2017 The Epic by Captain Ahab
I signed up for The Epic early and
immediately regretted my decision because I knew I couldn’t take it easy on
training. Last year the Epic or “Ogre”
was the challenge of the year for me. I
trained hard, finished, and dropped off most of my racing shortly after. This year I didn’t train half as much and was
recovering from injuries that took me out of my running training. I knew going into this year’s event that my
cardio was in bad shape, and I hadn’t had a chance to get in a long ride, so I
would be in pain. I also hadn’t been
weight training, but my legs felt strong to me, so I thought I would try my
best and if all else failed, then just finish.
It pretty much rained solid a few
days before the event, so the course was shortened to take out the highest
water crossings. I was happy to hear
that I no longer had to ride 150 miles soaking wet and only would have to ride
130. Tanya (my wife) and I drove down to
the event in the rain, checked in, ate dinner, went to the pre-race meeting,
and crashed at the hotel, all the while it was still raining. Tanya started telling me it would be nice to
stay in the hotel for the weekend or go home early. I told her I had pre-paid the hotel and I had
driven all the way, so no matter what I was starting in the morning. We met some out of town racers that asked me
questions about my bike set up and what clothes I was going to wear. One of them didn’t think tights were
necessary, but I told him I wouldn’t be riding fast enough the whole time to
keep warm while soaking wet. He almost changed
my mind to wear shorts, but I stuck with my plan. Wear a water “proof” jacket over my jersey
and let my tights get soaked over my shorts.
I planned to ditch the jacket and tights if I got hot. I chose to wear my summer mountain bike shoes
because I knew my feet would be wet instantly and my boots don’t drain.
Larry Lazo told me we had to crush
the start and stay ahead of most the pack, but I knew that meant me too. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hang with him
for long. We started and instantly soul
crushing realities started coming into my mind.
My legs were already burning, I was overheating, I couldn’t see due to
the rain and gravel crap, and I couldn’t hold Larry’s pace. I realized that to finish I had to slow down
and recover and find a pace I could live with.
I had an extremely hard time of recovering. I don’t think I ate enough that morning and I
didn’t eat enough at check point one, even though Tanya was trying to get me to
eat more. I felt like I was drinking
enough, but since I was soaked through I couldn’t really tell if I was sweating
(my jacket was not water proof). I found
a pace I was comfortable with and I kept my clothing as it was because I feared
getting hypothermia. I knew there was
nothing I had to change into that would keep me dry, and wet and warm is better
than wet and cold. The hail pinging off
my helmet made me laugh until it hit me in the face and went through my helmet
vents. It was short lived, but the wind,
rain, and lightning were fierce. I
decided it was safer to keep riding and keep my rubber tires on the ground
instead of my metal shoe cleats. That
meant there would be no hill walking.
Eric Reber caught me struggling
before check point one and I told him that I was having trouble recovering. He
was sore from well over 200 miles the previous week, so he said he would ride
with me. It was nice to have someone to
suffer with that didn’t mind the slow pace.
We rode quite a bit with Jeff and Carrie Sona on their tandem and I got
to witness their insane downhill speed and subsequent splashing and parting off
the waters at the crossings. I’d follow
them down and take Jeff’s lines and then pass them uphill and then repeat. It felt safer following them at speed through
the water crossings than doing it on my own.
I figured if they survived, then I would. I still was very concerned about the
crossings after last year. Eric and I
stayed together until CP1. At CP1, Tanya
started talking to me about quitting again and I thought Eric left before me,
so I took off in a hurry avoiding Tanya and looking for him, but as I got off
to walk a water crossing I saw him coming up from behind, so I waited for him
to catch up. We rode a pretty chill
pace, but even at a slower pace we still had to walk crossings as they were
getting much deeper.
We took the asphalt back to
gravel. The asphalt had me thinking I
was feeling better, but once back on the gravel I started feeling bad again. It continued to rain and the wind and
lightning picked up. The miles were
slowly ticking off. I pretty much had to
walk every water crossing and one or two had almost swept me off my feet. My legs started cramping and I cursed myself
for not buying water, Gatorade, and food at the gas station. I rode on without any fuel and water,
thinking if I get desperate there is plenty of rain to drink. The gravel started getting eroded off the
roads from the down pouring rushing streams that were now on both sides of the
road. It was neat to see, very loud, but
very hard to ride when the streams crossed the road and made tons of
potholes. My legs started cramping
really bad, which made me walk a hill, but the lightning convinced me to jump
back on the bike quickly. I could feel
my skin chafing on the seams of my shorts on the top of my thighs and I
thought, that’s a first.” Around 3 miles
to go the front tire flatted. I quickly
changed it and didn’t feel anything sharp in the tire, so I chalked it up to a
pinch flat from hitting all the potholes.
About a mile later the rear flatted.
I found a long skinny sharp rock that pierced and stuck into the tire. I was riding through standing water almost
constantly, hitting potholes, and a million sticks, and a piece of gravel
flatted me. As I was changing the flat,
trying my best to keep gravel out of the tire, the wind and lightning became
incredibly fierce, so much so that I started thinking about shelter. I looked around for twisters, didn’t see any,
looked around for shelter, and decided the thick woods was my best bet, but
stayed put, and continued the flat repair.
With
the flat fixed I got back to riding and knew I was really close to the
Start/Finish. I started to pass a truck
and the guy kept waving to me. I thought
he was directing me to turn, which matched my Garmin, so I started to turn and
he jumped out of his truck and acted as if he was going to stop me. I then could hear him yelling that the power
lines were on the road. I asked him what
the other racers did and I told him I would step over them like they did. After crossing two down lines and a tree I
was on my way again. I started to feel the back tire going flat again, but I
could see the Start/Finish so I kept going.
A lake stood in the way of the finish. I thought, “This will be cool and get some
cheers” as I plowed into the water and rode through at about top tube depth,
but no one noticed my efforts. I turned
to finish and the finish line was destroyed, most people were already gone,
some people were huddled under the shelter, and Tanya was standing there
saying, “Thank God, you are crazy!” I
think she meant that she was thankful I was back and not so thankful I am
crazy. I checked in so the race
officials knew I was alive and then Tanya told me all about the storm that
knocked everything over and flooded the grounds. I managed 72 miles, so I didn’t even complete
the 80 mile course. I hated cutting it
short as I really wanted to see if I could recover and ride the rest, but by
the look of things, the race director made the right call.
 |
| Before it blew over. |
We had
another night in the hotel pre-paid so we stayed and chilled out. In the
morning I changed my tires back to heavy duty CX tires and found a half inch
thorn in the rear gravel tire. We ate
breakfast and did a little shopping, but it was still raining, and I thought we
better get home before roads close.
Tanya likes highway 70, so we took that.
It was packed with traffic, but I may have done some off-roading to go
from highway to service road to avoid it.
When we got home we started to hear of all the flooding and road
closures. Good thing we took 70. It was an Epic wet adventure. – Ahab.
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| Highway 44 |
