Name of the Beast

"Think of mountain passes as an opportunity for elevation resolution"

The thought of climbing hills used to worry me a bit. Not the kind of fear as a kid when I climbed a tree to poke a stick at the porcupine, or when my friend Scotty tried to grab a baby squirrel out of the nest at the top of a pine tree and instead grabbed momma squirrel. No, this feeling was friction between my self image of not being an athlete and knowing that the TD hills were certainly enchanted, long and tall.

While we're mired in self disclosure, the TD hills looming the most were those in the Flathead Valley; Flathead, Cabin, and Galton Passes. Why? In 2013 I didn't ride in the Canadian Flathead, but surprised myself at actually enjoying some of the other climbs, getting stronger as the ride went on. Still, something about the Flathead rattled my cage. In 2015 when I got to Flathead Pass it turned out to be an easy spin to the top. Cabin pass was mildly annoying as the approach consisted of numerous rolling hills, before getting to the meat of the climb, but was very rideable. Galton was straight forward, up and up. At the top of Galton I remember thinking, "Crap, these are just tilted dirt roads!". And so they are.

What I am getting to is a characterization of the TD route. Remember that I am reformulating my training plan for 2017, and figured that even though I know what the route is, I need to pin down what the route requires in physical ability. Call it a science experiment. So what is the route?

One of the TD Gods once figured that the TD route consists of equal amounts of up, down, and flat. Looking at the elevation profile for the route, that seems reasonable. So lets figure that the downhill portion only requires coasting, or peddling for short distances, at a steady rate, with moderate force at best. That leaves the up and flat parts. The flat portion requires long duration peddling at a moderate to higher (headwinds?) force. The up portion means that we peddle at high intensities (relative to the down/flat), for the typical length of each pass - which is roughly 2 to 8 miles (but there are tons of shorter hills too!).

Notice in the list that there are no instances where we need raw sprint speed, unless you nurse the fantasy of nipping past a faster rider at Antelope Wells! This race consists of strength and endurance. Ok, what does endurance and strength mean in training terms? Best to take them one at a time. Which means a trip down the rabbit hole.

Endurance means that we can ride for a long time. But riding at five miles an hour for a long time is much different that at ten miles an hour. Let's modify endurance to mean riding at a 'race pace', whatever that means, for a long time each day. Long time for the TD means 12 to 20+ hours for us aged mortals. Figuring race pace speed is easy. For example, if you target 25 days for the entire race, and it is 2,700 miles long, then you need to ride an average of 108 miles each day.  Assuming that you ride (not counting stops) 12 hours each day, your average speed is nine miles an hour. Ride slower? Then you need to ride longer each day to meet your goal.

Except! Average doesn't cut it because the terrain gets in the way. Preparing for 2015 I did a massive, complicated spreadsheet of my anticipated racing pace and time, using my training pace, previous 2013 pace, expected daily saddle time, phase of the Jupiter's Moons, etc., etc., and came out with an average of 9 miles per hour. In that masterpiece of data delirium, I used a formula for speed on the up, down, and flat portions of the route. I figured that if Flat Speed is the base unit of measurement, then Downhill Speed is twice Flat, and Uphill Speed is one-half Flat Speed.

Do the relative math and you see that it is not speed that matters, it is Time spent on each portion. For example, the time spent on Uphills is twice that of Flats, and four times that on Downhills. Remember the rabbit hole? Trust me on this, for my assumptions the total time on hills is 57% of ride time. That on Flats is 29%, and Downhill is 14%, near enough, and the absolute numbers don't matter as much as the ratios do. Yer numbers may differ.

If I am riding over half the time uphill, guess what needs to be emphasized in training? Leg strength. The assumption that endurance alone is what is needed stumbles a bit. Yep, you also need endurance to go along with the strength. For hills, call it Muscular Endurance.

On the Flats, we use less strength but still need lot's of endurance. We just don't go as far into the strength intensity zone as on the hills. Call it Aerobic Endurance. Downhill - heck, better bone up on your rough track bike handling skills, as you already have the oomph to keep going - we don't train for Downhills as they come 'free', along with the other training.

