Read this commentary from Adam Myerson: Pretty Boy Floyd

Well, today has been “interesting.” I won’t say “bad,” because, well, I’ve had much, much worse days than today, but it hasn’t been all roses, either.

First, on the way here, we decided to try the GPS’s suggestion of using highway 50 to cut off a chunk of I-40/65 to and from Nashville. Problem was, part of 50 was closed due to flood damage, so we ended up detouring through some crazy back roads. We saw some wild flood/wind damage out there, as well as some places where mudslides had, at one point, been covering the road.

Once we got to Cotton Mill Preserve, we set up camp, had a snack, and pucked up our registration packets. Somewhere in the midst of all that, Ryan lost his spare key to my car. I’m not worried- it’ll turn up, but he’s been freaking out about it for a solid 7 hours now.

The pre-ride wasn’t exactly wonderful, either. First, I had a mishap with some rocks on a slightly technical section that I’d hit pretty well at CrudeXC a few weeks ago. I managed to fall over into a patch of poison ivy with my right leg pinned between my handlebars and my top tube. It hurt. Bad. I’m sitting here with ice on the inside of my right quad while I type. Then Ryan’s shifting started effing up. I thought I’d done a good job at re-cabling it and whatnot, but apparently not. We still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with it. A new chain & some barrel adjuster tweaking hasn’t improved anything.

After we rode & worked on the bike, we headed over to the vendor area for dinner. However, the pasta dinner people were packing up to go home. So, we went to a sandwich booth. I asked if they had anything vegetarian, and the guy told me no- all they had was lettuce because their good tomato shipment hadn’t come in yet, so he can’t make a vegetarian sandwich.

WTF? Seriously? So a vegetarian sandwich is apparently just lettuce and tomato.

So we went & ate Mexican food. That’s about it. Ryan is grouchy and I am tired.My ice pack just leaked on my sleeping bag.

I just came here to race.

Please?

This weekend is not only my birthday (15th!), but also my 2nd try at the Dirt, Sweat, and Gears 12 hour. Last year, things went horribly wrong when rain at the start turned the course into a disaster area of dense, sticking mud. You couldn’t roll a bike on the ground because it would immediately clog so horribly that the wheels couldn’t turn.I resorted to carrying Ryan’s road bike for 3 miles in order to get in my whole 2 laps.

The current prediction for Saturday’s weather is a 40% chance of storms. So, I’ve got a contingency plan- if it rains, I keep riding the MTB until the mud starts to stick. When that happens, get to the pit and swap out for my CX bike. Being lighter and less cumbersome to shoulder, it will be easier if the course is reduced to hiking as it was last year. I even threw a skinny (27c!) grass tire on the rear for mud clearance, so it should be able to roll if I need it to.

The weekend was full of random oddities that made it memorable (other than riding for 100 miles). I made sure to highlight them in case you’re not up for reading the entire story.

I left Memphis later than desired on Thursday, so I ended up crashing on Kim F’s futon in Chattanooga that night instead of at Thunder Rock campground as I’d originally planned. Good move, though, because finding/setting up camp in the dark kinda sucks.

Friday morning, I headed out to the campground.

On the way out, I stopped by Panera for some coffee. There was an old, fat guy in a sweatsuit and cowboy hat smoking on the patio near where I parked. When I got out of the car, he watched me intently as I locked my bike up, then as I went inside, he made a comment about how my hair had something of a European look to it. When I came back out, he told me a philosophical verse in Spanish that he’d thought up. I can’t remember his translation, but it made me smile.

When I got to the campground, I found a nice spot to set up, then decided to head back in to Cleveland to go to the bike shop (it’d been too early when I’d passed through before) to get a fender for my bike. I figured it might be an insurance policy against rain (spoiler alert… FAIL).

When I arrived back at camp, I met up with Todd H (my best Arkansas buddy), who had set up at the campsite next to me. He’d done the race a couple of times before, so he helped me figure out where to pre-ride that afternoon. While I was out, I came around the corner and saw a guy standing next to the trail with a camera as if he were waiting on someone to photograph. Thing was, I hadn’t passed anyone for a while… I think it might have been Harlan Price (pro from Independent Fabrications), though I was moving kinda fast & didn’t get a good look, so I could be wrong. I asked him if he were going to take my photo as I zipped by.

Even though the trails were really easy compared to the stuff I’m used to in Arkansas, pre-riding was a good idea since the final bit of trail was a screaming decent (including a couple of tricky corners) off of the mountain. Afterward, I picked up my registration packet, cleaned up, and ate some dinner before settling in for bed.

