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C/2/2905.49 Jeff Bell's RAAM 1996
I've just returned back "home" from my RAAM solo adventure and I'm dying to put together a write-up, so here we go....I could babble on for hours with trivia as well as substantial stuff, so bear with me as I stab at what RAAM solo was all about for me. My first thought about RAAM is that the race only seemed to partially resemble what I imagined it would be like. It was full of pain and it was tough and exciting and emotional and all, but it all unfolded in a way which was just --unexpected. What you expected to be hard was easy, and it became hard when you didn't expected it. The list of the "unexpected" was endless -- I didn't expect to be sleepy so much. I expected to be bothered by the humidity but wasn't. I expected to feel weaker at the end, but didn't. I expected that I'd need the crew to talk to me often, but was typically happy to be alone. I expected to feel a constant sense of being in a race, but I often I felt that I was on a training ride, not the real thing. I broke down in tears of happiness one morning in Eastern Oklahoma, rather than at the end. I felt it had to be the toughest thing I had ever done, but I remember intense moments of suffering on the Terrible Two [double century] which I believe to be worse than any single moment on RAAM -- RAAM is just different -- it's a week and a half of periodic suffering -- mixed with enjoyment, an emotion I also didn't expect to feel nearly so much. It seems like the RAAM experience is littered with life lessons. Tom Buckley finished 30 minutes or so outside the 48 hour cutoff window. He had a headwind going into the finish and had a crash that beat him up as well. But Tom will probably feel closest to one of the biggest lessons of RAAM -- that what's important is being there to experience it all, drinking it in, not whether you made some arbitrary time goal or had the strongest legs or needed less sleep. RAAM can teach you about greed and how it manifests itself -- there is a tendency to think that perhaps you could have done better (in spite of the fact that the goal was always to just finish for me). I always intended to only have this experience once, and now I want to devote my time and energy elsewhere. Bill Moser said that he thought RAAM changed his life. I think I feel instead like it might change me a bit. I feel that I learned that steady pacing in ANY long term endeavor gets you farther in the end. OK, diving into the story, a couple of days before the race I had built a schedule based on time splits between time stations for crossing which got me to Savannah in 10 days, 8 hours -- just in time for the awards banquet and hopefully just inside the 48 hour finisher cutoff. The second half of my schedule had me slowing down, filled with splits which were close to the equivalent of 8 hour per 100 mile. I was feeling that even this might be a bit optimistic, so I made my return plane flight reservations late enough to accomodate a 11 1/2 day crossing. We had nine crew members in "pods" of 3 which rotated every 8 hours from sleeping in the RV to the pace van to driving the cargo van and/or the RV. My brother Derek was crew chief, my uncle George (we were both part of RAAM 94 team) was motivator/car customizer/ice cream getter/comic/sleep specialist [at least 8hr/day]. There was George's wife, Denise, my cousin Francesca, my girlfriend Dana [thank you!], Dave Hernandez [the supreme motivator and ever-present guy as well as bike mechanic], Tony Fedirko [nutrition specialist,cyclist, medical dude], Debra [my brother's girlfriend and supreme navigator], and Kim [our massage therapist, yes!]. For the first couple of days, we were amazingly close to our schedule, which also meant that we were far back, nearly OTB. Time and time again, we would be within 10 minutes of our projected time station splits. I never worried about when riders passed me, but at the same time felt discouraged when it happened, and couldn't help but be a little down about our position in the race. I kept my heartrate in the 110s on the flat, below 129 on the climbs, and let myself coast when my speed got above 24-25mph on downhills. One of the main purposes of this strategy was to keep from experiencing stomach problems, which I seemed to always get on Double Centuries and RAAM Qualifiers. Ironically, one of the benefits turned out to be that I conserved strength and was able to keep my heartrate at this same level pretty much throughout the race -- no different at the end than it was on day 1, (although 125 felt more like 145 as time went on). I feel fairly