September 2002 - 24 Hrs of Adrenalin World Solo Championships

Silver Star Resort, Vernon, British Columbia

Why would anyone want to ride a bike up and down a ski hill for 24 hours? I'm not really sure and I often ask myself the same question after about eight hours of one of these races. Yet, when it's all over, I still tell everyone how great an experience it was and I find my self signing up for another one. This year was no exception. What a strange addiction this sport of ultra-marathon mountain biking is.

It took Joanne and I two days to drive the 2500 km to Silver Star Mountain Resort in Vernon, British Columbia. We arrived early Friday morning, over a day before the 12:00 noon Saturday start time. I pre-rode the course right away. It started off with a fairly easy four-wheeler trail climb. This lasted until almost the top of the mountain. Then the trail turned into a single track climb to the top. From the top of the mountain there was technical single track almost all the way to the bottom. It was fast, rocky, full of roots, and in places so steep that I could not ride so I was forced to walk my bike. Basically, it was exactly what I expected.

After the pre-ride, we set up our pit area and hung out with some friends that I rarely get the opportunity to see, mostly people that I met while racing the Alaska Iditasport last year. For some reason I did not feel nervous about this race. I decided to go out, ride as hard as I could, and have a lot of fun at the same time. I even slept pretty well that night.

Saturday morning went by quickly. Before I knew it, my two cups of coffee were gone and I was standing in the starting line-up of my first World Championships with 82 other riders. It was the largest field of 24 hour solo riders ever assembled for one race. The music blared. The crowd of spectators were cheering and we started the race at 12:00 noon exactly.

The climb to the top of the mountain went very smooth. Pat Irwin, a single speed rider from Alaska, passed me about half way up so I decided to follow him since he seemed to be going at a steady pace. Pat and I have raced together for years. Usually he is quite a bit faster than me and eventually he dropped me but we passed a lot of people on the way up. When the single track started, it became difficult to pass so I stayed behind the wheel of the person in front of me and the person behind me stayed right on my wheel.

I bounced down the first technical section of the course barely on the edge of control. The dust from the wheels ahead was so thick that I couldn't really see the ground. It was like a brown fog had rolled in. My front wheel struck a root the wrong way and slipped out. I tried to break my fall using my left foot but it could not find solid ground. My foot eventually caught on something and my ankle rolled over. The pain was intense to put it mildly. I fell off the bike immediately and laid on the ground for a minute hoping the pain would go away. It didn't. I stood up and tried to put weight on my foot but I couldn't. Only 30 minutes had passed since the start of this 24 hour race and it is already over for me. I couldn't believe that this had happened after all of the work that I had done to prepare for this event.

I decided that I couldn't just give up so I would attempt to ride.

I limped to my bike and got back on. I managed to clip both feet into the pedals and to my surprise, my foot did not hurt once I was riding. It's not unusual for life's problems to go away after you start riding a bike but I never really expected this one to. I continued down the mountain and eventually came to a section that was too steep for me to ride so I stopped to walk down. Unclipping from my pedals brought the same intense pain to my ankle as if I had just rolled it. This was a problem. This is not the type of course that you can simply ride all the way through. I would have to stop frequently for sections that were just too difficult to ride and there would also be many unplanned stops. If I had to suffer this much pain every time that I unclipped, I wasn't sure if I could go on.

After that first painful dismount, I became afraid to stop. I was riding over everything. I pushed the full suspension of my new bike to the limit so that I would not have to unclip my left foot. On several occasions I had to make an unplanned stop but I chose to simply fall over rather than unclip my foot. Once I was on the ground, I could twist the bike rather than twist my foot to unclip. This was becoming really annoying.

I made it around the course and hobbled through the timing tent. When I got to my pit area, I set the bike down and immediately sat down in a chair, hoping that Joanne would not notice my limp.

"How was it?" she asked.

"Pretty good except I twisted my ankle. It should be OK though," I lied. I had a sandwich, drank some Gatorade, and took a double dose of Advil to hopefully keep my ankle from swelling up too much.

On my second lap I decided to experiment a bit so that I could at least make a controlled stop without the intense pain that I had been enduring. I tried twisting my foot to the left instead of the right to unclip. No difference, still pain. Then I thought of the lifting techniques that I have learned at work to avoid back injury. When rotating while lifting, you are supposed to turn your entire body, not just your trunk. Why couldn't the same principle apply to the ankle? I tried rotating my entire body to the left to unclip so that my foot stayed aligned with my leg. It probably looked funny but my foot popped out of the pedal with absolutely no pain! I felt a whole new sense of freedom. I could stop whenever I wanted to!

Although I still had the occasional unplanned stop and I still fell over every now and then to avoid unclipping the wrong way, for the most part, things were much better. I came to the section that had caused me problems on the first lap and decided to ride it. I was all alone so I could give my full attention to the course and not worry about any other bikes around me. At the exact spot that I had crashed on the first lap, my front tire stopped short and I flipped over the handle bars and landed in a tree. This course was really starting to beat me up. I rode the rest of the lap with only a few minor crashes and arrived at the pit area in good spirits. I drank a bottle of Gatorade, ate a granola bar and headed out for lap #3.

This time I decided to walk the section that had been causing me so much trouble but when I actually got to it, I decided that I couldn't let it beat me. If I walked it now, I would be walking it for the rest of the race. I rode it clean. Race course 2, me 1, I was keeping score. There were other sections of the course that were far more difficult and I would not even attempt to ride but this section had become personal. It had almost taken me out of the race.