So back to the 'average' pace. Some days your race plan goes swimmingly well. Other days it smells worse than you do. No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. My race pace plan for 2015 lasted two days. Where was I? Oh yes, average pace. There are some stretches of the route where getting even close to the average daily miles is a miracle. Other stretches where you can literally, if you are willing to hurt enough, double it. The latter example might happen anywhere on the stretch from the top of Fleecer Ridge MT to past Coulter Bay WY. Fast times, low passes, pray for dry roads.

Dang rabbits! They seem to think that our backyard lawn is a banquet, and flowers are dessert. Rabbit urine kills grass, so we can tell where they have been dining by the bare spots. Although I have 'convinced' three of them to move on to other planes of existence, and closed off their favorite den with wire mesh, the rest have homes nearby (we live a block from the golf course - why can't they stay there?). Which leads to another rabbit hole we need to explore.

What is endurance? To know that we need to delve into how the old (pun intended) body works. Energy to fuel muscles comes from 'burning' nutrients. Call it 'food combined with oxygen'. If I get into the details I may get hate mail, so for you science purists, sorry. The waste from muscles ends up in your blood as something called 'lactate'. Being efficient, the liver recycles lactate into more fuel, but I digress. The more the muscles work, the more lactate builds up before it can be converted. At some level the muscles get the signal to stop making more lactate, and you got no more go power. Your muscles 'burn' and feel weak. This is called your 'Lactate Threshold', or LT.

Alternately, you may run out of oxygen before you reach your LT. Then your problem is that you aren't taking in enough oxygen into your blood from your lungs, and can't burn the food to fuel the muscles. You may be breathing in enough air, but the oxygen level in your blood is too low. This is called your Aerobic Threshold, or AT. If you continue past this point you go Anaerobic (which means you lay there gasping for breath!). Most athletic people run into LT problems before running out of air, but both matter. These explanations are dangerously close to science!

At this time I state the prime two rules for riding effort on the TD: NEVER go past your LT, NEVER go Anaerobic!

Being as smart as you are, you're wondering if both LT and AT levels can be improved by training. You betcha! An increase in LT basically means you can metabolize Lactate quicker. Up your AT, and you aren't limited by air intake. End result is that your muscles can operate longer, at higher intensities, which  means a faster pace.

To summarize, we need at least three things in our training plan; strength training, especially for the legs and 'core' (stomach and back - they act as a base for the legs), raising our LT level, and increasing our Aerobic Capacity.

Enough for this time - I've exceeded my BT (Blog Threshold) ! Next time I'll figure out what training increases my LT and AT, and how to increase strength. The song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show comes to mind,

"Such an effort
If he only knew of my plan
In just seven days
I can make you a man"

Only saw the movie seventeen times. The darn rabbits are out back again...

Motivation: Dirt Dive Your Ride

Motivation: Dirt Dive Your Ride

"Thank God training is over!" Me, at end of 2015 training for TD
"So, what, now you can go ride 2,700 miles?" Wife

Getting out on the bike takes effort, even if I look forward to riding. When I view it as a chore, it's even more of an effort. Don't let the Trail Fairy fool you, sometimes riding is a bit of a pain. Decision making theory that says people make their decisions several seconds before they are conscious of doing so. That gap is critical. Being aware of the process allows me to (sometimes) intercept the excuses for not riding, and steer my decision. Another way of dealing with it is to program my auto-pilot (logical brain response center) to always jump to the "I will ride today" decisions, before any excuses get in the way. Rituals help ( not the kind that involve reading chicken entrails) such as getting my kit on before I have a chance to make excuses.

This process is critical on long ultra rides. Waking up before dawn, or when it's really butt numbing cold, is a daily process. One trick I used was to exit my tent when I first woke up. Squirt out of the bunker before thinking, naked or not! Being outside takes away the excuse to hit the snooze button, and makes the decision to get on the bike easier. I also open the air valve on my pad when the GPS alarm goes off - and if I try to go back to sleep I'm on hard cold ground.

