The Victoria Divide 550 - Day 4

My alarm went off again at 6am. That seemed like too soon but was another decent seven and a half hours sleep. I jumped up, got dressed and packed my sleep kit away. I wasn't feeling hungry so just drank the coffee milk I had carried and got pedalling just on first light. The trail was fairly pleasant, gradient wise but I took it easy to allow my weary body to warm up a bit. 

I soon came to a stupidly steep section of track that I just resigned myself to walking. It wasn't a bad morning for a walk.

They never look as steep in photos.

The Victoria Divide 550 - Day 3

I woke with the sun this morning, not opting to set an alarm to get up too early. I figured I was only about 40km from Mt Buller which equalled lunch and a resupply. I ate the other salami sandwich from the general store in Jamieson and washed it down with a big coffee milk. No need for a refrigerator out here!

Crappy low light photo of the camp.

The Victoria Divide 550 - Day 2

My alarm went off at 0630, waking me from a somewhat fitful, yet refreshing sleep. It is hard to sleep peacefully when your legs are yelling at you but I did feel pretty good. As soon as I got up I noticed that my phone and cache battery  lights were not lit, indicating they were not charging. I wandered over to flip on the light and ...... nothing! Ahhh, the power was out! Oh, well. There was still hot water so a quick shower to wake up, then pack everything back onto the bike.

I rolled out the door at 7am and coasted down the chilly main street to find the Foodworks, hoping they would be open as the power seemed to be out for the whole town.

The Victoria Divide 550 - Day 1

The Victoria Divide 550 bikepacking route is the brainchild of 2018 Tour Divide winner Lewis Ciddor (Great interview with Lewis HERE by Ross Burrage on his "The Hidden Athlete" podcast) who was the first Aussie to win the iconic Tour Divide Race.

The route basically divides the state of Victoria in two by arcing north east out of Melbourne, carving through the high country before undulating across the rolling countryside of rural northern Victoria.

So, how did I become involved in this crazy endeavour? Well, I watched the inaugural race last year online and read the subsequent blog write ups about it. I sort of know the country down there and I love being in any of the Australian Alps, be they located in NSW or Victoria. So when the race popped up on my radar late last year I tagged it with "Interested" on FaceBook. 

Then I forgot about it.

Training... Or Is That Testing Days

Here I am, well into Week 2 of my base training for the CTR and it is seemingly going well. I am coming off a low base fitness this year, which my Threshold Test confirmed with quite low heart rate zones. The Threshold Test is never much fun as it involves a 50 minute warm up then 20 minutes of going as hard as you can - and by that it means finishing just as strongly as you started - which can be pretty tricky to judge. I think I went a bit easy at the start as I felt quite strong still by the end but it can be a very fine line and I didn't want to stuff it up thereby having to punish myself and do it again. At worst, my zones are on the low side which is safer from an overtraining point of view. I will get the pleasure of doing it again next month though as your zones change as you get fitter.....looking forward to that one..... :(

It has actually been nice to enter a structured training plan as well. I think I need to have a goal with my cycling. Whenever I don't I feel like I am just going through the motions to some extent and the last few months my mtbing has been a bit stale. I am also enjoying the little bit of strength training in the gym as a distraction from the bike. I can already feel the muscle memory coming back from the last two big training efforts in 2015 and 2018.

This has been exacerbated this year by a challenge that Dean Anderson (he did the AZTR750 in 2018 with me) threw out there late last year. He challenged all of us on the Strava platform (think Facebook for cyclists and runners) to ride for at least 15 minutes, EVERY day of 2020. 

It sounded like my kind of challenge!

But do you realise how hard it is to ride EVERY day? No? Well, I can tell you it has been pretty tough some days, seeing me out on the bike at 2340 some nights just to squeeze that 15 minutes in because once you are out of the challenge, you are OUT!!

Dean at Kelvin Bridge in the 2018 AZTR750 race

Anyway, I am pleased to say that I have not missed a day and this CTR training is making it far easier to meet the challenge. Not that I have any excuse as despite the rain here, it is not the -13C that Dean is dealing with in Canada!