It rained a bit over night, but in the morning, seemed as if it’d be holding off. I had some oatmeal, changed, and headed up to the start area. When I lined up, I was chatting with some of the other women when Cheryl Sorenson (who went on to finish 2nd) and I had the following exchange:

CS: What’s your name?
Me: Andrea
CS: What’s your last name?
Me: Wilson. You haven’t heard of me yet.
Surrounding others: giggling/mumbles
CS: “not amused” look

I might be new to the 100 miler game, but I know when I’m being sized up…

Anyway. The race started. There was a lot of pushing and shoving, but I settled in on Todd’s wheel since I knew he’d be pacing himself via powermeter up the first 2.5 miles of paved climb. About a mile up, that got to be a bit much, so I dropped back a bit. I wasn’t in a bad spot when we hit the singletrack, though being in a big group, it was hard to settle in. I went kinda hard, because I could see/hear some of the competition ahead & behind me.

This would prove to be a mistake.

After about 10 miles, I settled in to a more comfortable pace. I also got passed by a lot of people in doing so. The singletrack seemed endless, but eventually we were dumped out on to the forest service roads. It was there that the longer climbs started. I felt OK. Not great- I was cursing my lack of climbing fitness as well as the 10 winter pounds I’ve been “meaning to lose” for longer than I care to reveal. Then, about mile 30, my back started to hurt. I kept trying to shift around to find a more comfortable position, but to no avail. It was bad.

Soon enough, Laureen Coffelt came trucking along from behind me. She asked how I was doing, and I told her my back was on fire and I felt horrible. She reassured me that if I just kept plugging along at the speed I was going, that I was still on track to have a respectable time. I resolved myself to getting to the 3rd aid station (almost at the top of the longest climb and taking some aspirin with half a sandwich to see if it’d make me feel better.

Not much further (about mile 40), my legs started to remind me of the effort I’d put in earlier. My quads cramped every time I hit a steep pitch of road. This, along with my back pain, sent me off my bike to stretch every couple of miles. Somewhere during that time, it started to rain. A lot. It stormed bad enough that Lynda Wallenfels was nearly struck by lightning, forcing her to DNF the race.

I won’t lie- on that climb, I wanted to quit. I told myself that I didn’t deserve to finish the race because of my lack of preparation. The thing about racing 100 miles is that you can’t fake it…
You can fake road races where you pull up to the start and everyone expects you to do well, so they’ve already partially resolved themselves to being beaten. You can fake the endurance races that are done after 5 or 6 hours by relying on halfass fitness and sheer determination in order to put up the front that you’re a machine that can hammer that stuff out like it’s no problem. But when you’re facing 100 miles of time on your bike, it tears you down to the bare, soft underbelly of your exact level of preparation and training.

I finally reached the 3rd aid station at mile 50something. I took a few minutes to get my chain lubed, eat some food, take some aspirin, and compose myself. I reminded myself about what Laureen had told me earlier about plugging along. Once again, she helped me to NOT DNF a race (see the Fool’s Gold 2009 report in reference). I got back on my bike and rode on. I knew that after a bit more climbing, I would be rewarded with a long decent, and was hoping that by the time I reached the bottom, the change in position combined with the meds would have me feeling better.

I took my frustrations out on the downhill. There were nice lines from faster riders already worn on to the dirt, so all I had to do was follow those. All the while, the rain was falling steadily… I squinted hard enough that if you were to have taken a photo of me, I probably looked like I was riding with my eyes closed. I was working hard enough absorbing the washboard bumps in the road with my legs and shifting my weight around that I never got freezing cold as a lot of people reported. I’ve seen a few people’s reports of how horribly bumpy, slippery, & treacherous the descents were, but I didn’t think they were all that bad. Maybe those people were on 26ers or something.

After going down for a while then hitting some tall rollers, I finally came to aid station 4. They had gummy bears. When the aid station worker uncovered their bowl, all I could say was, “Oh my god, that looks better than diamonds!” and cram a handful of them in my mouth (along with all of the dirt and sand from my glove). Everyone laughed at me. I’m not sure why… I mean, gummy bears were a lot more useful to me at that point.

The next bit of road was nice and flat for a mile or two. Some guy on a nice carbon FS Gary Fisher drafted me until I told him that if it started to rain again that I was going to pee. Without stopping. (Squatting at that point would = leg cramps, so ya gotta do what you gotta do…) Eventually we reached another (shorter) climb. The wind picked up a lot in the time it took me to get to the top, so I was kinda worried that I was about to get stormed on really bad. Luckily, it only rained.

The rest of the race is actually a bit blurry. I’m sitting here at my computer trying to think of what to type, but all I remember really is just lots and lots of pedaling, wind, and rain. Somewhere between the pee guy and the singletrack, I got more chain lube and a chocolate moon pie.

Once I got to the last section of singletrack, my leg cramps came back with a vengeance. I was forced to granny gear or walk some stuff that I’d blown through in my middle ring the day before. Once I was up the initial climb, I took one last stretching break. When I got back on the trail, a gust of wind fell a huge, rotten branch onto the middle of the trail about 15 feet ahead of me. It exploded when it hit the ground, and probably would have fallen on me if I hadn’t paused just before then.

