February 2007 - The Arrowhead 135

Be Careful What You Wish For

I hoped it would be cold. Cold or snow. Either would do but cold would be best. I’m not really a very fast biker compared to some of the other racers that would be showing up so I need some kind of adverse conditions to even things out. Cold would slow down the guys from the south and snow would demoralize the fast bikers when they were forced to walk. 

This is the third running of the Arrowhead 135 Ultra-marathon, a unique 135 mile human powered race along the Arrowhead State Trail in Northern Minnesota. There are bike, ski, and running divisions but I would be biking as usual. The first time that I did this race in 2005, I was frustrated by a mechanical problem with my bike that caused me a 12 hour delay. After missing the race last year due to work commitments, I was determined that this year, things would be different. 

I spent hundreds of hours testing everything that I would use during the race. I wanted to make certain that every single piece of equipment that I brought with me was up to the task. Part of that equipment was my own body. I would seek out the coldest part of each training day in an effort to adapt myself to the cold. In the three weeks leading up to the race, the temperature in Red Lake plunged into the -30’s, -40’s with the wind chill. I really hoped the temperature would hold.

As I drove to International Falls the day before the race, the forecast played over and over on the radio, “-34F with -50F wind chill.” Oh boy, that is really cold, too cold. I knew then that this race would push both me and my equipment right to the limit. I hoped that I wouldn’t be pushed past the limit.

I arrived at the mandatory gear check and proceeded to show Don Clark, “The Gear Nazi”, all of my equipment that I would be carrying during the race. This is done to make sure that every racer has the equipment required to survive in winter conditions. There is no competency test to make sure that people know how to use the equipment.

After the gear check I met up with some friends that I always see at these types of races. Pierre Ostor and his wife Cheryl are the race organizers. I’ve known them since Pierre and I first met while racing the 2000 Iditasport 100. We have managed to attend at least one or two races per year together every year since then. Pierre asked if I would help the people from Brazil with getting their gear to the gear check. I was glad to be of help and it gave me something to do until my hotel room was ready for check-in.

I picked up the Brazilians, Marta, Rodrigo, and Mario, at their hotel. They were so friendly and full of energy that it was contagious. It was the first time that Marta had ever seen snow! I helped load their gear into my van. It was a lot of gear. It took us several trips to load it all. After the gear check I took them to K-mart to buy more gear, including 4 large bags of charcoal which they intend to use to start a fire and cook a meal every 10 miles or so. I really tried, as politely as I could, to give them some advice on traveling light and stopping as little as possible in the cold. Maybe I was too polite? Maybe cooking every ten miles was a good idea?

At the pre-race meeting I looked around and saw that everyone was pretty enthusiastic and seemed undeterred by the cold. Pierre and Cheryl gave out some logistical instructions about the trail and let everyone know that the start would be staggered this year so that people would not have to stand around at the start line. I really liked that idea. You just had to show up at the start line sometime between 7:30am and 8:30am and take off. No waiting.

During the meeting, people teased me about the fact that I was from Canada and this race would be warm for me. I must have had ten people tell me that. The fact was that it would be very cold even for the most seasoned Canadian. The only difference was that I know what this kind of cold feels like and I knew how difficult this race was going to be. You can not rest when it is this cold and there is always some kind of problem to deal with. First the face gets cold, then the hands, then the feet, then your water freezes, then your food freezes. Each of these problems must be addressed before it becomes unsolvable. If we are lucky, there may be an hour in the middle of the afternoon where we can just ride. Outside of that hour it will be constant work to keep all systems functioning.

I know all this. I know how hard it will be. I know that a bad decision will be severely punished without prejudice or mercy. Mother Nature is very unforgiving, especially in the winter. There can be no mistakes.

I sort of envied the people who did not know what they were getting into. At least the anticipation of the difficulty would be less. Ignorance is bliss, right? At the same time, I feared for their fingers, toes, and their lives.

