2015 Rockwell Relay Race Report, Part 7: Symptoms of Sleep Deprivation

06.25.2015 | 12:26 pm

Previously in this Unbelievably Long Story: 

1. Race Prediction: We Will Lose
2. Part 0: Generosity and Bratwurst
3. Part 1: Cold Fury
4. Part 2: A Day in the Life
5. Part 3: Winning When You’re Losing
6. Part 4: The Chase
7. Part 5: Zombies
8. Part 6: Stop Shouting at Me

Two oh eight. Two oh eight. Two oh eight.

I was running the number through my head. I didn’t know what the number meant, but I knew I’d find out soon. After all, I wasn’t that far from the finish of this, leg 9 of the Rockwell Relay. I’d be seeing my team and then I could ask them. If I didn’t figure out what the number meant myself.

Two oh eight. Two oh eight. Two oh two oh eight oh eight. Two oh eight eight oh two oh.

I was making a chant out of it, breathing it in and out with my cadence.

The climb was getting steeper. Really steep, in some places. I was no longer alone, like I had been earlier in the day. I was passing people now. Passing people often. Getting close, going harder.

Smelling the barn. I was about done with this 37-mile, 4000’-of-climbing monster. And then I was going to rest. I was going to drink some plain ol’ water, and I was not going to eat anything until I felt like it. 

Because my part of the race was going to be done. Done yes done! No more cold pizza, and I was going to throw any remaining parts of the Subway Clubs I had bought back in Moab in the trash.

There was a farmer, had a dog, and two oh eight oh two oh.

Hey, wait a second. Is that? Yeah, it is. I’m pretty sure it is. Not positive, but pretty sure.

Mary. And…that guy from that other team she rides with. I can’t remember Ryan’s name at the moment. Which is no disrespect to Ryan. My brain wasn’t working at 100% right now.

After all, I hadn’t been able to figure out that my team had been shouting my gap times at me for twenty minutes, before they had to shoot forward to get ready for the exchange.

Even though I had started seeing Troy’s truck pulled over on the side of the road from time to time, which had made me start wondering whether I was closing the distance between our teams.

Even though, in my previous leg, I had expressly asked to have numbers like this shouted at me as often as possible.

And in fact, even now, as I saw Mary, I didn’t make sense of the numbers. Wouldn’t, in fact, understand them until after the race and after a nap, when I asked The Hammer, “What did those numbers you were shouting at me mean?”

“They were your gap. To Mary. Of course.”

“Ohhh.” I consider for a moment. “Well, that makes sense now.”

Back In It

But the numbers were gone from my head now, anyway, because my whole world had just turned upside down.

I was closing in on the Infinite Teams. We were not in a distant-second position. We were in a within-seconds-of-catching-them position.

We were, in fact, very much in the race.

And suddenly I went from feeling tired and loopy, to feeling nothing but joy and power and ferocity and the love of the chase.

Big ring, second gear. My “bleeding out the ears while standing and climbing” gear. 

I can hold this gear, standing, at tempo, for twenty minutes on a 6% grade, thanks to years and years of single-speeding.

It’s my favorite gear.

It’s my secret weapon.

How to Talk to Cyclists

When I pull alongside Mary this time, I don’t have a clever strategy in mind. We aren’t going fast enough for wind resistance to make much of a difference. Either I’ll be able to ride away from Mary and Ryan…or I won’t. Regardless, I am at my limit now. 

“Hey Mary,” I say.

I would have said “Hey Ryan” too, but I still cannot remember his name.

“There he is,” Mary says. And at that moment I think Mary is absolutely awesome. She’s been expecting me. It’s a gracious acknowledgment. 

I keep pressing, but don’t look back. Not for a minute anyway. And when I do look back, they’re not there.

We’re back. Team SBR-WBR is back in the lead.

And with that realization, I discover that big ring, third gear is a surprisingly good climbing gear, too.

Big Push

Somehow, this mountain had brought a lot of riders together. I had not seen any racers for hours and hours, and now I was passing racers constantly.

Most, I would simply ride by and say “Hi, nice work, keep it up, we’re almost there” or something like that. Usually, to be honest, some small portion of that. 

But one guy…well, it took me a long time to catch him, and for a while I didn’t think I was going to catch him at all. Once I did, I sat on his wheel for a few seconds to compose myself, then pulled ahead. “Let’s work together,” I said. He grunted affirmatively.

I pulled for thirty seconds or so, then swung back. He moved to the front, but said as he did, “I can’t hold this.”

