Ready for Everest Challenge 2014?

Introduction

The one big race I do every year, the Everest Challenge Stage Race—two days of racing with 29,000 feet of vertical gain—is  coming right up.  In case that “29,000 feet” description doesn’t tell you much, consider that each stage of this race is like climbing a 5-mile staircase with 24,000 steps that would take you to the top of a 1,160-story building.  The first day is bad enough, but the second day is murder.  The third (and last) climb on the second day is, by itself, the equivalent of a two-mile staircase with 10,000 steps reaching the top of a 490-story building.

A friend asked recently, “Are you ready?”  It was not my wife who asked.  She knows better, having had quite enough of my blather.  It was my friend John who asked; he flew out from New York to race the EC two years ago.

I could have simply answered John directly, since he was reckless enough to ask and might actually be interested in the answer.  But why answer only him, when I could blog about it on albertnet, where other people, like my mom and a Russian hacker, might also see it?  Plus, maybe you’re considering racing the EC, or have already signed up, and are wondering more generally, what does it take to be ready for it? 

(Perhaps most importantly of all, this post will come in handy later, when the EC is over, as a retrospective building block for self-flagellation.)

My gut

My gut tells me that I’m ready.  But then, what does “ready” mean?  I’m very confident I can finish, since I have five times before.  Beyond this minimal sense, “ready” begs the question “Ready to do what?”  To a snowboarder, “ready” means “Ready to shred this gnar’!”  Which I’m totally ready to do, unless you’re talking about descending, where my modern chickenshit approach and undersized “big” chainring keep me decidedly within non-shredding, non-gnar territory.

So, what am I trying to do this year?  Well, after all the solid training I did last year, I ended up setting the wrong goal.  (I should have followed my own advice and not set a goal at all.)  I’d been so miserable on the final second-day climb in 2012, I vowed to take it easier in 2013 and pace myself better, especially on the first day.  (Day-to-day recovery is my Achilles heel.)  Did this strategy work?  Well, I certainly felt better on the second day’s last climb last year, but I was only 3 minutes 40 seconds faster ... and I was 20 minutes slower the first day.  So whatever suffering I saved myself then has been dwarfed by the year of self-loathing I’ve subsequently suffered.  (I’m reminded of a Steve Coogan line:  “Remember:  death is but a moment; cowardice is a lifetime of affliction.”)

So, this year, I’m going to try to man up and go as fast as I can, both days.  I know that sounds simplistic, but go try racing for more than twelve hours over two days and then decide if you still think this all-out business makes any sense at all.  So:  am I “ready” to go utterly destroy myself?  Well, can you ever be “ready” for that?  And conversely, aren’t we all born ready?

Of course, “my gut” doesn’t refer only to a subjective sense of readiness.  It also refers to whether or not I’m fat.  “Fat” in cycling parlance means having an abnormally low amount of body fat that is nonetheless still higher than what you wish you had.  I’m pleased to report that my fancy electrode-equipped scale tells me, as of a couple days ago, that I have 5.9% body fat. 

There’s some fine print, though:  you have to configure the scale with your height, age, and whether you’re an athlete or not.  This last setting probably tells the algorithm to simply lower the number so that the self-styled athlete doesn’t get pissed off and demand a refund on his crappy scale. 

The numbers

I keep a really detailed training diary.  I know, I know, I should use Strava for this, everybody keeps telling me that, but I don’t feel like sharing all my details with the world, especially if I’m updating the comments right after a workout and might write something untoward.  (The pro team Omega Pharma-Quick Step has a rule against riders tweeting within an hour of competition “when when emotions can be running high, and logic and reason can go out of the window.”)