certain that this strategy also kept me from ever feeling super-super low. In the final days we were beating our time station split estimates by so much that we didn't pay much attention to the schedule much. I finished in 9 days, 13 hours, 15 minutes -- 6th place. Far behind the leaders to be sure (Danny Chew finished in 8 days, 7 hours ... and the remarkable rookie Wolfgang Fasching something like 8 days, 14 hours in 3rd place behind Rob Kish.), but the goal was to finish -- it was a one-shot attempt for me and it couldn't have gone better. But ALL of us who finished felt that it was a dream of a lifetime fulfilled. So many memories and incidences. It seemed like a big blur to all of us. The first day was so brutally hot and I was pouring so much water on myself that I think I changed shorts about 6 or 7 times because the chamois would inevitably get wet and begin to chafe. I remember how crushing it was to see Jodi Groesbeck crash during the rollout. I have had a hard time recalling how I felt that first day, except that I was interviewed on the morning of the second day and I remember that I told them that "it had been hell". They were expecting a more positive response, but I was just telling it like it was. I was too far behind the leaders to be able to offset reality with a bunch of excitement about my race standing. I was too far back. (After 24 hours I was about 30-45 minutes behind my schedule, which was OK, but not something to get too excited about.) I eventually settled on 3 hours of sleep, but not after trying out shorter sleep breaks -- like the 1 hour 45 minute sleep break in Mancos, CO. Sleep deprivation only caused me to feel sleepy, and I'd end up needing a nap if I got less than 3 hours. I didn't hallucinate much with one real exception -- the descent down from Wolf Creek Pass -- I felt horrible, was fighting sleepiness, and was seeing sections of pavement jump up at me, and other weird effects I can't describe. Going up Wolf Creek on the other hand was gruelling but bearable. My uncle, ever the joker, offered me a 20 pound rock at one point on the climb "for balance" and I was feeling carefree, so I rode with it for about 150 yards up to where my girlfriend, Dana, was standing and told her I had brought her a gift. (We've still got that rock..) I remember talking to the race directors and their camaras at the top of Cuchara Pass and describing to them how the climb went on for so long, and that I got mad at the road once and wanted to throw my bike at the road for hurting me. I was fairly sleep deprived, and it hit me right after that I had heard Seana Hogan describe the exact experience once before. Was I subconsciencely experiencing that anger only because I had heard about it once before then spit out the words in a fog thinking they were my own? Did Wyatt have some remote control access to my brain? I felt like I was in some Outer Limits episode. The remainder of that night was a long ride down to Trinidad, CO, to a sleep break. During that stretch it was a stretch to feel that I was in RAAM. Over and over I was feeling that we were on a training ride for RAAM -- it was late, there was no one around, I was sure no one else was riding their bike of all things at such a late hour. The next day my neck felt like it was giving out and that I'd be lucky to last another day. Dark feelings crowded in, but I weakly drove them out by deciding there was nothing that could be done and by taking in the beauty all around. Don't ever deny it, this country is SO beautiful!! That was not a great day. At Boise City we turned east into a dead-on headwind. 4 hours or so going about 10-12mph. I took a 20 minute nap during that time and felt a bit depressed. I remember trying to fight sleepiness later that night, and coffee seemed to have no effect. Only cold water on the face would help and only for a few seconds. I remember weaving down the road and told the crew that I was doing it only because that was the way to ride that felt best. I was pretty sure I was only weaving when going uphill. The crew told me later I was really slowing down, so they talked me into going to bed early (1:30am?) The next morning, I remember coming into Slapout (halfway) and as it was getting light I looked down to see a rash of red and purple blisters on my left arm and leg. A wave of panic came over me, I thought it was my body's way of reacting to the stress of the race -- Outer Limits again -- but we later figured that it was some poison oak or something that I had picked up. Considering how my feet, hands, lips and rear felt, it wasn't so much of a big deal. I had to laugh, what else