Beginnings of a Race Report

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Nathan Sports sponsorship took care of all my reflective needs.

Most of the gear that got loaded into the van.


Part of my pre-race prep is to change all the batteries in my Power Tap hubs and CPU’s.

The crew assembled at my house early on Friday morning. We did some last minute running around, picked up the rental van, packed it and drove to the race start in Santa Clarita/Valencia. It is just outside the Magic Mountain theme park.

Chris looked relaxed as Brandy and I were turning in our crew waivers and picking up my goody bag.

While the crew sets up the vehicle with lighting and signage, I get my pre-race mug shot taken. These are great for before and after pictures so your friends can see how much you suffered.

Vehicle Inspection seemed to take longer this year. While it seemed there were less inspectors available this year, we were assured that there were three of them out there. It was pretty comical to see Cindy “Pitsnake” Steiger as mama duck and all her little ducklings following her around the parking lot as she inspected vehicles and bikes. Our guess is that all of the ducklings flocked to Cindy because she is so recognizable with her involvement in Furnace Creek 508 every year.

Our turn finally arrive and the inspection was done and out of the way. My routine after inspection is that I like to go to the hotel and relax while the crew gets groceries for me and for themselves. While they grocery shop I always wish I could fall asleep, but it never happens.

When they returned we went to the pre-race meeting. I have been to three of these and by far, I enjoyed this year’s the best. Hearing John Marino speak about how he got started in this craziness was incredible. Because of his vision and his grandiose goals, we now have the Race Across America, the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association and the Furnace Creek 508 — just under a different name and distance than it was at first. I thoroughly enjoyed his talk. I just wish I had more time to talk one on one with him.

While at the pre-race meeting I saw some old friends. Here is Francis on the Left and on the right the guy that talked me into a triple century as my very first Ultra Roehl.

After the meeting it is back to the hotel to get some rest. I never sleep well before these races. On the way though we stopped at a gas station and Robyn Benincasa was there. She kindly drew some legs on my legless bird.

Morning of representing for Sho-Air.

The crew just before the madness began

I’ll post more tomorrow and every day over the next week.

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How Far is 509.5 miles?

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This year’s Furnace Creek 508 was 509.5 miles. So just for fun I thought I would look at just a few cities and see how they are from each other. I hope you find this fun and interesting. Keep in mind that my race had an enormous amount of climbing and traversed the Mojave and Death Valley deserts. Ok here goes..

SEATTLE TO YREKA

TERRE HAUTE TO ATLANTA

PROVIDENCE TO RICHMOND

PORTLAND TO DAVIS

DENVER TO GRANT

LAS VEGAS TO GRAND JUNCTION

MIAMI TO HILTON HEAD ISLAND

NEW YORK CITY TO RALEIGH

SAN DIEGO TO SACRAMENTO

PARIS TO MILANO

PORTSMOUTH TO DUNDEE

Why don’t you check from your hometown how far you would get if you drove 509.5 miles away?

The Down and Dirty of my Furnace Creek 508…

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I wanted to drop a quick post as I compile the data and sort the pictures and videos. Yes there will be videos this year yay! Subscribe to the blog to get updates.

First off I want to thank my crew. Brandy, Jason and Ticia they were AWESOME! When you have a great crew your event goes off a lot smoother. I also had the benefit of cool foggy weather the first 30 miles and then massive tailwinds for many sections of the first 100 miles. The Heat Miser stayed away and I believe it was in the low 90’s for most of the first day. I would pay for the benefit of the tailwinds with just as massive cross and headwinds especially going up Townes Pass.

One of my greatest treats was getting to the base of Townes Pass before sunset. I was about 1.5 miles from the right turn onto HWY 190 which I consider the base of the climb when the 6pm hour hit. At 6pm until 7am we MUST mount lights on the bike and turn on the yellow flashing lights and install our safety triangle. I HAD NEVER SEEN THIS IN THE DAYLIGHT. I was so excited. Basically I did an 11 hour double century with about 12,000 feet of climbing to get to the base of Townes Pass still about 300 miles left though.