Old-school Excel training diary in hand, I compared this year’s EC training to that of 2012.  (Of course how I prepared in 2013 is irrelevant, that race being an ugly smear on my memory.)  The below chart shows a comparison of the EC training period (beginning after vacation and ending in mid-September) for both years.  What I’ve discovered is that my preparation has been almost eerily similar:

Look at that.  Only ten seconds difference on Mount Diablo.  The biggest contrast is the number of Diablo ascents, but this year I did two fairly comparable rides in Colorado  (click here and here for details).  The difference in vertical gain might look like a lot, but actually, I gain that much vertical in just a couple of weekday (i.e., evening) rides.

Now, if I were a proper bike dork, I’d have a power meter and could look at all kinds of extraordinary numbers.  And in fact, it would help me during my rides as well.  I saw this in action last weekend when, on the second trip up Mount Diablo of the day, my pal Craig dropped my other pal, Ian, and me.  Craig just walked away from us (figuratively speaking).  At the summit, when Ian commented on this, Craig said humbly, “I was just watching my power meter and trying to keep it between 300 and 350 watts.”  To which Ian replied, “Yeah, I was just trying to keep mine between zero and 200.”

The requisite lugubrious day

I think it’s pretty unlikely that anybody training for a race like EC, and then racing it, will escape having a truly lugubrious day.  If he does, he’s either loafing too much (like I did last year) or is egregiously lubed like the pros.  (Yes of course I noticed that “egregiously lubed” is an anagram of “lugubrious leg guy,” except when it isn’t really, which is always.)

The trick, I think, is to get that lugubrious day out of the way during training so that you won’t have it during the race.  It’s like an insurance policy against having a particularly bad day when it really counts.  This almost worked in 2012 when I did a double-Diablo training ride fueled entirely by greasy dim sum, as chronicled here.  But I wasn’t quite miserable enough that day to call it lugubrious, which perhaps is why that last EC climb became my crowning lugubrious moment of the year.

What exactly do I mean by lugubrious?  Well, you know, just mournfully, pathetically, almost comically sad (though too sad for it to be funny).  This photo, I think, captures it pretty well.  Yes, I’m actually sobbing into my orange slices (after totally cratering in the 2003 La Marmotte).

So, you may be wondering, have I had my 2014 lugubrious moment?  Well, I almost got it out of the way really early, on January 1, when I raced the Mount San Bruno hill climb.  I went into the race angry, and was hoping to channel that anger into a great performance.  But as I wrote in my subsequent race report, “As I got dropped, I discovered that it’s possible to be bitter without being angry.  In fact, I just felt sad.”

Fortunately, that wasn’t my most miserable biking moment of 2014.  Nor was a frigid ride in the rain in February, though that experience was also awful enough to write about.  No, my worst ride of the year so far—which certainly deserves the lugubrious label—was my first double-Diablo after getting back from vacation (i.e., from missing almost three weeks of riding). 

Man, that ride was just awful.  I clocked abysmal times on the climbs, and couldn’t even keep up with my pals on the flat section back from the mountain.  (Because I’d taken so long on the climbs, Craig had to really motor to get home on time, and couldn’t wait up for me anymore.)  I finished up with over an hour of solo riding when I was barely able to turn the pedals.  By the end I was just totally shattered.  Everything hurt ... my legs, of course, and my butt, and also my forearms, my biceps, even my hands.  Even coasting hurt.  I came away from that ride feeling that the “good base mileage” rule is bogus—that I’d have been no worse off had I done no riding at all during the spring.  After that ride I was totally useless for five days straight.

(They say misery loves company, and I was duly cheered to learn that another pal on that ride fared even worse than I had.  Despite skipping the second trip up the mountain, he had to stop to lie down three times on the way home.)

Omen

All those stats I provided earlier may end up meaning nothing, as stats often do, so I should probably hedge my bet a bit with an omen.  I certainly have one to share, though whether it’s a good omen or not remains to be seen.