was going to happen? The rest of that day in Oklahoma would be the low point of the race (but also the turning point as the next day was probably my best, where I covered about 350 miles before sleeping). That day was very tough -- a brutal south wind which we were always turning into, and it was viciously hot. Evidently the crew was always playing a game of trying to guess what I would like to eat at each hourly feeding. I felt sad that they placed so much of their assessment of their self-worth on this task, because my tastes were so arbitrary and meaningless. We had a limited "menu" but there was no telling when a pop-tart or potatoes was going to be a good or a terrible suggestion. It was hard to explain, the crew took their suggestions so seriously. I remember getting a Snickers bar (not on menu) from Denise at one point during the hot part of the day and it was the most wonderful thing I had tasted in years. I looked at it carefully as I ate it because it was such an ingeniously wonderful piece of food. (Normally don't like Snickers.) At the same time, the crew was later mystified when I turned down a Snickers bar suggestion every other time -- I just didn't want to ruin the experience by having it be less wonderful. Every morning the crew would serve up hot pancakes with bananas in them, which I eventually figured out was routine and it did give me something to look forward to. That was great. I slowed way down that day and remember begging the crew near the end of the day to ask some locals if the wind died down at night. I tried to get the crew to let me sleep during the middle of the day. I felt better at dusk, went through a picturesque town I won't forget, and then got real serious about trying to keep the momentum up going over an endless road of big rollers. The moment of truth came 15 miles outside of Shawnee, OK, when I thought that I would go insane trying to gut out the motivation to ride the remaining miles to the hotel. The next morning was the calm after the storm -- I felt OK, my neck was better, I was averaging something like 17mph over rolling terrain, and getting hot pancakes from the crew (along with Energy Surge -- half of my 500 cal/hour diet). The countryside was green, peaceful, and the temperature was great and I began to imagine crossing the line in Savannah and the tears started coming down. It was as close as I'll ever feel to being part of the script of a Hollywood movie. That "good" day in Oklahoma-going-into-Arkansas was my turning point. We went through a stretch of flat roads with no wind where it felt easy to cruise at 18mph or better. (Of course, for Chew or Kish or Fasching or Tatrai, they were probably doing 20mph or better.) At one point my uncle George stopped at Mac Donalds and got 3 ice cream cones, all different flavors, and put them in cups and offered me a choice. I was horrified, ice cream during a race? Fortunately I came to my senses and became a happy guy munching down a huge amount of ice cream. (In the first half of the race, I lost no weight, but in the later half I lost about 3 pounds. Tony estimated that my diet was about 9,000 per day, around 7% fat, 15% protein and the rest all carbos.) Later in the day in Arkansas, I felt invincible for hours on end -- flying along, up hills, feeling no pain. Caffeine no doubt helped, although I'm so sensitive to caffeine that the amounts were not great -- a Mountain Dew when I felt sleepy and an occasion iced coffee drink when I was felt in serious need. (One time though, the day before, I got so sick of fighting sleepiness and caffeine seeming to have no effect, I chugged 3 iced coffees in a row and felt bulletproof for about 2 hours. Not sure how much that helped as that day overall was near the bottom of the list.) My legs felt great and seemed to have a mind of their own, begging me to go faster. At one point, I think I had been overdoing it and the feeling of unlimited strength left me for about 1/2 hour. I was sure that my brake pads were rubbing or I had a sticky wheel and I kept getting off the bike to check, starting to panic. The crew was asked what in the world I was doing, and I figured they probably wouldn't understand, so I just told them not to worry. Later my strength returned again and stayed with me the rest of the night -- when the teams began to catch and pass us, Chris Kostman came by and interview me and I tried to explain to him that I had broken through and had "super-charged" strength. He told me he was skeptical, but I babbled on and took it up to 26.5mph and read 137 heartrate on my monitor, convinced that this cemented my case. Later the #3 team, Pacific