Ring of Fire, 12-hour Time Trial

Distance: 112 miles
Elevation Gain: 9,520 feet
Average Moving Speed: 12.95 mph

Well, I had a lot of fun for the first 6 or 7 hours. So my first goal (Have Fun!) was met. Not so much fun to end the ride though. I learned that I need to deal with the heat differently on a really long hot ride. Nausea is particularly no fun when you are in the middle of nowhere...

Even in bad shape though I was able to finish the big loop, so I accomplished the second goal as well.

We won't discuss goals any further... ahem. ;)

The day started out gloriously. The drive from Madras to Maupin allowed me to watch the sunrise - food for the soul! I arrived in plenty of time to get ready to go, but not too much to twiddle my thumbs and work up some race anxiety, so the day really couldn't have started any better.

Once I started riding up out of Maupin my heart rate jumped to the top end of my target climbing range. The route to Mt. Hood is nearly all climbing, so I had it basically pegged there the whole morning. It was more than I had intended, but in the end I think it was okay, since that is what those zones are for. The problem is when I started descending it was getting hot, and I hadn't been eating enough, and things started to deteriorate.

I had read up on riding in extreme heat beforehand, but I didn't want to try something totally new on an actual race. I had ridden in the heat before and been okay. But I hadn't ever ridden this hard in the heat, nor this long. Our RAPSody ride weather was 50s, 60s and 70s all day, not 90s like that last few hours today. Live and learn.

Rode a bit with John Henry Maurice, whom Amy and I had met at RAPSody. Great guy! We were riding up the hill toward Tygh Ridge Summit and he and his support vehicle offered me a ziploc bag of ice to put on my back under my jersey. It was awesome - Thanks John Henry! Another valuable lesson learned...

Wind wasn't bad. There was a little stretch of headwind from Tygh Valley to Sherars Bridge that was pretty tough, but that was mostly tough due to heat/nausea. At the 100-mile point on this stretch my total time was a minute or two over 8 hours. I wasn't excited about the milestone at the time, but in retrospect, what with all the climbing, going 12.5 mph overall to that point was a nice achievement.

I'm pretty sure the nausea issue I was having is related to not being able to eat enough food while riding. That will be solved on future rides, hopefully. But today, it was ironically during and after the descents when I had nausea. The climbs were okay. My theory is that my stomach only had liquids in it, and the 25 to 40 mph descent speeds was enough to bump and vibrate my tummy into a very upset state.

My time-off-the-bike was minimized fairly well at the 3 rest stops. That all blew up when I had to stop at Sherars Bridge and recover from nausea for about 20 minutes. I needed cold water badly. My water was hot. No fun. Only 9 miles and it may as well have been 90 in the state I was in. Thankfully the WSU-Vancouver relay team was there. Little did they know they would be the fourth SAG stop of the day! They offered water to the pathetic schmuck who needed it very badly. And it was cool water. A major, major improvement over my hot cytomax water - makes me want to puke just writing it!

The nausea subsided so I decided I could make it another 9 miles. The WSU guys said it was flat and with a tailwind - and there'd be ice water in Maupin - SOLD! Maybe they were running short on their own water? ;)

I made it to Maupin and contemplated trying to recover and attempt a small lap, but after a few minutes I realized that was not likely to happen. At least not to the level that I'd be comfortable risking being nauseous again. Seriously not a fun thing to experience! So I thanked George and Terri, George gave me my "Ring of Fire Finisher" cap, and I called it a day.

Another learned item: a personal support vehicle on a ride like this would sure be nice. Although if I had a PSV today it wouldn't have solved my main problem - that's all on me. But the ride would have been much more enjoyable with immediate access to cold water (among other things) at all times during the race...

All in all, lots of positives in terms of lessons learned, and that was the main reason I did this race this year - so I could learn all that much more about racing if we decide to do it next year. The only question is, will we do any racing next year? Only time will tell. :)

EDIT: With further reflection I am confident that the much higher than usual physical effort for the first 6 or 7 hours, the lack of fuel intake (I tried but just couldn't ingest as much as I knew I needed), and excess heat were interrelated and as a whole are what caused my nausea-induced early finish.