Day 3 - XC stage
Today was a different kind of stage than what was presented to us as a cross country stage. The program said 5 laps around a 7 km loop and we didn't have to ride together. Both Trever and I were still tired from from yesterday - very tired.
We decided to ride by feel. I wanted to do well but wasn't sure how the legs would react. I decided to start fast and see how I felt. Trever was going to do the opposite. Start slow and increase the pace if he felt good.
We started at 10 am. The start was crazy with 300 racers trying to get the hole shot. The course was a true mountain bike course with fun twisty singletrack, double track, one hellish 50 yard hike-a-bike, a treacherous singletrack downhill and a section of pave on steroids. I had a decent start and did the first lap in about 25-26 minutes, then slowly started slowing down after each lap.
I lost one of my water bottles on the first lap so I had to stop after each lap to fill up so I wasted a little time. I started to get lapped by the pros halfway through my 3rd lap and I started to struggle a bit so I decided to stop "racing" and just ride it out. At the end of my fourth lap I was told that was it. I was a bit confused. Apparently everyone finishes on the same lap as the winner.
Trever managed to pull in 3 laps so we did ok. Not sure how they calculated times but we moved from 20th to 13th. Not bad for a short stage when both of us took it "easy".
Tomorrow is a 80km day so we hope to be done in about 5 hrs. We hope!! :-)
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Brasil Ride 2012 - Day 2
Queen stage :-)
Things I learned today:
The reason why this race is a 2 person team event
One month is not enough time to prepare for this event no matter how fit or experience you are
Garmin 500 battery life is just over 10 hours
My bike is lighter than Trever's
Stage 2 we were told was the hardest stage with a distance of 90 miles and over 10000 ft of climbing. It sounded menacing and it was. The stage started with 10 miles of paved road and then another 10 on a rolling dirt road. We covered the first 20 miles in about 1 hour. We rode with the lead pack for the first 10 miles and decided to back off and be conservative. It was going to be a long day.
I knew Trever was not having a great day when he started falling off of my pace on the climbs so I started backing off or slowing down at the top of the climbs. We made to the halfway point in about 4 hrs and thought we were doing good time. Not slow, not fast. Steady. The weather was cooperating also with light rain for the first 4-5 hours. I was trying to help by pushing when I could.
This is about when things started to get ugly. Trever was looking worse even though he was eating and drinking. We hit the first singletrack which was fun and we kept motoring. At about mile 60 we started the most difficult crazy 30 miles. About 10 miles of technical singletrack with tons of steep hike-a-bike sections. This section was called vietnam. By the way I HATE VIETNAM!!
Just before the tough section Trever clipped his handlebars on a rock and did the most amazing endo. It was a thing of beauty. He landed hard on his shoulder and I truly thought he was done. I expected a broken collar bone or damaged shoulder. Luckily he only bruised his thigh, took some skin of his shin (nice memory of Brazil) and bruised his hand. We sat for maybe 5 minutes and then continued on.
At this point I was very worried about Trever. He looked bad so I started taking his bike on the hike-a-bike section and pushing both bikes up the hills while he walked, drank and ate. I was feeling very good. Felt strong. (this is why this race is a two person team event - you never know what can happen and why I know my bike is lighter than his).
Trever is one of the most fit people I know and has done more stage races than anyone I know, we've done a few events together and he has pushed and pulled me on more than one occasion so it felt good to be able to repay and I was set on doing everything I could to get him to the finish line. I must say that Trever only got a one month advance notice about this race while I have been preparing for 3-4 months.
We finally made it out of Vietnam and to the last aid station. We got Trever some medical help. They checked his blood pressure, gave him some anti nausea medication and forced him to eat and drink. We were probably there for about 30 minutes. All we had left was 13-14 miles of dirt road, 3000 ft of climbing with pitches up to 30%. OUCH!! We had 4 miles of rollers then the big climb and finally the descent into the finish. I pulled Trever again at the bottom and then the doors fell off. All of a sudden it was me feeling nauseous. I had to get off my bike a few times when it got too steep. At one point I got off the bike, took my helmet off and sat down. Another 10 minutes lost. Cramps started hit me near the top so I had to pedal one legged while still climbing.
