This year will be different.
Honestly, it is NOT peaceful.
Here's my review from last year:
I've been waiting for a plane for hours now... Here's a really rough draft of a trip report (really rough - it'll be changed a lot). But for those of you interested in knowing more, here ya go...
It was probably mile 52 or 53, and we'd been grinding along side by side for a while. I looked over at the guy next to me and asked, "What do you think it means that the song that's stuck in my mind is 'Bringing on the Heartache?" (thinking of you here, Martha Van Tassel). Life, mirrored in an earbug.... welcome to the Crusher in the Tushars, one of the toughest races in the US, and the toughest thing I have done since summitting Mount Rainier. 69 miles, 50/50 split between pavement and dirt. 5000 vertical feet up, 5000 feet down, and 5000 feet back up. I kept laughing at the hype--I mean, really... the site touts the race's difficulty to the point where one simply assumes it's just hype. Shakespeare's quote comes to mind: "Methinks he doth protest too much". No race could be this difficult, right? Um... wrong. You won't know how wrong, until you are deep into the second ascent. That's the thing about the Crusher. It lures you in and then, when you're at your weakest, mercilessly crunches you while it laughs at you. And I am not exaggerating.
The race starts months earlier--or should--with prep. For a few months, I was serious about it. Then, in May, everything fell apart for me. My calendar filled and I dropped farther and farther behind on training. And that was my first mistake. I planned on riding the Bountiful Skyline Drive repeatedly, until I could ride it twice without stopping. As life snuck up behind me, I started skipping major training rides. Important rides. And yet, while I was defocused from tri training, I was also not focused on Crusher training. This is a deadly combination! Also, as a 43-year old returning athlete, I was training too hard. Way too hard. Next year I'm going to focus on endurance rides, with regular power training, but not trying to climb the Skyline every week. Spreading that training out over an entire week means I just might live to ride another day.
The first big question about the race is which bike to ride. Half of the race is on paved surfaces where a mountain bike quite literally drags you down. Small wheels. Knobby tires. Spongy suspension. If it sounds like a complete waste of energy, you're right. The 'back stretch' of the ride is a good 10-15 mile ride along route 89 from Junction, UT to Circleville, UT. I was on a bike with 700c tires, and was passing riders left and right who were humming along on their fat tire MTB's. The desire to ride a big tire bike is fully justified. With the head wind, there was a dual gain--not only did I roll better, but I got into my drops and the miles flew by almost as fast as the mountain bikes.
But (and with the Crusher, there is always a but), the 5-6 mile descent following the first climb will have anyone with a rigid frame wishing they'd chosen otherwise. The hill is steep, with several switchbacks, and severely washboarded the entire way. Not your typical mild bumping--these washboards are easily 4" and maybe as much as 6" deep. At 10 MPH they are bone-jarring. At 25? One man referred to it as 'water boarding.' Water bottles littered this stretch of the course. I even saw a broken cage, with the bottle still in it. For a guy who has been cycling since the 80's, the stiff frame and caliper brakes were just a throwback to a simpler era--I'm used to it, I took it in stride. For people who cut their teeth on full-suspension and disc brakes, I am sure this section was pure misery. The race promoters promised there would be one point for everyone, regardless of what bike they ride, that they wished they had ridden another bike. For the cyclocross riders, this was that point. For this old geezer... I'm pleased with how my cross bike performed, and wouldn't change it--even in the washboard section. Bottom line: unless you are really experienced with endurance riding on a fixed frame bike, you are likely to be miserable on this 5-mile stretch if you ride anything but a mountain bike. For your first Crusher, take the hit and ride your fat tire bike, or spend a lot of time riding your cross bike in the hills. Ultimately I am happy I rode my cross bike. My problems were configuration (wrong rear cassette) and insufficient training.
