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| Pre-Surgery, just trying to have fun with it :) |
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| Pre-Surgery |
In
late January I had injured my left ring finger at a training camp in Tucson
leading to surgery that had been scheduled for February 3rd that
included having a pin to hold the bone together and a wire to reattach the
tendon. The exercise prescription immediately following the surgery was four
days of no sweating as per the surgeon’s orders. This followed a few phone
conversations with my coach, TJ Woodruff to help me make the most out of five
weeks on the trainer with a lot of threshold work and some supplemental
strength work to keep my fitness in check for when I did get back to riding
bikes. Fun bit of info that I learned, it is possible to flat on the trainer. The first five weeks after surgery, physical therapy followed for the next two
months which was supposed to go until June 3rd but this was the
point where I could at least get off the trainer and start riding on the open
road again except had to be done with a cast-like splint on my arm called a dorsal block, it could not have come sooner though, the stoke factor was unbelievable
even if I did have to take the first five minutes of the ride to learn how to
ride a bike again! TJ labeled the ride “Freedom ride!” and that was exactly
how it felt, sheer enjoyment! Fast forwarding to early April, my PT told me
that my finger as doing really well and almost back to normal function and only
needed to see me one more time for a re-evaluation and discharge. He then gave
me a full recovery date of May 3rd. This left me with a decision to
race or not race the Whiskey Off-Road being only one week away from that “full
recovery” date and I had made the decision to make Whiskey the first one back. For more detailed info on the injury: http://www.orthobullets.com/hand/6015/jersey-finger (mine was Type IV)
The
week prior to Whiskey, I had given TJ the word and he put some time together to
pre-ride the 25 mile course one day and the infamous Skull Valley climb the
next. He had given me a lot of pointers that I admittedly can’t remember but
the two that stuck with me were “don’t go far above threshold if at all during
the race” (given the length of the race) and for Skull Valley, “don’t write
checks at the base that your body can’t cash at the top”. These two pieces of
advice stuck in my mind the whole next week heading into the race. The day
before the race, we headed up to our cabin in the Thumb Butte area, unpacked
and relaxed a little. I had a short ride to knock out to finish opening up my
legs for race day so I went out and did the start climb to a shortcut that took
it right to the final descent. After I knocked out the ride, I felt ready to
race. There were a lot of rumors running around of cold temps, wind, snow and
rain for race day; sounded like some epic conditions to me, more stoke. TJ,
coming from Wisconsin knows all about racing in the cold and had given me some
winter pro tips to beat the cold during the race; one of these included putting
a thin layer of Vaseline on my body to lock in the heat in which proved to help greatly.
Race
day. I woke up at 5 to have breakfast done by 5:30 with a start time at 7:30.
My mom had made a comment that it was snowing just a little outside and that it
was really cold, as expected. I put on all the layers I had, this included knee
warmers, bibs, a long sleeve baselayer, a jacket, and a vest of course all on my
Vaseline laden body, almost ready to rock. I was still a little cold when I
stepped outside. I met up with TJ at Whiskey Row where the race was about to
start and he was very much my saving grace, he had lent me a pair of baggie
shorts and a skull cap to keep warm. I filled up my bottles with Clif Shot
electrolyte drink mix and put some Clif shot gels in the pockets in my vest. It
was pouring rain at this point and it was starting to look worse. I made my way to
start line shivering, but ready. I had a good spot, second row out of the
perhaps 700-900 racers there were.
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| Pre-race, on the line getting ready for whatever Prescott can throw at me |
Upon
the start we had rolled out at a decent pace, nothing too hard, conversational
pace for sure. It then started to amp up a little more, I wanted to stay at the
front but I didn’t want to blow myself up, of course I didn’t take TJ’s advice
at all and like and idiot, I found myself pushing into threshold before we even hit the dirt and I
paid for it later on. I saw one of my good friends and one of my first friends
in the cycling community, Adam Humphrey pass me on one of the first parts of
the singletrack and saw him toward the front for a good amount of the race.
Once settling down into a pace, I found myself riding with another friend of
mine and teammate of Adam’s, Wes Rasmussen. Wes and I went on to spend right
around half of the race together. Shortly after hitting the first climb, maybe
30 minutes into the race, rain turned to snow and the wind picked up
considerably, snow then turned to all out blizzard and was relentless. Snow in every direction and
this didn’t settle down until we had reached the turn-off to descend into Skull
Valley. Wes and I had stayed together for the most part until the last bit of
the Skull Valley descent where he had dropped me, never to be seen again.
Descending into Skull Valley I was able to count off how far back I was, I lost
count after a while but figured I was sitting somewhere in the top 20. As I was
climbing out of Skull Valley, I started falling backwards, thinking these guys
were going all out and that I would catch them toward the top. Rain turned to
sleet and shortly after, I came up on one of my good friends Nick Skaggs. I
knew Nick was fast and that he would be good to stick with for a while. As it
turned out, Nick and I had stuck together for almost the rest of the race.
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| Nick and I talking it up on the line pre-race about how rad it will be to race in the snow |
Toward
the top of the climb, I knew it was coming time to make a move to be the first
one to the singletrack so I turned it up and gassed myself out toward the top
and was the first one to the final descent. I made it almost to the last bit of
climbing on the course to a short bit called cramp hill when my mud gummed
drivetrain jammed up on me. I guess it had decided to clock out early for the
day. I took a few minutes to rip the chain out and get it rolling decently again while I watched Nick and another guy go by. I plugged along and made it
up cramp hill and on the very last bit of descending back into town I cramped
up, oddly reminding me of a muscles test I took days prior. Fun stuff! No matter, I
pedaled through it hoping the cramping would stop soon which it did, still in the raging
wind, the sleet had stopped coming down at some point and I finally made it to
the road and pulled it back into town. I came up to one of the last bits of
road in town just before the finish and then made the descent back down. At
last, the sloggy, muddy, snowy, rainy, blizzard of a race had come to an end on Whiskey Row with an epic story to tell for the ages. Not to mention that I was now part of THE 2014 Whiskey 50, not to be forgotten.
Afterward, a quick photoshoot with TJ and Cyclingdirt followed the epic spectacle of a bike race. Considering the conditions, everything
had held up pretty nicely, the Trek Superfly held up well and rode super rad as always, my new Rise 60 race wheels from Sram were perfect and stayed on point the whole time, even in the sloggy
descents.
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| Post race shot w/ TJ and Cyclingdirt |
There
can’t be enough thanks to go out to my coach, TJ Woodruff of Momentum Endurance
for keeping my fitness in check through the injury, helping me out on race day
and always making sure I’m headed in the right direction. Also a big thanks to
my parents for always supporting me in my races and helping me out whenever
needed.
One
last thanks to all my sponsors who make the magic happen behind the scenes:
And to you guys who read the whole thing!! Wow, that was a long one... :)
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