During the afternoon and evening, I packed everything onto the bike exactly as I had done on all my training rides. I also put a couple of extra pounds of air in my tires. There would be extra pressure loss in the cold and I didn’t want to risk getting a flat. Changing a flat in these temperatures would be down right dangerous. I also added an insulated parka and extra long underwear. I didn’t want to take any chances.

Ron Kadera was my room mate, just like in 2005. Ron is a bike shop owner from Minneapolis but in winter his passion is skiing. Four skiers have qualified to enter the race. Only Ron and one other would actually show up for the start.

Ron and I switched between the weather channel and the Super Bowl with equal interest all evening long. I slept well and felt ready to take on the world in the morning, or at the very least, the Arrowhead 135.

Day 1

We woke early and immediately turned on the weather channel. -30F with a wind chill of -45F. Whenever I face a difficult challenge, I always think about a similar past experience that I have had where the challenge was even more difficult. “This is bad but not as bad as when …” I couldn’t come up with anything.

We drove to the start line and the temperature on Ron’s van thermometer plunged to -33F. The start was pretty casual. Cheryl wrote down the time and at 8:22am I simply started riding off into the wilderness. 45 other people were both ahead and behind me. Ron had to sort out some last minute gear problems so I left without him.

 Bill at the Start Line, -33F

The first section of trail is a seven mile out and seven mile back flat section. In 2005 we were able to start the race right in International Falls but the local snowmobile club will not allow that anymore so now the race is started at an intersection between the highway and the Arrowhead State Trail. Good thing for us that the DNR does not share the same philosophy as the local snowmobile club. 

The trail was firm but rough and we were heading straight into the wind. I felt good and six layers were doing a good job of keeping me warm. It wasn’t long before I saw the first causality. A biker was sitting on the side of the trail fixing a flat. I asked if he needed help but he said he was OK so I kept going, happy that it wasn’t me with the flat. I got to the turn around point, checked in, and headed back without stopping for even a minute.

About half way back I noticed that my rear tire was pretty wobbly. I looked down and saw that it was almost flat. I took out my pump and tried to inflate the tire but it wouldn’t pump. The pump was too cold. I shoved the pump under my shirt and winced at the pain. It was so cold against my skin. After a minute or so I took it out and it seemed to pump fine. I pumped up the tire and started riding again. I figured that the tire went low because of pressure loss due to the cold. Strange that the front tire was fine?

Of course the tire lost its air again. This time I figured that the tube went low because the presta valve was not secured well. I warmed the pump up under my shirt again, inflated the tube, made sure that the valve was tight, and rode for another five minutes or so.

It was time to accept reality. I had a flat. I’ve had to change a tube at -34F before so I know that it can be done. It sure isn’t fun though. It really sucks actually. I found a nice sunny spot that was mostly sheltered from the wind and proceeded to change the tube. It was a pretty slow process. My friends, the Woodbury’s caught up to me and offered assistance but I was making good progress so I told them to go ahead. They said that they were taking a break at the road crossing anyway so I knew that I could just walk there and they would lend a hand if I was unsuccessful with the tube. At one point I touched the metal rim with my bare hand. It burned just like touching the element of a stove. No blister appeared so I think that I pulled my hand away in time. As I worked I felt my feet slowly going numb. This is the dilemma of having trouble in the winter. Problems compound on top of each other until you can no longer cope. Right now I’ve got a slightly burned finger, numb feet, and a tire that is still flat, all because I made a small error in judgement 4 hours earlier regarding tire pressure. Like I said before, mistakes will be severely punished.

I decide to finish the tire and fix the foot problem after that. The new tube eventually goes in and inflates with little difficulty. I double check everything to make sure that it is installed properly. Looks OK. I ride off and after about five minutes, stop to make sure that no parts of the tube are sticking out around the rim. Looks good. I’m back in business.

