Night Crash

*This isn't me in this photo. You'd think that after all of the crashing I've done, at least one of them would have been caught on camera, but I don't think I have a single picture of me crashing.

The night ride was (almost) perfect last night. Perfect temperatures. Perfect trail conditions. Full Moon. Great group. Great trails. Etc. It was perfect right up until I went down. I went down pretty hard, but somehow managed to escape without any serious injuries (at least I hope to have escaped - my knee has a pretty good bump on it, but I'm pretty sure it's just a bruise and nothing structural. Can't put much weight on it yet).

Anyway, I've gone down hard twice this year that I can remember. First there was the RAWROD TT crash, and now last night's crash. I could be subconsciously blocking a few other hard crashes from my memory in an effort to convince myself to keep mountain biking.

In both of this year's crashes, I crashed in places where I'm not sure exactly how or why I crashed. And I happened to be following Rick both times. I'm pretty sure he's been dropping banana peels when I follow him. Or maybe little land mines. I'd welcome any other theories you have, as long as they do not relate to my ability (or lack thereof) to ride a bike.

PCP2P 2010

Holy crap that was hard! I remember it being hard last year, but was it that hard? Whether it was the heat, the extra few miles, or the brutal new section on mid-mountain (more on that later), it seemed like this year, the Park City Point 2 Point race sucked a little more life from me than last year.

I sat down to write my Park City Point 2 Point race report about 6 times last over the weekend, but couldn't get myself to write anything down. I guess it's because I've been in conflict about the race ever since it ended, and I'm still having trouble figuring it all out. The race was awesome, but when it comes to racing, I can get a bit greedy. Or delusional is probably a better word. I had a good time. I had a good finish. Overall, I thought I actually felt better this year than last. But I had a goal finish time in mind (8:30, in case you were wondering), and I didn't make it, so I've been trying to justify why that is. Certainly it can't possibly be due to the fact that I'm just not fast enough, right?

I lined up with the 8-9 hour racers after briefly contemplating lining up at the back of the sub 8's. I'm not sure why I entertained the idea of a racing with those guys, since one of my main focuses was to start out slower this year in hopes of having something left at the end. We started around Round Valley, which is filled with fun, flowy, fast trails. I tried slowing down, but the pressure of staying with the group was strong. I'd let the group gap me on the climbs (and let everyone behind me know that they were free to pass me whenever) and catch them on the descents, so I figure I saved a bit of energy there.

Skid row and Lost Prospector were awesome. If only the entire course could have been on Round Valley, Skid Row, and Lost Prospector. It reminded me of a casual lunch ride. Adam, Keith, Jesse, and I rode it in a paceline. I even got to see Bagley dusting himself off after a crash, just like during lunch rides (sorry Bags, I couldn't help myself). All we needed is Sunderlage pushing the pace at the front.

We made it to Deer Crest and Adam formed a gap. I considered going with him, but thought better of it. Jesse and I rode the little micro-loop before Silver Lake 1 aid station, and he says to me "hey Aaron, does this look familiar?" Hahahaha... that one will never get old (turns out I skipped it last year).

I felt pretty good going up the steep climb out of Silver Lake 1 with Lynda...

... good all the way up till I heard the dreaded hissssss of a flat tire. Somehow, while traveling at a max speed of 3 mph up that climb, I slashed my tread. Fortunately, a few days beforehand Keith had added about a half-gallon of Stans to my tire. The weight weenie in me thought "dang, that's going to add 1.56 seconds to my climb out of Silver Lake." Turns out it saved me more like 10 minutes, because I was able to get the tire to seal after a minute or so. As I did so, I dreaded watching my energy go to waste as people I recently passed rode by me. As if it really matters in an 80 mile race.

I caught up to the group on the Flagstaff Loop and made a quick sprint to make sure I was leading the DH. Over the past 2 years, I've ridden it 17 times (mostly during the Perfect 10 race a couple years back), so I was confident I could rip it. And not to toot my own horn, but I did (rip it). Toot toot.

I flew through Silver Lake 2 aid station, thanks to the Mad Doggers being there to help me out (they didn't shun me for wearing a Racer's jersey) and soon found myself completely alone. The nice part about being alone was that I was able to ride T&G and John's completely at my own pace. Oh, the other good part is that nobody heard me cussing about how bad I hate John's trail, and that nobody saw me while I stood on the side of the trail for a pee break.

Speaking of John's trail, I don't think I've ever been on a descent that I wanted to end more badly than John's. And calling John's a "descent" might be a stretch, since I'm still not convinced it actually loses any elevation.