January efforts

February so far.....

Today's training ride saw me cop a drenching but at least it is warm here. 

Speaking of the rain, it just hasn't stopped for a week now! We have had seven days of constant, heavy rain and our total here is somewhere in the 400mm(16inch) range - give or take a few. To say the contrast from ten days ago to now is dramatic is a massive understatement. We went from still worrying about bushfires to having floods in the space of about four days!

Mid December - but it could have been last Wednesday - just 8 days ago! 

Today - the 13th of February 2020!!

That's not to say that the whole country is enjoying some rain. I witnessed a pretty intense dust storm last Friday on my way to Perth. It was somewhere in the Riverland region of South Australia and was still impressive from 34 000 feet!

Speaking of work, this bloody Coronavirus - Covid19 - to give it it's newly minted name is wreaking havoc with inbound tourism here in Australia. Working for an airline does have me worried about the knock-on effects that are yet to be played out. Bus, accommodation and general tourism operators who rely on Chinese tourists are doing it very tough already. Anecdotally, as a company and from what I see, we are very reliant on the Chinese as well and this thing is going to knock us all pretty badly for the rest of 2020. (Bloody gut feeling was right - see comments on this post)

On another note, I was made on offer too good to refuse on my beloved BMW. Here she is, going to a new master just before the rains hit last week. She will have a good home as he is not only an a/c engineer but a fellow mtber.

Now don't panic because that was always the plan. Find an inexpensive adventure bike to see if I liked it, then if so (HELL YES!!!) to buy a more capable (read expensive) adventure bike. I am now working on Stage 2 (as I hope are the Covid19 vaccine scientists) of that plan so watch this space. 

Thanks for checkin' in.

Cheers.

Time For Another Crazy Race ?

It has been almost two years since I last completed an epic/crazy bikepacking race and it would appear that the planets have aligned again. Yup, I have had some more long service leave approved from mid July and I aim to complete my "lifetime triple crown" of  THE original, grandaddy bikepacking races. Already having the Tour Divide Race and the Arizona Trail Race 750 under my belt, it is time to cap it off with the tripartite of the Triple Crown  -
The Colorado Trail Race (CTR).
Note - the Triple Crown is technically completing ALL three of these races in one year, hence my "lifetime" triple crown as I would never get enough time off in one year to have a crack at these races all in a row.

(Maurizio Doro photo)

The CTR is the shortest of the three at just 525 miles (845km) but as you can see from the link above, what it lacks in distance it makes up for in climbing and elevation of the trail itself! 72 500ft of climbing is still two and a half Mt Everests - sea to summit - plus much of the race is around the 10 000ft elevation mark. The highest point is an eye watering/lung busting pass at 13 270ft. This will be challenging for a sea level dweller such as myself. Don't forget that a large portion of it is also single track.
There is nowhere to train for that elevation here in Australia so I will just have to train as best I can, then try to get over to Colorado a week before the big event to try to acclimate somewhat....

(Maurizio Doro photo)

So, to the training.
I have my Lynda Wallenfels training programs that I followed for the TDR and AZTR750. They worked well for me then and I have no reason to doubt that if I follow them rigorously that they won't work for me now. I have one week until the official training starts and to assist in the process it will be back onto a strictly nutritious diet with no hollow calories. This will be tied to a zero alcohol policy - especially easy sounding today as yesterday was Australia Day and perhaps one or two too many beverages were partaken in......

(Maurizio Doro photo)

The rules of the race are the standard unsupported bikepacking ethos that accompanies each of these ultra endurance style races. No dedicated, outside support that isn't commercially available to everyone. So, just ride your bike from Denver to Durango by yourself, with no help.
Sounds like crap doesn't it?
Well, I happen to really love the challenge of doing it all by myself, with no help. It requires you to plan ahead, prior to the race, with a frenzy that might only have been matched by the D-Day planners but you know a lot of that planning will be worthless once into the race because "I" will be the uncontrollable factor. I might feel awesome and rip ahead. More likely, I will feel like crap and make some dumb decisions despite knowing better. Then it will be up to me to roll with those decisions and make the best of it - all while being rooted out of my brain.
Fun, no?!