I felt a bit sorry for myself at this point. I can’t seem to get through this race without some kind of mechanical problem. I think that I must be jinxed. At the same time I also felt pleased that I was able to successfully change a tube at around -30F. On the previous occasion that I did this, it went flat again after about half an hour and I spent the next three hours walking home. This was a much better result.

I rode on with renewed energy and my numb feet came back to life pretty quickly. The flat country slowly turned into rolling hills. The trail was pretty firm and I was making good time. At mile 38 I arrived at the Gateway store intersection. This is not an official check point but most racers stop here to rest, warm up, and have some hot food. I decided to not stop so that I could make up some of the time that I lost during the tube change. My Camelbac bladder still had plenty of water and I had lots of food.

I crossed the road and continued on toward Melgeorge’s Lodge on Elephant Lake around 36 more miles up the trail. I should be there before dark.

Two bad things happened after this: the trail got worse and I got tired.

I started running out of steam at around 4:00pm. It was like my arms and legs were being restrained. I also started feeling nauseous, classic signs of a bonk. I ate more food and drank lots of water in an effort to slow the process but it was too little to late. I hoped that I would be able to reach the check point before a complete system shutdown occurred.

The trail got rougher and rougher as I felt worse and worse with each step or pedal depending on the conditions. I was walking about as much as I was riding due to bad trail. As darkness came, so did the cold. It felt like a vice pushing in all around me, especially on my face. I resisted the urge to don my neoprene face mask. I wanted to save it for a real emergency and I wasn’t at that point, yet.

The “five miles to go” sign for Melgeorge’s came into view and it was sure a sight for sore eyes. The trail became even worse and I was walking more than 50% of the time, all the while feeling sicker and sicker with each step. I could no longer eat food. It had taken me the last two hours to eat one oatmeal bar.

I came to an intersection that was not marked and I could not tell which direction was correct. Bike tracks were going in both directions but only one could be correct. I followed the one that looked correct but after about 20 feet I saw foot prints going the opposite direction up the trail. Which way was right? Then I remembered that I was carrying a GPS with the trail mapped. I turned it on and started riding up the other trail. After about 500 yards, I checked the GPS and was able to confirm that I was indeed on the correct trail and the other trail was wrong. Cool! This was the first time that I had ever actually used my GPS for anything useful.

The night before the race, I had dinner with the Woodbury’s. They told me that they were renting the Aspen Cabin at Melgeorge’s. They invited me to crash there if things were not going well for some reason. They knew that I intended to go straight through without stopping but made the offer just in case I had trouble. I was definitely having trouble and all I thought about for the last few miles was crawling into bed in the Aspen Cabin.

I arrived at Melgeorge’s and immediately asked the owner where the Aspen Cabin was. “It’s right over there but the people who reserved it cancelled their reservation.” She must have seen my face drop. “Don’t worry, we have rooms vacant if you need one.” I would definitely need one.

I went to the check point cabin and signed in at 9:30pm, over 13 hours after leaving the start line. I was in fifth place but no one had left the check point so it was currently a five way tie for first place. I really wanted to go back out on the trail but my body was speaking to me and I knew that I should listen. I have survived many races by listening to my body. Right now my body was screaming at me.

I was surprised to see Ron Kadera at the check point. He should have still been skiing. He told me that he dropped out due to bad snow conditions after about 14 miles. The Woodbury’s also dropped after about 14 miles so that is why there was no Aspen Cabin.

Gretchen, a checkpoint volunteer, offered me food and drink. She was awesome. I ate hot soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, orange juice, and water. It was so good. Mary Pramann was also there volunteering and she told me that her husband Dave had a room and I could go there and crash if I wanted to. I so wanted to.

I went to the room and chatted with Dave for a while. He won this race last year, setting a course record in the process. This year he suffered the same fate as me. The painful bonk. He said that he wasn’t leaving until daylight. Dave also said that he doubted if more than 10 people would finish the race due to the difficult conditions. His statement would prove to be amazingly accurate. I decided to leave between 2:00am and 4:00am depending how I felt. I had a shower and went to bed. I intentionally did not set an alarm. I wanted to let my body tell me when it was time to go.

