Bike: The 24 Hours of Landahl

Dispatch from Team Forbidden Donut
(additional posts and pictures at yourmtb.com)

I’m out on my first lap, second in the team rotation. The treacherous rock outcrops and escarpments I feared so much from last year were behind me and didn’t seem as bad as I remembered (at least, with fresh legs and plenty of sleep; that would change). Now I am in the heart of the sweetly twisting singletrack—buff, beautiful and at times reminiscent of a slalom run. Carving sinuous s-turns betwixt trees in the dappled afternoon light is an unexpectedly beautiful experience amidst the brutality of a 24-hour event. If you weren’t there, you were missing out. As one great philosopher of our age so eloquently noted: “I pity the fool.”

Indeed.

Spurred on by clanging cowbells, I came into the start/finish too hot and nearly bit it within sight of the timers’ table. Yay me. Still, I’d shaved a minute off my best time. Which, honestly, is about ten minutes worse than most people’s worst times. Ah well.

I trundle off to camp, looking forward to the burrito that awaits me. And the sandwich. The two sodas. Handful of muffins. Chocolate milk. Hey, we’re the sole representatives of the Clydesdale division; there’s a reputation to uphold!

Sedated by the exertion, the copious amounts of ‘refueling,’ or perhaps the satisfying combination of both, I’m in a bit of a stupor. There is a box of donuts in our camp labeled, in scrawled black lettering: FORBIDDEN. Jeff, our lead-off rider, has tied one to the end of a stick as incentive for our upcoming night laps. Tragically (for the donut and would be suitors), he leaves it unattended and Mandy, that camp dog, eats it because, well, a) she’s a dog and b) she can’t read (They’re FORBIDDEN, Mandy! It says so right on the box!). Alas.

The sun wanes and Steph lights the tiki torches as we begin preparing for our double night laps. We’ve decided to double up so that everyone can get some extended shuteye. By the time Jeff gets in from his laps, it is fully dark. I take the baton and head off, my lights cutting a rideable swath through the void. On the bike, I feel surprisingly good though, as I’ll find out later, this won’t last. As I throw the bike around in the first couple of miles, however, I am constantly reminded that if ever there were a course suited to the 29er, this is it. Every little ledge, root, and gap seems just big enough to stop an inattentive 26-inch wheel cold, but just small enough to allow a 29er to roll right over it. Yes, I find I have wheel envy.

As if to prove a point, the trail at Landahl doles out its first (but not last) bit of punishment for me. I take an uphill switchback too shallow and run right into a low rock outcropping. I’m unseated, pitching forward, and catch the top of the steerer tube hard in the pubic bone. A blessed inch to the right from singing falsetto, I’ll carry a painful bruise for a week.

I regroup and remount, riding uneventfully for the remainder of the lap. A glance to my left reveals the midnight blue of the open sky low beneath the inky black of the trees; I’m happily just about at the fields. Here I’m caught by smiling Dwayne Goscinski, a former teammate who’s going solo for his first 24-hour race, and we ride along chatting for a while. He’s upbeat and looking forward to passing 100 miles in the next lap. I’d probably be crushed doing half that, but he’s doing great and I lose his wheel once we hit some of the rocky parts at the Family Trail. I roll through camp and swap out my headlight battery for another (they’re both about 7 years old) and head out for another.

Please, sir. I want some more.

Here’s where the wheels came off. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Not far out of the start/finish, I edge over to the side of the trail to let a faster rider through. I over-correct and come back into the trail too soon, grazing the rear wheel of the rider, who turns out to be eventual solo winner, Josh Tostado. I’ll find I get passed on the course a lot by Josh. Hey, there’s the switchback where I got passed by Josh Tostado. There’s the short climb where I got caught by Josh Tostado. Look, the field where I got passed by Josh Tostado. I think he might be fast or something.

Once I hit the rocky sections, I found I didn’t have the extra energy to pop my small-wheeled bike up and over stuff. I walked. A bunch. Back on the smooth stuff, it seemed like the steam just went out of my legs somehow. I spun and had gel and tried to recover.

“At least I’ve got two lights,” I thought to myself. “That’s comforting, both for the extra brightness and that it makes if feel not so isolated out here.”

That’s about when my handlebar mount flickered and went dark. Damn.

I should pause here to note that I had only about a week’s notice that I’d be riding this race. Not a lot of time for training. I run and do an hour-long spinning class once a week, but I hadn’t been out on the dirt in nearly two months, and I certainly hadn’t been doing endurance training. In hindsight, that’s probably not the best preparation for an all-day endurance event. Hmm.

Oh, and I’d only gotten about four hours of sleep the night before. Doh!

And so went my third lap. It went on interminably. My handling skills—what little I had to begin with—left me entirely. I had trouble controlling the bike. Even keeping it on the trail was difficult. I actually crashed in an open field, felled by a smooth little rut in the trail. Finally, I was near the end of the course: just a downhill and a left and I’d soon be in the camps and then the wondrous, beautiful finish line. I shot down the hill with visions of a hot shower in my head, hooked the next left, summoned what reserves I had and motored. And motored. And … slowly realized I was lost. This trail looked a little overgrown to have been hosting a race for the past 13 hours. I stopped, looked around, and saw only dozens of glowing eyes staring back at me. I had stopped in the middle of a herd of deer, all looking at me quizzically (though later I will recount to teammates that they had the look of vengeance in their bloodshot eyes). Crap. This is SO not the course. I’m lost.

I turn around and force myself to pedal back up the trail, cursing myself for pushing so hard earlier, now that I have to reclaim it all back, uphill. I find the right trail and hit the finish line more than a little dazed. I hand the baton to Scott and stumble back to camp.

After two burritos, Vitamin I, and a gloriously long, hot shower, I curled into my sleeping bag atop an air mattress and looked through the screened top of the tent at the twinkling stars. Tired, fed, clean, warm, stars. What a wonderful way to fall asleep.

I awoke several hours later as the sky was just beginning to turn from deepest blue. The stars were still visible and I spotted Orion. I think he was looking down and laughing at me.

I poked my head out of the tent to get my bearings and figure out where we were in the rotation. That’s when Twister rolled in to camp for our expert team, The Shortbus Mafia. Twist had awful open blisters on his hands and couldn’t hold a bar anymore. Later in the day, he would tape up and go out for one more painful lap.

Personally, I was dreading going back out for another lap and contemplated pulling the EJECT button. My butt hurt and I just felt beaten from the previous lap (spinning classes and running just do not prepare a body for certain things). I caught some more sleep while Rick was out on course and woke in a slightly better disposition.

I suited up with two pairs of shorts for my final lap. Steph was kind enough to affix a stick with another donut on it to my helmet and off I went, chasing the mystical forbidden donut onto the trail. It’s amazing what a transformation takes place between that awful, lonely time in the darkness and the light of a new day. Sure, I hurt. Sitting on the saddle was torture and I even augured in at one point due to some unseen trail voodoo. But the course was bright and beautiful again. I was even able to keep a good humor during the mother-of-all flat changes (my thanks to the rider from The Pushers for loaning me a pump). In the end, I’m so glad I went back out for a final lap, in the bright light of day…chasing a donut.

I’d really like to thank Steph for making camp life bearable; Scott, Jeff and Rick, my brilliant teammates, for letting me ride with them; Scott Nelson for setting me up with a spare light; and my loving wife for letting me play in the dirt for the weekend.

Mmmm….forbidden donut…