(Maurizio Doro photo)

What bike will I take?
Well, it is very early days yet and while I always try to take the most route specific bike to these races it may just be a case of run what I brung. At this stage I am thinking that I will use the Cannondale Beast Of The East that I used for the AZTR. I will remove the Lefty and put a Pike fork on it for strength and so that I can run my dynamo hub. While a hardtail, it does have Plus size tyres which should give me a little bit of plushness over what looks to be pretty rocky terrain. This choice may well be totally inappropriate so watch this space on bike selection....

(Maurizio Doro photo)

So, I guess that is my declaration. I am committing to this thing. Let the training begin..... (next week)

Below is a moving pictures version of the 2018 race by Aaron Johnson. Check it out if for no other reason than to ogle the scenery!!

Thanks also to Maurizio Doro from Italy who tackled the CTR in 2019 and from whom I have borrow the above photos - without permission...but I hope that is ok Maurizio?

Cheers.

2018 Arizona Trail Race 750 - Day 5

I was up at 1230ish and quietly packed my bivy into my bar bag. It seemed like Dean was sleeping in, as a quiet snoring was emanating from his bivy, about 20m away. I tip-toed past him as he was by the entry point to this little clearing by the river. I knew I would be seeing him again, later in the race. He is one strong rider.

The trail went up, pretty much straight away. It started out as double track but quickly went to single track. Single track that skirted around a cliff face with a high wall on one side and a drop off the other. I pushed most of the ups and hooted down the downs. There were many, many of these. 

I made a deal with myself this morning. I was not going to look at my gps distance at all and I was not going to look around in the darkness at all. I was simply going to look at the trail, keep moving along it and when I had done enough moving, Picketpost trailhead would be in front of me....

The only photo I took of that morning. Lots of exposure.

2018 Arizona Trail Race 750 - The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Here I was, panting hard, sweating harder, pushing my heavily laden bike up a steep, loose hillside in southern Arizona under a blistering sun, just a handful of miles from the Mexican border. 

I briefly thought "what the fuck am I doing here, no really..., wtf ?" as I rounded yet another tight, loose, rocky, climbing switchback. I stopped to take a pull on my water bottle, then my eyes swung out to take in the vista of the Miller Peak wilderness. 

Holy crap! From up here at 6000ft, the view was magic! 

I had been riding/walking with some guy from Idaho or North Dakota for about five minutes and he just kept his head down and pushed on. I felt like saying "look to your right!!"  

He was deep in the pain cave, just 45km into this 1230km race. The Arizona Trail does that to people. It gets inside their head. All of the stupid pushing up a fall line trail with no breeze. Have you ever noticed there is never any breeze when you are climbing in the hot sun? No breeze, just the quiet muttered curses? But then the yee-haws of the loose, steep, rocky drop down the fall line on the other side help to wipe that horrible memory of the climb.......until the next steep pinch.......

So, what was I doing, grovelling along the Canelo Hills section of the Arizona Trail on this fine Thursday morning I hear you ask? Lets rewind a little to explain how I found myself in this mess. You may wish to grab yourself a cold beverage before continuing......

HELL YEAH!!!

There was a lot of arse kicking on the Arizona Trail in early April. Mostly, it was the trail kicking our arses......... but I got the last laugh.

Pardon my French......but......FUCK YEAH !!!

Quiet Contemplation

Well, I am back. More in body rather than spirit at this stage.

After what I have just experienced I feel a lot like this sign........

Thankfully I have a week off before I go back to work so that I can recover from this......

via GIPHY



More to come................

The Time Has Come !!!

Well, that 3 month period went quick !!! I can't believe that I am jumping on a jet tomorrow morning, bound for the US of A and a world of hurt and wonder on the Arizona Trail!! (warning-excessive use of exclamation points in this post is highly likely!!)

I went to my last PT session with Jim at Transitional Fitness this morning and I can't thank him enough for all of the effort he has put into training me. I am feeling strong from a overall perspective which will be important as I wrestle my laden bike along the sometimes overly kindly named "trail" that is the Arizona Trail. While my cycling prowess might be a few notches below the fitness I carried into the Tour Divide, I am happy to sacrifice some of the on-bike fitness for the overall strength. 

