The next question that must be asked is why go beyond ultra cycling? Well, sometimes you don't have much else of an option. When life hands you lemons, either you can come up with funny faces or you can make lemonade and have something sweet to drink. It all depends on how you deal with the lemons that are handed to you. In my case I have decided to make lemonade and just ride it out.
Back in 2010 I decided to give up driving and haven't had a car registered in my name since the end of April 2010. I haven't had a car sitting in my driveway since Columbus Day Weekend 2011. I'm single and I live by myself. The bike was going to be my means of transportation. It started off nice like that but then things changed and I started looking to take care of one 'big problem' I knew I had to deal with since I did't own a car anymore. I live in New Hampshire and all my family lives in Ohio. The last t ime I had been out to see them was mid summer 2004. I knew the only way I was going go get out to see them was going to be by bicycle. I'm not the kind that spends big bucks to do anything or get anywhere. Theirs always a cheaper way of doing things including getting from point A to point B. Why take the bus, plane or train when you can just get off your butt and ride the bicycle.
I knew I had to get my sorry butt in shape and I thought I had to get myself use to riding 100 mile days consistently. I had always heard of guys doing cross country bike trips riding one hundred miles every day. I knew that if I looked at my normal year as it was anymore that my best time for doing a bike trip out to see family would also be when the weather was going to be the best, mid-August to mid-September. Typically in the spring in the midwest you have to deal with severe storms. By early June the heat starts to pour in. By mid to late September the overnight lows start to get quite chilly meaning you would have to pack more clothes/heavier sleeping bag to stay warm overnight.. During mid-August to mid-September you typically have lost the summer heat but you don't have the fall chill in the air yet and at the same time you also find the weather pattern slows down quite nicely and you end up with 8-10 days between storm fronts. With roughly 800 miles out to my moms house that would mean 8 days...perfect timing. At the time back in 2011 I was still a whimp about riding in the rain so trying to find a nice long stretch between storm fronts would make for a dry ride out and back. Sweet.
2011 came and it was looking sweet until the day before leaving for the trip. A 10 day stretch of dry weather was moving in. From the Rockies east was suppose to be dry for 6-7 days before the next precip was showing up on the weather maps. It was all starting right behind a storm front that was moving through. The problem was the storm front had a name...Hurricane Irene. To say the least I ended up scraping the trip altogether since I couldn't get out of New Hampshire thanks to all east/west roads across western New England being closed thanks to the damage from Irene.
2012 came and I was in much better shape, probably in true respects...too good of shape. I spent the spring getting myself into long distance shape. Heck I had ridden 7 200 mile days between the last day of winter and mid June. I had 12,000 miles in for the year before I left for the bike trip. I knew I had one big problem before I left for the trip. I knew the first trip was going to be a 'suicide' trip. I had always been doing one day rides around home. I knew once I found the open road that I was going to be in big trouble. Ever since then I have found myself unable to do the nice long(150-225 mile) one day trips around home anymore. I do them all the time on the open road but I've only had one 150 mile day around home since the 2012 bike trip...I have given the 'disease' the nickname 'situational burnout'. The trip in 2012 ended up taking me on out to the Mississippi River round trip. Yep, I always ride front door to front door. It was a 2700 mile trip that was quite an eye opener. Most of my riding before the trip had been unloaded. The last three days on the bike in July I rode a minimum of 159 miles. As I left for the trip, 2.5 days later than planned I knew my original idea of trying to keep it around 90-100 miles a day wasn't going to happen if I was going to make it to my moms house by the time I had to get there. I definitely saw a sizeable difference between unloaded and loaded down riding. I thought I would be a Superman and be able to easily ride 150-160 miles each day fully loaded. I got a rude awakening to say the least.
2013 my plan for a 6000-6500 mile trip got cut dramatically short, only 1700 miles out and back to my moms house. Not quite the Texas and Dakotas trip I was planning for. Yep, pretty much the second year in a row where things didn't go quite as planned, only much worse this time around.
