TD Training Entry #14: Magic in the Hill Country

This past Friday, I bade farewell to my very understanding wife and began a five hour drive out west to the Texas Hill Country, so named because it’s very hilly and very Texasy.   (See, down here in the Lone Star State, we name things what they are.  Not like, say, the Andes Mountains, which is comprised of not even one single Andy, let alone many Andes)  In general terms, the hill country is a rugged 14,000 square mile area north of San Antonio and west of Austin, with a maximum elevation of just under 2,500 feet.  You may not know that it is also Lance Armstrong’s backyard…he has a 450 acre ranch west of Austin with some pretty gnarly trails in it.  Although we’re not exactly talking Mt. Kilimanjaro here, this area is the closest I can travel to on weekends for training purposes, since I’m leery of using any precious vacation hours to travel somewhere “good” for some elevation training.  At this moment, I have five weeks of vacation saved up (I haven’t taken an actual vacation from work in a year and a half….arrgh!!) and I expect to  have almost six weeks by June.  That should cover pre-race travel and acclimatization, four weeks of racing, if needed, and then one more week for post-race travel and recovery.  That’s worst case scenario.  Best case scenario, of course, is that I finish sub 21 days because I rocket straight down the entire route as though my bike and I were shot from a cannon, possibly causing the syrupy drool of slack-jawed spectators to sway erratically in my wake. 

OK, so where was I?  Oh yeah, the hill country.  I’d made all my preparations  during the week, ready to jet as soon as I got off work on Friday.  My goal was to bivy Friday night at my Canyon Lake campsite, ride a 120 mile loop on Saturday, bivy again that night, and then on Sunday get in another 60 miles at least, and maybe 80, time permitting.  As always, though, Fate had other plans!

After I’d left the house and driven a few miles, I began mentally running over my checklist again, and I couldn’t help but to pull over and make absolutely certain that I had all my gear in the truck.  That’s when I noticed a broken spoke on my front wheel.  Huh?!  When did that happen?  I had no replacements, it was after 5:00 PM, and I had to check in at Canyon Lake by 10:00 or they’d close the gates on me!  If I couldn’t somehow get it fixed right now, I’d have to find some bike shop near Canyon Lake the next morning and waste hours of precious training time waiting for them to open and then begging them to give me immediate priority, and I didn’t even know if there was a shop anywhere in that area to begin with.  I considered calling off the trip and just riding locally (the very thought of which I’ve come to loathe with all my soul) but Canyon Lake already had my money for two nights of camping. 

I furiously began calling bike shops in Houston that were in a general westerly direction…if one of them would take me, it wouldn’t put me out of my way too much.  Long story short, I was shot down three times before the mechanic at the fourth shop, Daniel Boone Cycles, agreed to save my weekend.  I hauled ass down there, and he fixed me up lickety split, and he cut some spare spokes for me as well.   I forced him to accept a generous tip and I blasted off…right into rush hour traffic!  UGH!  As I sat impatiently in my truck, inching down the freeway, it occurred to me that I had just trained for one aspect of the Tour Divide.  Calling ahead to bike shops and begging them to stay late and do work for you is a prevalent theme in past call-ins to MTBCast.  I now have some experience in that!  Sweet!

Somehow, someway, I made it to Canyon Lake just before closing time.  “We were just about to give up on you!” said the weary-eyed old lady at the gate.  I didn’t tell her that if I had arrived to find the gates closed after a manic four hour drive, I’d already decided that I was going to paint the words, “We Eat Poo” on the guard shack.

I made a hasty camp using only what I will have on the TD and fell asleep quickly, not heeding the fact that my efforts to get here had been so frantic that I’d forgotten to eat.  Friend, that is something I’ve never “forgotten” in my entire life.  I am usually thinking about what my next meal will be and when I can make it happen, and I was doing that way before I started training for the TD.  Don’t make me get all Fat Albert up in here. 

My plan was to crawl out of my bivy sack no later than 5:30 AM and be in the saddle by 6:15 or so.  FAIL.  I got up at 6:30 and proceeded to display alarming slackitude for an hour and a half while I took pictures, fiddled with gear, and scratched my ass while looking at deer.  I was rolling by 8:00, but I was cussing myself for losing almost 2 hours of riding time. 

I rode up and out of Canyon Lake and was immediately rewarded with a long, steep climb, which I knew was coming from having driven down it last night.  Double granny whammy right off the bat.  Thus began my most challenging and most scenic ride to date! 

