World's Toughest

When I woke up the Thursday before the World's Toughest Half and realized that I didn't even own a pair of tri shorts anymore it really hit me that I hadn't been a triathlete for quite some time. I hadn't even walked into a transition area since I lay in a heap at the Ironman Cozumel finish line almost 18 months ago, and before that I hadn't followed a triathlon through to the run phase (although I'd done a bunch of aquabikes) for another year or more. Now that I found myself mixing among tri-geeks again I bristled a bit, but it was more like coming home. As much as I griped and complained about how much the event cost and how much shit I had to pack, triathlons are familiar and tactically simple compared to some of the odd stunts I've gotten into since.

I signed up for this triathlon in part because it fell on a weekend when I had nothing better to do, and in part because I wanted to stalk a fellow blogger, Gretchen whose trail photos and stories I've been eating my liver over for years. Since Auburn is only an hour from where Gretchen lives in Truckee, it seemed like a great chance to track (stalk) her down and meet the legend behind the screen. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In the week before the race I was experiencing a new sensation that has begun since my drunken hiatus from training last summer and fall: feeling tired. Now that I work about 12 hours a day running, demonstrating, and putting weights away, as well as a minimum of 3 spin classes and a boot camp class a week, I just don't get time "off." By my estimate, I probably do at least 100 squats a day, 50 deadlifts, a football field of farmer carries, 40 sets of stairs, and dozens of miles of walking before it even gets time for me to make the decision whether to do my own training or not. Sometimes it just catches up, and this week was one of those weeks where my hamstrings were tight, my butt was out of juice, my quads felt creaky, my core was achy, and my back needed some serious cracking. Also, this week I got another year older. Coincidence? Maybe not.

Now that my excuses are out of the way, I turned up in Auburn just as I was for the race expo not entirely sure what I was getting myself into. I hadn't been able to find an elevation profile on the event website, so I pulled a few guys over at the expo to explain what the climbing would be like. "Well if you've been out of it for as long as you say you have, you sure picked a doozy to start," a SMOFo told me as we walked back to the parking lot together (we were best buddies from the time we met, of course). "But this is only the World's Toughest Half because the other halves are so flat."

"Oh," I said. "I thought that they got the name because hadn't been copyrighted yet." I mean what did they do, go and check out every half ironman distance race in the whole wide world?! Based on a complete lack of evidence either way, I had decided that the race's name was an exaggeration. Still, it didn't bode well that I saw more drop bars in the parking lot than I saw bullhorns. I have done hilly triathlons before and even at those I felt like the only one with clip-on bars. But here some of the riders hadn't even bothered with the aero bars at all. Gulp.

Then I went to drop my running stuff down at T2, which was separated from T1 by about 7 miles (I hate it when they do that! The logistics are such a nightmare for a single person.) All my chores done for the day, I went to check into the hotel and scare up some dinner and breakfast for the next morning. I'd forgotten to bring a breakfast that met with my standards, and with no fridge, no silverware, and no plates or bowls, I was at a loss for what to have for breakfast before the race. I wandered around the upscale supermarket for half an hour before I finally located a breakfast burrito which I purchased and took home to have half for dinner and half for breakfast.

Once I bit into this "burrito", I found it to be was THE WORST BREAKFAST BURRITO EVER ASSEMBLED. It was made with what might have been a microwaved egg back in the mid-90's but now was just some yellow plastic, a slice of cheddar cheese from the sandwich bar, and some nasty white starchy rice that was so overcooked that it was the size of mature maggots. The second half of this culinary aberration found its way to my tummy at 4 o'clock on race morning, 2 1/2 hours before the start and sat there undigested until after the swim. I drove to the start, did my whole getting ready for the start thing, and then made my way down to the water with a few minutes to go.

They were shoving everyone into the water for a "mandatory warm-up," but I knew better than to go in past my ankles. It was a good thing too, because one of the buoys kept drifting off course and they had to start the race 5 minutes late so that they could re-set it. By the time the second wave (my wave) went off 10 minutes after they cleared the water, all the people who had "warmed up" were shivering and their lips were blue. I on the other hand was nice and toasty warm in my pee-filled wetsuit.

My swim training has been spotty at best, so I really, really, really didn't mean to take it out too fast. But I just got so frustrated by all the feet in my face in the washing machine that somehow I wound up out of breath and feeling queezy by the first turn buoy (of which there were six, three per lap for two laps). After that, "too much breakfast" said in a queasy voice pretty much sums up my whole swim experience.

By the second lap I had slowed down considerably and was still wondering whether I would need to take my face out of the water to puke or if it was possible to just puke right down into the water. I came around the second turn buoy, pointed toward the third and started swimming, and then I could see... THE BOTTOM! If you don't know, THE BOTTOM is where The Monster lives, and I really, really don't want to see that shit. I couldn't see THE BOTTOM on the last lap. What gives? I could see THE BOTTOM the whole way to the last turn buoy (the one that had been drifting at the start), and I certainly didn't remember that buoy being so close to the edge of the water the last time I passed by here. As I passed, I could see a kayaker holding on to the corner of the buoy so that it wouldn't float out of the water and onto the rocks altogether. Great. So now the swim course was long and me trying to hold down breakfast all this time.

As I aimed back toward the swim exit, I looked up and saw a paddleboarder next to me. Now what was he doing there? Was I swimming off course (I'd been doing a lot of that today too)? I breathed over my other shoulder to see what I could see over there and SPLASH! The lead sprint swimmer who was just passing me kicked a huge wave right down my throat. Now I really felt like I was going to puke. I cruised into the finish, and about 100 yards away I looked up to see where I was going and... 50 orange caps were coming right at me! As we were coming in, we had to cross through the "mini tri" competitors who were just setting out for their swim.

When I finally hit solid ground, I stood up and I walked. I had stepped on my foot funny and it really hurt, but that wasn't really why I was walking. I walked slowly up that chute until I was quite sure that that nasty excuse for a breakfast burrito would stay in my stomach where it belonged. Then I slowly puttered into transition to put on my helmet, sunglasses, socks, and shoes. Then I looked around to see if there was any other way I could put off riding. When I saw there was none, I took my bike and jogged toward the bike exit.

I mounted my bike and began to ride away. We began a roughly 10-mile, 2000 foot rolling climb right out of transition. Before we were even out of earshot of the transition area, one of the guys riding near me veered off to the right, hit the curb, and turned his right side into hamburger meat on the concrete and grass. There hadn't been anything in the road, he hadn't been in his aero bars, he hadn't been reaching for anything, there were no errant bunnies crossing the road to avoid, the road was relatively straight, we'd been moving at about 8 mph up the hill, and there were spectators who didn't seem to recognize him sitting about 3 feet from where he ate shit. So there was no reason to cut close to that particular spot on the side of the road. What's with triathletes and bike handling?

The SMOFos at the start had warned me that the hardest climb on the course was the climb out of the swim, but for some reason the difficulty still annoyed me even though I knew it was coming. It wasn't the hardest climb I'd ever done, or even the hardest climb I'd done in the past month, but in the first 7 miles it lurched up some 1000 feet, then topped it off with another 400 over the next 3 miles or so. The grades maxed out at about 12%, which was enough to have me breathing hard and push my heartrate into the high 180's. I felt like I was breathing through tissue and my aero set-up felt uncomfortable underneath me. Then this girl in a Cal skinsuit rode by me like I was standing still and I had no energy or desire to follow her. What was wrong with me?

