Race Report #1 2008: El Tour de Tucson Ride

This first event of the season was not so much a race as a me being a rabbit for a good friend in a 109 mile charity ride. I figured it was a good shakedown for me to start the new season. As it turned out between Mistress catching a cold, supporting friends for the Soma 1/2 Ironman and my concussion, I lost about 250 miles of riding in three weeks and went from being highly prepared to just wanting to keep myself an honest rabbit, finishing one wheel ahead of my friend.

It was to be miserably cold on race morning and as my father, godfather, Doug and myself exited our hotel for a meal the night before the ride and I had two things on my mind; my splitting concussion headache and find a cheap sweatshirt to wear while waiting for the start. (I should have learned from Ironman Florida, be prepared for morning chill with a throwaway top.) I was surprised that just sitting in the back of the vehicle as we drove around that I was being assaulted visually, my eyes still impaired from my latest head injury. We all retired to our room later that night with full bellies and me with a $9 XL green sweatshirt courtesy of Walgreens.

Race morning found Doug and I at the start line 2 hours ahead of time. As a charity ride the waves are set up for projected finish times and when one chute becomes to full they force you back with slower riders. We ended up being seeded right behind the quicker riders boxed out of the faster group ahead.

As we started, I mentally defaulted to riding without draft, after a couple miles I realized I could draft and picked up amazing time and speed, covering the first quarter of the course around 19 mph. Well above our projection.

There are two areas where cyclists must dismount and portage their bike across dry sandy rivers. During the first such carry at mile 8, my speedplay cleat became damaged and it took ten minutes for me to reclip into my pedals. For the remainder of the event it was a constant challenge to take my foot off the bike without wrenching my ankle. Unfortunately this foreshadowed a similar fate to my left cleat during the next portage around 50 miles and then I simply tried to not get off the bike at all.

Doug and I did very well staying together up until the point of the second portage. My only lag with him was when my HR watch showed full memory one hour in and I had to delete some files before restarting, one of the many times I wished my aero bars were attached. He picked up a good draft and I needed to bust out to catch up.

After the second portage rolling hills came into play and I found I could attack them quite well. Doug kept a reasonable pace, as we had been told the hills in the later section were not to be trifled with. He found easy company along the way so we adapted our strategy so that I would time trial the five to seven miles between aid stations and wait for him then repeat. This we continued to do, with me waiting about ten minutes at each station until mile 72 where I again had plenty of time to refill my bottles, empty my bladder and nibble on food until Doug arrived.

We were told at this point with 37 miles left that the course was essentially played out and there would be no more hills. I looked at the watch and then at Doug. I felt really good after 72 miles. Strong. I wanted to beat 7 hours of course time and had less than 90 minutes to do it. We talked, shook hands and parted ways.

Doug had made an interesting point earlier in our ride. People were afraid of speed. They dawdled along at slow speeds and low cadence. Our drafts, while helpful to conserve energy, slowed us down considerably. This is not a race. It is not a time trail from T1 to T2. Its a charity ride with 10,000 cyclists. It blew my mind that they didn't stand on the road and hand out bottles of water. You had to stop at basically a party and the uber-gracious and genial volunteers filled you up by pitchers. There was not energy/calorie drink handed out. A very laid back race. So when I parted ways with Doug with 37 miles left, I really wanted to fly.

And I flew.

The next hour I covered 27 miles. I reached speeds, without drafting, of 31, 32 miles per hour. I hit 36 mph as my fastest speed. It is the greatest hour of cycling (and without aero bars) I have ever had. And I loved every minute of it.

At mile 74, just past our parting, the last group of cyclists entered the course for their 35 mile ride. There were several distances one could ride, 109 miles the longest, 35 the shortest. At this point I was doing around 30 mph and passing people doing half that speed. One cyclist came up to me and asked me about the color of my bib, I didn't get it at the time, but people in the shortest ride had blue bibs and people in my wave had white. All I got from him was that he was impressed I was riding that fast that far into my event.

I would sometimes grab onto a draft line, as my HR was hitting around 181, this allowed me to drop HR and still keep a decent speed. Then I would bust out in a flurry of high cadence and blow past the line.

During one such time that I was moving off the line, around 28 mph. I was passing people and a van was approaching from ahead. A cyclist looked over his shoulder at me and yelled, "car" but I didn't need to slow, I kept my speed high to pass once the van moved by. The cyclist looked back at me again and yelled, "Car...dude your wheels are so loud I thought you were a car!" I smiled and blew by. That was cool.

I ended up being stuck at a couple of lights, the police by now were doing their best to keep traffic stops to a minimum and was resigned that my fantastic hour of cycling was not going to put me under the 7 hour course time. So I slowed down and just tried to keep all the systems running smoothly.

It was difficult to unclip either foot and the wrenching action of my ankle did not allow me to be gentle with my legs. I cramped pretty hard at a couple of the intersections waiting to be waived through.

Another cyclist approached me and said the biggest, most awesome statement I have ever got in endurance racing. He obviously had seen the M-Dot tattoo on my calf and said, "Did you do the Ironman." I replied, "Yeah." His response was, "You're one bad motherfucker...that's a compliment."

I finished the course around 7:15, I didn't delete enough memory from my watch, which kept showing 'Full Memory', so stopped looking at it with 9 miles to go. My bike computer ride time is just over 6 hours. That shows how much time was spent at aid stations hanging out. Doug finished about a half hour later with a big smile and full of pride. He did great. I am so happy he was able to coax me into this ride as my first of the new season. It had been on my radar for years and it did not disappoint.

Several minutes after finishing I definitely felt I could run, but was glad I didn't have to. Instead I had a couple beers, a couple cokes and a medal around a neck; reward for a good day of training.