Crusher in the Tushar Race Report, Part 3 – Plus Bonus Crusher Podcast

01.5.2016 | 7:12 am

A Topically-Relevant New Podcast Note from Fatty: Is it a coincidence that I’m continuing my long-overdue race report about the 2015 Crusher in the Tushar today…on the very selfsame day  I’m promoting my FattyCast interview with Burke Swindlehurst?

Is it furthermore possible that I’m continuing a race report and promoting a podcast just a day before registration opens for the 2016 Crusher in the Tushar?

Possibly. You’ll never know for sure.

Regardless, Burke Swindlehurst — the mad genius behind this incredible race — is an extraordinarily good guy. He puts this race on for the right reasons. Talking with him for an hour — was a pleasure. This has been one of my favorite FattyCast conversations yet. 

Here’s my episode description: 

I go to a lot of races, and I like most of them. But I can’t help but wonder: what it is that makes me love a very select few events — the ones that compel me to come back year after year? I don’t know, but former pro Burke Swindlehurst seems to have gallons of that secret sauce on hand. Like just about everyone I talk to, I’ve got Burke’s half-road, half-dirt race stuck in my head. We talk about the how and the why of this unusual event, as well as why Burke has no plans to follow up the success of this race with another.

Find it on iTunes, Stitcher, FattyCast.com, get the RSS feed, or listen / download it below:

An “OK, Where Were We?” Note from Fatty

I love writing race reports. I get a chance to take this incredibly intense experience — sometimes intense in a good way, sometimes in a bad way, but always intense — and make sense of it. Find the story — including heroes, villains, and dramatic tension — in it.

And in many ways, I get to relive the event. Often, as I write, I’ll be surprised to recall an instant or image that hasn’t crossed my mind since I crossed the finish line.

And so it’s no surprise, I suppose, that during the summer, my blog has tilted very heavily toward race reports.

Some very long race reports.

Meanwhile, my summer filled up with races. To the extent, in fact, that I got behind on some of these race reports. Including, I’m sad to say, on my Crusher in the Tushar report…in which I got two installments into the thing (here’s part 1 and here’s part 2), and then got sidetracked.

The problem is, once you lose momentum on a story, it can be very hard to get that momentum back. At first, you say to yourself, “Hey, I’ve already let it go for a couple days and I’ve got this other thing I need to talk about, so it can wait another day.”

And then you start saying, “Well it’s been a couple weeks now and by now, nobody even remembers that I wrote a story about it.

In spite of the fact that at least a few people are being very clear that they haven’t forgotten about it:

And then, eventually, you say to yourself, “I’m not sure I remember the details of the race well enough to tell the story any longer.”

But then, last night, I couldn’t sleep. I just laid there in bed, sleepless. And during this sleepless two hours, I re-told myself the story of my 2015 Crusher in the Tushar.  A wonderful seventy miles, with 10,000 feet of climbing.

And while I don’t perhaps remember every detail of the day, I definitely remember enough of the day to finish the story.

So let’s do this. Part three… of a race report I began last July.

How’s that for a cliffhanger?

2015 Crusher in the Tushar Race Report, Part 3

I had finished the first big 4000-foot climb, and I dropped Ben. Which was too bad. Or maybe it was on purpose. I’m not sure. 

Okay, let’s just agree that my feelings regarding catching, pulling, and then dropping Ben on this big climb were…complicated. Here’s why:

1. Ben is my niece’s husband. So we’re family. So I want him to succeed.
2. Ben is young. So I want to beat him.
3. Ben is a genuinely nice guy. So I want him to succeed.
4. Ben is tall, thin, good-looking, and has a full head of hair. So I want to beat him.
5. Ben has never shown any indication that he’s interested in beating me. So I shouldn’t care about beating him.
6. Ben is likely to get faster as I get slower. So I want to beat him. 

And in the final analysis, I really want Ben to do really well in every race he does.

A picture of Lindsey and Ben at the summit of the Nebo loop during a training ride in Summer 2015.

Just so long as I do a tiny bit better.

Highway to the Danger Zone

My Ben-less status was beside the point, really, because as soon as you hit the top of the first big climb in the Crusher, you have a crazy-steep descent down the other side.

And I wasn’t going to go down that descent at any speed other than the speed I felt safe at. Because that descent down what is affectionately known as the “Col du Crush” is scary.

No, it’s not a treacherous and narrow strip of rocky, rooty singletrack. It is, in fact, a wide gravel road, with fairly gentle bends.

But it is so steep. And it is so loose. And (in places) it is so washboarded. It’s everything you can do to just keep the bike under control as you bomb down this 7 – 11% grade downhill for about seven miles.

 

A lot of people passed me during the descent; I have no recollection of passing even a single person. And that was just fine with me.