Care, came by and I paced next to him for a few minutes, which felt effortless. The crew pulled me over and asked me '...just WHAT are doing??' I told them I was "doing a science experiment". Evidently I was experiencing was something close to normal riding strength, partial immunity to pain, and feeling very awake. It just seemed so unlikely, I thought that I had "broken through" or "gotten stronger." The next morning we had about 100 miles or so to the Mississippi and I still felt great. I had a hard time keeping an even pace, 15mph didn't feel much different than 20mph, but I decided to go by my average speed (I reset my Avocet at ever time station) and aimed to average 17mph. It turned into a gruelling stretch of flat, rough road at the end and I was glad to have it over. We had passed a lot of people in the last 24 hours although we only actually saw a couple -- John Buffington (who we were neck and neck with the night before) and then Tom Buckley, who we passed as he was being worked on at the side of the road. Part of the mystery of RAAM is that you never really know too much about what's happening with other riders, but when you pass someone you desperately hope that they stay behind you. You tend to fear that they will come screaming past you. I was feeling too good at this point to worry and at the Mississippi drive-across, for the first time started to think strategically about our position. As it turned out, there were only two riders ahead of us that appeared to be within range -- Rob Morlock and Kaname Sakurai -- no more than 2 hours ahead. Although it was over 750 miles to end, I seriously thought that this was the final stretch. And in certain ways it was. The front runners were impossible to catch and it imagined that it was unlikely that I would get passed. I felt great and we "hunted" down Rob systematically, keeping a steady pace, gaining at each time station. It was the rolling hills of Tennessee, I thought I could sense how I thought Rob was feeling. Passing Rob was anti-climactic -- he was pulled off to the side of the road and we heard that his pace van was stuck in a ditch. (Our RV pulled off to help and there was a head-on with a drinking driver and a woman with a baby right there. Fran, our RV driver, was a bit shook up, and Tony, our resident medical expert went to the aim of the victims. No one was seriously hurt...whew!) So it was just Kaname left to try to catch. We had seen him off and on since Arizona (!), and I was in awe of his speed and strength, while the crew convinced me that he was in trouble because he was experiencing serious neck pain (he had a Scott aerobar attached to his top tube pointing straight up with padding on it which he rested his head on) and he was stopping a lot. I poured it on as it started to get dark, trying to convince myself that I was gaining time on ever stretch of rolling hill. It began to rain and I pressed on hard, telling the crew that I thought that our position in the race would be decided that night. (...Dramatic stuff, having never in my "sports" career felt like I was in the driver's seat...). Somewhere around 11pm or so, we came around a turn and there he was up ahead, I was a bit shocked. I put on the coals a bit more and got close to him but had to work a bit too hard and pulled up a few yards short of his van and just paced him. My brother was in the pace van and told me .."remember what Mr. Burke [our high school cross country coach] used to say. When you pass, give it everything you've got and demoralize them." Well it sounded like good advice at the time, so I wound it up and flew by him, hoping (in vain) that maybe he'd think we were a team passing. Who knows what went through Kaname's mind. Even at the finish, we could only communicate like ape-men, since he and his crew spoke only Japanese. He'd never seen me doing anything but puttering along. Did we serve notice and kick off a battle? Did we frighten him? Did he think I was a fool? Perhaps he had his own plan all along and couldn't care less. In any case, there was a "rub". All the rain had soak my shorts long ago and I was developing a genuine rash. I had to get into dry clothes. A dilemma. So I kept the hammer down as much as I could until I thought we had enough of a gap to change and still stay in the lead. I pulled over and began changing. Slowly the feeling of needing to get back on the bike slipped away as it tended to do every time you stopped -- eventually I was suited up, ready to go, telling myself I would go about 50 miles more before sleeping. Then we noticed we had a problem -- the bike seat (Gel Avocet) was wet, which would