I have wanted to do this race for a number of years. Somewhere along the way I had been distracted, and what began as a cross-training activity became an obsession: trail-running. I wanted to participate in the Catalina Island Trail Marathon and it always coincided with or was too close to the Pow Wow mountain biking events. These are both serious endurance events that take serious commitment in training just to finish. I had to pick one or the other. This year my first love won and I registered for the Counting Coup.
We all put up with the sandbagging
friends that complain about some unspecified recurring ailment or their lack of
time to work out or a bike that never seems to be dialed in. Somehow, these guys
always set us up with the excuses and then proceed to demolish us on the
friendly Sunday rides. Much to my amusement, I became one of these guys last
Saturday. Here is my story:
I had been literally sitting on my ass for four weeks straight, from the middle of December to the middle of January, working. Nothing else mattered, not even biking. I had an opportunity to develop a piece of software that would change the outlook for my floundering business. In these times of recession and economic slowdown, this was not just a priority but also a matter of economic survival. The mountain biking would have to wait.
When I finally got back on the bike, both the fun of riding my steed in the outdoors and the pain of lost form were sharply felt. A lot of riding would have to be done if I was to race in the Counting Coup.
Every time I get out of shape, I devise a "shock session" that will jump-start my training. This year it would not be some death ride up the Main Divide but a friendly parent-son game with the "Under-14 Boys" soccer team I coach. It turns out that almost half of my team is of Persian descent and their parents are as crazed about soccer as we South Americans are. I showed up at the neighborhood field for our first Spring Select meeting expecting an easy day. Instead, I was greeted by a bunch of restless 14-year-old boys who seemed to have sprouted another few inches over the holidays. And then there were the dads and uncles: a great group of middle-aged guys who play competitive soccer every Sunday. They are in excellent shape and are great sportsmen. They beat you into the ground and then offer you a hand to help you back on your feet. They always do it with a nice compliment and a smile that reflects their hard-core sportsmanship and their love of the game. We ended up playing for almost three hours with very little rest. There is something about having your son playing in the opposite team that always makes these games extremely competitive. And fun!
My other training "shock session" was my annual ABT (All Boys Trip). Every President's Day weekend I join my college buddies for a few precious days of revelry consisting of non-stop drinking, sports, abuse, very little sleeping and great camaraderie. We have been doing it for nineteen years and ABTs are an institution in our lives. This year we went downhill and cross-country skiing in beautiful Sun Valley, Idaho. Describing the eventful trip would take reams of paper. Suffice it to say that, thankfully, it is not part of a regular training regimen.
When I finally got serious about my
training, I confined my Sunday MTB rides to sections of the actual
Vision Quest route.
I wanted to determine if I could make the cutoff times. I knew I could finish
the Vision Quest but I was not sure how long it would take me. After contacting
the race organizer, I decided that I would not be able to stand the
disappointment of not being allowed to finish the race; I chose to enter the
Counting Coup event.
As unorthodox as my training methods may appear, they pale in comparison to my choice and care of equipment. On my last training ride, I had chosen to go up Maple Springs and check out the Holy Jim descent. I started to feel really good just before Saddleback's saddle; I shifted into high gear and got out of my saddle for some serious hammering. The result was a sheared-off derailleur hanger and a rear derailleur broken into pieces sadly hanging all over the chain. I was not completely sure what had happened, but I knew I would be riding a single-speed back to Cook's Corner. I cut my ride short and descended on Harding Truck Trail. I decided to burn off some extra energy by doing a fast fire-road downhill with a few easy jumps. On the last jump, just before getting back to the pavement, I came down hard. As I lay breathless, unbelieving and somewhat hurt, I could not comprehend what had happened. Examining the front wheel and the fork gave me my answer. My wonderful 7-year old elastomer technology fork had broken.
I duct-taped my fork, got my front wheel
to rotate without hitting the fork (no brakes), cleaned the blood off my legs,
patched the nasty gash on my forearm and limped back to my car. I got home in a
foul mood. Not because of my broken bike and bloody wounds. That had been the
norm for a number of years when I got started in this sport and that is how my
wife gauges how much fun I have on my rides. Nowadays, a simple scratch means
that I must have ridden a new trail. What had me in a foul mood was the
realization that "Cannibal" needed some serious repairs and I only had a week
before the race. As I looked around the garage at two cannibalized bikes, I knew
it was time to bring my steed into the shop.