I took a moment to beat myself up before I realized that I hadn't trained for this race. I had no right to get pissed about results unless I'd done some specific preparation for this race, or even this sport. I also realized that even if I chased someone down on the bike, it would all be over once we started running. Forget it! After that I just tried to enjoy myself and ride only exactly as hard as I had to and no harder. Make no mistake, there was no 'phoning in' this race. The total elevation gain in the first 30 miles was some 2000 feet (more like 3500 with all the crinkling up and down), and when it was time to go downhill it was usually too fast to even pedal. And while I'm complaining about the elevation, of the 2000' elevation gain, we only got to give about 1000 of it back because the finish was some 1000' higher than the start. So in short, even though I was dragging my feet, I was earning my lunch!

Right from the very beginning I felt a deep, not quite stabbing pain above the top of my illium (the big wing-like muscle in my pelvis). It was a familiar old feeling that I had always assumed was caused by yoga because I stopped doing yoga regularly around the time I stopped doing a lot of tri riding which was right around the time that the pain went away. It felt like I needed to twist and crack my back, or like someone was sticking a dull knife right into the spot above the bone, and the pain started radiating down my leg to my hamstring, putting a hitch in my pedal stroke. It started immediately on one side, and by the halfway point it was there on both sides. Was this what old guys meant when they said their backs were tight? Whenever I could, I stood up and tried to move my hips around, but by the time I drifted into transition my back was so tight that I could hardly move.

I hung my bike up and looked forlornly at my stuff in the grass. How was I going to reach it? Slowly but surly I got on my shoes and visor, tied my shoes deliberately (yes, I'd decided to skip lace locks) then grabbed a bottle and my race belt. Before waddling off I gave my back a quick twist and got a very unsatisfying crack, but my traps cramped up int he process. Fantastic. Now I would be running like Frankenstein rather than like a pirate with two peg legs.

I tottered out of transition and onto a flat little footpath through the woods. The run was a 3-lap course that broke down into 3 distinct sections:

• Section 1: Flat 1-mile on a narrow foot path next to a man-made canal where the only thing to worry about was not getting so out of it that you tripped or just simply drifted into the canal.
• Section 2: 1.5 miles downhill (roughly 400') on a mostly gravel path, plus a short, steep jaunt down another footpath through the grass.
• Section 3: Run back up the way you came, then skip the path next to the canal and instead turn toward the finish, run a loop around (and through) the transition area, and back out for the next loop.

It took most of the first loop for my back to loosen up. I only made the mistake of looking at my GPS once. When I was at about a 10:37-minute-mile on a flat road and had no hope of picking it up, I decided not to look at my pace anymore. I wanted to walk, but I realized that I was so knotted up and tired that walking wouldn't really feel any better and would just drag the whole process out. I just wanted to be done at this point. Right from the very first lap all I could think about was how great it would feel to lie down in the grass at the end.

During the first lap, before my back had loosened up and I could move a little more freely (if not more quickly) I put it out there to any magical or all-powerful entity out there in the universe that I know I have the physical strength to finish this, but if he/she/it would give me the mental strength to do it without too much fussing, that would be pretty fucking fantastic. Whether it was God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Mother Earth, the Universe, Allah, or the awesome power of my own determination that answered my prayers, it worked. When I started running, I felt on the edge of despair like I usually do at mile 23 of a marathon. By the last mile of the first loop, my discomfort and abjection had dropped back to about mile 22 of a marathon and just kind of sat there right at the point just before shit gets really bad.

A few chicks passed me on the run, but it was hard to tell how many because of the multiple-loop course. Maybe it was because I had gotten off the bike later than I used to, and maybe it was because of all the hills, but I didn't get trounced as thoroughly as I usually do in the run. Or so I thought. Ignorance is bliss.

By the final loop I was losing it pretty bad. I was hungry, my everything hurt, and I was beginning to lose track of what I was doing. My fantasies about lunch and lying down in the grass were feeling more and more real and I would snap out of it and realize I was still on this stupid hill that really wasn't pretty enough to be worth all this. Although I felt just as horrible at the beginning as at the end, now that I look back my pace had dropped from roughly 9-minute miles on the first loop, to 10-minute miles on the second loop and 11-minute miles on the third loop. Shit was going all bad and I had no idea.

"And here comes Claire [and then he pronounced my last name right] from Pacifica coming in to the finish!" the announcer said as I wandered down the finishing chute. I tried to put my hands above my head at the finish line, but more to stretch my back and open my lungs than out of triumph. A volunteer handed me a bottle and a medal still in its plastic packaging and I spotted a stool.

"Can I just sit down for a bit?" I asked. By degrees I lowered myself to the stool and sat there drinking water and being glad that it was done for several long minutes before I drifted out of the finishers' area. It took me a long, long time to get changed into regular clothes in the bathrooms, then I tried to scare up some food from the post-race buffet. Chipotle was making tacos, which meant just a little bit of cheese and a tortilla filled with pico de gallo for me (no shredded animal, thank you very much). Looking back, I think it was just lack of nutrition that kept me feeling like hell (I was dealing with some nausea again by the second half of the run), but right now I was preoccupied with another problem: my car was 7 miles away and that's where my wallet was. Until I got my wallet, I couldn't buy anything more than a tortilla filled with pico de gallo.

I got directions back to the car from a bunch of locals while their buddy threw up strawberries and tacos into the grass next to us, and then I got on my bike again with all my stuff in a side-loaded duffel on my back, and started back toward the car thinking the whole time about how fucked-up this was. My crotch hurt. Once I got back to the car, there was no way that I would have the energy to drive another hour north to see Gretchen and still be able to stay awake for the ride home. Fail!

Overall I did solidly average. I finished second in my age group, but there were only 4 women in my division. I finished 12th woman overall, but there were only about 39 women in the race. I finished 80th out of 160 overall. Overall I was 60th on the swim, 67th on the bike, and 96th on the run. It was nothing to brag about, but for once I was pretty darned proud to have finished. It hadn't been easy, and although I had a basic level of fitness in all three sports, triathlon is more than just a swim, a bike, and a run strung together. It hadn't gone as smoothly as I'd hoped, but I finished without mentally checking out and walking. So that was something.

The next day everything was sore. My back, my traps, my delts, my hamstrings, my glutes and even my SCM (that muscle in your neck that sticks out when you stick out your bottom teeth). Now I really, really, really need to take some recovery time before the AIDS ride and my 200 miler the following week. Will I do another one? Maybe some other time, but not for awhile.

Fewer teeth than a redneck

Given the choice, I never would have signed up for the Devil Mountain Double to begin with. Of the roughly two dozen double centuries held in California each year, this one had more climbing than any of the others by about 15%, and it was one of the first of the season. Mama didn't raise no fool, and I knew that between my six months off of riding and all those hills I didn't have a prayer of doing well on that course. Still, every year the California Triple Crown picks three of the toughest doubles of the year, compiles the times of all the riders (who have done all three) and treats the bundle as a stage race. Therefore, if I wanted to be in the stage race rankings, then I had no choice but to finish the Devil Mountain Double. Which is how I found myself in San Ramon at a few minutes to 5 in the morning with 200-some-odd other riders waiting to ride off into the sunrise.



I've gotten too good at quitting over the past few years, so I decided to check my ego at the hotel and enter this race just to finish. There was no way around finishing. I had to finish this race if I wanted to do the next 2. So I closed my eyes, gulped hard, and let the fast riders take off without ever even trying to catch them.

