From the Archives - National Championships Team Time Trial

Introduction

I just finished watching the Tour de France team time trial. What an awesome event. As a tribute to this underrated cycling discipline, I offer this story from my archives.

(I originally wrote this back in 2003 for dailypeloton.com, which has evidently gone under. I did a dozen or so stories for that magazine and over time I’ll post them all to albertnet. The first such story I rescued is here.)

In 1990, I helped represent the UC Santa Barbara team at the NCCA Collegiate National Cycling Championships at Stanford. We went in as favorites for the team time trial, having dominated in this discipline all season long. Here is the full story of our Nationals attempt.

Collegiate Nationals Team Time Trial – September 30, 2003 (race was on May 19, 1990)

My story begins earlier in the season. I stacked hard descending Refugio Road, north of campus off US 101. I was pretty banged up and missed the next week or so of training before the Conference Championships.

At Conferences, I had terrible form and dropped out of all three races: the road race, the criterium, and even the team time trial (fortunately, the team still managed to win). Despite this piss-poor performance, I had an automatic spot on the Nationals team, along with our team captain, Trevor Thorpe; the Conference road race champion, Eric Cech; and John Pelster, another of our most solid TTT riders. We had four other riders vying for the final spot; we’d make our selection based on how fast they went in training over the next week. Naturally, I was an emotional wreck after Conferences, but Trevor snapped me out of it, saying, “You are not allowed to freak out about this!” I still had two weeks before Nationals to get my act together.

Three teams in particular we worried about. The California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) team from San Luis Obispo had won the TTT at Nationals the previous year, in Colorado. The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) team were the reigning overall champions. But I was especially worried by the UC Berkeley team, because they’d lost to us by only two seconds at the Conference TTT—and they wouldn’t let us forget it. The way they went on about our paltry two seconds, you’d think they won the race.

One advantage we had over everybody was our fleet of “funny bikes,” designed especially for TTTs. Oddly, it wasn’t until the night before that we finally equipped them with the “clip-on” aero bars. (At Conferences, their maiden voyage, we’d ridden on the cow-horns.) We installed the clip-ons the day before the race and tried them out for the first time that night, riding through downtown Palo Alto after dark.

Back at the hotel, our fifth rider, Dan Wolnick, had bad news: he’d come down with a virus. But he’d have to race anyway; our alternate rider was so bitter about not making the team, he’d decided to stay home.

The next day we had the road race in the morning and the TTT in the evening. The road race was a mixed bag. My fork broke and I had to withdraw, as I couldn’t get a spare bike from neutral support. (I was still riding toe-clips and they only had bikes with clipless.) Eric had back problems so he DNF’d too. Dan was too sick to finish. But Trevor—though he’d been dropped by the breakaway early in the race—managed to claw his way back, reconnect in the final kilometer, and solo to victory. He now had the opportunity to win two national titles in one day—but of course he wouldn’t have much left in the tank. The rest of us would have to have the race of our lives.

I was feeling some pretty serious pressure. After all, I’d finished exactly zero of my last four races. Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about the taunting from the Berkeley riders—“two seconds!”

More than anything, I didn’t want to let the team down. A good TTT team is much more than a bunch of strong riders in a paceline; it’s a highly temperamental thing. If a rider accelerates even slightly when he takes the lead, he makes it really hard for the previous leader to latch on to the back, and any disruption to the pace costs the group time. Every rider must be acutely aware of how every other rider is doing and fine-tune the line (e.g., leaving a tired rider on the back for a rotation, or switching up who is drafting whom). If a rider senses he’s feeling better than the others, he should take a longer turn at the front.

It was a strange feeling lining up with these guys. To say I respected them would be an absurd understatement. In fact, I was almost in awe. I knew full well just how blazingly fast each one of them was, and just how hard each was going to go. In fact, awe doesn’t even cover it: I was almost afraid of them. Afraid of just how much I myself would suffer in matching up to the example I knew they were going to set with every pull.

The TTT is arguably a shame-based event. Say you ride poorly in an individual time trial: okay, you cost yourself some time, placed poorly, scored fewer points for the team. But if you screw up in a TTT, you just ruined everybody else’s race too. Your teammates could be on fire, it could be the best race of their lives, and you could ruin the whole thing. The race organizers ought to provide seppuku knives at the finish line.