By the middle of the week, it was clear that I would not be riding Cannibal on the Counting Coup. On Friday afternoon I settled for my last alternative: my buddy's wife's bike had been sitting in my garage since last year. It was still caked in red dirt from Sedona where I took my buddies on an MTB-ABT in 2001. One of my friends had used it, not too happily, and now I understood why. It is a Trek 930. The type of bike that is fine for a two-hour ride around the park but may be inappropriate for a six-hour endurance race. It seems to be about fifteen pounds heavier than my GF hardtail, twitchy on the downhills and not the best of fits. The only upgrades I could do were to replace the Slime tubes, replace the pedal cages with SPDs and put my saddle on. (When was the last time your rode an STX-equipped bike?)
I will not bore you with the details of the Counting Coup route. It is a long race that seemed longer when everyone around me started to leave me in their dust. In my strange pattern of performance, I suffered like a dog for the first two hours and did not feel good until the middle of the race. The endorphins kicked in during the Maple Springs climb. It felt good to actually pass a few people that had passed me before and to even smoke a few free-rider types on the downhill, on the backside of Saddleback. My final time was 6:36 and I would have been six minutes late at the Holy Jim cutoff for the final part of the Vision Quest. I felt really good at that point and could have continued if allowed to. I finished what I had set out to do, and there is no greater feeling of accomplishment than that.
But the Pow Wow is not about bragging
rights. It is about a truly unique mountain bike event that is so difficult to
finish that you find everyone rooting for each other. It's about cheery
volunteers who greet you at 4:45 a.m.
with a warm smile on a chilly morning. It's about the guy who joked about my
pretzels and all the other stuff in my jersey pockets during the bus ride to the
start. I knew he would be having fun no matter what the outcome of his race.
It's about the guy who I had met on a previous ride on the Santa Anas who drove
from Palm
Desert
and did not know that Saddleback existed. It's about the guy who I did not meet
until the awards presentation but helped me decide to enter the
Counting Coup based on a couple of exchanged
e-mails detailing times for a training ride. It's about the guy who blew sweet
smelling sage smoke on me to cleanse my spirit and wish me luck on my race. It's
about the pretty ladies who kept me inspired during the Main Divide grind; I
reciprocated by urging them on to meet their cutoff times. It's about the
awesome single-speeders who pass you by, hammering out of the saddle dressed in
some freakish attire (tennis shorts and leisure short-sleeved collared shirt) as
if they need to stand out for the freaks of nature they are. It's about the
studette who got tired of waiting for her husband, ditched him and proceeded to
bomb down the Silverado Motorway with a vengeance. It's about the young guys in
the Ventana tandem talking about exotic gear all the way, only to have their
exotic front rim snap during the Holy Jim descent.
It's about the father-son
team who where also on a tandem. It's about the outstanding trail-runners who
did not need bikes to complete the Vision Quest. They did all 52 miles of it on
foot, in a very respectable time had they just been riding their bikes and not
their sneakers. It's about the really fit guy that rode with me for a while and
who told me he needed full suspension because of how old he was. I thought he
was another middle-ager like me and wanted to compare ages. He is 60 and after
learning that I was only 43, he deemed my youth "just a crime." It's about the
guy who flatted at the drop to Holy Jim and looked at me in disbelief when I
gave him a spare tube. It's about the older guy dressed in full mountain man
regalia. I thought he was a veteran of these races but it was also his first
time. Talk about getting psyched for a race. It's about the young guy who
competed with me to the finish and whom I passed only because I was willing to
get my feet wet at a stream crossing. It's about the great volunteers from the
OC Search & Rescue Squad who graciously provided me with towels to wipe off some
blood and seemed a little disappointed that I did not want to be patched up.
It's about the two young guys who rode fast and hard with me back to the
campground as if we needed some more riding after 40 miles of racing. It's about
the volunteers who were still cheery at the end of the day and met you back at
camp, ready to hear your stories, feed your ego and stomach and give you raffle
prizes (I think everyone won a prize.)
The Pow Wow is also about something else that cannot be expressed on a website. It's about people who honestly care for the wilderness and have a spiritual bond to it. All the Native American references for the mountain biking events and the Warrior's Society might seem contrived until you meet these people in person. As I stood at the starting line listening to a great speech by Chris Vargas, all the nervous anticipation that precedes usual races disappeared. Dawn was rising over the Santa Anas and the chill of the morning had dissipated. It was not just the rising sun brightening my day; it was also Chris' heartfelt words about the need to preserve wilderness areas for future generations and how lucky we all are to have the freedom to enjoy these wilderness areas.
Three ravens flew over us. First one then two others, in an arrowhead formation, pointing the way into Blackstar Canyon for all us warriors. It would be a good day to ride!
Thought I'd try riding the VQ this year
on the singlespeed. Never done it before, although I'd been riding the thing for
almost a year now. I am definitely fitter than ever, and my only regret is that
I didn't start when I was younger. At 43, I feel the age thingy more and more
these days.