The 2014 trip started out with the idea of trying to finish off the New York counties I hadn't been in yet over the past two years. I still had like 12-15 counties outside of NYC/Long Island that I hadn't been in yet on the bike. I was also going to finish off the rest of the northern Ohio counties as well. I had found myself grasping ahold of the idea of trying to ride all the counties in a given state just as a way of making myself always take a different route and as a result always see new scenery each year. Four days before leaving I woke up and a question popped into mind before I could even open my eyes. That question would dramatically change the first part of the trip. Instead of doing most of northern NY I would instead head down to Annapolis, thanks to the coincidental timing of my departure for the trip. I decided instead to ride down and watch the finish of Race Across America(RAAM). While down in Annapolis I found myself with a simple problem. What was I going to do when I left my moms house in a couple of weeks. I had quite a few thoughts but no real plan of any kind. Anything from simply riding back home to riding all states east of the Mississippi River to riding round trip across the country. Thanks to health issues with my mom that turned out to be nothing but migraine headaches I ended up doing a radical change of plans and decided to try to ride all Illinois counties from my moms house in a matter of like 21-22 days...roughly 2700-2800 miles. It was on this leg of the trip that I found myself in the state of shock when I was falling asleep at the handlebars late morning into mid afternoon every day starting on the fourth or fifth day into the Illinois county ride.
Now my normal routine was starting to develop. I would wake up at the crack of dawn lay around for another 10-15 minutes and then get up and pack up and leave the campsite by sunrise. I would ride back into town and grab breakfast and finish up the route planning for the day and start looking at possible campsites for that night plus get the cue sheet written out for the day all before leaving to ride anywhere from 120-160 miles for the day. I would get into town around 6-7PM, grab groceries for the next day, check out the possible campsites all before heading into McDonalds for the rest of the evening. I would grab supper and then head online to start planning the route for the next day, get emails sent out so family and friends would know where I was, etc. I wouldn't leave McDonalds until either I got kicked out, 10-11PM, depending on closing time, or maybe not until 1-2AM if it was a 24/7 McDonalds. Yeah, I was normally only getting 3-5 hours of sleep a night, just like the bulk majority of guys that do Race Across America each year. The main differences were I was riding fully loaded touring, 40 pounds of gear in a backpack on my back and I wasn't riding a full cue sheet already made out for me. I was planning the next days ride from one day to the next. This being the third year in a row that I was finding any preplanning of a bike trip being a total waste of time and my trip never went anywhere close to the original plans I spent a nice chunk of the winter prepping. The 2014 trip would end with around 5700 miles, but yes the biggest surprise was finding myself falling asleep at the handlebars during the daytime. I wasn't prepared for that to happen to say the least. I did find a nice routine that may have been my undoing as well. Normally sometime during the day, 11:30AM or 1:30PM I would get into a full service town and I would grab a high sugar snack. I knew I was pushing the miles and was freaked out and wanted to make sure I wouldn't end up bonking so I wanted to get the high sugar/fast processing food in me to help make sure I wouldn't bonk. As I would leave the town after grabbing the high sugar snack within 5-6 miles I would start to fall asleep. I would go another 5-6 miles fighting to stay awake, and then I would stumble across a gas station. I would go inside and grab a 44 oz cup and fill it full of pop, no ice, just pop. I would take it outside and drink it down and be fine the rest of the day, no matter whether this happened around noon time or 2PM, it would be the same effect either time. After getting home I found out my biggest problem was grabbing the high sugar snack. Thanks to the sleep deprivation the high sugar was doing nothing but making me sleepy.
The 2014 trip ended and everything was fine. Like a crazed fool that hasn't learnt his lesson yet I started planning a 2015 trip. Actually I don't think I had much of a plan made though. I knew I was going to go down to Annapolis again and back to my moms house again. Anything else I didn't really have planned. Before leaving for the trip I knew I didn't want to go straight from Annapolis to my moms thanks to flooding around my moms place. The trip to Annapolis was going to be a 1400 mile trip down, roughly 200 miles per day. I was going to ride all 6 New Englands on day one(236 miles). Day 2 was going to be the ride down to the NY/NJ state line(roughly 200 miles). Day 3-4 was going to be riding all NJ counties. Day 5-6 was going to be riding all Delmarva Peninsula counties with day 7 taking me on into Annapolis. After Christoph Strausser won his third consecutive RAAM I was going to go out and ride the last three counties in Maryland that I needed. In usual fashion the best laid plans of mice and men...they don't go to me, planning is a waste of my time. Instead of leaving out on Wednesday, the day after the start of solo RAAM I never made it out of the house until Monday, two days before the first finishers would start making it into Annapolis. I had then started thinking about just riding it straight through, non stop 500 miles and change. Those plans started off nicely. I knew where I had to be by 11PM to make sure I would be well set for overnight services. I know that is quite a key thing you have to focus on when riding unsupported overnight is making sure you have somewhere you can fill up the water bottles. After riding across the line on the map that separates the warm air down south from the cold air up north...about 60 miles south of my house(highs around home forecast to be in the upper 60s to low 70s, while the Boston area was to be in the mid 80s and NYC up around 90), I ended up getting dehydrated. I knew I wasn't going to make the cutoff in time so I pulled the plug and made it a 183 mile day. A good nights sleep followed up with off and with threats of storms coming to fruition by late in the day on day 2 I ended up cutting the day short at 143 miles. I had thought earlier in the day about just riding it straight through and getting into Annapolis early in the monring on Wednesday but the weather made me change my mind. That night I had a horrible night of sleep, sleeping underneath a train trestle that was very active all night long...a train coming through every 20-30 minutes. The next day I rode 187 miles and made my way on down into Annapolis around sunset and after grabbing supper I watched Sevi Zotter end up winning RAAM instead of Christoph Strausser. Over the next several days I was around city dock watching all the guys come in to finish. Yes, that meant I spent the entire night Friday wide awake at the finish line. I camped out every night right at city dock.