The hill country is quite beautiful, at least by comparison to where I live.  It is miles upon miles of rolling hills and sweeping views.  It features tons of steep climbs (and exhilarating descents) and has a great open air feel which I don’t get to experience much.  That being said, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.  I’d failed to realize just how developed the hill country was.  For one thing, what I thought would be 120 miles worth of lonely farm and county roads turned out to be heavily traveled and bustling with traffic.  And it wasn’t that nice country traffic where the rare vehicle is not in a hurry and always give you a wide berth.  No, this was that mean city traffic.  Cars were barreling down the road and sometimes coming so close to me that my asshole puckered up to the size of an atom.  Much of the time, there was only a tiny sliver of shoulder to ride on, and often there was no shoulder at all.  As beautiful as my surroundings were, the ride itself was pretty stressful.  I was too scared to even think of putting my headphones in, as I needed all my senses for avoiding a careless doom. 

I attacked the climbs with delight, and I roared into the downhills with glee.  I got up to 37.5 mph on the steepest one, which is the fastest I’d ever gone on a bike.  I’d always imagined I’d be scared shitless going that fast, but no, my shit remained intact, and I was grinning ear to ear the entire way down.   

About 50 miles in, I started really disliking the continued intake of junk food.  In order to simulate my Tour Divide diet, I was fueling on candy, Little Debbies, and assorted other crap.  As I mentioned, I’d forgotten to eat the night before, and there were no breakfast places on the early part of my route, so I hadn’t had anything substantial.  The crap wasn’t sitting well, and I decided I wouldn’t eat it anymore…I’d push to Johnson City 20 miles away and grub there.  A lesson would soon be learned from that decision…

At mile 60 I hit Pedernales Falls State Park and went on a site seeing tour there.  From having studied up on it, I knew they had about 8 miles of singletrack there as well as some nice waterfalls to snap pictures of.  The park was pretty crowded, and I couldn’t get any pictures of the falls without people in them.  That, along with the non-stop intense traffic on the roads, was really beginning to grate on me.  I was hungry for solitude and I knew now that it would not be forthcoming.  I loved that the route itself was so challenging, but I was beginning to regret having made this trip…it felt like every resident of the hill country was on top of me, and not in a good way.  I decided I was not going to ride in the same conditions tomorrow.  I would complete this 120 mile loop, bivy down, and leave in the morning, and that knowledge was very sad indeed.

I took off from Pedernales, trying to focus on the satisfaction of having visited it rather than the disappointment in my decision to leave, and a few miles down the road, I began to feel a bonk coming on.  Could this be right?  I mentally reviewed my food intake….yep, I had not been eating enough.  I hadn’t eaten from my junk stores in a couple hours, and even before that I was taking in too little, because it just wasn’t going down right.  Plus, I’d had no “real” meal since yesterday afternoon.

But damnit, I didn’t want to eat anymore shitty candy!  Not until I had a shitty double cheeseburger and shitty fries in me at least.  I was 7 miles or so from Johnson City, I would forego the candy and push on.  I could make it.

I began to crank with a purpose until I heard “rattle plink rattle plink”…my cassette had come loose.  I guessed I didn’t tighten it enough when I’d taken it off to clean my drive train the other day.  My lock ring tool and wrench were back at the truck.  Shit!  I would have to live with the rattling and the piss poor shifting. 

I returned my gaze to the road, and I felt the familiar dizziness indicative of the onset of bonktown.   Come on Tony…only five more miles.  Don’t eat the damn Skittles.  Just five more miles.  But it was too late.  Each pedal stroke suddenly felt as if someone had tied 20 pound weights on each foot, and my thoughts were becoming more and more disorganized.  I saw a massive climb comin’ at me, with a water tower marking its crest.  Making me earn it, huh?  Fine, it will be all downhill into Johnson City after that.  I plowed on and eventually reached the top to discover….no water tower. 

No.  Water.  Tower.  I’d hallucinated it.

I stopped pedaling…I looked around…was it hidden in the trees??  No…it was never there.  As I stood there straddling my top post for a few minutes in a daze, I became aware of my legs shaking weakly, not wanting to support me.  Hm…I guess I better eat the sonofabitchin’ Skittles.

