Shenandoah 100 recap

Aid station 3, 45 miles in, I stand there with two full bottles and wonder what I am looking for. My mind is blank and thoughts are not coming thru clear. I am in the midst of a heavy bonk. My stomach shutdown about an hour and a half ago and I am soaked with sweat. I ditch my nutrition plan and switch over to Gatorade and water. I finally figure out what it is I am looking for, my bike. I had handed it off to one of the exceptionally helpful aid station volunteers and he had made sure to lube my chain and have it ready and waiting for our departure back out onto the course.

Flash back about 24hrs and George is pulling the crimson cruiser into my driveway in a spitting rain. It’s still dark as we load the truck and make haste for rt 287. Seven plus hours of highway under our belts, couple stops and a lunch break and we roll into Stokesville campground. We stumble on some familiar faces and try to find a campsite. Not wanting to camp in the blazing sun of the field we head back down a dirt road and eventually find a kickin spot tucked into the pine trees, just far enough from the mayhem to be quiet but close enough to where everything is going on. We make camp which of course is a comedy of errors. We pitch the tent, put up the ez-up and get our table and chairs situated. For a couple of half retarded haven’t camped in a while rejects we have quite a sweet set-up. Over the next hour or so we get our registration packs which include a sweet t-shirts and our number plates. Our fates sealed we zip tie the numbers to our bikes and head up to the pavilion to meet up with some other New York boys for dinner.

I’ve got to send out a huge thanks to Chris and his crew who put this event on. The organization is spot on. They were at capacity this past weekend and they handled it very well. All the volunteers were friendly and efficient and everything went off pretty much without a hitch.

After dinner and a little bsing with some familiar faces we head off to call it an early night. I know what’s in store for tomorrow and can already feel the nerves creeping in. A few pints of Sierra Nevada helped to knock them back for a little while but that didn’t last long.

We make the decision to ditch the rain fly as the skies have cleared and we want to maximize the airflow thru the tent. At 11:30 it starts to rain. By 12 it is pouring and I am struggling to get the rain fly on by myself. George is snoring thru the thunder and commotion. As I start to get thoroughly soaked I rouse George to get some help. We rig the rain fly and move the ez-up to cover as much of the tent as we can. I dry off and climb back into my sleeping bag. George climbs in and is asleep in seconds. I stare at the roof of the tent as gale force winds and rain pound at the thin layer of nylon. I sleep maybe a matter of minutes the rest of the night. I am awake when the alarm goes off at 4:30. It has stopped raining and is fairly warm. We get up, sort out the camp and begin to prep. It’s going to be a long day.

At 6:30 we are off, all five hundred plus of us. George and I had made the decision to try to stay together and we had made the offer to Matt Davies as well. He had a bad time on a pre-ride the day before and we figured we would have strength in numbers. I lost both of them off the start. I see matt and then lose him. George is a little way back. I feel great all things considered. I spin on the road heading for the first climb and chat with a single speeder from Marty’s. We hit the first climb and away we go. Good pace all the way up. We get to the first gate and there’s a bottle neck. I take a break. Eat some hammer gel and resign myself to move at the group pace. Up and thru the single track and down the other side to aid station 1.

I stop here and refill a bottle, take a hit of hammer gel and wait for George. Matt rolls thru and wants to keep going. Good on to him and he rolls off. George comes thru a few minutes later and we head out. We make our way to the second climb and get separated on the decent. I roll into aid 2 and am swarmed by volunteers. They give me my drop bag and refill my bottle. I refill my big bottle with my perpetuem and heed mixture. At this point it is going down well. George rolls in and gets refilled and we snack a little and out we go. We roll about 5 miles on gravel roads and double track before we get to a heinous hike a bike section. I hear one of the riders behind me talking to another saying that we will be pushing our bikes for quite a while and push we do. It’s just excruciating. It’s here that I start to have real problems. On the bike I was ok, but pushing thru the muddy slick climb I can’t keep my heart rate stable. I feel like I could vomit at any minute and dry heave a little from time to time. I stop to rest but it makes it worse. I’m a little dizzy and don’t want to drink any more of the mix so I use the one bottle of just heed but I am way low. I steal some water from George but the damage is done and I know it. We crest the top and bomb the sweet decent into aid station 3. I feel like I might be getting something back until I realize I have been standing in the middle of the road wondering what the hell I am looking for. Oh yeah my bike. Oh boy its game on now. We roll out onto the road and toward the next check point.

About two miles down the road George turns to me and asks what I want to do. “Just keep going” is all I can say. I need to spin on the road. It hurts but it’s good. The wind cools me down as I have been alternating between cold sweats and hot flashes. That’s probably a bad sign now that I think about it. George stops for a nature break and I slump over my bike and just wait. We start to feel human again after spinning on the road but that is short lived. We cross a dry creek bed and more heinous hike a bike ensues. Now I know that I will walk during these races on my single speed but at this point I could barely turn the pedals on the light grades. Mix in the peanut butter mud and slick shale and roots and my morale took a deep six. We finally crested the top of the climb and bombed down to the bottom. There was a little creek crossing and I dropped my bike and proceeded to soak my head in the cold mountain water. I can’t lie to you as I was seriously thinking of refilling my nearly empty bottles from the stream. I mean how much worse could it make me feel at that point! We rolled thru some fresh cut swampy grassy single track and into aid station 4. This was the end.

We were at mile 58. We had a 20 mile climb ahead of us on gravel roads and then a long decent and another climb and decent yet to the finish. We were well ahead of the cutoff time but way behind on our schedule. We were 7 hours in and our pace certainly wasn’t going up. I know how badly George wanted to continue. I could see it on his face. I also knew what a poor decision that would have been and how exposed we would have been out there once we left the aid station. The probability that we would make the cut-off at the next station was still pretty good but after that we would be close to needing lights to continue and I purposely didn’t bring any. I just didn’t want to be out that long. So we called it a day. We sat in the grass and waited for a ride back to camp. We didn’t talk much. I made small talk with the volunteers and tried to keep my mind off the fact that we were done.

I lost the battle mentally on that last long hike a bike. The body was in rough shape but I lost it mentally and that’s a huge part of being able to ride all day like that. I was able to turn that corner at the Cohutta 100. There was point where I realized I was on pace to finish in a decent time and as much as everything hurt I knew every turn of the pedals was closer to the end. I never turned that corner at Shenandoah. The mountains had their way with me.

We got back to camp cleaned up and ate. George took a nap. I called the family to let them know that I survived at least part of the race. After I hung up the phone I just wanted to sit in the chair and cry. All the emotion drained from my body. So instead I took a walk up to the finish area. Watched as people crossed the line, chatted about the race with people I knew and some I just met. I ran into Christian Baks who had just finished ahead of Chris Wurster and we chatted about the course and race. This started to revive me. I took in the whole atmosphere and was glad to just be there. I went back to camp and woke up George for dinner. We ate with Chris, his wife Beth, and Christian. George finished his plate and disappeared. Shot and not feeling particularly sociable. I hung around up top. Watched the awards ceremony and saw a few people coming in with lights on and cheered loud for them. I knew how hard they worked for it. Matt finished in 12:01. He wanted under 12 bad but man I give him a lot of credit for that time. I give a lot of credit to everybody who came out and gave it their all. I have to say that I left everything I had up in those mountains. I came back empty. For whatever that’s worth .

Needless to say I slept like a log Sunday night. We were up early packed and on the road home. Had a great breakfast at cracker barrel and made it back to New York in the early pm. All in all a great road trip.

Well Shenandoah 100 you had your way with me this year. I will give you that but I just might be back so don’t laugh to loud just yet.