Mt. Diablo
start: 643' finish: 3553' length: 10 mi

Mt Diablo wasn't a severe climb, and it gave you its elevation slowly. We hit the bottom of the climb in a big clump, and in a big clump we stayed all the way to the top. Despite trying to take it easy at work for a week, four 14-hour workdays had forced themselves on me. Then I made the mistake of doing 8 blocks of rubber band runs, which shot my quads so badly that they were still sore to the touch three days later on race morning. As I was climbing, I already began making excuses for myself. I began to wonder if working this much was really worth it and whether I should quit my job or quit cycling. I was never going to be able to rest again in my life, I decided. In short, I was already feeling terrible and tired.

I found myself riding with one of my SMOFos, who introduced me to another rider (female, and I tried not to care). We chatted our way up the hill, but there were three guys on Steve Rex bikes who were weaving all over the place. I was in my lowest gear pushing that sweet spot in my cadence where I couldn't slow down or speed up comfortably without braking or shifting. I kept trying to edge around these guys, and then they would swoop toward me all of a sudden with a left or right hook. "HEY! WATCH YOUR LINES!" I snapped in spite of myself. Soon, every time I found myself coming up behind these guys I would zip past them as fast as I could and get a few solitary minutes to myself before the clump swallowed me again.


Later the SMOFo said to me, "Yeah, we were commenting on how you were wasting your energy sprinting up Diablo" (he pronounced it 'Die-ab- lo') "like that." Dude, I wasn't sprinting, I just couldn't ride as slow as you guys on the stepper shit in my non-pussy gearing! What inspired this conversation? Well, once we came up the final driveway to the summet, I stood up for the last push to the top. Only 100m from the top suddenly my body rebelled. I had that Oh fuck, I can't hold this anymore! I tried to slow down, I tried to stand up, I tried just sticking it out, but there was just no way around it. Giving up any shred of dignity I had left, I stopped pedaling and stepped off my bike when it stopped rolling. Then I walked the final 50m to the top.

I have not had to walk my bike since I lived in Spain, smoked, and rode a $500 bike in the Pyranees. I've ridden up some of the most famous climbs in France with a 32x28. The only difference was that today I had a 27 in the back rather than a 28. I guess that one little tooth could make a huge difference.

At the top everyone was settling in for a fine breakfast, so once I filled my water bottles I skidaddled in a hurry so that I could take the switchbacks and unguarded drop-offs with the road to myself. Now that I'd turned around I could see that I had been in The Pack. I had seen only no women coming down the hill ahead of me, so I must have left them the rest of the chicks in the crowd at the top. I sailed down the mountain at a leisurely pace, trying to keep my back and neck loose despite the early morning cold and 25mph winds.

Morgan Territory
starting elevation: 948' summit: 2030' length: 8 mi

Off of Mt Diablo we dipped into the valley and under the tree canopy on one of those narrow back roads where two cars can't pass each other. It was a pretty and gradual 500' climb for about 20 miles, and then suddenly the road started pitching up spastically like someone retching. It was like the road had been feeling nauseous all afternoon and now was finally throwing up. Steep grades in the high teens would throw you up into the sky and then let go for a second, only to upchuck you a little further. Here I began to notice that I was passing a lot of people on the climbs. This made no sense, because I wasn't climbing hard. I just couldn't go as slow as they could. Later, more and more people would comment on how well I was climbing and I wouldn't know what to say because I was climbing as slow as my bike would go. That was how I figured out that everyone who wasn't riding a triple had a 30-tooth cog in the back except me.


By the time I reached the top of Morgan Territory, I was already unraveling a little bit, getting grouchy and upset at myself for even being out here. I dumped my bike on the ground and stomped over to the table and started shoving boiled potatoes into my mouth. There was more salt and rosemary on them than there was potato. It was disgusting. It was delicious. I would have liked to have stuck around shoving more and more food into my face, but the 25 mph winds hadn't died down yet and it was just unpleasant standing around in wind like that, so I got back on the bike to give all that elevation back.

Patterson Pass
start: 383' finish: 1381' length: 3.5 mi

I rode through flat and downhill farm land with the wind at my back for a glorious 15 miles, then over a small bump that I don't even remember called Altemont Pass before I reached the bottom of Patterson Pass. Somewhere in this space a group rode by, and I saw one head with a ponytail turn to look at me as they rode by (this head will introduce herself at the end of this story). I knew better than to chase. Today I was not a competitor, I was in it for something else. I just didn't know what that was yet. And anyway, there was something disheartening about riding through wind farms, even if the wind was at my back for the moment.

Right at the bottom of the climb I found myself surrounded again by a clump of SMOFos. I remember that they were there because when I heard the "clang, clang" of something and said, "What the fuck was that?!" no one answered me and I remember thinking that was kind of rude. I kept riding as the hill got steeper and steeper with every step.


I don't know what made it come into my head, but I thought, What will I do if I broke a spoke? I'd never broken a spoke before. That was something that only happened to fat guys who tried to ride low-spoke wheels (yeah, like those spokes are really making a difference when you've got the frontal surface area of an aircraft carrier!). Well just call me Clyde(sdale), because when I heaved up the last 20% grade ("Oh my gawd hill" was spray painted on the pavement) into the aid station at the top and checked my bike, sure enough there was a spoke missing from my rear wheel.

"How bad is it to ride without a spoke?" I asked one of the aid station volunteers. He did that thing that I do when I don't want to admit that I don't know the answer where I pretend like I'm looking into the matter until I'm pretty sure that you're not paying attention anymore and then just go back to what I was doing. Okay, fine! I spun the wheel, and the brake was rubbing with each revolution. I loosened up the brake pads so it wasn't rubbing anymore, but if it had already gotten this out of true in a few miles, then what would happen after another 125 mi?

I didn't know what to do about the situation, so I went to pee instead. This was one of those bald California hillsides that remind me of the old Windows desktop, with absolutely no cover. "Do you have any facilities for the ladies?" I asked one of the female volunteers. She pointed to one of those electrical box things across the street. To crouch behind it, I had to climb over a rotting wooden fence and through some rusty barbed wire to pee in plain view anyway. When I got back to my bike I decided I would figure out what to do with the spoke while I was on the road. You couldn't ride for more than half an hour without seeing a sag wagon anyway.

And sure enough, not 10 minutes later as I had fallen in next to some middle-aged lady (who I didn't think should have been strong enough to ride with me if I hadn't spent so long at the rest stop), I interrupted her to wave down a truck with half a dozen wheels on the roof. He said he would pull over at the next turn-out, and I dropped the old lady (who had lower gears than I did) to roll to the top of the hill for my wheel switch.

The car had RAAM stickers on it, and the guy who popped out looked like a skinny Santa Claus, and I couldn't believe my luck. I must have flagged down the Sheldon Brown of the west! "What kind derailleur do you have?" Sheldon asked.

"I've got 105 on right now," I said, feeling poor and wishing I could say at least Ultegra.

"Great! I've got a 105 wheel right here!" he said, trying to pull my wheel off without flipping the bike over. I could tell by the way that he wasn't pulling the derailleur out of the way to get the cassette free of the chain that this guy was no Sheldon Brown. So much for my hopes of a quick switch-out.

"Look, why don't we just flip it over?" I said, pulling the wheel free. We counted the gears on the new wheel and thank goodness it was a 10-speed. He had more trouble getting the new wheel in than he had getting the old wheel out, so I asked if I could try. As the only employee of Valencia Cyclery who was asked not to build bikes, my mechanical ineptitude is hard to beat, but here he was showing me up.