Day 2

I woke at 4:00am and started getting dressed but my stomach told me that it wasn’t time yet. I had another big glass of water and went back to bed.

At 5:30am I tried again and this time I felt much better. I started getting ready to go out into the cold and Dave got up as well. The outside temperature was around -30F, slightly warmer than the day before but still plenty cold.

It was then that we noticed that Dave’s rear tire was completely flat. What a great place to get a flat, inside the +74F room! Dave changed his tube and I put more air in mine in order to avoid a repeat of the day before.

I ate a large breakfast at the checkpoint cabin, drank copious amounts of coffee and by 6:50am I was back on the trail, climbing the long hill out of Melgeorge’s. I had stayed at Melgeorge’s for over nine hours. I wondered how many people passed me during the night?

I came to the intersection where we were supposed to turn right but once again, tracks went in both directions. This time there were no footprints to guide me. I turned on the GPS and headed down what I thought was the correct trail. After about 100 yards I checked the GPS map and found that I was heading in completely the wrong direction. I got back on track losing less than a minute. I used the GPS a total of six times that day at similar intersections and on two of those six occasions I avoided significant delays by finding that I was following the wrong trail. I’ll never do a long distance race without a GPS again.

At 9:00am I crested a hill and came upon the remains of a large camp fire, still smoking heavily. It looked like two people had stopped to bivy for the night. Why would someone stop only two hours from the check point? No one was around so I kept going.

I came to a long flat section which I remember well from two years before because it had been so fast. This year the trail deteriorated and I was forced to walk at 3 mph. I felt so slow. Dave Pramann caught up to me and rode by. He was using a Pugsley snow bike with huge tires. He was able to ride and I could only walk. I was so jealous. Lots of people were using Pugsley’s this year but I was never sold on the advantages until now. There was absolutely no doubt. He was riding and I was walking. I made a pact with myself to own one of those bikes before the start of the 2008 version of this race.(Shh! Joanne doesn’t know) I briefly considered letting some air out of my tires so that I could ride more but thought better of it after I remembered how hard it was to change the tube the day before. Hopefully trail conditions would improve.

After two hours of walking, trail conditions did improve and I was able to ride. The improvement was brief and after about half an hour I was forced to walk again. Now the trail was really bad. Even walking was difficult.

I started doing the mental calculations of how long this would take if I had to walk all the way to the finish line. I had about 50 miles to go and I was walking at 3 mph which equals…17 more hours! Holy marathon Batman, that’s too long. I would definitely run out of water and I would be dangerously low on food though I still had an emergency supply of food that I carry just in case. I also carry a stove to melt snow and make more water in case I need to so really everything was OK but it sure seemed like a big task ahead.

After two more hours of walking, the Arrowhead trail intersected the Voyager Trail and everything was fine again. The trail was completely ridable. Unfortunately, I was not doing so well. The nausea which caused me problems on the first day was back and I still had a really long way to go.

I came to the top of a big hill and there was a sheltered sunny spot on the trail so I decided to stop and take a break. I was convinced that my problem on the first day was food related so today I changed my diet at the start of the day and was eating strictly trail mix ever since breakfast. Since I was now in exactly the same condition as the day before, I switched my diagnosis to dehydration. I still had lots of water so I sat down on the nice sunny spot and drank about a quart of water. It was 2:00pm and there was no wind. It actually felt warm. I was so comfortable that I decided to lay my head down, just for a minute. I closed my eyes and…

REALITY CHECK – A voice inside my head suddenly screamed,”Bill, it’s -20F and your sleeping in the middle of a F#$%&*G snowmobile trail!!”

I jumped up as if a bolt of lighting had struck me. Spencer Klaasen had caught up to me and I guess that he startled me awake by the noise of him riding his bike up the trail. I was wide awake now. He asked how I was doing and I told him that I wasn’t feeling too well but I had just taken a break and I was feeling a bit better.