Anyway, I actually felt pretty good all the way up Steps. Good enough that I thought I had a chance to get back on track to come close to an 8:30 finish. And then, just as I started on the Shadow Lake Loop, the cramps came on. I popped a few Endurolytes and drank the rest of my water bottles (queue ominous music now) and resorted to soft pedalling the loop, which I'm pretty sure gets 1/4 mile longer every time I ride it.

The descent was fast, fun and thirsty. Or maybe it was me that was thirsty. Either way, by the time I rode into the PCMR aid station, I was parched, and looked as if I was about to fall off of my bike:

I was so dehydrated, in fact, that I wasn't even able to fight off getting dry-humped by the gilly.

If you can get past the dry-humping, you'll also notice in the previous picture that I'm wearing a pretty warm base layer. I'm wearing this despite the fact that it was hot has hades out there. So why didn't I take it off? (I'm sure you're dying to know). Because it goes against my endurance racing mantra, which is "keep pedaling, dammit!" I may not do a lot of things well on a bike. I don't have bursts of speed up steep hills. I can't do wheelies or do cool tricks. All I got is the ability to continue pedaling when all logic and reason tells me to stop. This can be a good and a bad thing.

There must have been a 20 times on Saturday when I thought to myself: just stop. Just long enough to take off this blasted base layer. Just long enough to take another pee break. Just long enough to sit down for a bit. Just long enough to oil my squeaky chain. But I didn't stop. Because it goes against my mantra. Even if I'd be better off over the long haul stopping for a minute, I continue to pedal. And despite the downsides of pedalling when I'd often be better off stopping, my mantra did get me out of that PCMR aid station. I wanted to stop so bad, but I knew if I did, I might not ever start again. So I hopped on and kept going, albeit slow as snot.

I battled cramps and stomach issues on the Spiro climb. I'm not sure if my stomach issues were due to the water I drank at PCMR, the Electrolytes, or the unsatisfactory consistency of my poop that I reported on last week, but my stomach got bad. And then, my mantra kept me riding on a nearly flat tire for a while, because the slit it my rear tire started leaking again. Once I was riding on my rim, I finally got off and shot it with some air. Joel Z and I rode together for a while, and if a course is tough enough to bring a guy like Joel to his knees, well, you know it's pretty brutal.

I was struggling, but I knew that the mid-mountain trail was fortunately just around the bend, and last year, the mid-mountain trail gave me wings and I hoped for the same this year. But alas, the mid mountain trail isn't what it used to be, and the new rerouted section sucked every last bit of life out of me. The funny thing (or maybe not so funny thing) is that when I pre-rode this section last week, I thought to myself "what is everyone complaining about? This new section is fun!" Turns out, pre-riding != racing (some geeky computer programing notation for you). By the time I started climbing out of mid-mountain, I was toast. But I wasn't the only one. I saw a long line of nearly-dead, hollow riders from mid-mountain to the Canyons.

You probably know the rest. Awesome DH into the Canyons, one last annoying climb, and then I was done. Finally. It was cool to hear the cheers of the crowd as I rode through the finish line. Felt like a big shot for about 10 seconds. And then I came super close to passing out at the finish line at around 8:50. 43rd overall, 7th in category.

In addition to being an awesome course, the P2P is full of treachery, deceit and guile (which are all just synonyms for each other, but worth repeating 3 times). The first 20-25 miles are so relatively easy, and you feel so good that you think you can hammer, so most people do. But what you forget is that the race doesn't even start (for all practical purposes) until after you pass Silver Lake the 2nd time. Looking at the split times is interesting to me - the finishing times are much more closely correlated to the second split than the first.

I find the comparisons from this year to last year both fascinating and frustrating, so I'll bore you with some facts. I rolled into the PCMR aid station at almost the exact same time (6:11) both years. So I figure that I was riding a bit faster this year considering that a) I didn't skip a 3-4 minute section of the course like last year; and b) the climb up Big Bear takes 3-4 minutes longer than last year's route (up Tour de Suds). This year, I climbed Spiro 2 minutes faster than last year, even with the cramping, stomach issues and flat tire (yeah, I bonked hard on Spiro last year). But last year, I covered mid-mountain to the finish more than 10 minutes faster than this year. I figure I lost a couple minutes due to stopping at the aid station for water (which I skipped last year), but the rest came from the new reroute and simply from going slower.

I look at the times of the fastest finishers and am amazed at their ability to maintain speed for such long periods of time. I did all I could to keep something in the tank for the finishing stretch, but came up a bit empty. But still, I'm happy I raced, happy with my finish, and happy to mix it up with so many rad dudes. Yeah that's right, you're totally rad.

