After going up a killer long hill that my dad let me draft on, we pulled into the next rest stop and last one before Hell’s Gate.  (as a side note, if you don’t make it to mile 62-Hell’s Gate-by the time it closes-12:30-then you don’t get to continue on and ride the whole 100 miles.  Talk about disappointing if you miss it by just a few minutes!)  We weren’t sure of the exact number of miles left, but we knew we only had 23 minutes to get there.  As it turned out, there was a mechanic there, but we didn’t have time for that.  We burned another CO2 cartridge (thanks, Dad) and hustled on.  About halfway to Hell’s Gate the tire was dead flat again.  Yet another CO2 cartridge (thanks Paul) and we were off.  I made it into Hell’s Gate with a grand total of 3 minutes to spare, completely exhausted.  The idea behind closing the course after 12:30 is to make sure people don’t over exert themselves.  I’m not so sure that works the way it’s intended.  We killed ourselves, my Dad, Paul and his daughter Adrianne, to get there and those last 5 or 6 miles was probably the equivalent energy that I would have otherwise expended on ~15 miles.

At this point, although Paul and Adrienne made it with me, they decided to ride the “short” route home (for a total of 75 miles) with my Dad who missed the 12:30 deadline by about 6 or 7 minutes.  I was on my own.  They asked if I wanted help changing my tire before they left.  I looked at the map and saw that there was (supposed to be) a mechanic at the next stop, and in my exhaustion induced haze decided I would just ride on with the (by now mostly flat) tire.  In retrospect, this was not the best decision I’ve ever made.

HHH and SICGOOMH

At some point around mile 20 my trusty ipod just stopped working.  The night before I had even gone and loaded up a bunch of podcasts and music that I had been dying to listen to but had been putting off for just this occasion.  So now I was stuck with the reality that I was not only going to have to ride 100 miles, but I was going to have to pay attention to the fact that I was riding 100 miles.  I can’t even begin to describe how much harder that made things.  So without any new inputs, you know what is bound to happen, right?  That’s right, I got one song stuck in my head and repeated it over and over and over until nearly screamed out loud.  That song was Boston by Augustana.  Definitely not the worst song in the world, but I could have probably done with about 3 or 4 less hours of it in on repeat.

Things would have been so much better if I had managed to learn the words to my newest obsession before I got out there:

HHH+3

My dad was supposed to ride the 100k which splits from the 100 mile route at about mile marker 25 or so.  I was a little bit ahead of him, so I stopped and waited.  He didn’t see me standing there, and I didn’t see him pass me.  So I waited, and waited, and finally rode back 1.5 miles before I got a cell phone call through to him.  He told me he just turned on the 100 mile route to follow me.  Ugh.  He said he’d wait at the next rest stop for me.  I hauled ass back over the 1.5 miles I had backtracked and all the way to the next rest stop.  In order to make up for the lost time, I just took a quick bathroom break while someone filled up my water bottles.  In total I spent about 3 minutes off the bike before setting off again.  On top of that, I had just expended an inordinate amount of energy trying to make up for lost time.  Also, the zipper on my saddlebag busted and I was stuck carrying some stuff in the back of my shirt for the rest of the ride.  Oh yeah, and my tire started going flat.  But more about that later.

HHH

So I did it. I finished the Hotter than Hell Hundred. First, some stats. Total bike time: 7 hours and 42 minutes. Total time (including rest stops and misc.): 10 hours and 15 minutes. Total number of calories burned based on my weight and activity: ~5,000. Total number of people who finished after me: about 60 (not including all the wussies who dropped out).

You see the picture of the official ride jersey for 2009. I told my dad and wife that if I finished the whole thing I was gonna spring for the jersey (they’re usually really expensive). My dad said “If you finish, I’ll buy you the jersey.” That was all the incentive I needed, and it is now my most prized piece of clothing (my Ph.D. regalia doesn’t count as clothing). But really, the thing that kept me going was the thought that I did not, under any circumstances, want to have to come back out here again next year. I’m glad I did it. I’m very proud of myself, and it was certainly an experience, but I NEVER want to do that again. That was the true motivation. When I wanted to quit at mile 60 (and 61 and 62 and 63…) I just kept thinking to myself “If I stop now, I’m still gonna hurt a lot tonight and tomorrow and the next day, but I’ll also have to hurt again a year from now and the day after that and the day after that.”  That was enough to spur me forward for another mile.

I’ll have more to share in the coming days.  You can guess some of the drama from the Tweets on the right, but I’ll be telling stories about missed connections, fat people and cookies, Hell’s Gate, my hatred for blacktop, flat tires, really, really nice riders and others who helped, flat tires (no, I’m not being redundant), broken pumps, how far away 70 is from 100 (it’s more than 30, trust me) and bringing up the rear.  For now, though, I’m just really, really glad it’s over.