We set off, and fell right into formation. From the start, we were just flying. If Trevor was blown from his road race victory, he didn’t show it. Eric seemed his normal animal self. Dan didn’t ride like a sick man. JP was laying down a brilliant pace. And I felt unbelievably strong. It didn’t even feel like my body; it felt like a much better one on loan from a born athlete. With all of my setbacks behind me, I found an incredible focus. Oh, it hurt, I was suffering hard, but in just the right way. It was like riding right out of all of life’s frustrations.

The bike felt amazing. While in the draft, I felt like I was being sucked along. Generally, you ride the cow-horns while drafting, and switch to the clip-ons only when you’re breaking the wind, but soon we felt comfortable enough to stay on the clip-ons the whole time. JP was riding behind me, which meant his pull began just as I latched onto the back. Seeing him churn away up there, I could tell he was having the ride of his life.

My main strength in cycling is recovery, which is why the TTT was always my best event. After a long pull at the front, I would be on the verge of blowing up, legs burning, almost anaerobic, but a short rest in the line brought me right back into a comfortable zone. Today I felt so good, so fresh, that I practically wanted to yell at the front rider, “Okay, that’s enough, get out of the way!”

At the first of three turnarounds, Dan burned up in the atmosphere. Every one of his pulls had been perfect, but he could only keep his illness at bay for so long. Dropping out was appropriate: far better to drive well for only three miles than to screw up the team’s rhythm for the next 10+. Still, this didn’t bode well. It’s like losing twenty percent of your engine.

During the second leg of the race, as we flew along in our reduced formation, I become aware of this faint ringing sound. There’s not much noise in a TTT—just the light whir of gears and the whump-whump-whump of the disks—and once I heard the ringing, I couldn’t ignore it. I realized it was the sound of a bike part doing something it’s not supposed to do. But where? I slowly took my eye off of Trevor’s rear wheel and looked down at my bike. Nothing wrong there. I shifted my attention to Trevor’s bike, and eventually spotted the problem: the lock-ring had come completely off of the adjustable cup of his bottom bracket. Without it in place, the cup could rattle loose, then looser, until his cranks would begin to rock back and forth and eventually his bike would be unrideable. All I could hope for was that Trevor didn’t use much grease when he installed the BB, and that the threads weren’t “chased” properly—that is, that there was brazing debris in there making the cup not want to turn. As precise as our riding was, this possible sloppiness might carry the day.

At our second turnaround, JP and I didn’t switch positions like we normally do. We didn’t discuss this—we just instinctively maintained our original lineup. JP and I were still taking the monster pulls, and Eric and Trevor still seemed plenty strong, so I was stunned when, early in the third leg of the race, Trevor yelled out that he was gapped. I held back for just a few seconds before he latched back on and everybody yelled to go. Now I was thoroughly rattled.

A harrowing aspect of TTTs is that you don’t have any relative sense of how you’re doing. If you’re in a breakaway in a criterium or circuit race, you can get your splits, and you know your teammates in the peloton are working to shut down the chase, and you have the sense of being ahead. This really fires the adrenaline, fortifying your efforts. In a TTT, you may sense that you’re going fast, but anything that goes wrong can shake your faith in your team’s ability to win. We’d lost Dan, and now we’d lost precious seconds regrouping. But I wasn’t deterred. After all, a rider like Trevor wouldn’t have lost contact if we weren’t absolutely flying. This thing was still winnable.

At the end of the third leg, before the final turnaround, was a small hill. Trevor was in the lead, and Eric was on the back—and then, suddenly, he wasn’t. And he wasn’t calling out—he was either in denial, or felt tempted to cash it in. I was frozen, and then Trevor yelled, all the way from the front, “COME ON, ERIC, GET BACK HERE!” It was shockingly emphatic, and seemed to put the fear of God into Eric. He fought his way back to JP’s wheel, and we were together again. But how much had it cost? It seemed like forever, but couldn’t have been more than five or six seconds. Of course, such handfuls are the difference between winning and losing.

