Failure on the 300

I was in death mud and had been for the past hour. The last mile of travel had taken me an hour. Ride 200 yards until the wheels stop moving, find a stick and scrape the hard packed clay away from my drivetrain and chainstays and then ride on for another 200 yards until the messy and frustrating ritual repeats itself once again. At times I dragged my bike, wheels unmoving, both up hill and downhill. I can't describe how demoralizing it is to have to drag a bike downhill...rear tire etching a line in the sticky clay singletrack....47 lbs of immobile junk containing my food and clothes for a ride.....this has all happened before, and it was happening again.

The race started with great flow by Canelo Hills standards.  I was suprised to find my mind in complete peace throughout the first day.  I normally have an ebb and flow of emotions as I settle into a bikepacking pace, but this day I was enjoying a mind which had settled into this place days earlier.  Bluebird skies and a rapidly moving cloud deck above foretold of weather just over the horizon.

As I neared mile 15, I sliced my rear tire descending a narrow track after Canelo Pass.  Without even uttering a curse word, I quickly fixed the problem...and moved on.....I was managing the variables.  In a few more miles, I dropped my chain and lost the quick links....I added quick links from my tool bag and moved on.....I was managing the variables.

As I exited the Canelo Hills, I was astonished to see my time was only 15 minutes slower than my previous ride despite the added weight of bags and the two mechanicals.  Moving into Patagonia, I stopped at the market for some soda, some ice cream and a spare tube from the bike rental place before heading north into the Santa Ritas. 

I was happy to see Forest Baker whom I had met the day before the race, enjoying a cool drink before heading up the road.....

Stopping once more at Sonoita for my dinner and next days breakfast, I saw Jen Judge on the phone trying to figure out what to do with a sliced rear brake line....ride into Tucson to fix it and return onto the route, or scratch.  I wished her luck and moved on.

As the sun began to set over Mt. Wrightson, I started descending the flume trail on my way to Kentucky Camp.  At this moment....this very moment....I knew that if I never rode another mile of this course, I had found the moment I look for so often.  The flow of the trail, the effortless banking and swooping, the sea of grass set against the purple mountains made me sing for joy...I was in it and loving it.  

Nearing Kentucky Camp in darkness and with a dull ache in my knee, I was happy to be in good spirits and have water for my 1st night...I was managing the variables.  A few minutes later, Jen rolled into camp.  I was happy to see her there managing the variables despite a major mechanical.  Throughout the night...the wind picked up and rattled the porch at Kentucky Camp...the variables were conspiring to manage back.

Waking to a cold mist of freezing rain, the wind was running pretty hard but my knee felt great, I had a burrito in my stomach and I was ready for day two.  Riding out of the gulley, the wind which had been blowing hard down low turned into gusting 40mph winds on the ridgeline doubletrack, blowing me off my line from time to time.  Stinging hail, graupel and sleet pumled my face...but I was warmly clothed and told myself this was just another fine day of winter weather I push into on skis...so why should I feel otherwise on a bike....I was managing the variables.

Climbing farther up into the AZT, I looked over my right shoulder to see another beautiful sight....another moment of beauty in the midst of such turmoil......  

Catching up to Jen in a few minutes who was having to down walk sections due to her brakeline, I remarked that between her climbing knees and my good brakes...we made a complete rider.  We chuckled and yo-yo'd on the climbs and descents for a few miles until I last saw her at a gate just behind me.  I later found out that this is where she scratched.

All alone, I continued to climb until I was stopped in the death mud just a few miles farther.  The irony that my fear before the race was talked about, with a picture of my last encounter with death mud, and now realized was heavy.  The variables began to stack up on my tally sheet.  I did the calculus in my head, figuring that the geology of the area would have me in this soil type for at least another 10 miles, possibly 20.  

I was able to manage my knee just fine as long as I kept it warm.  To keep it warm, I had to be moving.  To keep moving, I had to stay out of death mud.  I tried making forward progress, but doing so dragging a non-functioning bike uphill and downhill which gets heavier and heavier with each clay filled step is a losing battle.

Checkmate....the variables win.  Crawling out to Helvitia road, I made my way to the intersection with Hwy 83 and crawled into my bivy and bag where I went numb from the cold and mental exhaustion of the decision I just had to make.  Shivering uncontrolably, I was quickly joined by another rider, Tanner, who also made the same independent decision.  As we waited there next to the highway for our pickups, we seldom talked...quietly coming to grips with what just happened.  Tanner later returned to the spot where he was picked up and is now back on the route after having cleaned up his bike and allowing the conditions to dry out.