I guess I've drifted into the mental aspect of riding. Those who have raced the TD know that the mental and emotional part of the ride is much tougher than the physical. Ye who have not yet raced are wondering what the heck I mean. Was it Yogi Berra who said, "Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical."? Ditto racing the TD.

Discipline in both my riding routine and decision making makes the difference. That means practicing how I want to race when training. Back when I used to fall out of airplanes with my buddies, and teach others to do the same, we would rehearse the skydive on the ground (called 'dirt diving') several times before the jump. Our motto was "What you do on the ground you will do in the air" (our other motto was "Blue sky, Black death!", but I digress). Point is that making muscle memory and mental response meld together into an unconscious routine really helps when things get tough in the air, er, on the trail.

Lemme tell ya about three times my discipline failed on my last TD attempt:

 (Oh Trail Fairy, it has been months since my last confession, forgive me as I rode SRAM components)

- Day three I stopped early because I was tired, and a campground was handy. Turns out I couldn't get to sleep anyway until way late. Cost me at least 30 miles of riding.

- After lunch one day I had no energy - still don't know why - and stopped 40 miles short of my goal. I could have kept going, albeit slow, but let my discipline down.

- On the day I had a target of > 150 miles, I stopped early at 100 miles because a recent riding friend had rented a motel room and offered to share it with me. I had clear sailing, plenty of time left in the day.

(Trail Fairy: "The Trail forgives you. Say five hail Shimanos and switch to XT")

So what 'rules' did I violate? First one is keep making forward progress until you fall off the bike. Second, no matter how you feel, keep going and things will change: either for the worse or better. Third, ride at your own pace. There are a slew of 'rules' to ride by. These are a few.

I'm a sucker for witty moral boosters, hoping that chanting them will help develop mental discipline to the Nth degree. I've found some good quotes that help. Perhaps the best one for the TD is, "Get comfortable being uncomfortable". I also like, "Not dead, can't quit!", and the motto carved on the Navy Seal Training Center welcome sign, "The only easy day was yesterday!". (If you are wondering, no, I was an Army medic!)

Linking back to training, what you do in training you will do on the race. The decision making process during training follows you like a puppy on the race. If your puppy isn't 'paper trained', expect to suffer! I think of my decision and response process like a pile of round boulders: Solid and unshakable...until I pull one of the bottom rocks out, and then two fall, then four... It's not only essential that the 'pile' is made of solid decisions, it is crucial that they're cemented together (by practice), keeping one from undermining the whole stack. Let one fall, and others follow. Turns out my pile collapsed several times during the race. At this point you're asking yourself, "Do I want ideas from people who have been there and failed, or those who have never been there"? Yer choose.

I'm not even training yet, but I decided this year to keep up a 100 mile per week base level of riding. I ride my mountain bike on the road, mostly. Typically base mile rides are 30-40 miles each, elevation gain averaging 1,500 feet per ride, and I'm riding three times per week. Add a weight session each week at the gym, and a spin class, plus walks around the neighborhood. Sometimes I'm pooped! Compounding it all is that I use several standard routes, and they get boring. 

I didn't want to ride today. There, I said it. Blasphemy! This morning, after ingesting my HSF (Heart Starting Fluid - coffee), I automatically dressed to ride before I let myself make the 'Ride/No Ride' decision. Seemed kinda stupid not to ride, after being dressed and all! Turns out that the ride was pretty neat! For instance, I found that my max heart rate was higher than I've ever measured (I charged a long hill until collapse), and I felt positive on the rest of the ride. 

That brings up a maxim I've kept since my long distance running days, to paraphrase, "Never judge a ride until it is over." - similar to rule #2. Point is that the mental and physical perceptions can change rapidly. So a crappy ride turns out to be a good one after all. Many times during the TD I felt weak, tired, or emotionally wiped out, only to have a sudden change to the better. (This can happen both ways though!) If you read up on enough blogs by TD riders you'll find this paradoxical change happens quite often.

Of course, all of this 'ride regardless' is subject to real concerns of over-training stress, or making allowance for injuries or illness. I struggle keeping it real between actual reasons to not ride and excuses.

The discipline to train is the mother of racing discipline. Honor thy mother!