All for now but thank you all for following my progress and I will post again later today and throughout the week.

Shhh…sleepytime

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Brandy here again, guest blogging while George is sleeping. We’re here in Santa Clarita, on the eve of Furnace Creek 508.

Upon our arrival this afternoon, we checked in and waited what seemed like an eternity to get the van and bikes inspected. Lots of familiar faces here at the race hotel and it was nice to see so many people back for more suffering and pain this year.

Once we were done with the pre-race formalities, we made our way to our hotel, and then to dinner at Denny’s. Despite George’s bad experience in 2006, he hasn’t sworn Denny’s off and ate not one, but two meals.

After dinner we left George to nap while Jason, Ticia and I went grocery shopping. We were all stuffed and nothing at the grocery store sounded particularly appealing, so we ended up with turkey, pickles and cheese for sandwiches, mini bagels, cream cheese, carrots, crackers, Oreo cookies, Diet Coke and Pepsi. Not much of a spread for the next two days, but it was all that we could agree on at the time. We realized that we had wandered around for too long and that we only had a few minutes to get back to the hotel, pick up George and get to the pre-race meeting on time. We needed to come back and grab a few more things, including ice, but we thought we would just swing by in the morning.

The pre-race meeting hall, once again, was packed. George found a few seats for us and we enjoyed listening to Chris Kostman talk about the history of the race before he introduced both John Marino and Michael Secrest spoke about the early years of ultracycling. We set our watches to race time, wished our friends “good luck” and made our way to the van, where Jason was napping.

I decided that I needed a soda with ice, so we stopped at a gas station, where we also topped off the gas tank. While there Robyn “Athenian Rottweiler” Benincasa decided to draw some legs on the poor legless vireo on our signs on the car. Thanks Robyn! Back at the hotel, George went straight to bed while the three of us organized the back of the van. It’s actually spacious enough with the seats down, for someone to take a nap back there. Now, there’s no guarantee that some random objects won’t fall on your head, but there is enough room!

We decided to hit the grocery store for the second time tonight and grab a few extra things and ice, to avoid to the rush in the morning. I spied the business center in the hotel lobby, so I thought I would run over here and quickly update everyone. This may be our last post until after the race, so be sure to keep up to date via the Furnace Creek 508 Webcast.

Keep George in your thoughts during this epic weekend!

~Brandy

Blogging in my sleep

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I’m sleeping. Sleeping as long as possible, so Brandy is acting as guest blogger. 🙂

It’s early Friday morning and we were up late last night checking off boxes as we packed for Furnace Creek 508. About a month ago I asked George if there was something that we should be doing to get ready and he always answered me with “No, we have the 508 box!” The 508 box had many of the supplies from last year and was put away and not touched, so it would be ready for the 2008 race. He was mostly right, packing went really smoothly and I started to think that for the second year in a row, I’ve made it out to be worse in my head. Perhaps I’m still traumatized from all of the prep that went into RAAM and the enormity of the packing for that race.

So everything is in it’s place, ready to go into the van when George and Jason pick it up in about two hours. Surprisingly, the list of things to buy is pretty short. After I pick Ticia up, we’ll just need to make a quick run to Radio Shack to buy a bigger SD card for the Canon. Unfortunately, our plans to borrow the neighbors video camera fell through when they figured out that it didn’t work. Since Ticia and I both have our Nikon DLSR’s with us, we’ll designate the Canon as a makeshift video camera. The video on it is decent, and it’s better than what we had last year, which was nothing. The rest of the things on our NTB (need to buy) list, mostly groceries, can be taken care of once we get up to Santa Clarita.

We decided to stay at the Best Western down the street from the race hotel this year, so hopefully that won’t be too much of a hassle getting there in the morning. The Hilton Garden Inn, while a nice hotel, sells out of rooms with two beds much too quickly for a race of this size. Last year one of our crew members chose to sleep in the car the night before the race so we were trying to avoid that.