guarantee that my shorts would get wet again. We all stopped in silence, baffled, I felt a laugh coming on [your never too unhappy about a geniune reason to have to stop riding for a bit]. Dave Hernandez, our bike mechanic and constant saviour, divined a solution -- he tapped plastic baggies over the seat and I rode with it that way all the way to the end. This was the sort of stuff that good crews are about -- and while I'm writing all about me this and that, etc., I could think of an example of brilliance by every last one of our 9 crew members that saved the day at some point. Picking hotels, cooking pancakes, buying Bar-B-Q sandwiches and ice cream, telling me just what I needed to know and leaving out what I didn't, getting the generator on the RV replaced in route in Memphis, massage at the right time and place, surprise banners at major milestones, talking me out of sleep breaks when I didn't need them, making me sleep when I was slowing down, feeding me vitamins, sunscreen, Blistex, listerine -- and great tunes from local radio stations. I was just lucky to have them -- they were into it and they were organized and good at what they were doing. So, I'm back on the bike trying to stay ahead of Kaname, when I realize that I'm cooked and I won't make in 50 miles, much less 20 miles. And Kaname catches me and pass me and I'm demoralized. I slow down. At one point I get off my bike with the pretext of taking a leak and I throw my bike down on the ground, which causes momentary panic with the crew. Someone spits out words of wisdom and says to just "work through it, you just having one of those moments." There's a time station up ahead and time seems to come to a halt. With every pedal turn I'm groaning and maki ng a racket and I hope that Kaname and his crew doesn't hear me falling apart. I remember it being 2 miles to go and not being sure that I can ride that far without stopping. Finally we make it to the little town of Linden, TN, and strangely we seem to be passing Kaname just before we get to the actual time station. There's no question I have to go down for a sleep and I'm feeling that I've failed. I ask that we go for the full 3 hour sleep (no question in my mind, I want to sleep as much as I am allowed) and I go down in the RV parked in an alley on the course that is half-heartedly hidden (legal in RAAM to be sleep away from the course). The next morning Kaname is gone but I get the word that he cut short his sleep and we are 620 miles or so from the finish. This actually sounds good. Kaname has cut back on his sleep enough that there's no way he can ride straight through to the finish and he just might end up to be so sleepy that I can catch him later in the day. Did he panic and sleep too little or can he manage on 2 hours of sleep? I head out through rolling Tennessee hills which I remember from our 1994 Team RAAM adventure. At the first time station we are 1 hour behind Kaname and at the next 45 minutes. Things are looking up. Just as it was getting light, I remember feeling very good and very calm and peaceful and confident and I think that I was averaging around 16mph through these hills. I was clearheaded through most of the race and my math abilities stayed intact. I remember calculating that we might get to Savannah just before the bars closed on Saturday, which I thought would be a "feastive" time to arrive. I asked the crew to check my calculations and Dana came back saying that she calculated that with a 15mph average I wouldn't quite make it. I was pretty sure I could average 16mph and make it, but left the conversation at that. A day and a half later when we crossed the line at 1:45am on Saturday, I thought back on that conversation and realized that I was thinking pretty clearly -- we made the goal -- bars close at 3am in Savannah [the crew congregated in a bar afterwards and closed it down. They carried me a block and a half to the Days Inn. My eyes were closed much of the time]. The day ground on and I remember that as usual my feet were killing me (a constant -- numb spots, occasional sharp pains), my hands were in bad shape, there was a red band across each of them where I had been holding the brake hoods (I was standing on every hill. I had trained that way, seemed to go faster, and it gave me a break from sitting.). I came to a time station and thought I saw Kaname and pulled off into a gas station for a 2 minute break. As it turned out it wasn't Kaname I saw and the chase continued for many more hours. During that time there was a long, wide downhill stretch into a headwind which was demoralizing -- it was hot and I felt like I was going so