After the turnaround, we were on the home stretch—but it was a long home stretch. The pinging of Trevor’s bike’s lock-ring was like the ticking of a bomb. It looked like our race could go in almost any direction, and only one of them good. I was ready for this thing to be over. And about two miles from the end, I really hit the wall. I had never suffered so badly in my life. I was merely miserable while in the draft, but once at the front I was in full crisis mode. Our group was like a prison cell: there was nowhere to go for respite, no early parole, no escape until I’d served my full sentence. I stared at the bike computer, making sure the speed didn’t drop, willing the number to stay frozen, forcing my body to keep up the necessary effort. I kept promising myself that after five more seconds, I’d pull off and go to the back, but then—reminding myself that my teammates weren’t feeling any better—I’d renege on my promise and commit to another five seconds. When I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and it felt like my legs were going to shear off from the effort, I’d finally pull off.

But going to the back didn’t give immediate relief. This is because slowing down, even the minimum amount necessary to drift back, means you have to speed back up to latch on. That little acceleration was almost more than I could do. This is why people fall off the back of TTTs. Every latching on felt like a sprint. In fact, after a while I had to switch to the cow-horns and actually get out of the saddle to catch Trevor’s wheel. Every time, it felt like falling off a cliff and trying to catch myself by grabbing a clump of grass as it flew by.

JP noted this and the next time he dropped back, he eased in between Trevor and me, changing the lineup to give me the benefit of his larger draft. An added benefit: whenever I was latching on the back, Eric was beginning his pull, and (given the bad day he was having) he was the rider least likely to accidentally speed up. The final benefit was that JP, who had more juice left than the rest of us, started taking incredibly long and fast pulls, which inspired me to fight harder when it was my turn at the front. He really kept the group together.

With the lineup change my sprits improved. Sure, I was maxed out, but nobody ever won anything without paying the price. But I yearned to improve my efficiency in the transitions. Because I had to stand up to sprint onto JP’s wheel, I had to switch to the cow-horns every time I dropped back. I could feel the difference this made in wind drag. So I tried something new: getting out of the saddle while still on the clip-ons. Mistake. To my horror, I completely lost control and swerved so hard that the saddle clubbed me in the butt, almost knocking me off the bike. Then I overcorrected and swerved in the other direction. I was going down. Our Nationals dream was over.

But then, somehow, I regained control, and—with a fresh jolt of adrenaline—was able to get JP’s wheel. Now I was good and pissed off. No more screw-ups. Nothing was going to stop me. No crash, no self-doubt, no despair. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to quit. It’s hard to describe how this resolution worked. Every so often you hear some fool saying, “I’m a great athlete because I can just turn off pain.” That’s a load of crap. A great athlete turns on the pain, and leaves it on. I kept forcing the pedals around to increase the agony, to punish my body for wanting to falter. And gradually the finish line came into view.

The last two hundred meters of the race were completely unreal. Time slowed down. We slowed down. It was a slight uphill, and into the wind, and we were just human, after all. There was no way to keep up the speed anymore. It was like riding underwater. The finish line seemed to be receding. I felt like a toddler hanging on the edge of the swimming pool watching his beach ball slowly float away. We were all out of the saddle in a full sprint, but minus the speed.

Finally we oozed over the line and fell completely apart.

You’ve never seen such a sorry-looking bunch. We were moaning, whimpering, all our legs had seized up. We were weaving like drunks. Somebody caught me or I would have gone right over. But in a sense our race wasn’t finished yet. We had to know: was it all in vain? What exactly had we done out there, anyway?

My brother Geoff, the team mechanic for Cal Poly, ran over and said we’d taken six seconds out of them. This was disconcerting: though Poly had won the Nationals TTT the previous year, we’d beaten them all season by a larger margin than this. We could see the Berkeley team in the distance in their final approach, and they were going faster than we had, but it didn’t look like they would make it. We crowded around the big digital clock, and when our time was reached, they were still out on the course. We’d beaten them—and by the time they got in, we’d taken over half a minute out of them. They could see us jumping up and down and cheering, and they looked like they were about to cry, having to eat their words. Of course, we hadn’t won yet: CU was still out there. Again, the suspense was agonizing, but unnecessarily so. They lost by around forty seconds, and we became national champions.

We were celebrating before most teams even knew we’d won. But the full impact of what we’d accomplished was hard to grasp all at once. It dawned on us gradually and wonderfully all evening.

During the criterium the next day, fate returned to its normal bastard self. The bottom bracket in my loaner bike fell out, as if carrying out the threat that Trevor’s bike had made in the TTT, and my races-finished record went to 1-and-5. Eric abandoned due to some random mechanical. JP got stuck in the back, and with no support Trevor was out-gunned, losing what should have been a certain victory in the Omnium. And yet our spirits were high at the awards ceremony that night, as we donned our stars-and-stripes jerseys and gold medals. You can’t win them all, but we had won a very big one indeed.