Laps 4 and 5 were almost identical to lap 3. Race course 2, me 3. My ankle was still bothering me but it seemed to be improving every lap. I learned exactly where to dismount for certain sections of the course so unplanned stops were very rare now. At around 7:00pm everything changed with the arrival of rain.

The single track that I finally got the hang of suddenly changed into a slippery, slimy mess. With darkness added into all this, my lap times climbed to over two hours. Although this was bad, I had seen worse so I just kept plugging away. Everyone else was facing exactly the same problems as me.

Now my support crew really came into play. Every lap either Steve Tower or Scott would grab my bike and totally clean the drive train. Steve, another Alaskan, was here supporting his wife Janice in the female elite category. Scott was here to support Michael Madden, a friend of mine from Minnesota. Unfortunately, Michael broke his elbow in a race two weeks ago so he was not able to race. Both Scott and Steve were here supporting other people but they helped me out as well. That's just the way it is in 24 hour racing, very competitive yet everyone helps everyone. My bike never missed a shift. Joanne always anticipated what I would need and had it ready when I came in. Food, extra clothes, batteries for my light, you name it, she had it ready. It was so great to ride into the pit and know that all I had to do is eat and drink. Everything else was taken care of.

By midnight my ankle seemed to totally heal itself. No more pain. I can't explain it but that's what happened. I figured that it would just get worse and worse and eventually I would have to stop but exactly the opposite happened. I certainly wasn't complaining. I had asked Joanne to check the results after about twelve hours. Prior to that I did not want to know. She told me that I was in 7th place after the first two hours of the race, then I moved into 5th at some point and now I was in third place in my age category. That was way higher than I expected so I kept riding with a new enthusiasm. How far back was fourth? Could I keep going at this pace all night and finish on the podium?

The rain stopped and started all night but at around 6:30am, everything changed. Extremely heavy wind combined with ice cold, heavy rain ripped through the mountain. I was wearing three layers of clothing at the time but I quickly became soaked and cold; really, really, cold. The wind felt like ice against my skin on every downhill section. I knew that it would not be long before hypothermia started so I made a real effort to keep going fast so that I could get back to the pit area. I also knew that this storm, if I could endure it, would likely work to my advantage. For some reason I always seem to do better in races when the weather turns crappy. I've even started to hope for bad weather. Well, today I got my wish, and then some.

On two occasions I had to run with my bike in order to warm up. From my toes to my nose, every part of my body was cold. I finally got back to the pit area and I found everything in a state of chaos. Many of the pit tents had collapsed or blown away. Joanne had taken ours down before it blew away. Smart girl! Everyone suggested that I go have a shower to warm up but I figured that if I did that then I would never come back out. I decided to go to the van, crank the heat and change into my winter cycling gear. No matter how much rain came down, I figured that I would be warm once I got my winter clothes on. I was shivering so badly that I could not hold the breakfast omelet that Joanne got for me. She got me some hot coffee and I stripped off my wet clothes and finally warmed up.

There was one problem. Joanne was wearing all of my winter clothes. So, I literally, took the clothes off her back, long underwear included. I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that I have taken all of my wife's clothes off of her and then just left.

I set out on my next lap, toasty warm but as luck would have it, the storm ended and I was forced to remove most of my extra clothes before I got to the top of the mountain. Oh well, at least I was still going. Trail conditions were terrible. The single track was so slippery that I was forced to walk almost all of it. The cold lap had taken a huge amount of energy out of me. My legs felt like rubber. There was nothing there. I had to walk most of the steep uphill sections. The lap took me over two hours and I arrived back in the pits at 10:35 am. I rode in and simply forgot to take my feet off the pedals. Pat Irwin was standing by and grabbed me so that I would not fall over. I was completely exhausted.

There is a funny rule in this race which says that you must complete your last lap between 11:00am and 1:00pm. Therefore, if I left for my last lap before 11:00 am and did not make it back before 1:00pm, I would be disqualified. This was a bit of a dilemma since I knew that my lap times were over two hours. Michael Madden was in the pit area at the time so I asked him to check the results to see if I had to go out for another lap in order to maintain my third place standing. He is an experienced 24 hour racer so I knew that he would be able to figure exactly what to do. After a few minutes he came back with some numbers.

Fourth place was over a lap behind so it was impossible for him to catch me. "Great, so I've got third place, no need to ride another lap".

"But", Michael explained, "second place is only 30 minutes ahead and we don't know what he is doing. He could be sleeping. If you wait until 11:00 and go for one more lap, you could take over second place".

Second place had not even occurred to me until now. I had simply been trying to hold onto third. The problem was with the 1:00 pm cut off time. If I left at 11:00, then I had to do a lap in under two hours. The overriding factor in all of this was that I was exhausted. I simply did not have the energy to ride another lap, especially since I had little hope of completing the lap before 1:00pm so it would not count anyway. I waited until 11:01 and went through the timing area for the last time. The race was over.

As it turned out, the guy in second had become ill during the storm and he stopped riding. He went out for one last lap and finished at 11:06, five minutes behind me. I had placed second!

This was the first time that age groups were made part of the World Championships. I think that it is a great idea. It allows a guy like me with a family, a job, and a passion for mountain biking to compete against people in the same age group and yet still compare ourselves to the sport's elite riders. If I had competed in the elite category, I would have placed 17th. I would have been happy with that. But, I didn't compete in the elite category, I competed in the 25-34 age category. I think that I'll just savor 2nd place for the moment and forget about all of the what-ifs.

A Few Stats:

Laps completed by me: 13

Laps completed by winner of my age group: 15

Laps completed by overall winner: 19

Total distance travelled according to my odometer: 222.95 km