slowly that Bill Moser, who we had heard was only an hour back, would certainly catch me. My dreams of 6th seemed to be going down the tubes after all and I began to think that I better get prepared for drift back in the pack here at the end [which was still OK with me]. There was a 1,000 foot climb up to Monteagle (near Chattanooga) and that went well enough that I felt good again. I imagined I was climbing Old La Honda, it was a nice winding road. At the top there was a relatively flat stretch and I was on the hunt again. Passing Kaname was again a bit anti-climactic -- he was pulled off at the side of the road. I really think that one of the things I had going was that I just wasn't getting off the bike much at all. In the places were I could, I'd pee off the bike (until I pieced together a corrolation between me "spilling" in my shorts and the early warning signs of saddle sores. I quit the practice after that.) and the only other stops of the day were 1 or 2 bathroom stops/customary 1 or 2 changes of shorts per day and an occasional change of the shorts on hot days when I would accidently get my shorts wet from pouring water on them. One thing I remember about this last part of the race was that I couldn't do a trackstand easily anymore, so I resorted to putting a foot down at stopsigns. Also, my sense of balance started to fall apart on the very last 24hours and it started to feel a bit strange riding down the road -- as if the bike was a bit unstable and a sudden motion might take you down. I told the crew it felt a little like riding on an ice rink. After passing Kaname we cruised into Chattanooga and then from there into Georgia as the sun went down. And then perhaps the strangest thing of the entire trip happened. For a couple of hours I had been gravitating to a very particular and constant power output. It felt incredibly smooth and even pedalling down the road. At one point I felt I was fighting that effort level, trying to pick up the pace, so let go and sent no mental messages to move my legs and MY LEGS CONTINUED TO MOVE ALL BY THEMSELVES. I was absolutely mesmorized by this phenomena and when the crew would talk to me, I distractedly answered quickly and went back to concentrate and observe what was happening. I was worried that the effort level that my legs were putting out was too low or would slowly decay, but this wasn't the case (!). On the flat I wo uld be moving at 17mph, which was fine. I would slow up too much for my tastes going up hills, so I stood up then and pushed, but when I sat back down, it was right back to the same effort level. And going downhill my legs would still be keeping the same effort level, I would be spinning faster and faster, until I finally would tell my legs to stop. And they would instantly and would start right back up instantly at that same level when I wanted to go again. It was so bizarre! This went on for 2-3 hours, until we finally got into so much climbing and descending that the effect disappeared. That night in Georgia, the climbing gradually became intense until it transitioned into endless miles of giant rollers. It seemed like nothing in the middle part of Georgia was flat. I was starting to lose it a little somewhere around 10-11pm and when I asked for a break [on the pretext of putting on warmer clothes, riders are s-o-o clever], I realized just how "weird" I had been feeling out there on the bike with al l that "automatic legs" riding and all. I was feeling unexcited about the climbing ahead, so I turned to the caffeine solution and asked for some No-Doz. I guess I was putting the crew on the spot because I had confessed earlier that No-Doz typically made me sick. So my brother gave me 1/8 of No-Doz tablet [active ingredient =3D caffeine] washed down with a cup of Jolt. Well I was flyin within a short time. It was hilly, but I was feelin VERY good, working up a sweat. I would actually hope that there was yet another hill after each hill and my uncle eventually suggested to me that I might be overdoing it. I eased back a notch. I picked up the new pace van crew at the midnight crew change over and stopped to explain to them how good I was feeling. (It was weird because I had last seen them 8 hours earlier when they were about to go down and was feeling good at that time. I wanted to say, "check this out..I'm STILL feelin good."