Last week I was hammering home through Tilden Park, at the tail end of an evening training ride, in the last moments of weak daylight before dusk set in, when I saw something swoop down from out of a tree.  Its trajectory was totally unlike that of a bird.  It came right at me and then swerved at the last second, but in the wrong direction so instead of going over my head, it went down and actually hit my thigh on its way past.  “What are you, blind?!” I thought, before realizing that yes, in fact, it was.  It had to have been a bat.  Moments after seeing it, I saw another creature of the same size and odd flight style, but this one was silhouetted against the horizon and was definitely a bat.  I got home and googled “bats Tilden park Berkeley,” and sure enough, bats can be found here.  Or they can find you.  (The other odd creature I’ve been seeing lately, but on Mount Diablo, is the tarantula.  I’ve seen three of them in the last month.)

So, what does it mean to be hit by a bat while riding?  Stay tuned to albertnet, because in early October I’ll give you the a full report on the 2014 Everest Challenge:  what I ate, and how badly I destroyed myself, and thus whether being hit by a bat is a good or bad omen.

Race Report - Mt. San Bruno

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Why I race Mt. San Bruno

I’m not a bike racer. Depending on your perspective, I’m either a washed-up old has-been, or merely a would’ve-wanted-to-have-been. But, having raced for over a decade, I can fake it pretty well, if I choose my races carefully. Criteriums require a lot of sprinting, for which I have neither talent nor conditioning. Short hill climbs favor climbers; I’m not built for them. Regular-season races favor those who race every weekend and follow a fairly regimented training program, which I can’t be bothered with. So if I race it all, it’s generally either an event that’s too awful, by its length and difficulty, for most racers (e.g., the Everest Challenge), or is held out-of-season.

The Mt. San Bruno Hill Climb takes place every year on January 1, a day when (in theory) most people ought to be too tired and/or hung over to participate, and nobody in the northern hemisphere should be in anything approaching race shape. Perfect for a guy like me who rides the same amount, at roughly the same intensity, all year round. Perfect in theory, anyway.

In reality, bike racers are an irrepressible bunch, the kind of people who really ought to get a life. My category (Masters 35+) fills up every year at Mt. San Bruno, as do most of the other categories, and the racers show up fit, trim, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed. Still, it’s not too far a drive from my home, so I can pretty easily assemble a small entourage for it (plying my wife and kids with hot cocoa). This year was my third; I raced it in ’06 and ’08, and this year set out to improve upon my performance from last time, when I was over a minute slower than in ’06.

The 2010 bike race scene

Bike races have changed very little since I started in 1981. You get a lot of stringy people milling around a parking lot in some industrial park, with a big line at the san-o-lets. (I’ve learned to bring my own toilet paper—it often runs out.) Most of the bikes you see are more expensive than the cars they came in on. The mood is a combination of camaraderie and jitters. The big change from when I raced regularly is that everybody warms up on stationary trainers now. One crew even had a little canopy erected over their warmup area in case it rained. (I found this a bit twee, frankly.)

I met up with a teammate, Mike Ceely, who—being an old-school type—got his warm-up riding to the race. In his case this meant coming straight from a New Year’s party that lasted into the wee hours. Just for fun, he wore an old jersey from a long-ago bike club, Team Milwaukee (its official name, in smaller lettering, being “équipe la merde”). That’s him in red below, having a laugh with me and an old buddy of his (in blue). I can’t remember what was so funny.

One new development in the sport that’s becoming increasingly common is the timing chip, which automatically records every racer’s time. I first used on in 2003 in La Marmotte, a cyclo-sportif in France; I was required to put down a deposit (something like 10 euros) for it. They had them this year for Mt. San Bruno, which was the first time I’d seen one used in such a minor race. It was a small strip of foam rubber with adhesive backing and a chip embedded in it that was mounted to the racer's helmet. I guess the idea is to speed up the results; I can’t say that it did, however, as the results still weren’t posted when I left, an hour after I finished the race. Still, the timing chip is a nice idea.

