Double-Ultra Tri Off Road Report
My brain still feels a little scrambled from sleep deprivation, but I'll give this a shot. Months ago, Wayne presented the DUTOR Challenge. I was neck-deep in work, and barely gave it a thought. What usually happens to me, is that I get "bottled-up" for months at a time, and then need a blowout. After an insane Summer, by early September I knew exactly what I needed for the release.
I called Wayne. We've both done multiple events of this distance, but no one had ever done one off road. He said the elevation would be off the charts, and that we might be on the bike for over 40 hours alone. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it would take that long to cover 224 miles.... boy was I painfully wrong.
The 4.8 mile swim was really just an easy prologue to the event. I was stoked that I made it through with mental ease, seeing as the last time I swam a stroke was at the Deca in 2018. We drove home and prepared to ride bikes.
I brought my gravel bike, because I had ridden that thing over the gnarliest terrain in VT with some buddies a few months ago. Surely if I could ride it down the slopes of VT, the hills of PA would be manageable. No suspension, skinny tires, and a drop bar. Ouch.
We rode the first lap together, and it became clear what we had gotten ourselves into. Roots, rocks, and long, grinding climbs, broken up by other shorter, undulating, rolling hills. After 96 miles, at 2am or so, Kevin (my crew man) and I decided to sleep for 2 hours as a means to freshen up the mental state and get ready for the final push. It had been over 17 hours of straight riding and I wasn't even halfway. I knew that Friday was going to be a long day.
I got back on the bike around 5am after a quick bite. My feet, hands, ass, and neck hurt from riding a rigid bike on a course that probably demanded a mountain bike. With 8 laps to go, at current pace, I would be STILL on the bike by sunrise if I did another sleep. Fuck that. I didn't want to begin another day feeling how I was feeling. I pedaled the 16 mile course for the next 24 hours straight, struggling through the night big time, helped by Kevin at the end of each lap, and by Russ who kept me conversationally-engaged during the hardest of laps on that second night. Forever grateful for those two. 224 miles, and almost 30,000 feet of gain complete. The new “sexy" thing in cycling is to do an Everest. In finishing this bike course, we would do the first off-road Everest i’ve ever heard of. 40-plus hours of ride time. It hurt like hell!!!
Here we were at 5am, 48 hours into the event, and I had slept just 2 hours. We decided to sleep a little while before beginning the run. I ended up with about 90 mins of sleep, and by 8 or so was back on course. It felt amazing to be out on a cool morning, without a bike seat shoved up my ass.
The day was kind of uneventful. I never stopped moving. I sauntered through base camp each time, afraid that stopping would halt momentum. There was also a very real time constraint of getting home at a reasonable hour the next day. By mile 34 or so, I was starting to lose my mojo- I was running less, and things hurt considerably. Russ showed up. We chatted and laughed, and talked about the dumbest stuff in the world, but it worked. By 48 I was excited about finishing but unable to go as fast as I wanted. He helped talk me through those miles, and we showed up for mile 52 at Wayne's house to an intimate, very small crowd of friends and family. It was the perfect finish. Wayne was in between laps, and I was so SO glad he was there for the end. We chatted and laughed about how ridiculous the course was, and he was off to head toward the completion of HIS race.
This was one of the best, hardest things I have ever done. Wayne and Jan are like family to me. Wayne, the ever-positive, creative thinking man that he is, was SICK in the head to come up with this, and that is why he and I are great friends haha! Jan, HUGE thanks for the hospitality as usual, and the amazing food that always comes at just the right time. Kevin, my crew just knows what needs to happen to get this stuff DONE in a timely manner. I would have NEVER finished without this man. I’m not sure Russ knows the impact that he had on my race. Those hard miles can be exponentially slower when left to your own devices. There is no question in my mind that he saved me from being 5 to 7 hours slower in total. A huge thanks to him! Finally… thanks to Nicole, my wife, for understanding my need to go off once in a while and blast myself into smithereens. And to all of you who are still reading and follow along on these crazy adventures… THANK YOU!!!!!
-KP