Epiphany

Sat, April 21^st – 7:30 AM.  The day started out like every other Sat for like the past… oh, I don’t know effing forever number of previous Saturdays.  Roll out of bed between 6:00 – 6:30.  Grab some breakfast, wheat toast w/PB&J, coffee, maybe some fruit.  Mix up a bottle of Cytomax, bag up a few scoops of Cytomax powder, make a sandwich, get kitted and ready to roll by 7:00 – 7:30.  At this point, the entire team was in full on training mode.  300+ mile weeks were the norm.  Commute to work 4-5 days per week (both to/from) with at least one hill repeat session and maybe tempo or TT work mixed in.  Saturday long ride, sometimes solo, sometimes with a teammate or 3.  When I say long, we’re talking a hundo with 4k – 6k of climbing would probably be a middle of the road, typical day.  I know Metal, Hammer, and the Wildebeast all went over a buck-fifty on at least a couple of training rides.  My biggest ride was a 127 mile/8400 ft of climbing/7 hour solo gem that took me from the home out to the desert and back

Scissors Crossing after a killer descent down Banner Grade

Which required an emergency refuel stop at mile 110

Yes, V8.  Animal's call and he was dead right!

And a major replenish of stores that night.

Awesome.

But lest you think that this meant group rides with a couple of teammates which offered a break from long hours alone was therefore welcome relief, guess again boys and girls.  When we went out together it was almost always GO TIME.  Sure… often the rides would start with a “my legs aren’t great today… let’s spin for a while.”  Invariably, this would transition into “tempo” riding.  And almost always tempo was shortly followed with numerous full on attacks where the attacking rider looking to do nothing more than inflict pain and suffering on his brothers.  Mercy was rarely shown… Quarter was never given…  But that was what we did.  We were two months away from RAAM and at this point to a man we were committed to being as ready and strong as we could be, and perhaps more importantly we were committed to each other.

Well on this Saturday in April, Animal and I were up for a 5-6 hour ride to get some miles in and to get Animal (Ryan) back out after being off the bike sick for a few days. Why did Ryan earn the nickname Animal you ask?  

Intense? Nah...

   

Nothing remarkable planned.  We’d ride the coast north through Pendleton and see where we ended up.  At some point we decided to ride the RAAM start from Oceanside out to Old Castle.  As discussed previously, Wildebeest and I were slated to ride the parade and unsupported section out to meet Truck 1 at Old Castle and I wanted to ride the route a few times to make sure I was familiar with it.

So we’re about 50 miles into our ride and are just heading out from Oceanside on the 76 bike path when a rider on a black Orbea TT blasts past us going absolutely FULL GAS.  Animal turns to me and says very matter-of-fact tone “Look at that douche… Strava sniffing for sure… and he’s rolling 808s no less… really???”

Didn’t think more of it until a few miles down the path we see the rider coming back towards us.  As he rolls up we see it’s Wildebeest (Adam). 

Mommy... make that bad man go away...

So the Beest rolls up looking like he had been in a “spot of bother” during that effort, sweat pouring off his face, snot hanging from his nose down to his aerobars, and he breaks into a huge grin and says something like “That was awesome.” (We heard that phrase from the Beest more than a few times over the course of the next few months.)  He had in fact bagged the crown with a 350W, 28 MPH effort over the 6.7 mile run and was lamenting the fact that his Ora’s frame was cracked.  Fortunately, he had a new P4 frame on the way (the Beest rocks some pretty awesome bikes BTW.) 

Anyway after a few minutes of debate as to whether the frame will hold up for the rest of his ride, the Beest decides to tag along with us. Well, this certainly introduces a new twist into what was slated as a fairly civil ride.  As we roll down River Rd and are ready to make the turn onto Sleeping Indian (a 2.9 mile long little gem that rolls at the start before kicking up to an 11%avg/16% peak for the last 0.5 mile) Adam starts contemplating going for the crown.  As this is a fairly hotly contested prize that the average weekend warrior will avoid like the plague, I’m thinking “the man is nuts… he’s going to tackle this bad boy on his TT?  No chance.”   Sure enough, Wildebeest pops a u-turn and rolls back down to the start of the rd (we were several hundred yards up the hill) so he could take a proper run.  What did I do?  Attack Animal of course!  He’s a stronger rider than I am and fat chance I’m going to lose the opportunity to take him on the climb while he’s recovering from being sick.  So as I’m going into the red and putting a bit of time into Animal I hear something coming up from behind that sounds like something not of this world.  As I look over my shoulder I see the Beest coming around, flying, out of the saddle, doing things to that Orbea that are illegal in 26 states (I still have trouble sleeping sometimes.)  But, as I’m watching him ride away from me squeezing out what little life that Ora frame had left in it I had an “aha” moment… If I can get my TT up and over this hill in reasonable shape during the RAAM start, then the rest of the run up to Old Castle will be lethal. At that moment, my whole approach to RAAM 2012 had changed.  Rather than leave the TT loaded on the back of Truck 4 for everything except for the flat and fast of the middle of the country, it was going to be my weapon of choice with the roadie relegated to the big climbing pulls in AZ, CO, and WVA.  This was a sharp contrast to my RAAM 2008 and 2010 approach where I spent easily >60% of my time on a roadie.  If it wasn’t for that chance April AM meet-up with the Beest my approach may have been very different… And almost assuredly I would have been much slower.

Lethal Weapon 7.8 

The rest of the ride was relatively uneventful.  Pretty easy spin out to Old 395.  Then, a water stop after which I had a pretty good turn on the front starting up the climb.  The Wildebeest and Animal starting mixing it up with a guy who was a spitting image of Buffalo Bill.  Got gapped (yes Animal, payback is a bitch), later reeled Animal back in, and watched the Beest and Bill going toe-to-toe to Deer Springs.

All-in-all a good day.  102 miles, 4600 ft and a new approach that would pay dividends in a couple of months.

Next up, the start (I promise.)