Hopefully George will have a chance to update more before we leave. If not, we’ll likely be out of touch until Monday. You can however, follow along on the Furnace Creek 508 Webcast, which will be up and running at noon today.

Later!

B

Race Prep

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In the process of gathering my gear for Furnace Creek 508, I realize how well my sponsors have taken care of me this year. I’m surrounded by box after box of gear and nutrition. Without my sponsors, I wouldn’t be able to race.

Big thanks go out to the following sponsors in alphabetical order…

Cervelo for the P3 time trial bike and flyweight R3-SL climbing bike.

Finish Line for their lube, cleaners and everything drive train related.

Hawaiian Island Creations for their amazingly effective sunblock and their lip balm.

Kenda Tires for their tires and tubes.

Motortabs for their electrolyte tablets. These fit nicely into the Speedfill and will really help out with the expected temperatures being in the high 90’s this weekend.

Nathan Sports for all of the reflective gear for myself and the crew, hydration packs and lights.

NiteRider for the MiNewt lighting system and lightweight battery packs.

Shower’s Pass for their rain gear, which may come in handy on Saturday!

Skins for their compression garments. I’m wearing the tights right now!

Speedfill for their hydration system that I have installed on the P3. This makes hydrating on the time trial bike a breeze. Typically in this position my hydration takes a hit because it is not convenient to get out of the aero position in order to hydrate and fuel enough. Speedfill takes care of this issue.

Sportquest for their generous sponsorship of nutrition supplies. I plan to use the Carbo Pro 1200, Carbo Pro, Vantage and Recover supplements.

Team Sho-Air-Sonance.

Zipp for their deep dish aero wheels.

Wheelbuilder.com for building the 404 and 808 Power Tap wheels.

Woolistic for their amazing wool jerseys and base layers.

Begin Countdown to the 508…

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72 hours until the start of the Furnace Creek 508. Saturday Oct 4, 2008 at 7am.

This morning on the way to work I was doing some calculations and setting goals for the race. My goal is to break 40 hours on this event.

To break 40 hours on the 509.5 mile course this year I would have to avg 12.7 mph. Sounds reasonable since it is really slooooow to most people that race shorter distances. In actuality it is a good avg speed for multi-day non-stop Ultras. There are so many things that can go wrong. You wouldn’t believe how quickly your avg speed drops when you stop for JUST 30 mins.

Let’s use the example of a century.

100 miles in 6 hour total time = Avg Speed 16.6mph

100 miles in 6.5 hours (30 mins off the bike) = Avg Speed 15.3mph

The trick to a good time at the 508 is to STAY ON THE BIKE. As someone once told me “You are not making forward progress sitting here get back on your bike.” And that’s all there is to it. Keep pedaling and stay on the bike. But as simple as that sounds it is actually quite difficult.

Another way to look at this 40 hour goal is to look at my previous times.

2006 42:59 (nutrition problems)
2007 45:17 Fixed Gear

If my best time was 42:59 then I need to chop off 3 hours.

Let’s break those three hours up into the 8 stages of the race. I figured that out to be 22.5 minutes faster per stage than in 2006. Still sounds doable.

So what are the time killers?

1. Nutrition problems
2. Fatigue
3. Calorie Deficit
4. Sleep Deprivation
5. Hot Foot
6. Mechanicals– Flats, shifting issues
7. Night Riding– You can’t see as well in general and you can’t descend as fast.
8. Crashes
9. Resting– “Oh I just need 5 mins off the bike”
10. Nature Breaks
11. Heat
12. Cold
13. Clothing changes — for weather conditions and changing of shorts (usually 2x)
14. Equipment changes– Lights on/off bike exchanges
15. Follow vehicle – Mechanicals, Refueling
16. Crew- Fatigue, Sleep Deprivation, boredom, inattentiveness, running into racer
17. Going off Course– LOST Hard to do at the 508 but on other Ultras very feasible
18. High winds
19. Sleep breaks
20. Eating breaks

This list is not complete it is only the top 20 things that come to mind.

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