The Gym Bike sweat sessions are over!!

I am a little less confident in my gear setup unfortunately. I simply haven't tested all of my gear on multiple overnights. This was partly because of time constraints and partly because some major players in my kit (like my bivy) are awaiting me in the US as they weren't available to purchase locaally or over the interwebs. My philosophy with this aspect of my sub par preparation is that I will just harden-the-fuck-up and make it work!! I am again taking a massive chunk of time out of my family's life by taking part in this silly race so I plan on not wasting that time and will just get it done.

I still have to pack my final gear into my bags and to box up my bike. Before I do I will be shouldering the bike for one last (first actually) hike to see how it rides on my back. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute!! 

1st and only hike.......what could possibly go wrong....?

I have fitted the latest SRAM Eagle GX gearing to the bike so I should be able to pedal up a vertical wall if I so desire. 

The length of the derailuer cage is a bit concerning but I have a spare mech hanger just in case. Lets hope it isn't needed!

My gear exceeds the capacity of my bags but I can't see myself doing the race with less than what I have laid out here so the final cull will have to be made in Sierra Vista, the day before the race start.

Gear.......

Tool Kit

The link to Trackleaders is here so that you can follow all of the action from the 5th of April, 7am MST. The time conversion for us Aussies is 7 hours ahead but 1 day behind. That means the race starts at midnight, Friday EST here in Oz. The race discussion forum on bikepacking.net can be found here.

The racers to watch will be former record holder and Tour Divide winner Kurt Refsnider, current record holder, Idtarod 350 winner, Colorado Trail Race winner, TD 3rd place getter (in 2015) Neil Beltchenko, female Single Speed record holder Alice Drobna, mtb mega-star Rebecca Rusch(300 race) and probably a whole bunch of others I haven't heard of before.

Well, I hope you enjoy the show. I know I am going to have a love/hate relationship with this trail. I am just hoping that love triumphs eventually. ;)

See you on the other side.

Cheers.

Plodding Away

That is what I have been doing these last few weeks. Just plodding away, trying to follow my 10 Day Bikepacking Race plan from coach Linda. It worked well for the Tour Divide in 2015 and if I follow it as closely as I can (with a few modifications for carrying a bike!) I should be in a good place come April 5th.

I have sort of settled on taking my Cannondale Beast of the East for the race. I really don't want to buy another bike and I guess this will do the job. Especially now that I have carbon wheels on it and soon to come 2.8 width tyres (down from the 3.0 currently on it) I feel it will be a better rolling option. Still not as quick as a standard 29" 2.2/2.4 wide equipped mtb but close enough........

Another leg on the front and a dynamo hub in between and I'm set!

Now , where was I? Ah, yes, training.

To this end I have ventured back to an old favourite of many endurance riders, Brisbane Forest Park (or D'Aguilar Forest as it is known these days). 

It never looks as steep in a photo, especially a pano.

My first foray was on one of the hottest days we have had this year! It got up to 38C (100F) which is very hot for Brisbane. We normally only see low 30s, which with the humidity of the sub-tropics is plenty enough thank-you-very-much! As a result of the heat (and going too hard the day before) I struggled my way around the 50km loop I set for myself. I chose some of the steepest trails in there so that I could practice pushing my bike. Well, normally I can ride all of these climbs but that day I was definitely pushing on almost all of them while the Cicadas almost sent me mad/deaf with their high pitched screeching. I include a small snippet of their "song" for your hearing pleasure......turn your speakers up LOUD for the full experience as these things are easily over 100 decibels in the bush when they are in their tens of thousands!

After another week at work where I squeezed my training around life I decided to head out again for Round 2 of my BFP loop. I was really pleased to see that I felt waaay stronger and could have ridden all of the stupidly steep climbs. I had to force myself to get off the bike and push because that IS part of the training after all!