The skewer was screwed all the way down, so I had to loosen it to get it into the dropouts and then Sheldon started trying to get his hands in there again. "No, it's not in yet! You can't tighten it down yet!"

"I'm loosening it," I said. It finally fell into the dropouts.

"Is it in yet?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"I don't think it is."

I looked closer. "No, really. It's in there."

"It doesn't look like it." I sighed. This wheel was 100% seated in its dropouts, but I let him come around and put his big face next to the wheel. He was saving my ass after all. "Oh, I guess it is." Only then did he let me tighten it down.

"Do you have a pump?" I asked. The wheel felt like the tire pressure was about 60.

"Oh, right, right! A pump." The scene was more comical than anything, and I'm not so cold-hearted as to be bitter about the 5 minutes I lost when I could have had to drop out altogether. Sheldon put a piece of tape on my wheel with my number on it and handed me a business card, telling me that he would forward my wheel on to the finish.

Once I had a new wheel, something in my mind switched on. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I had had a good reason to drop out, and fate had intervened to make me keep going. I don't know what changed, but suddenly I made the mental shift from trying to have a perfect race to being willing to push through whatever the day threw at me. Which was good, because what I hadn't discovered yet was that the wheel that Sheldon had given me only came with a 25-tooth cog in the back, and I still had about 10,000' to climb.

The warm-up was over.

Mines Road

start: 600' finish: 2788 length: 20

Off Patterson Pass there was a long, fast climb called "the plunge" which I took with my rear brake caliper open (because half cocked and under prepared is how I roll). Before long I found myself alone at the bottom of a long, winding climb that reminded me of a climb that Shane and I had done in Provence. It was gentle and twisted civilly up the side of a hill with nothing but low trees and nature everywhere. I easily passed another chick on the climb and wondered how it was that I hadn't passed her before, since I felt like I was climbing easily in my easiest gear.

Then the grade eased off even more, and I was climbing through trees alongside a river. I kept checking the river thinking that I was riding downhill, but the river was flowing in the other direction. This is what cycling was supposed to feel like. Which is not to say that I wasn't tired, just that I was glad for the flat road (something that I hadn't seen all day). In fact I was still waiting around every corner for a downhill and some free miles, but if I was going to have to ride my bike then this was what I wanted to ride on.

On this climb I caught up with another rider; a heavy guy with an underbite that made him look like a Cretan. Once I started talking to him and he told me his story, I changed my mind about the guy. He wound up being the only other rider I would spend a significant portion of time with all day.

Here's his story: Back in the day, he'd been your typical really fat guy who never got off the couch. But the reason that he never got off the couch was because for a year he was paralyzed with MS. And he was depressed, because when you've got MS you've got a lot going against you. Once he began to recover a little bit, he still used to stay up late on the couch hating himself until one night he saw an infomercial for a motivational speaker. The unnamed speaker said that he should write down all the things he didn't like about himself on a piece of paper. He did it, identifying what he could change (being a fatass) and what he couldn't (the MS). Then he bought a bike from Toys R Us and he rode the same trail every day until the thing fell apart underneath him. Then he replaced it with a nicer bike and started riding the a different, longer trail every day. Then the bike shop guy put him on a road bike and he never looked back.

The MS still left him with some cognitive and neuromuscular problems, but he'd gone back to school to become a shrink and a nutritionist, and he'd done this race every year for the past X years. One year he crashed on the descent off Mt Hamilton (coming up) and cracked a few ribs. His legs were "all jacked up" too, so he'd had to walk up Sierra Road (still to come). And yet he'd still finished at about 2 am. "I just don't like to quit because of some of the stuff I've been through--the MS and all," he said.

I had a long while to chew on that. I had been too good at quitting when the going got tough because I wasn't challenged by "just finishing" anymore and didn't know where else to go in my head to find the motivation to push through. I hated myself for it. How much more could I have accomplished in the past few years if I hadn't quit when things weren't going my way? I could think of half a dozen bike rides just this year that would have put me in better shape to finish this very ride that I was on, had I stuck with them.

At the lunch stop, my gentle Cretan friend (let's call him) Ralph stayed to eat a sandwich. I walked around shoveling whatever I could find into my mouth for a minute. I ate the most delicious slice of Costco cheese that had been sitting in the sun all day that there ever was, and then I set off without Ralph so that my legs wouldn't freeze up waiting for him.

Mt Hamilton

start: 2066' finish: 4160' length: 6 mi

It was the hottest part of the day when I hit the final 5-mile push up Mt. Hamilton. The number of miles to the summit had been painted on the road for the past 40 miles or more, and now with 6 miles to go the road finally started climbing in earnest. Up I went, pushing my pedals over slowly and moving at about 4 mph. I couldn't remember a time that I'd ever climbed below 6 mph, and yet my bike stayed upright and I was passing other riders who were weaving all over the road in order to cut the grade. They were moving so slow, that I could see the individual spokes on their bikes from 50 yards away.

I passed yet another guy who cheered for me and told me that I was climbing really well. "I'm in the last gear that I got," I explained for the millionth time. "I've got nowhere else to go, I'm stuck with this pace for better or for worse." We were on the non-windy side of the hill and I felt like I was just straining to push more and more sweat out of my pores while my bike was going nowhere. I was moving so slowly that the flies came and buzzed around my head and I couldn't get away from them. So not only was I riding slowly, but I was twitching like a mad person. One of them bit me through my shorts and I've been scratching my right ass cheek all week. My hands were too sweaty to grip the handlebars when I was standing up (I frequently ride without gloves), so I was stuck sitting. And there I sat for about an hour as I wound my way up Hamilton.

I'd heard that the road levels off in the last mile into a few rollers, but when I reached the 1 mile to go mark the road was at the steepest yet and would stay there for another half mile. I stuck with it for a few minutes and finally got off my bike. I hate it when people lie to me about what I'm in for. I'd been pushing the pedals around at about 50 rpm for an hour and my quads just couldn't take the strain anymore. With but one (or maybe two) walking breaks, I got to the top and mounted my bike again. Then I rode down, down, down glad that I wouldn't freeze my ass off on the 10 mile descent.

Sierra Rd
start: 209' finish: 1945' distance: 3 mi

Sierra Road was the last significant climb if the day. When the 10 free miles off of Hamilton were up, I found myself back near sea level, back in the stifling, dry San Jose heat and facing a wall. Everyone had warned me that Sierra road was a bitch, but this? This was cruel. There had to be another way over this ridge that wasn't this steep! The road would pitch up to a 20% grade for a few hundred yards and then flatten out to a more manageable 5% or so for a few hundred yards before getting even steeper. The first time I walked my bike, a woman riding down in the other direction said, "It gets better after this!" It had better, I can't imagine cars getting up roads that were any steeper! But it didn't get better. Time and time again I had to get off and walk. What the hell was wrong with me? To say that I felt like a failure is an understatement. I just couldn't understand what my body was doing to me.

Finally I reached the top, and some lady came out from behind a car to snap my picture. "You did it!" she said.

"Yeah, well you're not going to get a smile out of me," I said, suppressing a smile. I felt like I deserved every inch of that descent off of Sierra Rd. I had about 40 miles to go and the world owed it to me to be downhill for the rest of the way. Now it was time to face a fact that I'd been ignoring all day because I didn't want it to be true: the course wasn't 200 miles, it was actually 205. Fuckers.