A final note

This version of my story isn’t exactly what appeared in dailypeloton.com. The original version ran almost 7,000 words so I trimmed it down. I also revised the ending, where we waited for the final teams to finish, because my original version was inaccurate. I based it on the recollections of three of my teammates, all of which matched one another but were nevertheless wrong. For an examination of this unintentional fiction (and my original account of the finish), click here and scroll down to “Gauchos win national TTT championship.”

--~--~--~--~--~--~--~---~--

For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Odyssey '91

Introduction

While riding over Ebbetts Pass near Lake Tahoe recently, I thought back to a really, really hard ride I did a couple decades ago. Two friends and I had set out to do something epic, something to test our manhood. Something we’d never forget. A week or two before the ride, we’d met in a café, pored over some topographical maps of the Lake Tahoe area, and planned out a route that would be over 200 miles long with around 20,000 feet of climbing. We weren’t bike tourists: this would be a one-day ride. We gave the ride a name: Odyssey ’91.

Odyssey ’91 didn’t go so well, but then that was sort of the point. It was absolutely brutal, shockingly so, and took us to unprecedented depths of suffering. In the week or two following the ride, each of us wrote about the experience. I have tried to find Trevor’s tale and John’s epic poem, but in vain. I also cannot find a single photo from the ride. But here is my original tale, sprinkled with photos from other rides the three of us did around then. Enjoy please enjoy.

From the archives: Odyssey ’91

Imagine this: you’ve got a $10,000 stereo, have a couple friends over, and are playing rock music at full blast. The bass sends shock waves across the floor and through the walls, making your heart flutter. The lights in your apartment, starved of electricity, flicker along with the beat like a flame in a strong wind. You can’t resist cracking a huge grin when the sound, traveling up your legs, vibrates your cajones, which are the center for percussion appreciation in humans. Can you imagine this feeling? The last time I had it I was at the top of Ebbetts Pass, 8,730 feet above sea level, beginning the descent of a perfectly paved single lane road on my bike, 160 miles into an epic bike ride with my friends. 

Odyssey ‘91. Like that spontaneous rooftop concert by the Beatles, it wasn’t hyped and almost certainly left thousands of fans feeling cheated somehow that they weren’t notified. Like that general admission Who concert, somebody could have been killed. Like a 2 Live Crew event, it would shock a nation of concerned parents by arrogantly defying social norms. Two hundred and nine miles. Twenty thousand feet of vertical climbing. Cold rain. Burning sun. Go ride or go home. On August 15 we set out to kick the flyest dope ride the free world has ever known: Odyssey ‘91.

Crossing over the summit of Ebbetts Pass was in every way a high point of the ride, a chance to rekindle our passion for the sport of cycling and enjoy a really blazing descent. But before I let you entertain your own grandiose visions of conquering the vast American asphalt wilderness, I should perhaps take you back to an earlier point in the ride, specifically Avery, California, when we’d been forced by pure exhaustion to take an extended rest stop. By “we” I mean Trevor Thorpe, John Pelster, and I, flying the proud stars‑and‑stripes jerseys we won in the 1990 Collegiate National Team Time Trial Championship. (Not only were these jerseys an aesthetically sound choice, but is at turned out a safe one given the hillbillies we encountered—the type easily rallied to senseless violence by others’ transgressions, such as lack of patriotism.)

Pure exhaustion at mile 114 resulted from poor trip planning and a spate of unexpected climbs beginning around 90 miles into the ride, at which point we’d been descending for like 60 miles. We had expected another 20 miles of gradual downhill before the major climbing would begin. Really? A full 80 miles of descending? Yep—as we rode through a tiny town, Wilseyville, I checked the Odyssey ‘91 Elevation Profile chart that Trevor had made, and it showed a gradual descent from 2,700 feet to 2,400 by mile 110, before a slight rise to Avery, our designated lunch stop.