I was also rocking my new Camelbak Octane hydration pack. It is a lumbar model with the bladder being down low, across your hips. I hate wearing a backpack these days as it makes it very difficult to regulate your body temperature but I must say, the Octane sits there nicely and the relatively small "pack" section of the backpack allows plenty of air to get at your back, keeping you much cooler than traditional hydration packs with the bladder mid back. I chose this smaller version so that I won't/can't load it up with too much crap during the race. It will also form part of my bike portage system for the Grand Canyon crossing when it is combined with my Mountainsmith Strapetts. I just need to figure out how to actually do that......

Octane win.

On other fronts I have renewed the insoles in my mtb shoes as I found for the TD in 2015 that I needed a small "dome" attached to the insole to help spread my metatarsals and stop nerve pinching that feels like a hot foot after a while. They worked perfectly in 2015 so I thought I had better get onto that again so as to eliminate one possible cause of body failure.

I also jagged a trip to New Zealand during the week, where we have all of our heavy maintenance conducted. 

Empty 737.

I didn't get locked up on arrival so I guess there were no outstanding speeding fines from our 2014 motorcycle trip......

While the ferry was a bit of fun, the training ride on the gym bike wasn't! It was a hot day for Christchurch (in the mid 30sC) and there was no air conditioning in the closet-sized hotel gym. Suffice to say, after 2 hours of hard efforts I was fairly swimming! On the plus side, I did feel good after a shower (don't worry, no photos...)

Sweat box gym.

So, here we are, 8 weeks out from the race and I just have to get a standard suspension fork for my bike so that I can run my dyno hub. I then have to have that dyno hub laced into my new front wheel, then I have to load the whole shebang up and take it on a few overnight rides to shake down my gear. Oh, and learn how to set it up on a backpack so I can carry it 35km(22mi) across the Grand Canyon......plus I need to get started on my route notes.....

Shit, I need to get CRACKING.........

Cheers.

Starting From Behind The 8 Ball

Some good news last week regarding my riding plans for 2018.  My requested annual leave was approved! 

Great news, right? Well yes and no. The down side to this is that with our company, leave approval is always notified in the first week or so of January each year. Why the downside? Well, I was hoping (half heartedly) to get leave to compete in the Arizona Trail Race 750 (AZTR750) which is in early April this year. That would only barely leave me 3 months to prepare if my leave was approved.

Three months. 

That is not a lot of time. I had six months notice for the Tour Divide in 2015 and that was only just enough time to prepare. Yes, I realise that I could have been preparing during the closing months of last year but it is extremely difficult to push yourself through the torture er, training for potentially no reason. (I wasn't confident I would get leave at Easter, the most sought after time of the year).

Neil Beltchenko photo.

Another reason, if I am being honest is I guess I don't have the emotional investment in the AZTR that I had in the Tour Divide. I had watched the TD for four or five years before I made the leap to race it. While I have looked on at the AZTR for about a similar time it just hasn't struck a chord like the TD. This is partly because it is only 750 miles (it's really 800miles) and it is stupidly HARD. Every racer that has done both the TD and the AZTR says hands down the AZTR is waaay harder than the TD, mile for mile. I am wondering if part of that is people's thinking? I can see that if you have done the TD you might think to yourself "750 miles? How hard can it be?"  

John Schilling photo

Well, I am trying very hard not to fall into that trap! I am also giving myself a little bit of a mental out. While I am certainly no athlete, when I raced the TD I really wanted to push myself and see what the best that I could achieve would be. With the AZTR a competitive time for someone of my limited ability would be about 10 or 11 days. I have 28 days leave.......... and therein lies my race strategy. 

John Schilling photo

I will train as hard as I can in the next 2.5 months, get my gear setup as optimally as I can (TD experience does help here) and research the route much more thoroughly than I did the TD route. This will give me a fair chance of having a good outcome and in the back of my mind I will have the knowledge that if something isn't going according to script that I have time on my side. I can cool my jets if needs be and look after whatever ailment I pick up (oh yes, there will be at least one!) and hopefully continue on at whatever pace I can manage.

