Lumberjack 100

When I was unpacking to repack for the Lumberjack 100 last week it was honestly the last thing in the world I wanted to be doing, Packing, that is....I was really looking forward to racing, just not the traveling to get there. Although most pros get travel weary, I think my lackadaisical attitude was mostly resulting what my coach and I call the "Finals Effect."

Remember back in college when you burned the candle down to a useless pile of wax, studying, cramming, pumping coffee and (if you were like me) when exams were over, you still found some secret reserve of energy to party like a rock star for a day or two in celebration? Then, when it was finally all over and you returned home to the comfort of mom's cooking and your own bed, you finally relax...and then get sick as a dog?

I was suffering from the Finals Effect from the Trans-Sylvania Epic, big time. I had great energy for the 36 hour drive home during which we spent 2 nights with friends and family in Colorado and rode every day. But, when I finally got home on Thursday, I crashed. Spectacularly hard. I could barely pull myself off the couch for easy spins for 4 days straight. I managed to get out and do a day of volunteer trail work with TVTAP (strained a back muscle, too. Uff.) The really crappy, rainy, windy and cold weather we returned to certainly didn't help the mood. I was in a big ol' recovery-from-a-stage-race hole.

I did my first (and only) hard ride since TSE on Wed. morning and felt decent, so that gave me some confidence that I could somehow pull a 100 miler out of my you-know-where that weekend. I managed enough energy to pack my bike and get on a plane on Wednesday afternoon and was graced with an easy, uneventful travel day.

Thankfully, I had a travel buddy this time around. I picked up Cary Smith, the fastest dentist on the planet, at the airport Thursday afternoon. We wandered through a Meijer (that I swear was bigger than any Walmart I had ever seen) for some groceries and made the 2-hr drive up to our humble accommodations up near Manistee. I'll just call the Northwest Cabins "rustic" and leave it at that.

Cary and I pre-rode some of the course on Friday and ended up riding a lot longer than we wanted to ride. We thought we were being crafty by cutting out on some of the lap...seems the course map we got at registration and the garmin track they posted on line were both wrong, so let's just say that our near 3-hr ride assured that I was good and open from my general slugging around the week prior to the race.

This was also the day my stupid back strain got worse. Must have been sitting on the airplane. It had become uncomfortable to breathe deeply, twist, put on socks and lie on my side. Riding was no good either. I did what I could, Cary re-taped my back with KT tape and I spent most of Friday either on the foam roll, icing, taking handfuls of ibuprofen and praying that I would miraculously wake up pain free.

4:30 am always sucks, but it sucked more when my first breath was painful. I choked down another handful of Vitamin I, drank some coffee and figured if I hadn't gotten an ulcer already this breakfast combination would only help me make it through they day.

The thing is, 100-milers always hurt. Racing in general hurts. I've done enough of these things to know that. But, this one was going to be particularly rough, knowing that, A) I was not quite recovered from TSE B) I was having searing back pain, and C) the only way to ride this course well was to be on the gas 100% of the time.

I used each hike-a-bike to stretch my back. I've never been so grateful for the opportunity to push my bike.

From the start, everything hurt. I simply accepted that was the way the day was going to go and in a weird way, it sort of made everything easier.

The definition of insanity, I think, is making the same mistake over and over and expecting different outcomes. What I'm getting at here is that I have been in the position many times where I was in pain during a race, but never accepted it. And the result (and mistake) was that I thought about the pain the entire race and spent valuable energy thinking about how much everything hurt. The thing about fighting it is that it keeps your mind focused on what hurts, not what you should actually be doing to race faster. I have learned to accept when I am feeling bad and to move on. Don't get me wrong, I don't ignore it. I simply acknowledge it, accept it and think about something else....like figuring out a way to go fast, regardless.

The Lumberjack course consists of 3, 33-mile laps on a course that is super-buff, tight twisty singletrack with very little dirt road and lots of short, steep and punchy climbs. I went out hard, wanting to be towards the front as passing would be difficult for a while. I had Cheryl Sorensen on my wheel immediately and from there we traded blows for the entire full lap. A few times I had started to get a small gap, but would always run into the same (singlespeed) traffic, allowing her to catch back on. We went into the first feed together and exited at pretty much the same time, but that's when she popped and I kept going, holding my pace. It was at about this time that I discovered my fork was slowly breaking.....by mile 40 it had ceased working completely. I realized this when I was reaching down to lock it out and suddenly there was no difference between locked and open. Although the course was pretty smooth, suspension always helps, especially in a 100-miler. Just another thing to not think about...

My first lap was 2:28, my second 2:36:08 and my third 2:28:11. Yup, my 3rd was only 3 sec. slower than my 2nd.

I ended up first, ahead of Karen Potter by 17 min. and also set a new course record. I won a really sweet ax trophy and a very generous (and equally paid out) check. But for me, the true victory of the day was that my head, not my body, won. I knew I was tired, hurting and probably not ready to have my best 100, yet I went out there wanting to throw down a sub 8-hr finish, determined to ride well no matter what. The power of the mind is more powerful than we think. As a sports psychology student, learning to harness that power and put it into practice is a fantastic feeling.

Next up? Home. Rest. Sleeping in my own bed. Training. No packing. Cold stream soaks. Grilling on the deck and enjoying sunsets behind the Big Holes. Summer finally decided to hit the Tetons yesterday and thankfully, I am finally home to enjoy its arrival!