Palomares Rd

start: 252' finish: 1194' distance: 2 mi

I got to the final aid station at mile 180 just as the sun was starting to set. "Congratulations! Only 25 miles to go and only two more climbs!" the aid station volunteer said.

"What do you mean 2 more climbs?" I said slowly in a very serious and very stern voice. I may have sounded drunk, my mouth wasn't working right at that point.

"Oh, they're nothing compared to what you've already done," he said cheerfully.

"How tall are they?"

"If you did Mt. Hamilton, you can do these."

"How tall are they?!" I asked.

"Aw, you'll get up it no problem," he chirped.

"WHY WON'T YOU FUCKING ANSWER ME?!" I screamed, hoping he would think I was kidding even though I really wasn't.

"400 feet," he said and walked away.

400 feet. Okay, I can do 400 feet, I told myself. That's just 100 feet taller than Johnson Rd at home. That's 100 feet less than Sharp Park which I do my hill reps on. That's a 10 minute climb. I can do 400 ft.

As I started climbing up Palomares Road, the sun set for real. By the time I was half way up, it was pitch black and all I could see was the lights of riders in front of me and the reflectors in the road going higher and higher and higher up ahead. I had no reference points to go on, and I felt like I was making no progress. The road just kept getting steeper, pitching up in the higher and higher teens around every corner. All I could hear were frogs and some farm animal screaming. As I was finally nearing the top another rider came up next to me. "How are you doing?" he asked.

"They lied to me!" I sobbed. I'd been crying by myself in the dark for the last few minutes and now I was sobbing so hard I could barely breathe. "They told me that this climb was 400 feet. Why would they lie to me like that?!" I was serious. I'd been thinking about one of my coworker's clients who had done a strongman competition and pushed herself so hard that she started crying and said, 'Call the police!' before collapsing into her trainer's arms. There was no way that pushing someone this hard was legal.

The End

When I came down off of Palomares, I had about 7 miles and one small climb to go. When I'd first gotten on my bike this morning I'd had a nascent saddle sore that now made it hard to sit on my saddle at all. The athlete's foot that I can't seem to get rid of on my left foot made my pinkie toe feel like it was the size of my head and both my big toes felt like I was pushing on raw bone inside my shoes. My low back was alright, but my upper back was sore from the bottom of my rib cage to my shoulders from pulling on my handlebars. My lungs and intercostal muscles were even sore from pulling so much air so hard into my lungs on the steeper climbs as I rode at my maximum effort. And still, they had tacked on these last fucking 5 miles so that we could go over one more fucking hill (this one really was 400 feet) just so that we could reach a round 20,000 ft. It was cruel.

After the final rest area was the first time I actually allowed myself to think about finishing this ride, as in being done with it and life going on. Now it felt like the end would never, ever come. That moment when I got to get off my bike would never happen. I'd died and gone to hell and this was it, just one long climb after another. I really couldn't imagine this ride ever stopping, no matter how I tried to get my head around it. Once again, I thought I would cry as soon as I finished this damned thing.

By the time I finally rolled into the hotel 16.5 hours after leaving it, all I wanted was a shower and to curl up in my bed and never move again. I rolled around the parking lot for awhile looking for where the finish was, then I tottered into the banquet hall, gave them my number, and tried to find my way to a seat. A volunteer swooped in, plopped me in a chair, and told me she'd bring me everything. "You want water? You want the cheese or the meat lasagna? What kind of dressing do you like?" she asked. Wow, they really do a good job taking care of the riders on this ride, I thought. I had to hand them that. I would have to include it in my statement when I called the cops, maybe The Law would be lenient. Then I looked around. The other riders were in line for the food; no one else was being waited on. Then it dawned on me, I must really look bad.

Once I'd eaten 2 helpings of lasagna, I tottered back over to my bike to pull off the borrowed wheel. I crouched down and counted the teeth on the biggest gear. ...22, 23, 24... motherfuckingsonofabitch! Yep, just as I'd told everyone but been too scared to check and make sure just in case it wasn't true. The climbing gear was only a 25. Flatlander gearing. Fuck me sideways.

I handed off the wheel and stumbled back toward the door. The ponytailed woman (one of several who had beat me to the hotel) came up to me. She introduced herself and was all smiles and salt on her face. "Hi, I'm [whatever]." Why is this woman talking to me?! I grumbled to myself as I told her where I was from, how the hills had been nothing like I'd ever seen before, and who I rode with. "Listen," she said. "I've got a hotel room here. You're welcome to stay the night so that you don't have to drive home." Oh, so that's what it is. I must look really bad. But there's nothing more humiliating than accepting something that you really need from a complete stranger who's offering it to you.

"No thank you, but I appreciate the offer. I've got things to do in the morning!" I told her.

Reading this race report you may think that I'm bitter about my bike giving out under me and ruining my race. Actually, I'm glad it happened. Sure, it took me a long time and I felt like hell, but I forced myself to push through despite things not going my way. And not only can I blame any disappointments on the gearing, I also know that I was tough enough to finish on gearing that no one else was dumb enough to try. I'm grateful for the deposit in the confidence bank. I hope there will be less quitting in my future.

Looking at the preliminary results, it looks like she may have won (although they didn't separate out men and women, so it's hard to tell). Hmmmmmmm... Can I make up an hour over the next 400 miles? Nice Lady from Santa Rosa: I've got you in my crosshairs! Just you wait till I get my bike right!

Starbucks, please sponsor my blaaaaaarrrrggg!

This race report may or may not be related to my last post about not feeling too well. For those of you unlicensed doctors out there who love giving advice, that's the post for you. This one's mostly about barf because barf is funny, as is anything that belongs in the toilet but didn't quite make it.

I signed up for the Rhodes Race 5K in Oakland mostly to support the race director and fellow blogger ClaireB, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. However, with my ride the day before getting cut in half, my legs were freed up to run a little faster. What "fast" meant today was anyone's guess. I've probably run fewer 5K's in my life than there are K's in a 5K, and with most of my training lately being on trails, I had no idea what my body was going to decide to do. As I told fellow Girls on the Run people (GOTR is where ClaireB works and Speedy Claire volunteers) at the start, I could either come in really slow, or I could run fast then crap my pants at mile 2 and have to walk it in. Hahaha, I'm so funny, right? Well if you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I was kind of serious.



The gun went off. Since there were 3 GOTR staff and volunteers around me and Claire B would also be seeing me suck or not, I made sure that I was out in front of our little cloud for at least the first minute of the race. Then I decided to try to figure out a plan. The plan was: don't look at your watch (which I suppose means "run on feel" but my "feel-o-meter" has never been calibrated, especially over short distances).

After ducking and dodging through the crowd to a pace that felt "comfortably uncomfortable," my watch sang. Thinking it was the one-mile alarm, I looked down astounded: "6:06" it read. Then I realized it was the six-minute time alert and went back to the race plan. Mile 1 felt good, and had I looked at my watch (which I didn't), I would have seen that my split was 7:22. (Exactly my 5K PR pace, but I had no idea at the time since I had to go look it up the next day.)



Then at mile 2 the Phantom Poo started its insistent rotting in my digestive tract. I'd broken Claire's No. 1 Rule of Public Pooping: Don't twice this morning to avoid this problem. I'd gone once at Starbucks (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog) before hitting the freeway, and then again when I got to the race venue. And yet I felt like a slippery, slidy turd slug would slough out of my normally iron-like sphincter if I didn't concentrate. And concentrate I did as the slight downward grade from the first mile turned to a flat road for the second mile and keeping up with the guy in front of me didn't feel so easy anymore. My split for mile 2 (which I didn't see) was 7:31.