After lying around for a while and choking down as much junk as I could stomach, I willed myself into Johnson City and pulled into the first joint I saw, Dairy Queen.  As much as I wanted it, I had to force down the entire large chicken basket, fries, and toast.  I sat around for a bit, letting it digest, but my powers were not returning.  I didn’t know if they would or not.  I knew I had 50 more miles back to camp, though.  Still feeling weak and bonky, I saddled up and pedaled out of town, laboring with my head down as the promise of dusk settled in over the hill country. 

And then….magic.

It was the most amazing experience of my young endurance career.   It came out of nowhere, and it came at the exact moment when I needed it most.  Absolute magic.  Thus, I switch to dramatic third person mode, just to do it the justice it deserves:

As the sun settled in behind the hills, the lone rider struggled mightily against the forces arrayed against him.  Exhausted and out of sorts, he could but hang his head low as he toiled into the wind, sped along only by the vaporous whoosh of unending traffic that seemed to mock his crawling grind.  His thoughts turned to defeat and the nebulous of self loathing that such an ugly word lives in.  He’d made a critical blunder, and now, he wondered ashamedly if he would give up and hide his bed in the thickets, cursing himself until the light of the morn. 

But wait…what’s this?  The traffic…it has gone?  All was suddenly quiet, it seemed.  Had every vehicle in the hill country spontaneously vanished?  A peace was about him…a wonderfully silent peace.  As he mused on whether such a thing could be real, the rider heard birds….hark!  He had not heard them all day over the roar of humanity, and suddenly their cheerful voices had found his ear.  He raised his head up for the first time in what was surely an hour, and he saw the last rays of the sun kissing their feathers as they sailed lazily on the wind together.  On the wind….the wind!  It was upon his back!  It fought him no longer!  Great heavens, it was pushing him up the hill!  He yelped in amazement, and without notice, some inner reserve of strength was mobilized within him.  As his speedometer inched ever higher, he wondered if he should dare allow himself to get his hopes up.  Perhaps the tides were turning, or perhaps he was being setup by the cruel hand of some wicked Fate. 

A scent reached his nose…the smell of open air, untainted by smog and pollution.  The grass, the trees, the very hills were in the air.  The rider looked to his right as he gained the top of the climb, and beheld the most beautiful vista he had laid eyes on in lo these many miles.  A vast expanse of unspoiled hills stretched across the horizon, and they were GLOWING.  It was as if the sun had retired for the night within the very hills themselves, for they exuded a subtle, fiery, yellowish aura.  High overhead, the first stars of the evening sparkled down upon the scene.  It was the setting of a fairy tale come to life.

The rider longed to stop and gaze at the majesty laid before him, for this was surely his greatest moment.  Before he could ponder over it, he looked forward, and could not help but to overwhelm himself with sweet, sweet emotion.  It was a descent.  A long, long, long descent, the end of which was but a dream lost in the shadows of darkness some miles away.  

It was too much for him.  The rider laughed, cried, and yelled all at once.  He flicked on his headlamp and let the wind dry his tears as he coasted effortlessly on the widest shoulder he’d seen all day, and still no hint of another soul in any direction.  He plunged into the cool night air, grinning in unquestioning gratitude at this utterly magical weaving of events, and just when he thought his mood couldn’t possibly get any better, he spied a lone piece of debris, the first he’d seen all day.

A toilet seat. 

At his sight, he bellowed into the world, unleashing his newfound mirth as he imagined a number of circumstances that may have seen someone hauling a toilet seat in their car, and then making a conscience decision to hurl it into the hills.  He laughed and laughed, and all was right in his world.

I rode that enchanting wave of fortune all the way back to camp.  I rolled in at 11:13 PM, having completed 120 miles, my farthest ever in one day.  Even with the bonk, my actual saddle time was only 10 hours, which I am very happy with.  I swallowed a Fosters, threw down the bivy, and had a great night of sleep.  I opted not to ride again the next day, which upset me, but the traffic was just way too stressful, and I did not want to deal with it again.  Besides, there is no way that kind of magic would happen again.  I will take it with me, and I will never forget it.   Nor will I forget my very important lesson about fueling! 

Next up, Pat and I are doing the Texas Chainring Massacre on 3/21!  It’s a 116 mile self supported dirt road race near Dallas.  Because it’s being held on a Sunday, there are only like 15 guys signed up.  So guess what…I am going balls out to try to win it!  Check back soon to find out how I did!  And here are all the pics from my hill country ride:

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