I finally left out of Annapolis around 8AM Monday morning for what I figured was going to be nice ride down south. I decided thanks to needing to avoid Ohio for a roughly a month...enough time for the weather pattern to change and to also let things get dried out. I saw the mid-Atlantic and southeast states looked dry and decided to finally break the southern barrier and head south. I was initially going to ride to each of the state capitals I hadn't been in yet on the bike in the states that were east of or on the Mississippi River. During the ride I south I didn't like the idea of hitting Atlanta on the 4th of July. I once again changed the plans and decided instead to try to ride all states east of the Rockies while still grabbing quite a few state capitals.
I wasn't expecting any trouble for at least 3-4 days. I figured I would run into daytime sleepiness but not for several days. Boy was I ever wrong. By 11AM on day one out of Annapolis I was already starting to fall asleep at the handlebars. I hadn't had anything high sugar at all. I stopped by a gas station and grabbed to pop and that wasn't doing a thing for me. It wasn't until around 45-60 minutes before the pop would start to kick in. This would go on for the next week. Every day the same routine. The only real problem by the time I was getting down around the South Carolina/Georgia border area was that it wasn't taking long at all for me to start falling asleep and I would fight the problem most of the day, from 9AM until I got off the bike late in the afternoon. I was going through the same routine and getting the same results. It would always seem to take 45-60 minutes before the caffine would kick in and start to help to keep me awake again. It wasn't until the full day in Georgia that I stopped having the trouble staying awake.
The rest of the way along the Gulf Coast went smooth other than me wandering why in the heck I was going so darn slow. I knew this wasn't right. In 2014 I rode with a 40 pound backpack when leaving my moms house and rode a 5:18 century. Down in Florida in 2015 with 30 pounds of gear in kitty liter buckets on the rack, flatter terrain and no wind I was typically everyday doing 6:15-6:30 centuries. I was puzzled.
It wasn't until I crossed into Louisiana that anything changed yet again. This time as I was riding into New Orleans it gave the feeling like I needed to eat/drink. I was in a horrible location with nowhere to really stop, other than along the road with the sun blasting down on me. It was a crummy feeling, kinda like the energy was draining right out of my body. Getting into New Orleans seemed to be a nice relief. Little did I know but this was the start of Phase 4 of ultra cycling, the phase I like to call 'The hump that will leave you sitting on your rump'. The next several days this problem would intensify with each passing day. Between phase 2, not being able to stay awake during the daytime, and phase 4, each phase appears to climb at an exponential rate. Once it reaches the top it vanishes and isn't a problem anymore. Phase 4 would leave me questioning so many darn things it was incredible. I had some very weird experiences that would take me clear into mid spring 2016 before I could finally start to put my finger on what appears to have been happening. I can just say Phase 4 will force you off the bicycle, quite often every day for 4-5 days. It won't take long to recover, 20-30 minutes, but when you figure this is occuring once every hour starting around 1PM, it really adds up to a big loss of miles or a late finish each evening.