The next mile I was searching longingly along the outskirts of the lake we were circling for the dock that was the start/finish. The pond had that festering duck pond smell and it was making me feel nauseous. Or maybe that was the running that was making me feel sick. I was continuing my campaign with the phantom poo, but the phantom poo had allied itself with my muscles to call an end to my race, and I hoped I could hang on for long enough to not have to slow down precipitously. I tried to lay ever so slightly off the gas.



As I approached the 3-mile mark, I had time to formulate the thought into words, The phantom poo wants out, and it's going to get out any way that it can. I just hope I can hold off until the finish. Then I crossed the 3-mile line (7:38), and suddenly, BLAM! The phantom poo said, YOU'RE GONNA PUKE RIGHT NOW!

"BLAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!" I said, vomiting up mostly Starbucks with little flecks of strawberry in it (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog).

"BLAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!" A little less Starbucks this time (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog).

"BLAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!" No product at all in this attempt, just lots of noise. This was not the silent, private kind of puking where the food silently leaps out of your throat. This was violent, yelling, vomiting from the bottoms of my toes kind of puking.

Then a guy came up behind me to pass. "Come on! You can do it! You're almost there!" he said.

I wanted to say, No, I clearly can't do it. I'll get around to it when I'm finished with this. Instead I said "BLAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!" and saw a little more Starbucks (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog).

I threw up a few more times, and just as quickly as it came on, I was fine again. As I turned around I noticed that a woman about my age wearing a pink top had just passed me. I couldn't let her go, and dashed off after her at mid-6 pace. But she got away. "Way to go, Molly," they said at the finish (her name wasn't really Molly). Then the guy who tore off my tag handed it to the other guy and said, "Hers goes after Molly's."

To Molly I wanted to say, "BLAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!" but I was finished puking. All told, I think that 23:38 had passed when I chased Molly into the finishing chute. Claire B later told me that that was good enough for third in my AG, but I'm not about to gloat since about half the people in the race were under 12, over 65, or dogs. Still, I wish I'd stuck around for the awards ceremony.

I was proud of my performance. This was the first time that I had pushed myself to vomiting in a non-hangover-related incident. The pride was slightly diminished by the fact that I felt ill for the rest of the day and into the next, but I have decided to see the sunny side of this cloud and call it a really hard run.

Go me!

A Warm, Sunny Day in January

After a harrowing ride the day before, resulting in a split top tube and a split... lip... I was not as fired up about my Sunday run as I wanted to be. A little after the fact, I figured out that I had hit six months sober without even realizing it, and since I had a big weekend on the calendar, I half thought about maybe doing it up big. Saturday was the 200K, and Sunday was a trail run where I was signed up for the 21K, but I had the option of upgrading to the 50. And as long as I was thinking about doing a 200K and a 50K, why not just do a long swim on Friday and round it out with greater than the distance of an ironman in all three sports all in one weekend. I did the swim (4400 yards) and the bike, but I'll spoil the surprise right now; I didn't do the full run.

The run was right in my own back yard, so I woke up late and took my time eating a big breakfast. Then I drove down to the Safeway (which has a Starbucks in it (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog) to pick up some last-minute essentials: coconut water, anti-chafe lube, and my coffee. I was cutting it a bit close on time, but I was only a few blocks from the start, right? What I hadn't thought about, however, was parking... and how I would have to park like everyone else. I suppose I could have parked at my house and walked down, but it was too late for that now and I didn't want to spill my coffee power walking down the hill. I found the registration table (as far from the start as you could get), and asked the guy what it would take to change distances. "I'm signed up for the 21K, but I'm still not sure which one I should do..." I told him.

"Aw, go for the 50K," he told me.

"Alright, let's do it!" I said. Then I thought better of it. "You know, I'm still not sure... what do I have to do to switch?"

"I have no idea, actually," he told me, even though he was working the table marked 'distance changes.' "Why don't you just run the 21K, and when you're done, you can decide if you want to keep going. If you do the 50, just tell them when you finish." Perfect!

I got my number on, the lube between my legs, and jogged to the start just in time to hear the starting siren and keep jogging. The trail went down to singletrack about 100 yards in and started climbing even before that. Because I was in the back, I (and everyone else) got stuck going the same pace as the slowest guy in the race. We hiked up the hill for about a mile, dashing around one person at a time whenever there was enough space on the trail. I knew that Sponsor was here, and I was hoping to catch up with her in order to have someone to keep me company and share the pretty views with. I was proud of how pretty Pacifica was, after all, and I never got a chance to share it with anybody.



Even at this slow pace, my legs were bursting with lactic acid, and I knew that I was fucked for the day. Right away I dropped the idea of doing the 50K, and just decided to enjoy the day and get through it however possible. It was the clearest sunny day I'd ever seen on these trails, and even though it was early in the morning, I was sweating in just a pair of spanky shorts and a tank top.

Up ahead, I had made my way up through the group to see that there was one guy who had let a giant gap open up in the trail in front of him. I was annoyed. Why didn't he get the fuck out of the way? Didn't he realize that there were people stuck behind him breathing down his neck? I got ruder and made my way up to him and finally around him. He looked like Gary Sinise on chemo. With Lieutenant Dan behind me, I now had to actually run up the hill. Ow, this hurt.


I came up on another barrel-chested guy who was running shirtless with compression socks and gaters on his legs. This guy's accessory distribution was all wrong. He didn't have so much as a visor or a watch anywhere above the waste, but he was wearing everything that he could cram on below the waist. He had the opposite distribution of body mass, with a giant, boxy torso and spindly chicken legs. It reminded me of something that one of the trainers at work had told me, "You can tell the gay guys who are sick (HIV+) because the steroids that they put them on to fight muscle wasting makes their abs stick out." He didn't look like a Castro muscle queen, but something about this guy's build gave me the heebie jeebies. Actually, I just kind of had the heebie jeebies. My mind was in that place: when you're running all out in the gym and then suddenly someone makes a loud sound with some weights and it explodes in your head so loud you think you're going to fall over.



Finally the singletrack trail opened up onto a wider (steeper) fire road. I was walk/running around people and they were walk/running around me. I came around a guy who had the gaunt body and moribund stride of an ultrarunner that didn't know when to take a rest day. It took me forever to get around him, and he was deep mouth breathing on my shoulder for what felt like an eternity. His mouth was agape and his big cheeks and sunken teeth reminded me of the pictures you see of mummies or mummified hikers that they find in the desert on CSI. I couldn't wait to get around him.

I finally shook off the Cadaver, and a guy came down the hill in the other direction, finished with the "out" portion of the out-and-back and now onto the "back." This was a particularly steep part of the trail, making it hard for even the elite guys (which he must have been to be so far forward in the pack) to look coordinated as they scrambled down the 15-20% grade, but this guy looked even wilder than that. He was wearing a shirt that said "run happy," but something about his gait made him lurch like a toddler just learning to walk. Was I seeing things? A runner behind me encouraged him, "run happy, my brotha'," and Run Happy Guy's response came in and out of my hearing like a wave. "MMMmmmmhuMMMmhuhhhmmmmmMmM." At the time I thought that I was really falling to bits and the fatigue was starting to affect my senses, but it turned out that Run Happy Guy really did have some sort of neurological disorder, and he was still out there running happy and way, way faster than most people. Well how could I possibly feel sorry for myself now?