Top of the hill and 2 mikes to the finish. Relief!! We made it to the finish in about 10:30 hours. Barely!! Trever got two I.V. Bags in him while I found us a hotel (1 mile climb - MOFO). Rode back into town, got some burgers, picked up our luggage, dropped off bags and hitched a ride to the hotel. An exhausting fucking day,,
Tomorrow is the XC day so we don't have to ride together five laps of a 4 mile loop. I wonder how much energetic I'll have. At least it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Stay tuned.
Things I learned today:
The reason why this race is a 2 person team event
One month is not enough time to prepare for this event no matter how fit or experience you are
Garmin 500 battery life is just over 10 hours
My bike is lighter than Trever's
Stage 2 we were told was the hardest stage with a distance of 90 miles and over 10000 ft of climbing. It sounded menacing and it was. The stage started with 10 miles of paved road and then another 10 on a rolling dirt road. We covered the first 20 miles in about 1 hour. We rode with the lead pack for the first 10 miles and decided to back off and be conservative. It was going to be a long day.
I knew Trever was not having a great day when he started falling off of my pace on the climbs so I started backing off or slowing down at the top of the climbs. We made to the halfway point in about 4 hrs and thought we were doing good time. Not slow, not fast. Steady. The weather was cooperating also with light rain for the first 4-5 hours. I was trying to help by pushing when I could.
This is about when things started to get ugly. Trever was looking worse even though he was eating and drinking. We hit the first singletrack which was fun and we kept motoring. At about mile 60 we started the most difficult crazy 30 miles. About 10 miles of technical singletrack with tons of steep hike-a-bike sections. This section was called vietnam. By the way I HATE VIETNAM!!
Just before the tough section Trever clipped his handlebars on a rock and did the most amazing endo. It was a thing of beauty. He landed hard on his shoulder and I truly thought he was done. I expected a broken collar bone or damaged shoulder. Luckily he only bruised his thigh, took some skin of his shin (nice memory of Brazil) and bruised his hand. We sat for maybe 5 minutes and then continued on.
At this point I was very worried about Trever. He looked bad so I started taking his bike on the hike-a-bike section and pushing both bikes up the hills while he walked, drank and ate. I was feeling very good. Felt strong. (this is why this race is a two person team event - you never know what can happen and why I know my bike is lighter than his).
Trever is one of the most fit people I know and has done more stage races than anyone I know, we've done a few events together and he has pushed and pulled me on more than one occasion so it felt good to be able to repay and I was set on doing everything I could to get him to the finish line. I must say that Trever only got a one month advance notice about this race while I have been preparing for 3-4 months.
We finally made it out of Vietnam and to the last aid station. We got Trever some medical help. They checked his blood pressure, gave him some anti nausea medication and forced him to eat and drink. We were probably there for about 30 minutes. All we had left was 13-14 miles of dirt road, 3000 ft of climbing with pitches up to 30%. OUCH!! We had 4 miles of rollers then the big climb and finally the descent into the finish. I pulled Trever again at the bottom and then the doors fell off. All of a sudden it was me feeling nauseous. I had to get off my bike a few times when it got too steep. At one point I got off the bike, took my helmet off and sat down. Another 10 minutes lost. Cramps started hit me near the top so I had to pedal one legged while still climbing.
Top of the hill and 2 mikes to the finish. Relief!! We made it to the finish in about 10:30 hours. Barely!! Trever got two I.V. Bags in him while I found us a hotel (1 mile climb - MOFO). Rode back into town, got some burgers, picked up our luggage, dropped off bags and hitched a ride to the hotel. An exhausting fucking day,,
Tomorrow is the XC day so we don't have to ride together five laps of a 4 mile loop. I wonder how much energetic I'll have. At least it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Stay tuned.
Ride Brasil 2012 - Day 1
Pre race
Trever and I arrived in Salvador on Thursday afternoon after a three flight trip. There is a four hour time difference so jet lag was an issue for us so we took a nap and headed to dinner. That night we slept for almost 12 hours and next day we headed to do some touristy stuff. On Friday we walked near the beach, went to a marine museum and just lounged around. Nothing exciting.
Saturday we met the shuttle that would take us to Mucuge at 7:30 am at the airport. Bus was supposed to take 6 hrs but it took a lot longer than that. We didn't leave until almost 9 am so we didn't arrive until almost 6. No chance to preride the prologue course. We built the bikes, found a room, and got the lay of the land.
