Lisa and I and three of our sons (the fourth is on a mission in Tennessee!) arose at 4:10am, showered, finished loading the car and headed for Logan to compete in the LOTOJA. It's amazing how much preparation goes into planning and executing a major event like this. Feed bags for every aid station, fluids for the day, spare tires and tubes, tuning of the bike, instructions for crew, etc. We arrived at the race nice and early. Got ready. Said hi to a few friends and then it was our turn. We entered the gate with 11 other tandem teams competing in both the licensed and citizen tandem classifications. The countdown was given and the race began at precisely 6:26am.
Logan to Preston: It was a bit dark, but the group formed a peleton and sped away. I had forgotten to turn on my Garmin so I started it then and was left to wonder how much time and distance elapsed while the Garmin found the signal. Wow! The peleton went out like a bat out of...well, too fast is what I mean. the slowest was about 23 and as fast as 30 on this flat stretch. This was downright retarded. They acted like it was a sprint when it is actually the longest USCF sanctioned cycling race in the country at 206 miles with three mountain passes to climb. There were several times in this stretch where Lisa and I had to fight to keep up. At every corner the lead team would blast around and act like they were sprinting for the finish. Dumb. We averaged 24.7mph to Preston and I told Lisa I was done with that group. We opted for the neutral aid station in Preston and dropped off our extra warm clothing in a bag, refilled our bottles and began the climb up Strawberry.
Preston to Montpelier: The Strawberry climb is long and ascends over 2,700 feet. The climb is mild at the beginning and gets steeper towards the summit at mile 60. We passed "Team Kirsten" a bunch of girls on the fun ride. Then we heard something in our chain. We stopped and looked things over and couldn't see anything. I took a potty break just in time for Team Kirsten to ride by (there is no privacy in cycling!). We got back on the bike and passed Team Kirsten again and they commented about the photos that they already posted on facebook. The noise continued and then stopped all of a sudden. Then Lisa said, "Reed, we have a flat." Apparently, what we thought was stuck in the chain was stuck in the tire and punctured it. We changed the tire fairly quickly and moved on, passing Team Kirsten and others now for the 3rd and last time. We both felt fairly strong climbing to the summit where there is a neutral aid station. Over the top we descended. lots of bikers tried to catch our wheel, but we were able to ditch them all with the power of the tandem...not to mention my parter aka "Torque" on the back. We flew down the hill and across the valley and into Montpelier.
Montpelier to Afton: The kids were waiting for us in Montpelier and they had all our stuff ready to go. We swapped out bottles and food and headed off for the next climb up Geneva Summit, about 1,000 feet up. This climb was uneventful, but Lisa and I do a lot of encouraging each other. We love riding together and make a great team. We ascended the hill and flew down the other side. Our descents reached as high as 51mph, but the bike always felt very stable.
The last major climb is over the Salt River Pass. About 1,450 feet and quite steep in the last 4 miles. This climb took some wind out of both of us and the sweat burned in my eyes over the last 3k. I commented to Lisa that the last K felt more like a 5k. Tandem's downfall is climbing and we felt it on this hill, being passed by a few large bikers that humbled us. No worries. We filled our water bottles at the top of the hill and shot down into Star Valley. This is a great part of the ride. A long downhill. Very fast. We did have people catch our wheel on this one and ended up dragging about 20 people down the hill, but sometimes that make you feel superhuman on the tandem. Across the flat we still kept a good pace and no-one passed us, but then we hit a little rise coming into Afton and a large group of bikers passed us that had been drafting off of us for a long time. No one said thank you. About a mile later, we came upon total carnage. Those same bikers had their lead man crash and everyone went right into him. It looked like 2 or 3 of them were unconscious. Bent up bikes everywhere. There were aid vehicles all along the course so we passed them swinging wide. About a minute later an ambulance came blaring down the road towards the accident. Awful. As we rounded the corner into the Afton aid station, one guy pulled up alongside us and told us that he was with the group that crashed, but decided to stay behind us rather than go around and stay with the group that wrecked. He felt like divine providence had worked in his favor today. We were glad we hadn't latched onto their rear and suffered the same devastation. The kids met us in Afton and got fresh supplies and off we went.
Afton to Alpine: Along this way Lisa started having some digestive difficulties. We made an emergency potty stop that was kind of hilarious, but not appropriate for here. After that she recovered a bit and started to feel stronger. She insisted on a bigger gear and slower cadence while she recovered but she still allowed me to crank away and I have to say that I didn't notice her letting up much. Tough girl! We arrived in Alpine at mile 156 and called out for our kids, but they were nowhere to be found. Bummer. So we headed to the neutral feed zone and reloaded and headed out. Lisa called Zac to let him know that we were already headed up the Snake River and to move on. We had no time to waste if we were to finish with a 10 in front of our time and even now, we needed to average about 23mph in order to make it. Not much chance, except I have been in enough races to know that the distance is not always what it's published to be or the GPS is not always perfectly accurate. I told Lisa if it turned out to be only 204 miles we might have a chance. We pressed on.
Alpine to finish: These are rolling hills with an overall 600+ foot climb. Some of the hills are fairly significant. We had to stop for another emergency potty stop for Lisa. When we started again, two of our friends caught up to us. We rode together for the next five miles past the high school, along the pathway and back onto the highway. At this point I told Lisa that I really felt like if we pushed it we could still come in under 11 hours. We went for it. With about 10 miles left we passed a tandem team (flying) and everyone in our path. We were cranking it. I wondered if our friends (Todd and Dave) were still behind us. We passed all kinds of groups. at 200.7 miles there was a 5k sign. This was just what I was hoping for. We had about 8 minutes to go 5k. We hauled. 4, 3, 2 1, and with 200 meters left to go our friends and about 30 other people that had grabbed onto our wheel came flying around us for a sprint finish. I felt like Mark Renshaw leading out for Mark Cavendish. It was beautiful. We heard the kids cheer (awesome), went through the chute crossed the line.
It was a great feeling to finish after last year's disaster where Lisa crashed (and has no memory of it) at mile 169 and we went to the hospital with a concussion and broken rib instead of finishing. Not this year. This year was a solid finish. A great event. After seeing me collect all my running medals, Lisa finally has a medal of her own. In the end I don't think it matters that we finished at 11:00:32. We rocked the house!
We placed 3rd out of 5 in our division (a podium finish!) and 7th of 18 total tandem teams. We're already planning next year's race.
| 