I got all the way to the top of the mountain without running into Sponsor, and figured that she hadn't come to the race after all, so I turned around and decided I'd take the rest of the course at whatever pace occurred to me. A few minutes down the hill I finally spotted her. "I was in the bathroom line at the beginning!" she yelled to me. "I got a late start."

"Well I'm running at a snail's pace, so you'll probably catch me in a few," I said. I relaxed my pace as much as I could, and even stopped to pee behind a bush, but she never did catch me. Now that I was going back downhill, life was good. I was glad I had legs again (rather than them just being a source of pain and misery), and I bombed down the trail with my arms outstretched like an airplane. Actually, it felt really good to stretch out like that, my chest and triceps were deeply sore I'm guessing from riding on a busted bike for 3 hours.

Unfortunately, the hill ended and it was time to climb up the second hill. This is the shortest hill on the course, made up of grades that I usually find run-able. Not today. I continued my walk-run which looked a bit like "run 5 steps, walk 3" until I reached the top. This downhill wasn't quite so full of life. I could feel the bruised area in my shorts complaining from all the movement going on, and I was also badly chafed between my thighs where the shorts didn't cover. I knew that I was wiped because I could feel my core muscles working on the descent.

By the time I hit the only flat-ish section of the course--a half-mile slight uphill jog on a gravel path to the last hill--even running on this road was tough. It was like I was stuck between miles 16 and 20 of a marathon for 21 kilometers. I wasn't seeing any more ghosts, and I was still passing people on the uphills, but I was falling apart quickly.

The final hill is an endless series of almost 30 switchbacks that climbs about 1000 feet over 1.5 miles. Even though I've run this trail several times, I still never know when I'm getting close to the top. There's tall brush to either side of the trail, and the trail makes its way up the spine of a ridge in such a way that it always looks like the mountain must end after this next bend. Above me, below me, behind me, and in front of me I could hear runners talking about how hilly this course was. Yep, and I run it all the time, suckas! I thought. When you finally reach the top, there's an anticlimactic sweeping turn and down you go.

Normally this is a fun and non-technical downhill that you can take at the speed of gravity, but my legs had had it. I plodded down the hill as fast as my wooden legs could take me. I was uncomfortable deep inside, almost like cramping or when you take a deep breath at the wrong moment and you get a sharp, stabbing cramp in your side. It reminded me of the scene in Running on the Sun when they say that one of the Badwater runners' internal organs have started to chafe from rubbing against each other. I wasn't marathon tired where you feel like you've been beat up from the ground up, I was tired on a far deeper level from the bones out. Maybe I would be back to the endurance level I used to be at someday, but I wasn't there yet.

Finally I hobbled down out of the trail and to the finish line. It was my slowest half marathon ever: about 2:30, with 3764' climbed over that distance. I figured Sponsor was right behind me, so I grabbed fistfuls of corn chips and sugar cookie pieces and settled in to wait. And wait. And wait. What I didn't know was that she was signed up for the 30K, and wouldn't finish for another hour and a half (I finally gave up and left after an hour and 15 minutes).

While I was waiting, I got to watch other people finish. The female winner of the 30K race came flying through the finish line a few minutes after me sporting a t-shirt from a 100-mile race. She was short and muscular, built like a shit brick house just like me with slightly less fat. She had a forward-thrusting energy down to her facial features, even when she was standing still. A couple of heavyset women walked through the finish line wearing cotton t-shirts, Target sneakers, and fashionable sunglasses chanting "slow and steady wins the (9K) race!" Then there was a young couple that I'd seen out on the trail who could have been American Eagle models. She was wearing lime green compression socks, and he was wearing no shirt and a Camelbak which they'd both stopped to take turns sucking on the trail. When they came around the bend to the finish line, they both burst into grins and started sprinting to the finish, elbowing each other and giggling. They were having so much fun, it made me want to be them. For a moment I was a little sad that my girlfriend's knees are too fucked up to ride and her feet are too fucked up to hike these days, but that's a story for another time.

While I was sitting, one of the guys that I'd recognized as one of the front runners struck up a conversation with me. He was one of those hairless skinny straight white guys over 40 that looks like he's made of wax, but he sure was fast. "I saw you out on the course," I said. "I like your Hawaiian shorts!"

"Yeah, I try not to take myself too seriously..." he told me.

After we'd shot the shit for awhile and I was feeling more comfortable, I got up the nerve to ask him something that I'd always wondered. "So when guys like you run a course like this, do you run the whole thing? Like even the steep parts?" I asked.

"Yep, it's not a fast run, but it's a run."

Woooooow. There were quarter-mile sections of this courses that were over 15%. He looked at me, "You look like you could be built for something like this. You've got those short legs, so you can get a fast turnover." Yeah... well... no. "How do you like those compression socks?" he asked. I'd had to roll the compression socks down a couple of inches because they covered my short little legs up past the knees.

"I don't know, to tell the truth," I told him. "I'm wearing them today more to hold me together than out of faith that they actually work."

"Well do your calves knot up really bad after a long run? Do they prevent that?" he asked.

"What? Um, no, I guess I don't get that. I mean I get tired and stuff. Tight. But knots? No."

I went home and took an ice bath, then I took a hot epsom salt bath. With the chafe between my legs and my split... lip... it took a good several minutes to be able to submerge myself in the water and I yelped and whimpered like a hurt animal, but finally I was successful in submerging myself. That night I got a massage from our massage therapist at work. I asked her why my experience with foam rollers and massages hadn't been as painful as other people had described. But when she hit my IT band and I screamed, I felt what all those people were talking about. "I think it's because you never sit still. Your muscles never get a chance to knot up like other people's," she told me. Yeah, well I was a hurt unit. I crawled into bed after my massage and spent every free second I could find the next day asleep.

I think I deserve a recovery week.

Boo-boos

With my confidence flying high after last weekend's 200K, I was looking forward to another flat and fast 125 miles from SF to Point Reyes, which is... north somewhere. A 7:00 start, between 6 and 7 quick hours in the saddle, and I'd be back in SF in time for a late lunch. I found parking near the Golden Gate Bridge at 6:30 and started getting ready. This race hadn't even provided parking suggestions, so I knew better than to hope for a bathroom after last week's fiasco. I took advantage of the fact that the sun wasn't up yet to duck behind a leafy tree and eliminate. Since the urge struck me right at that exact second, I did something I have never done before in my life and... went number 2 without a toilet. I'm sure those of you who have been reading since the days of Claire's No. 1 Rule of Public Pooping: Don't will be amused to know: Does a Claire shit in the woods? Answer: If she needs to.

There was no missing the clot of about 150 riders sitting at the base of the bridge. Registration had been closed when I tried to register on Thursday, but I didn't really care. I went to the guy handing out the brevet cards and said, "I wasn't able to register and I don't really care about the card, but I fully plan to take advantage of any food at rest stops, so why don't I pay the fee anyway?"

He looked confused for a second and said, "Keep your money, you're going to need it."

The reason for his confusion became clear as I made out some of the words that the guy was announcing at the center of the crowd. "...water at check points... only enough for everyone to have one bottle... enough to get you out of the state park... receipt is your signature, so buy something... not gonna be repaved anytime soon... know from personal experience, it hurts!"