On what would be the last full day of Phase 4 I finally went for the first full overnight ride. I was scared crapless about doing it because of what I was dealing with. I knew I wasn't going to make it out of town early thanks to having to get a spoke replaced at the local bike shop. I decided to go for the overnight ride since I had overnight services every 40-60 miles. I knew I was well set so after only getting a 30 minute nap around 5PM I finally left out of Shreveport for the ride up to Broken Bow, OK by way of both Texas and Arkansas. The overnight hours went extremely smooth. I was quite shocked at how easy it went. I had no trouble staying awake at all other than while talking with a town liar in Texarkana. The problem came with sunrise. The second the sun hit me I start to feel the energy drain instantly. The higher in the sky the sun got the worse the problem got. It forced me off the bike several times before I finally made it into Broken Bow about noontime. I should have been in town around if not before 10AM but I was forced off the bike by the body. I grabbed a Chinese buffet in town before heading over to the library. I knew I should be fine until around 2AM so I figured lets make more miles and get further north and more away from this high angle sunlight and heat/humidity. I was thinking that was causing the problems. Granted I was questioning, after the sunrise episode earlier in the day, if it wasn't sun poisoning. I was trying to figure just what the heck was going on. I was totally stumped. After getting the headlight battery mostly recharged and deciding for sure which way I was going to go I went to leave the library. I had the pause 10-15 minutes to fix a couple of problems with the bike, one with the rack and than a flat tire. I finally left and started back the way I had come earlier in the day back over to Du Queen, Arkansas. I got out front of the airport just west of Du Queen when I heard a noise and then started feeling something. Turns out, as I would come to fully understand the next day, the rack insert on the bike had come unscrewed and dropped down inside the seat stay. I was dragging the kitty liter buckets behind me. It was 10:15PM, totally dark out, and I'm trying to figure out how I can jerry rig something to get it to so I can keep the kitty liter upright. I finally figure it out and continue on into Du Queen and decide to play it safe and call it a night.
Starting with the next day I didn't have the energy drain issue any more the entire rest of the trip. The problem was totally gone. Anymore I tend to think the real issue is a combination of sleep deprivation mixed with lack of muscle recovery. Given what all transpired during the 4-5 days in Louisiana, both what it took and what it didn't take to get me to recover from any of the episodes makes me really think the issue is mostly one of lack of muscle recovery but it isn't something you will see if you are getting 6-8 hours of sleep a night.
Going into Lincoln, NE I stumbled into a guy and learnt a whole new philosophy of life...fast motion train wreck. I believe this might be Phase 5. To say the least I believe Phase 5 is best nicknamed the 'Governor' phase. This governor does control your speed though like it does on a car, instead it controls your power output. You can ride at 'max' power output all day long. Don't try to go over that level though because you won't be able to. Even though you can normally do it, you won't be able to do it in Phase 5. I bumped into the guy when I stopped a gas station to fill up the water bottles. I quickly made my way in and back out of the gas station and managed to catch the guy a very short distance from the gas station. We rode along side by side for 8-10 miles heading north into Lincoln. It wasn't until we were coming to a highway overpass that trouble would come up. I notice their was a very weakkneed climb going up to the overpass. The guy just flat out walked away from me like I was standing still. It wasn't that he sped up but rather I couldn't put out anymore power. I was totally tapped out. It was the weirdest experience I've ever had on a bike. It felt like someone had just placed a governor on my body and wouldn't let me put out anymore power. I watched my speed going up the climb tank like a rock...it shouldn't have. The climb was nothing. I should have had no difficulty keeping up with him but my power was gone. I could maintain the same power output but their wasn't a chance at getting anything more out. After getting off the highway and onto town streets I still noticed the same thing. I could move at a set power output, but don't try to make me give anything more than that as I couldn't do it.
About a week later while riding in Minnesota I found the just the exact opposite effect occuring. I found myself train racing...quite literally. I was riding along route 9 west of Morris, MN and I was riding with railroad tracks just off to my right hand side about 50 feet away. No obstructions, I could see the rail line completely. I heard a noise from behind and knew I had a train coming up behind me. I said the heck with it and decided to race the train. No, I wasn't going to be crossing any tracks all day long but I figured why not race the train anyways. I was riding along, easily doing 25-26 mile per hour, unlike the 18-19 mile per hour back in Lincoln. I kept up the pace while the 105, or so, cars on the train went by. I rode on into Morris and saw the train stopped on the tracks. After filling up the water bottles and then on the east side of town stopping and grabbing something to eat out of the kitty liter buckets I continued on east out of town and had only made it a couple miles east of town when I heard the train coming up behind me again. I debated it for a second or two and the said the heck with it and decided to go for some more train racing. This time I was riding along at 24-25 mile per hour. Again it was pretty much an effortless chase. Yes, their was a bit a tailwind and it did seem strange but it almost felt like I was drafting the train. I know with both the tracks being 50 feet from me and the wind being at my back that their shouldn't have been any kind of a drafting effect.