Of the entire race — all seventy miles of it — there is only one section that scares me, one section I look forward to having behind me: the Col du Crush descent. Maybe that’s because every year, coming down this road, I have seen at least one person who has gone down. And high-speed gravel crashes, while generally not fatal, are pretty nasty-looking.

This year was no different. On the side of the road, there was a guy, thickly surrounded by many more racers who had stopped to help. I felt caught between feeling awful for the injured rider and grateful that so many people instantly suspended their own race to help out someone they probably don’t know.

Not being seriously trained in first aid, I decided to keep going and be the guy to yell to volunteers that someone was hurt.

“We know,” the volunteers shouted back, and sure enough, by the time I got to the pavement — where I could relax and breathe again — an ambulance was on its way up.

Looking at my Strava record of this section, I’m frankly astonished I hit 42mph of this section. (I’m going to guess it was on the paved section of the descent, toward the end.)

Wherein I Make a Smart Decision for the First Time Ever

Here, take a look at the elevation profile for the Crusher: 

There’s something very interesting about that profile: once you do that one big descent down the Col du Crush (around mile 35), you’re more-or-less done with any serious descents for the day.

Which is one of the reasons I love this race. Lots and lots of climbing, and only one descent of any consequence.

Mixed in with all that, however, is one fairly long — fourteenish miles — downhill-then-flat paved section, where having a group to work with can make all the difference in the world.

The difference between fast and slow. The difference between getting back to the climbing fresh or beat. The difference between smart and dumb.

Of course, I hit that section all alone. It was inevitable. I climb much faster than most people, so I’m way ahead of folks who descend at my speed. And then people who are fast climbers and descenders leave me behind during the Col du Crush descent.

So, like I said: all alone to battle my way through the wind for fourteen miles, never getting a break, and arriving at the climbing section completely smoked.

Or…I could sit up. Coast and recover. Drink a bunch. Eat a bunch. And then grab on to the first train that came by.

My instincts yelled at me to go. Go go go. You don’t rest during a race. 

I told my instincts to shut up. I pedaled easy. I coasted. I ate. I drank. I recovered. I kept looking over my shoulder.

And within a minute, a train appeared behind me. By the time they caught me, I was back up to speed and yelled, “Mind if I join you?”

“Hop on, Fatty!” someone yelled. 

I looked back to see who it was.

Ben. Of course. I laughed. I was halfway through the race and had — without trying — wound up in the same train as my nephew-in-law. I was no longer conflicted about riding with him; I was stoked. We were fated to race this thing together. 

“Let’s kill this thing,” I said.

Express Train

I (and I think a lot of people) owe a debt of gratitude to Adam Lisonbee for getting me interested in the Crusher in the Tushar in the first place. It was his story that piqued my interest in the event.

That said, I used to be kind of skeptical of it. There’s no technical riding, just a mix of dirt roads and pavement.

But you know what? The pavement in this race — especially the 14mi Piute Valley Pavement section — is hugely strategic. If you handle it right, you can get through it without having worked too hard, and much faster than you would be able to do it yourself.

And I handled this section pretty darned well.

As the train caught me, I dropped to the back, perfectly happy to get pulled for a minute, with the expectation that I would do my fair share of pulling.

But the guy in front…well, he seemed to be under the impression that this locomotive had only one engine, and he was it. So he pulled, and he pulled, and he pulled. Never floating to the side and dropping back, never gesturing to anyone to come forward.

And so the rest of the group — four or five of us — let him pull. Hey, who were we to say otherwise?

Until, of course, he started to sag.

Even then, though, he didn’t pull off. He kept going. But pulling slower and slower was not OK. I moved forward, yelled at the guy that he was awesome and needed to drop back and catch his breath; I’d take a turn now. 

He dropped back, looking — it seemed to me, anyway — grateful. Maybe he didn’t realize you don’t have to keep pulling ’til you’re exhausted?

I, on the other hand, pulled for fifteen seconds, yelling as I drifted off to keep the pulls short.

The next guy did a nice, short, fast pull. Then Ben did, then the next guy did, and the next, and then back to the original leader. By then he had learned his lesson and he kept it short.

And we were flying. 

Before long, we had caught another train, creating a group of more than ten people. And then a train caught us, forming a megatrain. 

From that point forward, I don’t think I ever had to pull for more than ten seconds, then rest and just get sucked along for the next two minutes or more.

The miles flew by so much faster than I’ve ever done this paved section before. Twelve minutes faster than I did this same section on my singlespeed back in 2013, at an average speed of 22.5mph. Riding a mountain bike.

And now we had reached the aid station right before the five-mile jeep road section. I grabbed a bottle of water handed up to me by a fantastic volunteer and kept going (total number of times I put a foot down and stopped during this race: 0).

I looked behind me to tell Ben that drafting wouldn’t matter anymore. We were back to mountain biking.

But I couldn’t see Ben anywhere.

Which seems like a good place to pick up this story in the next installment (which I will not take months to write, I promise).