Sunlight...done!

The weekend of pain is over!  No more laps.  No more nausea.  Really, those are the only two things I dreaded during the event.  Of course, the laps were expected.  The gut issues were not.  Neither were insurmountable problems, however, and both were dealt with as a matter of course.  We had to keep ticking off the laps to stay in the race and we had to keep eating to keep skiing.  By the middle of the night, both were sucking heavily!

Race day number one dawned fine enough.  A slightly dubious weather forecast but fair enough for the start at 11am.  Eric Sullivan, the eventual Men's Solo winner and current world record holder for vertical feet skied in 24 hours (51,000+ feet) asked me if I was going to go out fast.  I confirmed, with Brian Johnson of Aspen chiming in that he expected nothing else from me.  Seems sort of senseless to go out hard in an event that lasts that long but it's one of the few opportunities I have rando racing at finishing first, if only for a lap.  There is also the fleeting glory of coming through the first transition in the lead.  Most of the other competitors have more sense, Sulli included.  Brian Johnson, on the other hand, was racing in the Duo category and could not help himself either.  There were a couple of others game enough to go to vomit threshold just because.

My original intention was to let someone else set the pace.  There certainly would be no warm-up and hitting max heart rate in the first minute would not be pleasant.  Unfortunately, no one else stepped up so I took the initiative.  I felt quite good with a few days of rest behind me.  I was curious how my pace would stack up to my fastest lap effort two years ago.  It was nice having the exact same course for a comparison. 

Slightly past the halfway point, the course kicks up to a steep incline which, when tired, requires some serious arm waxing to keep from going backwards.  In the heat of the first lap, there was no slipping.  Interestingly, my first and only challenge for the lap came from a runner!  On the steepest section, he was in full 4-wheel drive mode, clawing for vertical with his hands.  We topped out and headed to the transition for the final, flatter 300 meters with him just in the lead.  Unfortunately for him, he would be running down.  I ripped my skins and relaxed into a tuck for the very sweet descent, already savoring the fulfillment of my first goal.  There were no hiccups and I cruised through the timing tent, handing off to Mike for his first go.  Hearing the announcer say overhead that I had crushed the course record justified my effort.  27:34 against a similar effort two years ago that yielded only 29:57 confirmed I was on form.

Well, Mike forewarned me that he would be having none of this eager racing bullshit, intending to keep his cards safe against his chest until later in the event when he could tell just what he would need to finish.  Can't blame him.  It was his first such event and he had no idea what to expect.  Still, I sent him off hoping he would get caught up in it anyway and keep the glory for us.

We were trading laps so I was there waiting for the hand off.  I was crushed to see Elliott Larson come flying in with Mike hot on his heels.  Holy shit!  We had a fucking race!  Seems Mike had managed to hold off the hotly pursuing Elliott only to get passed on the downhill during a flat glide section where a better wax job saw Elliott take the lead.  Mike was being sensible while Elliott caught the bug.  I was able to regain the lead two more times but Elliott's relentless pace, keeping laps around 31 minutes for several of them, saw his team slowly pull away.

Before long, Mike and I decided that going two laps at a time would provide a much needed break and allow for better feeding.  We settled in for the night.  Meanwhile, Brian and Elliott kept up the single lap exchanges for the duration.  As the wee hours of the morning crept up, we started gaining time on each lap.  I was hoping they were going to completely crack as the sun lightened the eastern horizon.  No such luck.  We never got closer than 5 minutes and our fantasy of pulling by them faded with our late race energy levels.  Mike was rewarded for his restraint at the start by some consistently fast lap times as we made our bid.  It was fun to hear Brian say that he felt the pressure the whole night.  We may not have won but at least we raced hard and with distinction.

Although we had second in the bag before the 11am finish, I decided to throw in one more lap to stay on the same lap as the winning team and to spend some time with Dina as she did her final lap to win the women's solo and set the new world record at 23 laps.

Doing a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking, I have thought about our strategy.  We would have been faster staying with single laps.  However, I wonder if our feeding would have been compromised and we would have slowed anyway for different reasons.  My second lap was always slower due to drinking a couple of hundred calories to get me through that lap.  I felt this was important to long term energy maintenance.  Although I did slow a bit toward the end, I don't think my early enthusiasm cost me much.  Glycogen stores were long gone before I slowed and my times were fairly steady.  Besides, the racing hard during the first 3 laps was way too much fun!  No regrets there. 

In the subsequent post I will look at lap times from both years and how my current training may have impacted this year's results compared to 2007.  Interesting stuff. - Brian

Comments

[Thomas]

Curious to hear your comparisons pre weight training to post.
I'm a dedicated BC skier pretty fast and light who has been training my weakness's ( strength/speed intensity) via Gym Jones,Mtn athlete + Crossfit for the past 2 years while keeping my endurance up. It's an interesting journey and am still weighing up all the ramifications and possibilities. Congrats on your race ,good luck on the blog.

[brian]

Thanks, Thomas.
Your's is one of my first couple of comments. Kinda fun to know someone is reading.

As for the weight training, I've always been a gym rat so I don't need much of an excuse to hit the iron. That said, too much upper body beef does one no favors in endurance events, as you probably know. I'm 47 now so I think the strength gleened from some upper body training helps us age better and perhaps makes us harder to kill.

As for pure performance benefits, my feeling is that if the event or activity has a speed or explosive power component then weight training has a role. I'm sure I could survive rando racing without it although I think my quads deal with the downhills a little better with it. But that sport is all about the up and it's pretty steady state. Cycling, on the other hand, is full of speed changes and I'm a big fan of weight training for it.

For what it's worth, Tyler Farrar from Garmin Pro Cycling team is a big fan of weight training and has been doing plenty leading up to the Tour of California which starts tomorrow. With some luck, he should be right up there in the first stage prologue and later in some of the sprint stages.