I also have a secret weapon in the form of Dave Wicks. Dave is an awesome bloke (for a Kiwi) :) and has done the AZTR 3 times in the past. He is also very generous with his advice and support so I will be leaning on him a little heavier than I would otherwise like but I am sure I can repay his kindness with some frothy beverages along the way! Dave will be doing this year's version so we can hopefully share a ride to the start line on the Mexican border.

Now, back to the three core problems for my race.

I am not fit enough

I don't have a bike

I don't know the route

Fitness

I am doing what I can on the fitness front but I did lose most of last week as I was/am still getting over this flu. I couldn't subject myself to the rigours of regimented training so I opted for some general singletrack riding, putting in bursts of effort where I could (the guys were probably wondering why I was charging up every hill like a demented xc racer). Unfortunately, these bursts just highlighted that I have simply no endurance in the upper rev range. I can diesel along all day at a slow rate but I really need to work on my upper rev range.

Bike

The bike thing. Yeah, kind of critical. I don't have a bike currently that is suited to the demands of the race and I don't need to make the race any harder by taking a knife to a gun fight! I also really like my current steeds and don't want to trash them. This has me on the hunt for a secondhand mount and I am currently searching for either a Norco Revolver FS or a Kona Unit X. Two very different bikes but two that can get the job done.

Research

For my route research I have joined the Arizona Trail Association and have the badge and a 2 for 1 beer voucher to prove it! Funds from membership go toward trail maintenance. Most of you know my feelings about trail care so any small help I can provide to brother/sister trail builders is money well spent.

Via the ATA membership I can extract trail Beta from their great website. As stated above, I will be leaning on Dave and I have also read back through multiple years of race prep threads that are in that treasure trove of information that is bikepacking.net, making many notes along the way.

The training rides are under way and one good thing (if there is a silver lining) to this scorching heat we are experiencing here in Oztraylia is that it is PERFECT training conditions to replicate a race in the Arizona desert!

Wish me luck because I am going to need it!!

Cheers and thanks/sorry to John Schilling and Neil Beltchenko for their awesome photos.

Grabbing Life With Both Hands

Things have been trundling along for me with everyday life stuff going on. You know, the usual rat race stuff of going to work, taking kids to school, mowing the lawn when it gets to be 22.8mm long...... plus some riding. Being blessed with great trails right out my back door probably likely sees me taking the riding a little for granted. 

Since the Thunderbolt Challenge back in April there haven’t been any riding challenges on my horizon which can make it a bit hard to find motivation. Well, there was The Great Cycle Challenge in October, but that was spread over the whole month, not a specific, self supported race challenge.

I have been toying with the idea of racing the Arizona Trail since late 2015. It is meant to one brute of a race. Tougher mile for mile than the Tour Divide Race even though it is “only” 750 miles in length. Anyway, my leave ballot was recently open and it looks like I will get time off next April to have a crack at it. This won’t be confirmed until January but with the race starting on the 5th of April,  I have less than 4 months to get my shit sorted!

Since the 2015 TD race we have had a frequent, infrequent catch up here in Brisbane between Dave Wicks, Mark Meyers and I to discuss all things bikepacking, reminisce on the 2015 TD and sample a few cold brews. Since mentally committing to the Arizona Trail Race in the last week or so I have been telling myself to get an email out to them both so we can gee each other up about it over a beer. 

I wish I had.

Today I learned that Mark passed away last weekend. Details are sketchy as to the reasons but whatever they turn out to be, he has been taken from us too soon. He was in training for the Hunt 1000, his next bikepacking expedition and we had discussed it during our last bench racing session. We will all miss his dry wit, raspy chuckle and cheesy grin. To Mark’s family I offer my condolences and thank them for the time that they allowed him to spend with us, on our bikes.......or drinking beers and laughing.

Mark showing me the first few kilometres of the TD route, pre race 2015(and helping to settle my butterflies!)

While very sad and waaay too soon, to me it is another lesson that we need to be out there, living life, going for it as you never know how much time you have left. I am going to get stuck in and knock this AZTR750 out of the park because if it is worth doing, it is worth doing well and time is precious.

RIP Mark.

Mark and I, Spray River Trail Banff 2015






I am going for a ride...........