“Please,” I said. I’m pretty sure he could hear the desperation there. “My team is fighting tooth-and-nail for the Coed lead. I just got it back and need to build on it.”

“I’ll pull you to the bottom of that next big pitch,” he said.

And pull me he did. He ramped it up so hard. Completely demolished himself pulling me, giving me the first rest I’d had this leg…and the first pull I’d had since about two-thirds of the way through my first leg.

It was heroic, what this guy — a complete stranger — did. 

Then, as I swung around to take my turn, he put his hand on my back, giving me a free ride for three hard pedal strokes, and then a massive push forward.

Having someone work for me, even for one minute, was awesome. It made a huge difference.

The Race is On

I pulled into the exchange area one second before 8:15 in the morning. I was looking for The Hammer, of course, but I also took a moment to look for members of the Infinite teams, wanting to see their expression when they saw they were chasing us again. 

Surprise! 

Or maybe it wasn’t a surprise to them. Maybe me stumbling into the lead was only a surprise to me.

In any case, I sent The Hammer off with our traditional “I love you,” and then immediately started watching for Mary.

I didn’t have to wait long. Less than three minutes later, Mary and Ryan crossed the exchange and Marci and Billy took off, in the now-familiar role of working together to chase down The Hammer.

I didn’t grasp, however, how this had happened. How had we been out of the running, and then suddenly gotten back into it?

Well, I still don’t know the particulars of how the Infinite teams’ night went, but I can now at least look up the splits (something I couldn’t do during the race, due to lack of any kind of data connection). Basically, Marci and Billy had built a nine minute lead during the Boulder leg, which Troy and Big D had extended to a 27-minute lead by the end of the Henrieville leg.

That had been enough that we had stopped worrying about whether it was possible for us to regain our lead.

Our mistake was in forgetting that anything can happen in a race.

Because Lynette had chopped that gap in half, launching me to a place where I could bridge that other chunk of time. 

We were in the game, and didn’t even know it. If I had realized we were just fourteen minutes behind the Infinite teams when I started, I’m pretty sure I could have found it within me to come close to matching my best time on this leg. Which is…wait for it…2:08. 

Had I done that, the outcome of the following legs…and the whole race…would surely have changed.

Wishes, fishes.

I drank some water. I ate nothing. I was so happy. Happy with what I had accomplished, and even happier that my part in this race was over.

But our team’s race…wellllll, that was back on.

Ebullience

We loaded up the van as quickly as possible and got on the road. Not because we needed to support The Hammer (it was a cool part of the day and she had everything she’d need for the whole ride already on board). 

We just wanted to see how this race developed. Because here we were, in the tenth of twelve legs of the race, with less than three minutes separating our team from our rivals.

We couldn’t have devised a closer, more evenly-matched race.

We caught up to The Hammer, who had been having a wonderful time. See, for the time being, we were on the same route as a Ragnar-style running race, which meant The Hammer got to cheer them on, even as they cheered back at her. The positive energy fed back in a great cycle. For the entire leg of this race, The Hammer never stopped smiling and laughing. 

As we drove by, she gave us the #1 sign:

But something was off. Because she had someone on her wheel:

Yep, Billy — the Infinite racer who’d been riding with Marci — was drafting The Hammer.

And yes, both were laughing.

Marci was on up ahead, but not far, and before too long, The Hammer and Billy had caught up. 

“I’ve brought your domestique up to you; my job is done,” The Hammer said, earning several thousand irony points.

Lynette cheers on The Hammer, Marci, and Billy. In the background is Marci’s car, including the crunched front-left fender.

And then she started laughing. And laughing and laughing and laughing. A haven’t-slept-for-even-a-second-in-26-hours kind of laughing.

With the majority of the climbing in this leg behind them, attacks didn’t make sense. The three of them stayed together until just before the 18-mile descent into Cedar City.

“You’ve worked so hard to catch me, and now you’re just going to kill me on the descent. I’m no good at descending,” The Hammer said.

It was Marci’s turn to laugh. “No, I’m terrible at descending too!”

The Hammer’s teammates wouldn’t get to find out how or whether that all worked out yet, though, because we had to shoot forward and get Cory ready for his final race leg. 

Return of the Son of Comfy Slippers

There wouldn’t be much time for us to get Cory ready for his leg; The Hammer would be coming down the mountain almost as fast as we were.

