All it takes is
all you got.
--Marc Davis
When last we spoke Kim was digging her way out of the Lake Powell Pit into which this race had abandoned her. It's been a difficult climb and she knew it would be. She's seen for the last 9 hours how dramatic the hills which are so subtly rendered on the elevation map actually look in reality and her elevation map promised her twenty miles of constant climbing and is now delivering exactly that. Throw in the recently arrived (late but now trying its best to make up for earlier missed opportunities to make us miserable) wind and heat and Kim gets the first taste of how bad this can get. The distances of each leg in Rockwell are deceptive, almost seductive to any seasoned cyclist. Forty five miles. What's forty five miles? You can knock that distance out before breakfast most days especially when you've taken down century rides or even double century rides (ie Lotoja) which Kim has. But there's a reason the Race Bible cautions first time participants to not be fooled by how imminently doable this race might appear on paper. It is a real-deal no joking Grade A certified challenge. I know I've drilled that knowledge into Jennifer's head through race reports of years past and especially these last six months as we've prepped to do it together. I assume Thad has done the same with Kim, so this may not be the same reality dope slap that other rookie arrivals (lookin' at you team At Dawn We Ride) are receiving but it's still hard medicine, whether you were expecting it or not. As for me I'm just watching the minutes pass and hoping to be on the bike in Hanksville by 7. It's about thirty flat (or as close to flat as any of the miles that Cyclist #1 rides... so not flat at all but closer than the other 105) miles from the Hanksville Exchange to the begining of Capitol Reef National Park and just once I want to see it. It's all coming down to Kim and what she can do in these last twenty five sun-baked, wind-swept miles. --Marc Davis
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| Kim finally hits the summit, all down hill from here, except for when it's not, which is often |
*That may or may not be true depending on how you feel about excessively cold as opposed to oppressively hot weather for riding. Also, wind lest we forget
Moab Leg 5 Details
| Distance: | 45.4 Miles |
| Start Elevation: | 4,318 Feet |
| Finish Elevation: | 6,547 Feet |
| Total Ascent: | 2,602 Feet |
| Total Descent: | -381 Feet |
| Net Elevation: | 2,229 Feet |
| High Point: | 6,562 Feet |
| Low Point: | 4,291 Feet |
Leg 5 Notes
This leg is a significant climb that follows the Fremont River (upstream) most of the way. At mileage 29.0 you will enter Capitol Reef National Park. This park is one of the last great secrets in the USA. As the sun sets in front of you the light will illuminate the towering red cliffs. The historical town of Fruita at mileage 37.4 shows how early settlers of Utah lived. The green fruit trees of Fruita contrast beautifully against the red cliffs overhead.
Leg Nicknames: Hurricane Hank, Capitol Reef-er Madness and The Fruita Incident?
I pedal out into the suburbs of Hanksville (a sleepy bedroom community of mainly tumbleweeds, sagebrush and the occasional desert tortoise) all by myself, which with the exception of one year is how I've always ridden this leg. We're now 200 miles into this race and even with the staggered start, teams are spread out all along those miles. I enjoy the solitude and don't mind riding alone at all. The wind that was blowing in Kim's face is a manageable 7 mph and though not exactly at my back it's not working against me either. The road is flat to gently graded and the sun is still well above the horizon. At the exchange Thad told me it would be a while before they would catch me and I told him to take his time, If I'm in trouble on the first half of this ride nothing he's got in the truck is going to help me. I see a lone rider about five miles out of town, make him my carrot and tentatively plan on working with him. Jared's team left about five minutes before us and the gentle climb in the first part of this leg would be perfect for working with him but I realize as I close the 500 meter gap on this cyclist in less than two minutes that this is not Jared. What it is is a cyclist who is in suffer mode and well on his way to his own personal 'Fruita Incident', if he makes it that far. I want to tell him to hop on but I can tell from the look of desperation on his face that it's not a possibility and suggesting it would be more cruel than kind. A few miles further I see, not Jared, the jersey is far too bright, too loud to be the clean bib kit he and his co-workers designed, rather it's our buddy Gordon, of Dot and Gordon. Him I do tell to hop on and he does and we work together for a few miles. I'm not sure how old D&G are but they have to be late 50's at least, probably 60's and they are still bringin' it. I tell Gordon that he's an inspiration. That Jennifer and I hope to still be riding and racing when we are his age. To which he responds "We hope to still be riding and racing when you are our age!" (touché).
The scenery I've waited so long to see doesn't disappoint. I even start to get company. Fast teams that started two hours behind us and really fast teams that left Moab four hours back are now closing the artificial gap created by the staggered start and passing through. On fresh legs I could probably jump onto their fast moving trains and shave a few minutes off my split time but I am more than eighty miles and 6k of climb into my day now and I know how this Hanksville to Torrey leg ends and it's not pretty... well it is, to look at, not necessarily to pedal. So I keep my current pace enjoy the scenery and walk the constant Rockwell tightrope between conserving and competing. The method works and gets me past Fruita and to within eight miles of Torrey before the crew has to wave me roadside to don the after dark safety vest.