You shall be spared

Yesterday I was trying to find results of this year’s event online, and though I couldn’t, I did find somebody’s blog describing a blow-by-blow of the Masters 45+ race. It was written well, but I couldn't help the feeling I'd read this story before. Unless somebody rides off a cliff, catches himself on some shrubs, climbs back up to the road, gets a fresh bike, and goes on to win (all of which the Frenchman Laurent Fignon actually did once in a Tour de France stage), there’s generally not that much to get excited about in a blow-by-blow of a local bike race.

This is especially true with a race like Mt. San Bruno. For one thing, the race is too short to allow for some master plan to be carried out. Meanwhile, its being uphill means the speed isn’t that high, so drafting—and thus tactics in general—don’t actually matter so much. Of course, at the summit I heard all kinds of racers telling all kinds of tales, all full of tactical intrigue and strategic brilliance—the whole “chess-game-on-wheels” bit. I was hard pressed to believe any of it. In a race like this, there are some people you can keep up with, some you can’t, and others who can’t keep up with you; sometimes you can draft others and sometimes you can’t; above all, the grade sorts out who is strongest.

Thus, I’m not going to bore you with anything that happened between the time the race started and when I crossed the finish line. I went hard and then it was over and that’s all there (ever?) is to say about the race itself. But I wouldn’t have led you this far if I didn’t have a story to tell.

The story

My story begins shortly after I crossed the finish line. I took a few minutes to catch my breath, then learned that we couldn’t descend back to our cars until the last rider had finished. I had suffered terribly, breathing like a malfunctioning turbine about to blow out its bearings, my tongue dried like jerky from hanging out in the wind. The race had been so hard that one of the only things that kept me going was knowing that, not long after I finished, my suffering would end (whereas most of the rest of America would still be painfully hung over).

Then I thought: hey, speaking of hangovers, where’s Ceely? He hadn’t felt too well after his warm-up, and had no lofty goals for this race—he simply intended to treat it as another side-trip in his comprehensive tour of the many avenues of human suffering. There were gobs of racers at the summit so finding him wasn’t an easy task. I couldn’t remember what color his jersey was, so I had to scan the whole crowd for him. In the process, I saw this one dude who looked just awful—far worse than anything I’d expected to see.

Let me try to describe this guy. He’d climbed off his bike and was sitting on a low stone guardrail, staring blankly into middle distance. To say he was frowning doesn’t cover it. Every part of him was frowning. His mouth had an exaggerated closed-lip crease of a frown, extending down so far it almost reached the edge of his chin. His eyes were frowning as though tugged downward at the outer edges. The bags under his eyes were frowning, his eyebrows were frowning, and the creases in his forehead were frowning. Moreover, as he hunched over even his shoulders were frowning. He reminded me of one of those Greek theatre tragedy masks. Such misery. I thought, “He’s just plain lugubrious” before deciding that word wasn’t even strong enough and silently coining a new word, “ultralugubrious.” (It’s a testament to my own compromised mental condition that I reflected with delight that ultralugubrious has all the vowels, which of course it doesn’t.)

It was an amazing sight and then, suddenly, I realized, oh my god, that’s Ceely! I swear to it: although I was looking for him, I didn’t even recognize him at first. He looked downright unwell, and I suppose he was. Fortunately, he had filled his bottle with tonic water left over from the party, which was like nectar from the gods for both of us. (I’d not brought a bottle and had been regretting it.) Eventually his color returned a bit and we made our way down the mountain, taking a wrong turn at one point. (Perhaps because I seldom drive, I’m a lousy navigator and thus hopeless follower who would practically trail a drunk driver right off into a ditch).

Reparations

We had a big thermos of good cocoa, two excited children, and warm clothes awaiting us at the car, and following that a big, hot meal at a groovy Berkeley restaurant overlooking the bay. Not a bad start to the year.

Though I aggravated a feisty virus by racing Mt. San Bruno, It’s possible I’ll be completely recovered in time for the 2011 or 2012 edition. Until then, happy new year from albertnet!

Postscript

They finally posted the results. I finished seventh, in 18:03—a personal best for this event. I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with that.
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