The water actually did me a world of good and I felt much better. Spencer and I rode together and tackled the steep rolling hills that are the trademark of this part of the course. We seemed to travel at exactly the same pace so it was natural to stay together. We didn’t really talk about staying together, we just did. I remembered this section well from before. The steeper the hills got, the closer you were to the end of them. The down sections were sure lots of fun, especially since I wasn’t feeling sick anymore.

The hills eventually came to an end and I knew that it would now be flat all the way to the finish line. We still had roughly 25 miles to go so it was going to be a long haul.

Just as it started getting dark, I started feeling like crap again. I drank more water but this time it didn’t seem to help much. Spencer had lots of water but the lids of his containers were all frozen so he couldn’t access any of it. I started having a hard time keeping up with Spencer so after a while he was out of sight and I decided to just let him go. Five minutes later I caught up to him. He stopped to put toe warmers in his boots and said that he would prefer to travel together, even if I was a bit slower. I agreed but I was determined to not slow him down.

I struggled all the way. We had a huge tail wind which was great but it was also pretty cold when we stopped for a break. I put my wind shell on and kept plugging away. The trail was pretty fast and it was really cool to watch my breath just hang there in front of me every time I exhaled. It would actually distort my view. I must have been travelling at exactly the same speed as the wind.

We started stopping every 15 minutes or so to walk and warm up our feet. We knew we were getting close to the end and now was not the time to make a mistake.

At 7:30pm I ran out of water. It was too close to the end to bother stopping to melt snow but I was sure suffering. Every part of my body started to hurt. In some masochistic way, I remember actually enjoying this. I mentally detached myself from the physical discomfort and treated it as just another problem that had to be managed. I’ve never really been able to succeed at doing this but today it worked.

The closer we got to the finish, the faster Spencer started to ride. He was killing me but I really wanted to keep up. The two mile sign came into view and we finally relaxed, enjoying the last couple of minutes on the trail. At 9:05pm we crossed the finish line together. It was a great way to end the race.

Spencer Klaasen, left, and Bill Shand at the finish line the morning after finishing the race. Feb 7, 2007

Epilogue

I finished the race in fifth place. My total time was 36 hours and 43 minutes. Spencer finished behind me due to the start time difference. We were about five hours behind the winner. I now believe that I was fighting dehydration for almost the entire race even though I drank more water than I ever do on training rides. I guess it is true that cold weather causes accelerated dehydration.

Only 10 people finished the event out of the 46 who started, just as Dave Pramann predicted at Melgeorge’s the day before. Dave finished in third place.

There were several cases of frostbite that I know of and probably some that I don’t. One person had severe frostbite and had to be hospitalized. My friend Pierre also succumbed to frostbite. He is a 10 year veteran of winter racing in Alaska.

The Brazilians were pulled from the race by a race official after only seven miles. I don’t know all the circumstances but I know that they were upset about it at first but later thanked the race official when they saw how many people dropped out due to frostbite.

The campfire that I passed was made by a guy named Charlie Farrow. He had stopped to fix his fifth flat of the race. Almost every biker I talked to had a flat at some point.

Fourth place through seventh place all finished within 35 minutes of each other. We all started at different times and had no pre-arranged plans to travel together. Amazing.

Even more amazing, Sarah Lowell was the only racer to finish in the running division. Her time was 55 hours and 7 minutes. She won the foot division, set the women’s foot division record, and is the first women to complete the race on foot.

I entered the finish line cabin and collapsed onto the couch. It was a good 15 minutes before I could even summon the energy to remove my boots. I showered, ate, drank lots and came around quite quickly considering how horrible I had been feeling earlier. I was sure glad to be done.

I knew this race was going to be difficult and it didn’t disappoint. People ask me why I do this and I guess that it is the difficulty of the challenge. It’s a hard question to answer.