Hey everyone,
So I thought I would put together a summary of my experience during the Kokopelli Trail Race this last weekend.
Andie and I arrived at the Loma trailhead at 10:50 p.m., ten minutes before the pre-race meeting. The parking lot was full and someone came over and greeted and briefed us, the BLM was there and wasn’t too happy. After some discussion, threats of arresting all the riders and a ticket being issued to the “organizer” of KTR, I saddled up and departed at 11:30, I wasn’t about to wait to see if we got arrested or if there was going to be an actual start at midnight.
The beginning was just plain hot out, around 70 degrees through all of the single track. I made it to Rabbit Valley about an hour quicker than I was anticipating and was feeling great. Somewhere on the way to Westwater Ranger station I crested a small rise and the temperature plummeted pretty quickly into the 40’s. I had on my leg warmers, arm warmers, beanie, and long-fingered gloves, but was still cold.
I stopped at Westwater to water up and use the restrooms; the restrooms were warm so I might have hung out there a little too long. As I was leaving Westwater I was starting to shiver. I upped the pace and scarfed down a milky way to try and warm up, no go. I then put on my plastic rain jacket to keep the wind off me, I still wasn’t warming up. I became a slow moving shivering mess out on the trail. I knew that I was in the first stages of hypothermia when no matter what I did all I wanted to do was nap (not a good idea at all). Oh yeah, and my high-powered light had run out of juice around 3:30, so I couldn’t push too hard as I would out ride my light from my small led light. Luckily, Dewey Bridge wasn’t near me yet because that is where Andie was going to see me and I would’ve probably quit just to warm up and get a nap. If you were wondering, yelling “Dammit sun, get over the mountains already!” doesn’t really make the sun rise any faster.
By the time I got to the Yellow Jacket Canyon entrance I had improved enough to not give up and take 128 to Dewey Bridge . I went through YJC, it was quite sandy, I did my own personal audition for Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift through much of it; there’s nothing like having your front and back wheels start drifting around at 25 mph. Hooray Hopey damper (http://www.hopey.org), it probably saved my butt once or twice in this section.
Dewey Bridge, 9:05 a.m. I told Andie I would be there between 9 and 10 and since my good pace early on was thwarted with a hypothermia fit I was right on the money. I refilled some of my convenient food containers from my pack and at 9:10 Andie pulled in just as I was going to leave. She reminded me that I had left my 2 Ensures in the cooler, it felt good to say, oh well too late now, this is unsupported I can’t take it from you now. I told Andie that if she wanted to see me again she should either go to Castle Valley or Slickrock, if she was at Onion Creek Rd. it might have been too tempting to bail out.
I left Dewey and was catching people on the long hot climb, it was nice to pass back the people that passed me during my bad spot. This climb just wouldn’t end and I was cooking. The short descent into Cottonwood Canyon was nice and I treated water at the small creek. Then I started an even longer climb. Once I finally topped out I looked down at my legs and the quad muscle that is on the inside just above my knee was about 3 times its normal size. My legs were pumped. I descended through the technical Rose Garden hill and at some point I noticed a drop off in my sweat rate. Thinking my body wasn’t absorbing water quickly enough to keep up with sweating I decided to bail at Onion Creek Rd. I waited at the top of a small climb for the guy behind me to tell him to pass the word on to Andie at Castle Valley . He then asked me how long it would be to Castle Valley and how long to finish, he was pretty stunned when I said 4 hours with another big climb to Castle Valley and some more gentler climbing after that, still 7 hours till the end. He decided to bail out with me.
We descended Onion Creek Rd , a fun 13 mile almost entirely-downhill ride with 22 very-welcome stream crossings. We arrived at 128 roughly 14 hours into the ride for me. We saw three other mountain bikers in a paceline just a little behind us and I was anxious for them to catch us so we could trade pulls with them back to Moab . Greg (the other guy that bailed with me) and I traded pulls, neither of us being able to muster much more than 20 seconds into the headwind. We pulled over so Greg could eat something and I looked back and the paceline was nowhere to be seen, had they gone up Onion Creek? Nope, they showed up a few minutes later, they were three singlespeeders and were moving at a breakneck pace line speed of 4 mph! Greg busted out his secret weapon, Starbucks Doubleshot espresso and we split it, ready to do the 30-35 miles into Moab. On a whim I checked to see if my phone had reception, it did, I called in the cavalry and Andie came and got me and Greg. The single speeders got a ride from a truck about a mile down the road too.
I was really surprised at my lack of disappointment in pulling the plug early, even with the early quit it was a monster day/night, all I really wanted. Here are some of the stats for my ride:
Actual Time: 14 hours 35 minutes
Ride Time: 13 hours 4 minutes
Distance: 107.12 miles
Temperatures: Low 40’s to Low 90’s
Elevation: I estimate 10-11k in climbing with about 7k to go to finish out the course
H2O Drank: About 230 oz (probably needed to do more, but I didn’t drink or eat much when I was freezing cold)
Calories Consumed: About 3000, I still had about 1500 calories in my pack to finish the ride out.
# of Jelly Belly Sport Beans Eaten: ~175 individual beans, Fruit Punch is the best.
# of guys that had my same bike and we were the same jersey as me: 1… dang doppelgangers! His name was Frank and he was from Arizona.
No flats, no mechanicals and only one minor crash. Good time.
I’m feeling good today and actually rode my singlespeed bike to work today too. I’m in a good mood and have lots of energy considering I got up at 4:30 am on Friday, no sleep Friday night, 8.5 hours of tent camping on Saturday night and coming in to work and staying until 2:30 am last night after getting back from Moab and getting only 5 hours of sleep before I rode in to work this morning.
Hope you all had a good weekend!
-Nick
Rod,
Thanks for letting me borrow your light; I’ll charge up the battery and get it back to you. Maybe we’ll go for a ride on Wednesday?
