God Changes His Mind

So I wanted to be an ultrarunner.  However, that was not to be.  I developed Plantar Fasciitis and could no longer run without intense pain, no matter how many treatments I did for it.  So what is an ultrarunner supposed to do? 

Well, I decided to become an ultracyclist and signed up for this year’s Furnace Creek 508.  That’s a 508 mile bike race held in Death Valley, California.  The race has a 48 hour time limit and is billed as “The Toughest 48 Hours in Sport”.  It sounded like the perfect challenge for me.

I hadn’t really rode my bike much over the past several years, especially since I hung up my Ironman shoes.  My bikes for the most part sat forlorn and neglected and my bike shorts disintegrated in my drawers.  There is nothing like shotgun training though so starting sometime in May I began my quest to get in shape for this toughest 48 hours. 

I made a critical mistake in the beginning of my training.   I didn’t have proper bike shorts to carry me through the miles I would start having to ride, nor did I use chamois cream.  This set me up early to develop saddle sores, which have been plaguing me since I started training.  I’ve since replenished my cycling wardrobe at great expense and have become a firm believer in the soothing effects of a healthy dose of chamois cream being applied to my “taint” before I set off for a 4 to 17 hour ride.

Since I’ve begun training for the FC508, I’ve gotten to know the roads and towns north of the George Washington Bridge on both sides of the Hudson River very well and Long Island.  It’s hard not to, when you are riding 150+ miles in a single day.  For the most part I’ve ridden alone and learned where I can expect to find food and water and which stretches of road are vast wastelands.  I’ve ridden in the heat of day, the pouring rain and the darkness of night.  I’ve been on Route 9W long before any cyclists are out and long after everyone went home for the evening.  It’s been exciting and lonely, but for some reason never boring.  The roads keep changing, another hill to be climbed or simply just miles ahead of me before I make it home.

My family has been away while I’ve been training.  This has been very helpful.  I haven’t had the guilty feelings associated with abandoning my children while I go out for an extremely long training session.  I speak to them every few days on the phone.  My wife keeps asking me if I’ve done various things around the house, to which I reply with a resounding “NO”.  She doesn’t seem to have any idea what my days have been like since I started training.  It basically goes like this:

Monday – Friday: Wake 4am, ride 60 miles into NJ and back, shower, pack for work, ride to work, work, ride home, eat, sleep, repeat.

Saturday : Wakeup 4am, ride until I can’t ride anymore, come home eat, sleep

Sunday: Repeat Saturday.

I’ve never trained as hard as this for anything else in my life.  It is all consuming.  Even during my Ironman days, I wasn’t putting in the training volume that I am now.  So far I am injury free, with the exception of intense saddle soreness.

I do have a few friends that know and appreciate how much I’ve been training.  Their support is much appreciated.

As much as I’ve been training, I am worried that I will not be able to complete the 508 in the time limit.  The simple fact is there is not enough time in the day, nor enough long and steep hills in my area necessary for me to feel confident.  Maybe this is a blessing; perhaps it is making me over compensate by training all the time.

So far since I’ve begun training, I’ve logged 5,500 miles.  I keep planning trips further from home and more difficult.  I ride with a ton of stuff:  A full Camelbak, two water bottles, work and personal cell phones, GPS, pump, spare tubes, suntan lotion and lot’s of singles for the vending machines.  I don’t ride particularly hard, but I am not slacking either.  My moving average has been about 15.1 MPH and my overall average has been about 12-13 MPH.  This isn’t too bad when you consider I am stopping every couple of hours or so to get food, rest, eat and drink.  Fortunately, I’ve been blessed with only getting two flats while I was out riding, both of those is the same rear tire… I guess it’s time I changed it.

I am actually surprised that I got into the FC508.  I didn’t think I had that impressive of a race resume, especially when you consider I don’t have any major recent accomplishments.  I think part of the reason why I was accepted was my willingness to raise money for a charitable organization – Transportation Alternatives (www.transalt.org).   TA is a cycling advocacy group based in NYC that tries to make it safer for cycling and encourages the use of public transit.  I felt that having lived and cycled through NYC all my life, I should support an organization that helps make it safer for me to do so.  If you want to help me raise money for TA, you can make a donation by clicking on this link:

http://ta.convio.net/site/TR/Events/General?px=1043046&pg=personal&fr_id=1040