"Tomorrow is another day, and there will be another battle!" --Sebastian Coe
http://cyclingwithrodzilla.blogspot.com/2011/06/rockwell-relay-hanksville-to-panguitch.html
(if you go there, be sure you read Rodney's response comment to my post. It is truly one of the more memorable moments of my life from both a physical and a spiritual standpoint as well as being another vivid thread in the ever growing and changing Rockwell Relay tapestry that we continue to weave)
it's a good read about a bad time on a bike. The stripped down truth is I bonked, truly and totally, not the 'my mouth is parched and my legs feel rubbery' kind but the 'I don't have the energy to bear my own weight, let alone ride a bike' kind of bonk. Throw in the wilderness setting, the absolute dark of a moonless desert night (one we're about to replicate) and the inability to communicate with my crew in any way (cell service disappeared back in Blanding) and you have all the makings of an injury that breaks your spirit and leaves scars on your soul. I've since conquered this hill, this stretch of road, this stage several times but I still feel like it knows it beat me once and can do it again at any moment. There's another quote from Sebastian Coe that talks about the most critical distance in any race being the nine inches between your ears. It's a battle I still fight every year at this point in the race, I'm just glad I'm confronting it in the waning but still visible daylight. Thad gives me his standard pep talk "almost done, just eight miles more, go ride your bike." Which I do and it hurts and I feel pukey and when the sun finally does disappear I get the old familiar CapitolReef/Fruita incidentabandonment-issues shakes but I'm too close to the finish for it to cause any real drama. I make it to the Torrey exchange in just over 2 hrs 50 minutes. A PR by a mere minute but a PR just the same. Next up Jenn takes a shot at Boulder mountain and the QOM climb.Moab Leg 6 Details
Distance:
|
39.2 Miles
|
Start Elevation:
|
6,547 Feet
|
Finish Elevation:
|
6,484 Feet
|
Total Ascent:
|
3,442 Feet
|
Total Descent:
|
-3,556 Feet
|
Net Elevation:
|
-63 Feet
|
High Point:
|
9,639 Feet
|
Low Point:
|
6,471 Feet
|
Leg 6 Notes
From Torrey start climbing up UT-12 into the Boulder Mountains. Climb is steep up to a false summit at mileage 15 then after a short decent and 5 more miles of climbing you will hit the boulder pass. Take a moment to enjoy the view the east. The mountains seen in the distance are the Henry’s that you just passed earlier in the day. After summit you have a steep decent down to the quaint town of Boulder and to the exchange. Take caution and watch for cattle, deer, and elk on the road during the decent.
Leg Nicknames: Sisyphus and the Boulder, The King Is Dead, Long Live the Queen! (and a third option to be named later)
"The will to win is worthless, without the will to prepare." -Les Brown
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| Jenn's exchange kits including cold weather swap out for the Boulder summit |
After some confusion as to where to meet Jenn (they moved the exchange out to the road, not in the parking lot as in years past) I go through the chute and swap out the ankle chip and the vest (the latter costing Jenn a minute or so on her new this year QOM split). There's also a problem with the lights stemming from an earlier problem with the lights which is bad news because it is now not just dark, but moonless night in the middle of nowhere dark and if our lights (there are three complete sets, that at our current rate of progress will need to be used not just by Thad and Jenn but Kim as well) do not work then we are going to be in trouble. We finally get the lights, the vest and everything else situated. Jenn's exchanges, and this one too, at least the parts for which she does not need to rely on anybody else come off without a hitch because Jenn has prepared herself in every way she can: physically, mentally, emotionally and technically. If fortune favors the prepared mind then winning races favors the athlete who prepares in every way he/she can and Jenn has managed exactly that. It's what she does when she decides on an event. If she finishes off the podium, performs poorly or is in any way dissatisfied with her result it will never be because she wasn't prepped trained and ready for the task she has undertaken.