This was the part of the route we’d guessed at—the gap where two of Trevor’s topographical maps didn’t quite meet up. An accurate altitude profile of this section would look like an electrocardiogram of a heart attack victim getting CPR. Railroad Flat road was anything but. We didn’t mind at first, when we plummeted downhill at 45, all drafting inches from one another like F‑15 fighters in formation. But then the road suddenly went uphill. The G forces hammered my stomach down within the bones of my pelvis and stretched the skin tight over my cheekbones. Not that any of us was fazed, of course. We powered up the climb, out of the saddle, lean and fluid like praying mantises in some wild dance. Sure, you say, there’s nothing natural about insects dancing. Well, I’ll reply, there’s actually nothing natural about a person mounting a rolling steel and aluminum apparatus and putting it into motion like he belonged on it.

I suppose we made it look easy for awhile, until we rounded a bend and realized the hill was more than a short rise, and in fact went on and on. Slouching back down on our saddles, we quickly sobered up to the drudgery of torturing our bodies needlessly. Finally we reached what we expected to be a summit, only to be plunged down again. Descend. Climb. Repeat. Over the next few miles we learned to hate Railroad Flat road, and to resent the seeming innocence of its name.

Finally we reached Sheep Ranch road, which we were certain would be an improvement. I checked the profile chart again. Sweat had penetrated the plastic tape coating it, making the ink run precisely where the chart was radically incorrect. The chart gave me no warning that the next twelve miles would be absolutely brutal, nothing but up and down—a microcosm of the pathetic, wretched human condition with its illusory peaks and crushing depressions.

Pedal stroke after pedal stroke, we writhed like tortured animals, little understanding our suffering and powerless to bring it to an end. Suddenly, I was no longer on a bicycle. I was in the ring with Mike Tyson, a turnbuckle wedging its way into my back, pressing deeper into me with every body blow. I had a mental picture of blood running freely down my chin, out of my nose, out of every pore, my teeth flapping uselessly on ripped strands of gum. My sight gone, I strive only to sink to the mercy of the mat, except the constant beating is holding me firmly against the turnbuckle. Suddenly, the bell rings and my coach is telling me don’t worry, kid, you’ve only got ten rounds to go.

The vision faded out and I realized I was descending again. This only meant a new, lower low and severe penance for my momentary, ill-gotten relief. We learned to loathe descending more than climbing itself, as the harbinger of future torment. For you to truly understand the Hell that is Sheep Ranch Road, you must read this paragraph over again and again. Keep reading it until you hate it. Then read it some more. Remember that it is only the literary rendition of what we actually faced on the road.

Terrible things happen to the mind when the body is inflicted with incessant hardship. Take, for example, the Donner party and Alfred Packer, people who ate one another when locked in by harsh winter storm. Or consider desperate animals who chew their feet off to escape a steel‑jawed trap. Or women who set about tooling men to somehow get revenge for the horrible pain of their high heels. I suppose every mind develops some kind of psychosis when starved of food, oxygen, or common sense. On Sheep Ranch Road, my own derangement must have seemed harmless enough to the others; I never went completely berserk or tried to kill anybody. Rather, the mental firestorm manifested in an incessant incantation that reverberated through my brain, a thousand voices chanting an old ditty from summer camp:

Green Mountain, we’re the very best.
The best camp in the west.
Whenever we go out, 

The people always shout: 

There goes Green Mountain,
And the very best!
Da‑da da‑da da da da
[Repeats, over and over again]

The next thing I knew, I was waking up. Not in my nice warm bed, realizing it was all just a horrible nightmare, but on the toilet of a public restroom in Avery, halfway through a dazed defecation and wondering how long I’d slept. I was trying to sort out the dream I’d had, which somehow involved getting back the Bear Creek Elementary t‑shirt, the mottled brown one with milk‑chocolate sleeves that my mom chose out for me in the sixth grade. It was in perfect condition and gave me strength somehow.

I didn’t want to move. The dream was slowly replaced in my mind by the memory of the last half hour, during which time I struggled to wash down an XL‑40 Chocolate Truffle Bar with the last of my Exceed Fluid Replacement And Energy Drink. The roof of my mouth still ached and my throat was raw from the dry friction of the gagging reflex when I choked down the last of the dry energy bar. My stomach was churning now, from the lunch I bought at a convenience store: two‑thirds of an Entenmann’s orange cake, lubricated prudently with a Pepsi and a Dr. Pepper.

I left the restroom, found JP and Trev, and that was the end of our rest stop. The prospect of another 100 miles, with another nine thousand feet of climbing, stopped me cold. I couldn’t bear to mount my bike. But what else was I gonnna do? I’d dug my own grave.