We decided to pre ride on the morning of the prologue and made the mistake of assuming we knew where we were going and rode for 30 minutes before we realized we were on going the wrong way. Once we found the course we decided to still preride even though we had already ridden about 1 hour. As we started , less than mile from the start, Trever sheared off the spindle of one of his pedals. Luckily he didn't go down. So we went back go the room to get the spare pedals we brought. To make the story short. We ended up riding almost 3 hours and that's before racing.
Prologue
The start was interesting. They started us out 2 teams at a time. The team that we started with was not very fast so we quickly moved ahead. As we were going through the same spot where Trever broke his pedal I hit a rock and tore a chunk off the sidewall of my tire and it went flat in 3 seconds! We changed it pretty quickly in around 3 minutes. We got going again and started passing folks. The course had 3 sections of singletrack with the middle section having some VERY technical sections and quite a bit of sandy sections as well. I was on a roll passing people left and right, but Trever was having a hard time getting around folks. I stopped a couple of times to make sure he was still there and hadn't had a mechanical When I hit a sandy uphill section (we walked it on the preride) I was feeling strong and rode the thing and moved ahead of Trever. I think this is where Trever pushed too hard getting up the hill and started to struggle.
To get to the last section of singletrack we had to ride on the road for about 1.5 miles. Straight uphill - steep bugger. I had Trever hold on to my jersey as I pushed up the hill. Once in the last piece of singletrack, we just had a little more climbing to do and then all downhill to the finish - almost. That's when a mixed team we had passed earlier passed us. Both were strong climbers but had no tech skills. The guy let us go by but the gal was stubborn and would not get out of the way. She even got off and was walking as we were riding. Bee-atch!!! We finally got around her almost at the bottom - a little pissed to say the least.
We finished in 1:20 good for 13th place out of about 30 teams. Twenty minutes behind the master winners. We could have done a 1:10 but tomorrow is another day and the hardest of the race so I'm sure we'll move up. Still 6 days to go. Stay tuned.
Trever and I arrived in Salvador on Thursday afternoon after a three flight trip. There is a four hour time difference so jet lag was an issue for us so we took a nap and headed to dinner. That night we slept for almost 12 hours and next day we headed to do some touristy stuff. On Friday we walked near the beach, went to a marine museum and just lounged around. Nothing exciting.
Saturday we met the shuttle that would take us to Mucuge at 7:30 am at the airport. Bus was supposed to take 6 hrs but it took a lot longer than that. We didn't leave until almost 9 am so we didn't arrive until almost 6. No chance to preride the prologue course. We built the bikes, found a room, and got the lay of the land.
We decided to pre ride on the morning of the prologue and made the mistake of assuming we knew where we were going and rode for 30 minutes before we realized we were on going the wrong way. Once we found the course we decided to still preride even though we had already ridden about 1 hour. As we started , less than mile from the start, Trever sheared off the spindle of one of his pedals. Luckily he didn't go down. So we went back go the room to get the spare pedals we brought. To make the story short. We ended up riding almost 3 hours and that's before racing.
Prologue
The start was interesting. They started us out 2 teams at a time. The team that we started with was not very fast so we quickly moved ahead. As we were going through the same spot where Trever broke his pedal I hit a rock and tore a chunk off the sidewall of my tire and it went flat in 3 seconds! We changed it pretty quickly in around 3 minutes. We got going again and started passing folks. The course had 3 sections of singletrack with the middle section having some VERY technical sections and quite a bit of sandy sections as well. I was on a roll passing people left and right, but Trever was having a hard time getting around folks. I stopped a couple of times to make sure he was still there and hadn't had a mechanical When I hit a sandy uphill section (we walked it on the preride) I was feeling strong and rode the thing and moved ahead of Trever. I think this is where Trever pushed too hard getting up the hill and started to struggle.
To get to the last section of singletrack we had to ride on the road for about 1.5 miles. Straight uphill - steep bugger. I had Trever hold on to my jersey as I pushed up the hill. Once in the last piece of singletrack, we just had a little more climbing to do and then all downhill to the finish - almost. That's when a mixed team we had passed earlier passed us. Both were strong climbers but had no tech skills. The guy let us go by but the gal was stubborn and would not get out of the way. She even got off and was walking as we were riding. Bee-atch!!! We finally got around her almost at the bottom - a little pissed to say the least.
We finished in 1:20 good for 13th place out of about 30 teams. Twenty minutes behind the master winners. We could have done a 1:10 but tomorrow is another day and the hardest of the race so I'm sure we'll move up. Still 6 days to go. Stay tuned.
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