Climbing and crying are very similar words. In the Crusher, I'm not sure there's any difference. My biggest mechanical mistake: not listening to my buddy, Sanjay Balu (owner of MVS Cycles, a leading retailer of sport bicycles in south India). He urged me to put a 10-speed mountain cassette on my cross bike, and I ignored him. I had done the math, I'd calculated the gear inches. I replaced my 36 front chainring with a 34, and thought that'd suffice. Big mistake. I simply ground too low, too hard, too long. I was really envying the mountain bikers with their 28 front/33 rear configurations as we climbed back up out of Circleville! It was painful. More painful, more difficult than anything I've ever done - except maybe Rainier. As I climbed up the hills this weekend, I was reminded of my Rainier climb a lot. Travis and I would climb 100 yards or so, stop, and I would simply sink to my knees in the snow. I have never 'hit the wall' like I did on Rainier. Until the Crusher. With an injured low back, it was twice as miserable. I finally had to stop, just to walk and stretch my back. As time passed and I climbed higher, the road got steeper (14% to 16% grade). I couldn't pedal it. When I got off my bike, I had to stop and lean on it - I was dizzy, and afraid I'd fall over. At one point, I seriously found myself cursing the #($*@# who routed that ride. How could he not recognize that no human could climb this? If he'd popped up on the road, I honestly would have had to walk away in order to not punch him. I have never felt that much animosity toward another human being, in my entire life.
A couple of positive notes… As I finally crested that hill I came up on Yet Another Aid Station (YAAS). My digestive system was shot before I started (I'd spent the entire week prior to the race on the road eating restaurant food). I wasn't absorbing nutrition and I couldn't really drink anything. There were volunteers offering me bananas (no), watermelon (no), EFS (HECK NO!!)… I kept riding. Then I saw a guy holding out a shiny red can of Coke. I stopped, smiled a HUGE grin, pointed, and said "I want THAT!" I drank half the can in one gulp! Nothing has ever tasted so good in my life. Maybe it was the sugar, maybe the sodium… I have no idea, but after all the other crap I'd eaten all day, that was seriously the bee's knees. It kept me moving for the next 10 miles.
Once I got up that terrible hill, I was happy again to be riding my cross bike. Honestly, a mountain bike just can't keep up (as soon as the grade dips below about 5%). It was pretty much smooth rolling from there - a few hills here and there, a lot of sorrow, but smooth rolling. I started riding with a guy from Boulder named Jeff. He out-climbed me on every slope (his cross was set up with a mountain cassette--getting the picture here?). I passed him on the downhill (no idea why--that happens a lot with the wheels I was using) and we rode together on the levels. We were together until the last two miles--I passed him going down, he passed me going up. It was great to see him at the finish line.
Months ago I had planned on swapping to Kool-Stop Salmon pads. I used to ride them on my mountain bike, back when I was riding a caliper-brake bike. They're designed to be a bit softer - they wear quicker, but they prevent damaging the rim. They're perfect for wet, muddy environments. I swapped them onto my cross bike Friday and I am SO happy for it! Those washboard sections were murderous, and honestly… Had I been running my stock pads, I'm not sure I wouldn't have ended up in the mud at least once. Those stock pads just don't have the braking power, let alone the ability to shed mud and water.
When I crossed the finish line, I was around 250 of 350 riders. When I left the finish line at around 2:45, there were still about 80 riders on the course. At 3, they swept the course and closed the race. Greater than 9 hours, you got a DNF. I originally dreamed of a 5:30 race, figured on a 6:30, but factored an 8:30 worst-case scenario. Was I ever accurate...
One thing I've learned: I may not be fast (yet), but I can take a lot of suffering an misery. I can just keep going and going... This fascination with pain and suffering is actually part of a personal interest in the stories of survivors. They all share a couple of common traits: they are incredibly disciplined (they refuse to entertain thoughts of failure), they are incredibly focused, and they just never give up. I participate in events like the Crusher in part to prove to myself that I still have that survival instinct. Every time life throws something at me, I check myself to make sure I still have it - I don't ever want to curl up in a ball and give up. While I may have suffered untold misery, while I missed my goal and my planned completion times, and while I failed in several ways preparing for the race, I proved to myself again that, at least until I went to bed Saturday night, I've still got that survivor mentality. May I never give it up!
LESSONS LEARNED
* Don't travel the week prior to an event. Travel blackout for at least 7 days.
* Get more rest the week before
* MTB cassette
* Spare battery for HRM (my HRM died before the race even started)
* Get digestion worked out
* EFS, GU, Hammer... pick one, use it all season.
* EFS tastes like donkey piss. Develop a taste for it, or use something else. Whatever you do,
don't take a big swig and then spit it out all over some other rider's leg. It's impolite.
* More incredibly long training (should be up to 100 easy miles)
* Two water bottles, no more
* Bring bad weather gear (shoe covers, sleeves)
* One tube is enough. Bring patch kits
* Get low back resolved (muscular)
* Fruit, ESP watermelon, is delicious