Alright, now that I've bored you with the details, a quick thanks again to Dave Dean, Kendra, and Mad Dog crew for taking their entire Saturday to help out at the aid stations, even if us racers are often too self absorbed and delirious to express gratitude during the actual race. Also thanks to the PCPP organizers for putting on a top notch race that other races should aspire to, and for comp'ing my entry fee by giving me a pair of Smith Sunglasses in the raffle.

Till next year? We'll see...

How I'm Preparing for PCP2P

In case you haven't heard from the 30 other blog posts and 15,000 tweets on the topic, the Park City Point 2 Point race is happening this Saturday. 80 miles with 14,000 feet of climbing, 95% of of which is on singletrack, and a lot of that singletrack is of the somewhat technical variety. Like most people, the week before a big race is a bit strange for me. I'm used to spending my free time riding my bike in preparation for the big race, but with the race right around the corner, riding my bike can do much more damage than good.

With the race so close, I feel like I should be busy preparing for it, and the lack of bike riding leaves somewhat of a void. And where there is a void, I will find a way to fill it. Even the things I fill it with are completely meaningless. Here is a list of the N-number of things I have done to fill this void, one or more of which I am convinced will shave significant amounts off of my finishing time for the 2010 PCP2P:

1) The other day, I spent 40 minutes rubbing a thin layer of dried Stans off of the inside of my CrossMark tire. Because the extra 3.763 grams I shaved will make a huge difference in my climbing speed.

2) Resisting the urge to pee. Because by stretching my bladder an extra 2 millimeters over the next 2 days, I'll be able to ride 5 extra minutes on Saturday before stopping for that pee break.

3) Avoiding stairs like the plague. Because if I take one more trip up those stairs than is absolutely necessary, I will have no energy left at all on Saturday. Tonight, I think I may sleep on the couch in order to avoid that one extra trip upstairs.

4) Examining the consistency of my poop. I'm still suffering slightly from a bug I picked up from my daughter, which has caused me to lose 4-5 pounds in the past few days. Right now, I don't like the consistency of my poop one bit.

5) Holding back on the Ambien. Last year, I slept about 3 hours the night before the P2P race. This year I have Ambien as my secret weapon (well, at least it was a secret until I just told everyone about it). I've used it enough to know that it works like a charm. I also know that it worked best the very first time I ever used it. So recently, I've avoided using it at all in hopes that when I pop one on Friday night, my body will be shocked into the deepest slumber of my life, despite the fact that I'll likely be a nervous wreck.

6) Cleaning parts of my bike that don't matter. My cassette was pretty clean already when I started cleaning my bike the other day. But I noticed a bunch of gunk on the inside of my cassette that could only be cleaned by removing my cassette. So I did, and I soaked it in degreaser, and now it's sparkly clean. I'm still not sure why I decided to do this one.

7) Cleaning clothes that I hardly ever clean. I even cleaned my nasty gloves and crusty helmet. Not that they were really even bothering me before, but I'm sure I'll be way faster now that they are clean.

8) Thinking about meaningless weight savings. For example, I will need 2 large waterbottles from PCMR to the finish in the Canyons. There is a support station half-way between PCMR and the Canyons. Stopping to fill a bottle at said support station will take approximately 31.6 seconds. Is this more or less time than will be lost by carrying an extra large water bottle (which weighs approximately 720 grams) up the 1500 ft Spiro climb? Please discuss.

9) Shaving my legs. Kidding, of course. I haven't gone that far off the deep end.

At last year's 2009 P2P race, it seems like I went into it with a lot less anticipation than this year. Last year, I had no idea what to expect. The course was only posted a few weeks prior to the race, and I hadn't pre-ridden any of it so I had no idea what to expect in terms of trail conditions or finishin time. This year, I've pre-ridden the entire course and have a very good idea of my target time. Honestly, I don't know if this will help or not. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
Last year, Adam and Jesse may have been the only people I knew beforehand that were doing the race (once I showed up, I realized a few others I knew were doing the race as well). So we'd psych each other out a little bit, but nothing quite like this year. Nowadays there are more than double the participants, each of whom insist on tweeting non-stop about how nervous they are about the race. A heart-felt thanks to all of you for turning me into a big bundle of nerves as well.
So I have 1.5 more days to find meaningless ways to prepare for the P2P race. If you have not already done the N-number of things I listed above, well you'd better get on it, because you're not even close to being ready.