Suddenly, I was at the Thunder Rock Express trail. A bit of adrenaline boosted me through the first few turns, around several riders (one of them a female competitor!) and down the hill. I haven’t compared the times yet, but I’m guessing that despite the rain, I made it down faster than I had the day before. Once I was at the bottom, it was 1.5 miles of headwind up Hwy 64 to the finish. I like wind, and I had absolutely no idea if the person I’d passed was chasing me, so I buried myself.

Crossing the finish line, it took everything I had to not burst in to tears. I stopped on the other side and put my head down on my bars to absorb the enormity of what I’d just done. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, this will be old hat, but finishing the first one (and all of the emotions I felt along the way) will be a memory branded into my head forever.

My 9:59:30 finishing time landed me 11th place out of 16 finishers (DNFs weren’t listed, but 21 women were registered @ the start). Not stellar, but at least a benchmark. I’ve got a long way to go before I’ll be on the radar of the ladies who were duking it out for the podium, but hopefully that’ll come by the last couple of races this season.

This was my 3rd year to race MSGP (I skipped last year because I was in the process of having a road-bike nervous breakdown). It was my first year to be there with a sizable team, and this was my first time playing “team captain” for this year’s Marx-Bensdorf women’s team.

Not really knowing what everyone’s strengths and weaknesses were, it was hard to make a plan. This was obvious in the road race. I will be the first to admit that I’d underestimated a couple of my teammates, and if I’d known better, I would have instructed them a little differently.

Since we had 7 people in the race, the other teams let us get right up front and control the race from the gun (though this was cut down to 6 when Julie flatted early and didn’t get back on). We kept it pretty mellow until about halfway through the first lap when we hit a stretch of light wind & rollers. Here, I started some attacks. Of course, there were a few counters and a little action, but nothing really stuck. The pace remained high, but not impossible until we hit the start/finish area, where Debbie attacked up the hill to what we thought was a time bonus (I could have sworn I heard the official say it was, but later read the race bible and saw that the time bonus was only for finishing)

The second lap was similar- mellow at first, then some attacks. Then Pam went off the front and got a nice gap. For a second, Debbie (Absolute Racing) and Louise (Metro Volkswagen) looked at each other waiting for someone to make a move. A couple of the S3 women stepped up & started to chase, but for a couple of miles, it was somewhat unorganized, and Pam opened the gap.

With about 5k to go, we hit the a long grade. It was enough to let the chasers catch on. Marda and Karin traded a few attacks/counters (which really made me smile), but then Debbie did what she’s famous for and leaped across the gap to Marda, only to keep on going and get a gap of her own. CRAP!

We chased. It was pretty unorganized. We were closing the gap with 1k to go when I made the executive decision to try and get close enough that we could possibly swarm Debbie, and I’d be able to hold on to get “same timed” with the group. I put my head down and hammered it. While not ideal by any means, it nearly worked out that way- she still won by a few bike lengths and got a time bonus, but it minimized the damage. Even after working her butt off and being off the front near the end of the race, Pam still placed 3rd, and everyone else was sprinkled throughout the top 10.

I went to lunch feeling a little frustrated and wishing I could have been a better leader. Thankfully, that night’s TT would help settle our places in the GC and make the decision-making process a little easier for the circuit race.

The TT was painful. It was just under 3 miles and finished on a hill that wasn’t particularly big, but, given its place on the course, at about the 500m to go mark, it made you feel as if your heart was about to explode and your eyes were going to bleed (I think that meant I was doing it right).

For some reason, the women’s RR results were never posted at the TT venue (the TT start times weren’t posted until 15 minutes before the first rider was supposed to go off, either, but that’s another ball of wax…) So, we wouldn’t know who was placed where until the next morning.

In the morning, I decided that in lieu of riding the trainer, I’d ride the 11 or so miles to Copiah-Lincoln Community College for the circuit race. It was both beautiful and relaxing. Even more importantly, it gave me time to think about my team and how I’d plan our strategy for the day.

When I arrived, everyone was there and excited about the results (neither the RR nor the TT results for the women were posted until that morning). I ended up turning a 6:57, which landed me in 3rd for the TT behind Louise (6:44!) and Debbie (6:54). Marda’s 7:01 would put us in 3rd and 4th. If we could get some time bonuses, we could move up. I had a quick pow-wow with the team, then we all went off to finish warming up.

From the gun, Julie jumped out in front. She was caught in the first few turns, then Pam attacked on the hill on the backside of the course. She stumped the field again! They looked at each other waiting for someone to go while she opened it up further. At 51 seconds from the top of the GC, she was somewhat of a threat if she were able to stay away.