Over the next twenty miles I heard the jeering voices of those who told me I was a fool to attempt Odyssey ‘91: “You’re crazy.” “Why the hell are you gonna do that?” “You’ll never make it, you haven’t even been riding.” I couldn’t feel my legs anymore, they just turned around slowly, and my arms could barely support my upper body. Holding the bike in a straight line became like a drunk driving test I couldn’t pass. A few times I bumped into John, and finally the impulse to drift overcame my body and I veered off towards the center of the highway.

Trevor called for a break and we pulled over. Trying to rest my arms on the handlebar was futile. I kept sliding off, my arms bathed in a queer sweat that had my whole head swimming despite the mild sixty‑five degree day. Trevor announced we’d need to make seventy miles in the next four hours; I honestly doubted I could make even seven miles. When we set off again, I resolved that even if I somehow survived this ordeal, I would never ride a bicycle again. The next dozen or so miles reinforced this depressing resolution.

The human body is an amazing machine. Without warning, relief began in my head, in the form of optimism, and slowly drained through my body like gasoline filling the empty tank of a previously stranded car. I could feel my spine straighten as if invisible hands were lifting me by the armpits. My vision returned as though I’d put in contact lenses. By the time we reached mile 140 and Big Meadow, which turned out (like so many stops along the way) to be less a town than a roadside outhouse, I was back from death’s door and began to feel positively powerful.

Unfortunately, at this point John’s face became sunken and pale and he seemed to fall under the deadly spell of a wasting disease. At Bear Valley, we stopped at a gas station and he didn’t have the physical strength to effectively chew his Coke, much less the dreaded energy bar. Slouched up against a gas pump, he complained to Trevor, “I wish I was dead.” Trevor nodded in agreement and started to say something—but John stopped him and said, “No. I’m not just using the expression. I mean it, I really wish I was dead right now.”

John, too, eventually recovered and although Trevor never experienced the Grim Reaper effect, he was obviously fatigued during the four‑mile, two thousand foot wall from Hermit Valley to the top of Ebbets Pass. I felt positively fresh, although in retrospect I think I had merely become accustomed to the strain; my frame of reference was skewed. Now I could maneuver around and capture the moment in pictures with my little Minolta. Not that I could get Trevor to pose for the camera: he was locked into a fierce struggle against the mountain and the thin air of over eight thousand feet of altitude. Only on the ensuing descent did we all experience the euphoric feeling I described in my opening passage. Only then did we begin darting around like the bats that occasionally seemed to fly at our heads from out of the evening sky.

At Markleeville, we stopped for the night. Not because we were bedwetters, and not because the unexpected climbs had worn us out, nor because we’d realized our own physical limitations (since we evidently had none). The real problem was a tactical error we made in planning the ride: our itinerary just wasn’t sound. We planned to average about sixteen miles per hour, to take a certain number of rest stops, to spend between fifteen and eighteen hours on the bike, and to cover the distance in one day. We failed to figure in the amount of daylight available to us. Even with the horrors of Sheep Ranch Road, we kept to our original pace, perfectly, but we left at 7:00 a.m., which found us in Markleeville at 8:30 p.m., just as the sun had dipped out of sight, with about thirty‑five miles to go.

We could have made it if we were near civilization, but Lake Tahoe has its own style of darkness. It doesn’t mean reduced visibility with enough light pollution to get by. It means there is no difference between having your eyes open or closed. We had to get a motel room and park the bikes. We were too late for the restaurants in Markleeville, so we found a little store and picked out our dinners, which were very simple: John got Doritos corn chips, Trevor got Ruffles Sour Cream ‘n’ Cheddar, and I chose my favorite, Cool Ranch Doritos.

We ate at the motel. My third handful of chips tore the roof of my mouth like a cheese grater and I gave up on eating. A shower washed off the outer layer of my full body grime. You know the old cliché, “He was asleep before his head hit the pillow?” Well it didn’t apply in Markleeville. Too much pain was buzzing through our limbs to allow sleep. We all basically waited a bunch of hours for the sun to come up, while lying down with our eyes closed. The next morning, we climbed begrudgingly back on our bikes and hit the road. The climbing started immediately. Three hours later, Odyssey ‘91 was history. And so, of course, were we.

Final stats: 209 miles, 20,000 feet of climbing, 16½ hours, 15.7 mph average speed.