A few days later while riding along the Mississippi River I ended up catching up with a another cyclist and we rode along for 20-25 miles together pushing the pace and I had no trouble with the pace at all. The only reason I was ever holding back is because he said he was planning to hold back. Whenever he was out front he would always push the pace faster than he said he wanted to. He didn't have a cyclecomputer on his bike. I was always back off the pace to what he said he was wanting to ride. The pace he was wanting to ride was faster than the pace I was normally riding by myself but it was totally an exceptable pace...I just didn't have any reason for pushing the pace myself so I didn't.
So why the major difference between the Lincoln, Morris/Mississippi River experiences?
Hence what this blog is going to be all about. I'm getting ready to take off on the fifth annual summer bike trip in a couple of days and yes once again I'm planning on the usual routine, no trip plan just go ride and plan it out as I go. I was going to leave on May 21st, then May 28th, then June 8th, then June 17th, then June 20th. Every time something came up and stopped me dead in my tracks. Hopefully this time I will get out of the house and actually make it somewhere. I sure can't ride around home anymore. With the hopes to get in 23,076 miles this year, err 100,000 miles over the past 5 years I need to make the miles. Up until April 15th I was doing fine this year and on good track toward the goal but since then I have fallen off the deep end. I know I pretty much need 10-12,000 miles during the bike trip which hopefully will be over by early October. That will still leave me with another 4,000 miles and change left for the the last three months of years which is generally a pretty comfortable figure to work with for the last three months of the year.
I plan on keeping track of of several things and trying numerous things out when the time is right. I'm hoping to confirm Phase 4, 5 and 6('Sweetness'). I hope to maybe finally come up with a decent name for Phase 3, still not sure about it yet. This year I believe I have cut the weight back even more and thanks to all the delays I have gotten the bike much better prepared for the task of riding overnight which I plan on doing plenty of this time around. This time around it isn't as much about the touring as it is about the experience. Finding out more about the human body and how it acts under sleep deprivation and lack of muscle recovery. Is there, as I believe, a 'Sweetness' phase that lasts pretty much forever once you reach it. Or is what I saw last year have something more to do with the breakpoint between 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Four hours is too little, while five is plenty. Since I'm leaving much later than the past two years and the morning sunrise time is getting later with each and every passing day it should be interesting to see if phase 2 is still going to behave the same way or not. I'm hoping, if I can cure one problem I've had the past couple of years, to test out another idea I came up with last year. I just got to get my sodium levels high enough that I first lose the sodium stains and then I can test out my theory. Worse case scenario I still know what I did last year to avoid the much bigger problem.
So many things to try out and keep track of...hope I don't forget half of what I'm planning on researching. I'll post daily reports from the road, as long as I can get internet access, as to what occured during the day, not so much a trip report but an experience report. My guess is the first few days won't be much other than a check of distance, ride time, max heart rate, average heart rate, both daytime and night time(I'm quite curious about athletic heart syndrome since I have it...unfortunately the heart rate monitor I have doesn't record the slowest heart rate only the fastest and average).
Post trip I'll also check out on a weekly or so basis the possible two phases that you see as you try to come off the beyond ultra cycling binge. From fighting to stay awake unless your active to not being able to sleep I've dealt with both over the past 10 months or so since I got home from my trip last year.
In RAAM I believe you only see Phase 1 and 2 routinely. The guys that finish late Sunday into Monday are just starting to see Phase 3. I believe it is why they always seem much more relaxed when they get into Annapolis then the guys that finish before them. Phase 3 as I remember it last year wasn't much of anything other than a loss of speed compared to what it should be. When you go beyond ultra cycling you can see it all. It takes about a month of continuous day in day out riding under sleep deprivation before you get into the Sweetness phase, once there though you are there for the rest of the time you are out. At least that is my experience from last year. I'll have to see if that is my experience this year or if things are going to change thanks to getting a bit more sleep right off the bat thanks to a later sunrise already occuring.
Stay tuned and follow along for an interesting ride into the world beyond ultra cycling. Time to exit stage road.