She climbs out of Torrey and covers the 24 miles and 3500* hundred feet of climb to top of boulder mountain in 2 hrs and 24 minutes. Fourth** place (of twelve) in the Queen of the Mountain competition. Thankfully she was several minutes off the third place cyclist or there might be more consternation and recrimination regarding the muddled exchange, the fact that she let me through the chute prior to swapping the chip and vest (allowing me to log a personal best time from Hanksville to Torrey, thanks honey) and the problem with the lights. But fourth place or last place, she climbed a mountain in the dark! I want to say I was right there with her the entire time, ringing cowbells, whooping it up and urging her on to the summit but nothing could be further from the truth. Rather I was curled up in fetal position in the back of the truck unable pick my head up off the seat, let alone yell or show any emotion. Remember Kim? How I said we would all get to this point? Well it's my turn now. If I hadn't done this race enough times to know better I would assume that I was done, that recovery was out of the question. But I'll be back, just give me a few minutes of back seat and broken asphalt rest and I'll be as close to renewed as you get on Rockwell. While I'm suffering, Kim and Thad track up and down the mountain looking for Jenn. I'm assuming on any other night finding a cyclist on this mountain would be pretty easy since there would probably only be one (or more likely none) but tonight there are dozens and they all look surprisingly similar from behind and in front. Jenn wore her flashing slap band that she uses for running on her arm but it's not bright enough so we lose her temporarily but catch her just as she hits the false summit just before the final five miles of climb. We needn't have worried though, Jenn is having a great time and a great ride. The night is cool and star studded and the air is clean and pine scented. There are other riders but most of her time is spent in solitude, just her and her bike. Turn the cranks, focus on the cone of light in front of you glance at the stars until it starts to cause vertigo then go back to the road. ** Post race addendum. A male cyclist's time was listed on the QOM finishers as the second fastest. This has since been amended and Jennifer actually took the third spot (podium finish) and the Boulder climb (woot-woot). In the awards ceremony they only recognized the King & Queen respectively which is a good thing because otherwise we would have to call up the Rockwell Riders and organizers and hold a post hoc podium ceremony and photo op, I would insist upon it.
We hit the summit at almost exactly midnight and I finally peel myself off the back seat. I am dumbstruck by the galaxies you can see from this elevation and removed from the light pollution of civilization. The stars are so numerous, so thick they almost look like cloth woven into the firmament. The first time we rode Rockwell, a local rider who regularly did this climb on summer nights told our rider "You'll find God up there, if you look for Him." Not sure if it happened for Jenn but I am awed in the moment at the vastness of God's creations and my small place in it.
We get to the summit before jenn arrives and Thad does his final prep for Leg seven so we can accompany Jenn down the mountain. When we first discussed doing this ride with our wives I insisted that if Jenn was going to do Boulder Mountain we would stay with her on the descent. The first year we did this race a rider hit a cattle guard* wrong and went over his bars, suffering a neck fracture. Thad agreed and so rather than lose time at the Boulder exchange he is making sure he can be on the bike and rolling in the five minutes or so that it will take Jenn to cover the last few miles of her leg. At the summit Jenn pulls over cracks open her pre-race prepped cold weather/boulder descent bag, dons the contents, bumps her headlamp level to high beams and we're off. We track her for the first mile or so until we can pass her. Wish I had the mental wherewithal to get film of both her and Thad bombing their downhills in the dark. Descending is a skill at which they are both quite adept and watching somebody do it well is like listening to opera or reading poetry. It's beautiful and impressive in the way that watching somebody perform an act you could never duplicate always is. The ride down Boulder Moutnain's southern slope is not without drama however. About 2 miles before we cut her loose, but still a good 8 miles out of Boulder we nearly hit a group of (...!). We still don't know. We leave our lane to pass a cyclist and Kim has to slam on the brakes to avoid mowing down three (possibly four) people walking down the mountain in the opposite lane. Despite the fact that they were nearly crushed under three and a half tons of rolling steel and equipment they don't even flinch or acknowledge our presence. They are dressed in dark, baggy clothes, tatters really and they look like extras from the film set of Walking Dead. Before Thad Kim and I have a chance to ask each other if we all saw the same thing we come upon two more walkers, then another two and a straggler of two after that. maybe a dozen in all. A similar incident happened in 2011 (which also happens to be the only other moonless Relay we've ridden) only it was near the summit of the mountain and there were three individuals similarly disinterested in the fact that there was a bike race going on and they were about to be crushed under the wheels of its support vehicles. We talked with other teams that went through about the same time of night and got independent confirmation that what we saw wasn't a product of our collective sleep deprivation and road weary vision. There's a solution to this mystery but I'm not sure I want to know what it is. I rather like leaving this layer of Rockwell lore permanently under investigation but never adequately explained.