In any event, after speaking to Andy Lightle, Paul Miller, Calvin Mulder, Gerrit Slingerland, Tam Pham and others who've singlespeeded the Vision Quest, I was hopeful I could accomplish it. A concern was getting fatigued riding 52 miles on a fully rigid bike, but as it turned out, that was the least of my worries.
The day of the event dawned chilly but with the promise of medium temps and clear skies. After Chris Vargas's opening statement, the race got underway in short order. Not ¼ mile into it, however, my chain derailed (the first of three times). By the time the third derailment occurred, I was dead last and still only 1.5 miles into the ride! Tam saw my plight and stopped to help me. A simple stretching of the chain tension and things were back to normal. So, with a heartfelt thanks to Tam, I attempted to make up for lost ground.
By the time I got to Beek's Place, the
volunteers there (I don't even remember who) yelled out that I was in the top 20
(or something to that effect). I thought, "That's okay, I'm making up some
ground." My hopes were furthered by the news I received at the bottom of the
Motorway from the volunteers there: Andy Lightle was about 8 minutes ahead of
me. Of course I had no hope of even seeing Calvin, much less trying to catch
him, but my sights were on catching Andy.
After a five-minute rest, checking the blood sugar, I resumed my catch-up pace. But the pace I'd put upon myself was taking its toll, and by the time I was halfway between Maple Springs and Modjeska, I blew up. Was forced to stop on a sunny corner and eat about 400 calories worth of food. The blood glucometer read 59, which is bordering on hypoglycemia, so a food stop was necessary. As I sat there munching my bagel, apple, fruit leathers, cheese, tofu chicken nuggets and God-only-know-what-else, I was passed by 12 or so riders that I'd passed coming up Maple Springs. The classic situation of the Tortoise and the Hare.
My pace continued to degrade after
reaching the saddle and continuing the climb up to Santiago
Peak.
By the time I got to the bottom of Holy Jim, I was told that Andy was about 30
minutes ahead of me. Well, that took care of me catching him. So, I just relaxed
for a good 10 minutes, drank some Cytomax and ate some food. Mark Krotine did me
the favor of refilling my hydrapak. So now I had to face the daunting task of
the last 1/3 of the ride. It was actually not that bad, as I was not trying to
catch anyone any longer.
I'd not even reached the singletrack when the ride leader came bombing down the road. Whizzing past me with a wave and a smile. About six minutes or so later, the second place finisher came bombing down the singletrack, and a very short while after that, just above the Yeager Mesa turn off, my friend Calvin came down. He looked like "just another day on the bike."
Mike Dussinger shared my hike up West Horsethief, and we had a pleasant (well, as pleasant as possible) conversation while plodding up the hill together. Topping out on the Main Divide, Joe Lopez, Mark (CIA) Ayers and Tom Taylor were manning the station. I was sure glad to get that hike-a-bike over with! After gulping a few orange sections and taking another blood glucose reading, it was the beginning of the long home stretch. Just a short bit of up on the Main Divide, then the long reward of Trabuco Canyon and Trabuco Creek singletrack.
I still had hopes of finishing in less than 7 hours, but it would be very close. Trying to go as fast as possible on the Trabuco Canyon downhill without pinch flatting or running into another trail user, I made it down to the creek in good shape. One guy was changing a flat, said he was fine when I asked him if he needed anything. Had to yield to riders coming up several times as I was speeding down the Trabuco Creek singletrack, as they were beginning their last leg of the ride.
Just before the Trabuco Creek singletrack
ended, another rider was walking his bike with a flat tire. I gave him a tube
and loaned him my pump, saying that I'd see him at the finish line to retrieve
the pump. Continuing on to the finish line was quite sweet! I missed the 7-hour
deadline by 12 minutes, finishing the ride in 7 hours and 12 minutes, but that's
okay, as the important thing is that I accomplished my goal of finishing this
ride on a rigid singlespeed.
It was great to see all the folks out there, riders, support crews, course marshals, etc. The day was grand, with the weather cooperating to the fullest extent. Think I'll volunteer to help next year!
Arriving back at O'Neill Park, the day was in full swing. Jim Simescu, Jim Drain (the Continental Tire rep), Genna Vargas, Jim Lyn, Gennie and Valerie were all dishing up scrumptious Mexican food. Valerie was kind enough to share some of her fresh strawberries in balsamic vinegar with me, along with a warm embrace. She really is the best a guy could wish for.
The rest of the day for me was kind of blurry. Pleasant, but fuzzy. As usual, many folks scored at the raffle. Hopefully, the club made a little $$ in the process. After having just enjoyed the trails, I'd hate to see them get closed off to us with a Wilderness designation. Speaking solely for myself, I will continue to fight for our right to responsibly use the forest.
Enough soapbox, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Deireadh,
Mise, le meas
Keith
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