The exchange point wasn’t where we expected it; it had been moved from previous years. So we followed the marked turns — including crossing past a closed road where a parade would shortly be passing through. “I wonder how riders who come through during the parade will handle this,” I thought, idly.

We squint at signs guiding us to the exchange point; I am very glad I just got new glasses. That I, in fact, made a point of getting new glasses with an updated prescription specifically before this race.

Yes, really.

We park and Cory gets out and gets his bike out. He’s already dressed, so we make our way to the exchange point.

Then Cory needs to pee. Sure, there’s time for that. He takes care of that, then comes back.

And discovers he has forgotten to bring water bottles. He goes back to the van and gets some.

Then he discovers he has forgotten his helmet. He goes back to the van and gets it, then returns to the timing mat.

“I guess I’d better change into my bike shoes,” Cory says.

I look down. It’s true: Cory is wearing his comfy slippers, not his bike shoes. 

And as Cory takes off the first slipper…you guessed it, The Hammer rounds the corner. She’s ten seconds from the exchange point

“Change your shoes fast, she’s here!” I’m laughing at the absurdity that both our exchange delays included comfy slippers as a factor.

Close Call

The exchange point itself is in a parking lot, not in the road, and it had occurred to me that it wouldn’t be particularly obvious to a racer where the timing mat is.

So when I see The Hammer, I begin yelling her name and waving my arms.

And in a way, that’s a good thing, because I catch The Hammer’s eye and she makes a right turn into the parking lot.

But in a way, it’s a bad thing, because The Hammer didn’t realize that Marci was less than a bike length behind her, on her right, and hadn’t yet noticed that she’d need to turn right to get to the timing mat.

Which is to say, The Hammer turned right, right in front of Marci.

I gasped. Cory gasped. Probably everyone in the parking lot gasped.

Marci grabbed her brakes, corrected, and didn’t go down. 

Marci, The Hammer, and Billy all crossed the finish line within a couple seconds of each other. At which point Marci and The Hammer both started apologizing profusely to each other. The Hammer apologizing for not knowing Marci was right there and turning in front of her. Marci apologizing for not knowing she needed to turn right and going straight.

Both of them being very cool about it, and everyone being glad that nobody had hit the deck.

I got a picture of the three of them, all happy, all having raced their hearts out.

What Happened

We were 435 miles into this 520-mile race…and the two leading Coed teams were exactly tied as Cory finished putting on his shoes and chasing Troy and Big D down.

Lynette and I wanted to know what happened after we had left The Hammer. Had the three of them stayed together?

“No,” The Hammer said. “I faded in one of the last climbs before the big descent, and I descended the first part on my own. But now that I’ve had my Roubaix for a year, I feel a lot more confident on it than I did last year, and I was descending really well.”

“With about five miles left in the descent,” she continued, “I caught Marci. Billy had gone down on his own. I tried to get past her, but she’d just get into my slipstream, so she and I descended together and Billy rejoined us at the bottom.”

“Then, once we got into town, I told Marci to go up front, because with my terrible eyesight, I was having a hard time reading the Rockwell signs until I was right on them. And Marci said she has really bad eyes too!”

It makes sense, really: two of the strongest women on the course, winding up at the exact same point at the exact same time during the race…and both of them needing guide dogs to get them there. 

Not Over. Not Remotely.

One little detail here. As The Hammer told Lynette and me her story, she giggled and laughed the entire time. She didn’t know what was funny; she was just happy. Exhilerated. And, I might add, seriously giddy from sleep deprivation.

“Congratulations!” I told her. “Your part of the race is over now, too! From here, it’s all up to Cory and Lynette.”

Two legs left. Both of them mostly flat or downhill — terrain that definitely favors pairs of riders, not soloists. And this current leg was a particular problem: mostly flat with short punchy climbs.  

A powerful rider like Big D would have a huge advantage in this segment; Troy would just get sucked along in his wake, mostly coasting and feathering his brakes while he made a sandwich and enjoyed the sites.

But we had learned our lesson: we weren’t counting the race over until it was over. 

We hopped in the van to see how Cory was doing so far in the race. Which is where we’ll pick up in the next installment of this story. 

PS: I’ll try to write the next installment Friday afternoon as The Hammer drives us to The Cedar City Fire Road 100. Which means I may put up a post Friday evening if I finish as we drive out, or Saturday evening, if I finish as we drive back.

PPS: Regardless of when I finish and post my next installment, the one after that will likely not come out ’til Tuesday, cuz it’s going to require some work and I have other stuff piling up.