*About five miles out of Boulder, with Thad on the bike we see an ambulance headed toward boulder mountain. A cyclist hit a cattle guard wrong, lost control and went into the guardrail suffering a concussion, several cracked ribs and later was discovered to have fractured one of his cervical vertebrae. Glad we stayed with Jenn
Moab Leg 7 Details
Distance:
|
56.6 Miles
|
Start Elevation:
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6,484 Feet
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Finish Elevation:
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5,983 Feet
|
Total Ascent:
|
3,061 Feet
|
Total Descent:
|
-3,514 Feet
|
Net Elevation:
|
-501 Feet
|
High Point:
|
7,608 Feet
|
Low Point:
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5,220 Feet
|
Leg 7 Notes
This section of State Road 12 is what makes it famous! It just cannot be put into words, but here we go with a meager attempt. As you descend from Boulder down to the Escalante river, you will thoroughly enjoy cycling down the famous ridge at mileage 6.3 with steep drop off’s on both sides of the road. You will feel as though you are cycling in the clouds. As you near the Escalante River you will pass the Calf Creek Gorge (home of Calf Creek Falls) on the right. Excellent views from a top the road down to the green bottom of the gorge are breathtaking. Shortly after climbing up from the river on the other side you come to a windy section of road that contours a rugged white slickrock. At mileage 26.1 you will pass through the town of Escalante and begin an ascent back into Dixie national forest. After reaching a mild summit, you wind down the narrow canyon and end in the town Henrieville, population 159.
Leg Nicknames: Heart of Darkness, the Frozen Marathon or Graveyard Shift
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
--William Faulkner
Thad's turn back in the saddle this is the ride he has been prepping for for months now. It's the longest, darkest and often coldest leg of the entire race. A team that's running in the middle of the pack can easily drop twenty places in the rankings based on what Cyclist 3 does on these lonely miles through the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument. I hate to keep going back to them as Exhibit A but team At Dawn We Ride!(?) takes five and a half hours to cover this ground. Our teams have posted 4(+) hour legs on this section more than once and have never done it in under 3 hrs and 45 minutes. That is all about to change however because Thad has been eyeing this leg like his dog Otus eyes a T-bone steak left unattended on the counter top.
Per the elevation map, the leg features two good sized climbs and (you can't see this from the maps) two descents that would be considered 'technical' in daylight, at this hour with only helmet and bar lights they are practically suicidal. We track Thad down the first descent, though it's hard because we are about as ungainly as a moving vehicle can be and Thad and his Giant TCR are carving up these corners like he's the Grinch and they are Rare Who Roast Beast. If the roads outside of Escalante were a math equation it would go something like this:
(where 'X' is the posted speed limit)
Big Chevy Duramax diesel Truck = X- 5 mph.
Thad and his Bike = 2X+5 or 3X if we can illuminate the turn in front of him with our headlights.
 |
| What honey? Did you say something? |
Despite the fact that we are stuck in remedial arithmetic in our vehicle and Thad is doing graduate level parabolic Trigonometry on his bike, we manage to get him to the bottom of the first descent upright and still pedaling. he cuts us loose to ride forward to Escalante and that's where any recollection I have of his heroic Paul Revere-esque midnight ride comes to an end. We arrive at the high school parking lot, I break out the 'bag and I'm gone. I've said it before and I'll say it again, most profound twenty minutes of sleep I've ever had. Only it had to be more than twenty because I'm still asleep when Thad rolls through and alerts us that he's gone past by yelling 'Team!' to which Jenn and Kim respond by driving down the road a few miles to see if he needs anything, leaving me in the 'lot, easy prey for mountain lions, black bears and coyotes (all of which are present at a greater population concentration here than anywhere else in the state) or the Walkers of Boulder Mountain which may or may not have been flesh eating Zombies but were definitely creepy.
When they do finally come back for me Thad is well on his way up the agonizingly long and for the final few miles, steeply pitched climb. When we catch him Jenn says "He's enjoying himself, he actually looks like he's smiling and he is, only it looks like the toothy triple layered grin you see in pictures of Great White sharks as they bolt free from the water to take a huge chunk out of the hide of a Sea Lion or the leg off a hapless surfer. And that pretty much sums up Thad's Rockwell Relay 2015, Leg 7 ride. "If a tree falls in a forest or a cyclist destroys a ride in the middle of the night but nobody actually sees or hears it, does it make a noise or even happen at all?" The answer to the former is up for debate in freshman philosophy class. The answer to the latter is evident to anybody who logs onto Strava and sees the half eaten Sea Lion or the Peg legged surfer.
Some numbers:
56.6 miles in 3 hrs and 20 minutes
17 mph avg.
(and most important to Thad) avg 248 watts
It's a PR for Thad (and for the team) by almost thirty minutes and of the Cyclist 3 contenders that showed up this year only 33 did it faster.(!) It's more than impressive, it's phenomenal, especially considering the level of this year's competition. Thanks for the advice Mr. Faulkner. Done, done, and done.
We accompany Thad to the summit, stop long enough to let him put on a windbreaker and try (again, the physics and Math are decidedly against us) to track him on the winding descent. This time instead of leveling and then climbing, the road stays on a downgrade and because of it we are not completely ready when our rider thunders into Henrieville with a full head of steam.
Next up Part Four "After all, tomorrow is another day!"/ Kim climbs us back into the race (again).
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