I hopped right in with the front group before we had even cleared the bridge, and concentrated on keeping up with the big boys through the endless stop signs of Sausalito and surrounding towns. I knew the first 20 miles or so of road, but soon we were out on the open road and I was in new territory. Contrary to what MapMyRide's all yellow (less than 4% grade) elevation profile had led me to believe, the route was not flat. Instead, there were endless rollers that would climb at a 5-15% grade for about a mile or so, and then come back down, which I suppose would average out to look like a 2% grade over 125 miles. From the ground though, it was draining me dry. My muscles were sore and aching, and despite my best efforts to catch up on my hydration last night and this morning, I felt like I was playing catch-up on my water and food right from the very beginning. I had trained a lot this week, and was feeling it.

Point Reyes National Park was marshland meets cow pasture, with ever-steeper rollers and never-ending cow-catchers at the bottom of each hill. I was really beginning to feel shitty, and when we hit the final climb up to the first checkpoint (a hill that I estimate started at about a 15% grade), I was FRIED. I realized too late that I was already over the red line, and had no lower gear to shift into. I thought for long minutes that at any second I was going to have to get off my bike. At the checkpoint they weren't kidding about the one-bottle policy, and I was starting to get a bit worried about my hydration.

I decided that there was no way I was staying with those guys, and I would rather just pedal along at my own pace until I found someone else to lead me through the route (I had no cue sheet again) rather than try to keep up with the lead group. Eventually a tall Latvian who sounded a bit like Boris and Natasha fell back and we began riding together in our mutual half-bonk to the next checkpoint at mile 85. I was feeling terrible and I was sure that if I didn't get my hands on some salt soon, things were going to get pretty nasty.

The rest stop was an oyster-bar-in-the-rough/convenience store, and there was more of a selection of beers than there was nonalcoholic fluids. There was no Gatorade. I bought an Odwalla, 2 Pepsis (probably the first colas I've had in several years), and a giant jug of water. I planned to slam the juice and sodas, and then fill my bottles with water, but no sooner had I finished the juice and cracked the first Pepsi, when Boris and another guy that we'd picked up in the line for the cash register said, "If we leave in the next minute we can still make it in under 8 hours!" I filled up my bottles and ditched the water jug for the next group of riders and went outside. I started fiddling with the zippers to pull my sleeves off my jacket, and I heard, "Go! Go! Go!" I looked up and Boris and Natasha were already 10 seconds up the road. That's when I did something stupid.

(Word of advice: Never do a Google image search of 'bike crash.') Normally I would have moved my bike up into the street and out of the gutter more, but I threw my leg over my bike where it stood, clipped in with one leg, and pushed off with my free leg. As I began to roll I realized: 1. That I was riding right on the edge of a drainage ditch that dropped off 8" to the side of the road; 2. That I was in too hard a gear to get the pedal all the way around and build up enough speed to be able to maneuver my bike so close to the danger of the ditch; 3. There was one of those sandwich board-style signs right in my path. It said "CRAB" but I thought it said "CARB." That was the last thing I thought before I made that noise that my mother makes when she trips on something and came down on my elbow.

This was my karma for all those times I was unsympathetic to people who couldn't get clipped out in time.

I have no idea what hit what, because a millisecond before I hit the pavement, the nose of my saddle rammed so hard into my hoo-ha that I didn't even feel my elbow hit. Without getting into too much detail, it hit "downtown," right over the pubic bone where your weight sits when you ride. For a second, I sat there on the pavement looking at all my M&M's and gum drops on the pavement around the upturned sign. A group of Team in Training riders rode by and asked if I was okay. I continued to sit. It needed to stop hurting so much before I could move. "I'm... composing myself," I told them so they would leave me alone to my blinding crotch pain.

When I got back on my bike, it was really painful. It was like I had a really bad bruise... if you can bruise on your cho-cho. Later, when I finally did get to take my shorts off, there was blood everywhere, and not for the same reason as last week. Without getting into too much detail, it seems that the pressure caused the skin to just... rupture.

I didn't notice my top tube for another 5 miles. At first it didn't register. I thought, Huh, that's funny. When did I chip more paint off my frame? Other than my painful no-no place, I had already completely forgotten about falling. It didn't even occur to me at first that it could have happened in the crash. Slowly it dawned on my foggy brain, What if it's a crack? Cool, then I'll get a new frame. Wait... but to get a new frame it has to be manufacturer's defect. What if I broke it in the crash? But I was only going half a mile per hour, and I didn't even fall hard enough to get dirt on my elbow. I checked the face of my Garmin, which I knew had hit the ground because it was stopped when I got up. The Garmin wasn't cracked or even scratched. It was too far back on the frame to be from my handlebars. Was it the sign? No, but I hit the sign on the other side, right? I couldn't remember.

Boris and Natasha stopped to exchange electrolyte pills and I checked out my bike. The scratch went all the way down the side of the top tube, and underneath I could see carbon fibers sticking out. "Fuck you guys, I think I cracked my frame."

We inspected it, and after ascertaining that there was no crack in the down tube, Boris produced a roll of duct tape. "Are you serious? Who rides with duct tape?" I asked.

"Duct tape is great for everything, even if you get injured," said Natasha. "I have some too." We reinforced my $3000 frame with some $3 duct tape and I prayed that it would get me the remaining 40 miles home. As we rode, I started to come back from my bonk, but I was despondent. I felt like I was in that turning point in Million Dollar Baby where it goes from being a happy movie to a very, very sad movie. All those rides I'd taken on this bike, and now best case scenario I'd have to give the whole frame back to Specialized to get a new one. Worst case: I was going to have to come up with money for a whole new bike. What would I do without a bike until I could afford one? And all this because these guys couldn't wait 5 extra seconds for me to mount my bike. I was getting grouchy. Really, really, really grouchy.

And I was nervous. We still had the biggest hills and the biggest descents coming up. It hurt to sit, but I didn't want to stand and tax my frame either. I tried to sit up and spin up hills with a light hold on my handlebars to keep from torquing the frame, but on the descents there wasn't much I could do. You put a lot of torque on the frame when cornering, and I kept imagining my bike snapping in half if I hit a pothole on a long, poorly paved downhill.

Coming up the final steep hill out of Sausalito and up to the Golden Gate Bridge again, we came across another rider in a Landry's jersey. Landry's. I know Landry's. Is that in Boston or San Francisco? I couldn't remember for the life of me. "Are you from Boston?" I asked.

"No, but I ride there a lot. I do the Pan Mass Challenge every year. Have you ever done the Pan Mass?" I didn't want to talk to him, I just wanted to know if my brain was working right. "This year my brother's trying to put me up to doing the whole thing, all the way from the New York border. Over 200 miles over 3 days."

I'd been here before. My whole rivalry with Big Red had started over how much more badass the AIDS LifeCycle was than the Pan Mass, and here I was signed up for the LifeCycle again and having the same damned conversation. I had been thinking about how my broken bike must be some cosmic way of telling me not to be so arrogant, but right now I wanted to punch this guy in the forehead. Instead I said, "Alright, have a good day," and dropped him. Or so I thought. It turns out he drafted me the whole way up the hill. Fucker.

I was so irritable at this point that I was sure that I would throw somebody off the bridge if they got in my way, but I made it across with relatively little effort. I eyed the potato chips and pretzels at the end, but I just wanted this day to be over. I went back to my car, parked illegally at a burrito place on the way home so I wouldn't have to walk more than was absolutely necessary, shoved the burrito in my face as I drove (getting cheese and sour cream on the steering whee)l, got home, took a shower, put my legs up the wall, and went to sleep. I still had to run a long way tomorrow.