In the 2nd lap, Debbie went for a bridge/counter like she’d done the day before. Going in to the 3rd lap, I caught her. She peeked under her arm & told me we had a gap going, and I told her “let’s work it!” A minute later, Louise caught on to us with Marda in tow.

A lap later, Kat came across the gap by herself. This was both good news and bad news:
Good: Kat was a few spots down in the GC, so I could put her to work on the front keeping the tempo up so that Marda and I could (hopefully) sit in to rest up to trade attacks later on in the race.
Bad: Debbie doesn’t like to be outnumbered. I knew that she’d attack relentlessly to try and shell off whoever she could.

I must be psychic, because the next time we approached the little kicker hill before the start/finish, she attacked. We caught her about 1/2way though the next lap. Then she attacked again. And again. And again. Marda and I quickly figured out that the best way to deal with it was to hop on Louise’s wheel and let her “diesel” us back up to Debbie rather than trying to jump with the initial acceleration. The only lap she didn’t attack was the one right before we expected the the time bonus prime lap. On that lap, Louise tried to counter Debbie and ended up leading our pack out for the sprint. Even though she’d been attacking repeatedly, Debbie still got the 1st time bonus and I was 2nd.

The next lap, Marda and I tried to trade attacks/counters, but after a few failed attempts, it was clear that it wasn’t going to happen. All of the chasing had toasted our legs. With 4 to go, I told Kat to give us her best 10 minute TT on the front in order to discourage any more attacks. It was moderately successful. She wasn’t really clear as to why she was supposed to go up and kill herself (it was only her 2nd race ever!) other than I’d told her to (kinda hard to explain that strategy DURING a race), so a few times, she sat up and looked like she wanted someone else to pull, and we’d yell at her to keep going. Of course, there were more attacks. We still hung on, though.

Kat was great to have on the bell lap. Usually everyone slows down and mean-mugs each other waiting for someone to make a move, but she did an exceptional job of maintaining the tempo. We went from the bottom of the kicker hill. Once again, Debbie powered through first, but I was able to hold on for 2nd and Marda 3rd. Kat rolled in 5th, which was excellent for her because just being in the break brought her up several spots in the GC.

Back in the pack, Pam, Karin, and Julie kept everything under control. Pam managed to win the field sprint, too! Unfortunately, getting out-horsepowered kept us off the top podium spots. The final GC placing was 3rd (me), 4th(Marda), 5th (Kat), 7th (Pam), 11th (Karin), and 13th (Julie). Casey was forced to DNF the Circuit race because of pain from a lingering leg injury.

More photos HERE (including other categories)

The team’s performance was excellent! We had a good plan, adapted it as the race unfolded, and did the best we could with what our legs would give us. With a few more watts, we’ll be making up those precious seconds in the TT and be able to lay down a hard attack/counter attack or two when it’s needed.

I’m pretty sure that racing against Debbie Milne is a pain akin to childbirth- severe, yet rewarding enough that you’re willing to do it again and again. The woman moves faster than a scalded cat, and she never gets too tired to stop hurting you all the way until you cross the finish line. Afterward, she smiles and gives you a home-made baked good of some sort… kind of like when the doctor gives a kid a lollipop after getting a round of booster shots. Looking forward to the next race!

After DNFing for the first time ever a few weeks ago because of ulnar nerve problems, I made some changes to my mountain bike setup and, even though it still gets a little numb when I’m riding for a long time, I’m not experiencing near the loss of strength and coordination that I had a couple of weeks ago. Of course, being the exercise science geek that I am, I have to have a metric of measuring improvement…

I’ll have you know that just two weeks ago, I had to use two hands to pick up the nearly-new 5lb can of whey protein. Now I can palm it long enough for Ryan to snap an iPhone photo…

So I’m ready to give the road racing thing another go with the Mississippi Grand Pix Stage Race. I missed it last year because of my miniature nervous breakdown that prompted me to sell the TT bike and get in to this MTB stuff. This year should be interesting because I’ll have a team with me. Of course, Debbie Milne will be there as well. She’s been injured, but I also haven’t been putting the time in on the road bike, so I’m sure the battle will be lung-searing as usual. One missing “player” that’s usually on the podium is Shannon Koch (see link to her site in the blogroll). Previously, she’s dominated the time trial and made us race for 2nd on Sunday. However, this year, she’s off racing in Europe (another on the long list of former Metro teammates that have since become even more awesome).

Hey, I’m working on it.

While I was out gallivanting in the Ouachitas, Ryan was at the Tour de Tuscaloosa with the team. They had a pretty successful weekend of racing (including a 1-2 finish in the Women’s 3/4 crit!) Ryan managed to get into a breakaway during the road race and ended up 3rd! He wrote a nice race report on his blog

I’m really proud of him :)