I spent a sleepless night, disgusted by my warm bed and wishing I was still in the fight.  I was disgusted that each of my training rides over the past 4 months amounted to more time, more mileage and more vert gained than what I was able to muster these past 2 days.  I was in full pity party mode, until I read about Ray.  I made the decision to throw in the towel based on the variables...Ray did not.

I managed the variables as best as I could until the variables manged me.  I raced the race based on a strategy to go out steady and conservatively slow to preserve my knee for the last half of the course where I knew I could open it up and finish.  Had I continued on into the night on the first day for just another 15 miles, I would have passed the section that later turned into death mud....but hindsight is what they say it is....it's bullshit.  I find myself in good company in the DNF 300 club...but the decisions that led me here still sting.  I'm envious of those still out there, fighting to the finish.

Arizona Trail Race

On 9am, Friday the 13th....yes, Friday the 13th....I will set out on my folly.  I hope to finish...that is all.  The embedded map below is from trackleaders.com.....neat stuff.  

This is what happens when I get loaded.....

When I get loaded I tend to move a lot slower.....I wander a bit more.....and I forget what time it is.....

....I also get a bit salty....especially with my language.......

Like a lush, I ambulate around the random things; poking at the unique and oggling the olfactory hues which occupy my fancy.....

With each cattle gate closing, I wonder why someone would stack cobbles of granite upon such remote markers....and then I realize, it's because the Lizard King told them to do so.......

17 miles in from my start, I find the spring fed cattle tank in the middle of the desert I was looking for.....it was occupied by a swarm of bees and wasps......

Sneaking up to the tank slowly, I tested the patience of the occupancy as I filtered water....and observed a fine demonstration of surface tension.....

The low angled syntectonic deposits were my first reminder that I was entering a land of topographic changes.......

To my north, I spy the canyons I will sleep in this night.......

...that craggy stuff on the horizon.......

.....and that tiny, inconsequential nipple of a feature rising imperceptibly from the flat horizon in the center of the picture; well, that's where I came from.  The landscape here always blows me away....so far I've traveled, and yet so far I must go.  Distances are deceiving, because you can never trust the horizontal truth at the expense of a topographic reality....the later, reigns supreme in this land.

As I look forward, I am drawn to my immediate challenge.....the nipple with the switchbacks.....or Ripsey as it's called.....

There is not much to be said about Ripsey.....the Ocotillo reach skyward, as does Ripsey.....

I purposely did not take a picture of the Ripsey ridgeline because I'm riding solo....the ridgeline needs a rider to add perspective.....so my experience on Ripsey was one of a solo rider....and what I capture here is what I see....and more importantly, what I feel.  If you want to get an idea of Ripsey without riding it.....which is to say, not experience Ripsey....then lamely click on the following spectacular links, here and here ...... otherwise, grab a bike and go ride it and see for yourself....you'll not be the same ever again.

As I descend off of Ripsey, I see the canyon of the Gila below me.....and realize that I have to go down there to get water....and then climb back out that night....and go back down the next day.....and climb back out yet again.  I suddenly feel weak....feel stupid....feel foolish........and then I force myself to get present.....this is why I am here, this is the beauty I seek, the silence I hold golden and the views I gush about......this is it....this.....IS!

I get punch drunk with the smell of water in the Sonoran desert......the sight of cottonwood shedding cotton looked like snow gently falling from a blue sky.

After filtering water out of the Gila, I move on against the increasing angles of the sun; boulders casting shadows on the narrow strip of cottonwoods glowing in springtime glory.

Riding on until my stomach growls and the sun gets low, I finally find a wash where I can set my body down and I stop to capture the melt.

The last light of day hits the tendrils of atmospheric humidity before a high-pressure system moves in.....

During the night, I sleep to the sound of crickets.....the absence of any breeze or wind is slightly unnerving rendering any twig snap an alarm that the dogs of the desert are upon me.....but they never come....and I awake to another beautiful day.  I ride away from camp and capture the morning glow on a barrel cactus against the ranch house just east of Cochoran.

The railroad trestle above the Gila stands stoic above the precocious and lush nature of a perennial desert river.

Hours go by....not flowing, but slow painful miles as I climb away from the Gila in the still and hot hours of the young day.  I stop and wonder what I'm doing and why I'm here.....training for a ride where I will be alone, yet again....I've come to resent the tedium of being alone these past months.  But before I can have enough time to throw a pity party, I realize that this is a far better place to be than the alternative....you fill in the blank....

....this is where I feel at home.....a home found in the solitude that haunts and comforts me at the same time, a place that keeps me awake at night with fright and holds my attention with anticipation whenever I'm away from it..  A place I abhor and honor in the same sentence.  It is here where my Wordsworth comes in handy in realizing that "Thanks to the human heart by which we live, thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.