....ah, the ups and downs of RAAM.) We pressed on into the night, through the big rollers of Georgia and I continued to feel great, and I wondered if we could ride through the night. In spite of my deluded state, I could calculate mileage and knew that we still had over 300 miles to go -- too long to ride efficiently on no sleep. My sense of balance seemed to be getting worse and I thought that I had the crew fooled, they would sometimes talk about me in the 3rd person often at breaks .."he seems to be riding in a straight line, let's let him go on further". Some of the descents on those big rollers had me a little spooked -- it may have looked safe from the pace van, but out there on the bike with the wind rushing past you, riding on the "ice rink", 35mph felt pretty spooky. We'd move the RV 10 miles down the road, I'd ride to it and then we'd have a pow-wow and decide whether to go on. We had sketchy info on Kaname -- he was either 1 hour or 3 hours back -- two conflicting reports. Finally, at one of the stops no where in particular, I agreed to stop, glad to stop, still feeling somewhat wired, I went down to sleep in the RV in a parking lot right there on the course. It felt great. I wanted 3 hours, but the crew surruptiously let me have 2 hrs 45 minutes [a big deal to me]. Kaname had evidently gone through the time station before and was on his way towards us. I felt for him, as I calcuated that he had well over 300 miles to ride to get to the finish without a sleep, while we had about 290 to go -- an amount that wasn't so much of a stretch. At the first time station, Dacula, GA [or "Dracula without the 'r-r-r'" as my brother said] we found that we were 45 minutes up on Kaname. We were close enough that his vans were recon'ing up and down the road to see just where we were - a bit unnerving. I felt like everytime they went by though I happened to be looking pretty relaxed, eating some food or chugging along on some rare flat stretch. It was slightly cloudy, not particularly hot and the crew had ceremoniously giving me my custom RAAM jersey that morning for the ride in to Savannah, secretly nearly bringing me to tears. We cruised along, pretty much enjoying ourselves, expanding our lead on Kaname bit by bit. I knew he had suffered so much and worked so hard, I really felt that he was more of a hero than I. In the end, we began to zero in on David Kees when we discovered he was 2-3 hours ahead of us after all the sleep leapfrogging had settled out. I couldn't get myself to put on much of a chase, I knew he was a seasoned vet, when my crew finally told me [and they were instructed to lie to me if necessary] that they had gotten word that he was not looking well and his crew was doing everything they could to keep him on the bike. Well, it turned out not to be the case. Kees finished 2 1/2 hours ahead of me, but he must have turned it a bit, because I began to pick up the pace a fair amount. I remember my concentration would drift in and out at times though as I had bouts with sleepiness, but when I was on, I was pushing hard. The crew was talking over the inter-auto radio system, advising on good local radio stations to pump over the pace van PA [walkman was long since discarded, sleep deprivation made it tough for me to deal with that sort of mechanical mish-mash]. I still hear some of those sounds of these tunes. As it got dark, we were closing in on Pooler and Savannah, and there was one stretch of 40 miles [between Metter and Blitchtown] which I was sick of pushing through. So I reasoned that I should push hard and get through as fast as I could. [Who knows, maybe David Kees is broken down just up ahead.] I was already pushing along at 20mph or so when a team came by and I decided to pace off them for as long as I could -- up to 24-25mph!. Well, that cooked me, finally really and truly cooked me. I hung on for too long and when I quit, I drifted down to 15mph and could hold it at 17mph for more than 10 seconds before tiring. I was furious with myself for feeling good for so many days and then frying myself for the ride into the finish. I was not a happy camper for a bit and the crew couldn't console me. But as it turned out we were still far enough from Savannah that I eventually felt better and even laughed when the crew was kneeling in a three-layer human pyramid at the Blitchtown time station. I pedalled in burst and whatever else I could manage and got in Pooler and then picked up Nick and Cindi, my bike escorts going into Savannah. I remember secretly being embarrased at my slow speed. They could actually accellerate too! Wow, I had lost that! My cadence seemed to be half of theirs. At the end, Seana Hogan was there holding half of the finishers ribbon and she broke into tears a bit. I felt that a bit a bit of a cold soul for not breaking down myself, I was so happy! Jeff Bell, Palo Alto, CA |
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