Race Across America 2006 Day 8 Memories

After letting me sleep for 2 hours in El Dorado, KS, my crew got me up. Although it was late on Saturday afternoon, they had found a massage therapist that would give me a massage. They took me over to her and discussed how we only had 30 minutes for the massage. She insisted that she needed a full hour.

I dozed in and out but I could tell she was really good at finding tight spots and getting the muscle to release. After about 45 minutes, I could hear my crew getting anxious outside the massage room. I don’t remember exactly but I think they knocked on the door and told her she needed to finish up. They started getting all my stuff ready to get me dressed and back on the bike.

When I started riding, the sun was about to go down. It was a nice evening with a tailwind. It still hurt to pedal but my leg felt much better. Maybe I still had a chance to finish.

About an hour after leaving El Dorado, a RAAM vehicle passed and pulled off a short distance up the road. The official got out and I thought he was just watching me go by. My crew wasn’t sure what he was doing. Soon he came flying by again and stopped just up the road. This time we could see he was frantically waving his arms so we pulled over. He said a tornado had been spotted in the town where the next time station was and they had closed the time station down. He said it was also raining hard. RAAM doesn’t stop for any kind of weather but he wanted us to be aware of the tornado in case we got into any weird winds. Fortunately we just got another spectacular lightning display and a few sprinkles and wet roads.

Since I had to stop in El Dorado because of the mandatory Enduro category 2 hour stop, the plan was for me to ride through the night instead of taking an early morning sleep break. One of my criticisms of the mandatory stops was I might have to stop when I didn’t need to and it would then throw my sleep pattern off. Durango had worked out OK although I would have slept in Cortez if Durango hadn’t been a mandatory stop. It turned out I couldn’t stay awake in the wee hours of the morning. We first tried a 10 minute nap but that didn’t make a difference. Then I took a 15 minute nap which helped for about an hour. Then I couldn’t stay awake again and ended up taking a 30 minute nap.

The morning brought the good news in I was finally out of Kansas and into Missouri. Mentally that was a boost. The only problem was that the Enduro category had another time cut-off at Jefferson City, MO. It was going to be tough for me to make it.

Before too long, being in Missouri meant more hills. They were just rollers but they kept getting bigger. The worst thing was it hurt too much for me to stand up to get over the tops. It felt like something was binding in my left leg. I kept wanting to stop to stretch but my crew was trying to make sure I made the time cut-off. They did let me stop a few times. I considered riding slow enough to miss the cut-off so the pain would be over but I still had enough desire to finish that I kept doing my best. Nearly every time my crew had me pretzeled up on the side of the road, some local would stop and ask if everything was OK. Finally we got a big pop out of my hip. It made enough of a difference that I was able to stand up on the hills.

Through this section, a couple kept passing us and stopping to cheer me on. They were using my first name and the van only had my last name on it so they clearly had been keeping track of the race. Finally my crew stopped and talked to them. They had driven all the way from Texas to see RAAM. They were Fat Cyclist readers and had found my blog from one of his posts. It certainly was a boost to have someone cheering for me.

It was a hot day. Crawling up the hills in the Ozarks made it seem even hotter. In the desert we had used a sock filled with ice wrapped around my neck to cool me. In Missouri with the higher humidity, that just left me soaked without cooling a whole lot. Because my butt was raw and painful, I was wearing double shorts. That helped with the butt pain but it was making me too hot. I ended up going back to one pair of shorts. Going through the Ozarks, I did have one local cyclist ride beside me for a short ways which was nice.

The last 60 miles or so into Jefferson city was on a busy highway. I was hot and tired and the traffic noise was driving me crazy. I felt I was going to snap at any moment. I so badly wanted to get somewhere where it was quiet. In spite of the noise, I still managed to fall asleep a couple times.

My crew had told me that I had about 20 miles less to the time station than what the signs were saying to Jefferson City. I kept hoping that the time station was really just before Jefferson City. Finally my crew gave me the bad news. They had given me the wrong mileage and I had farther to go. Fortunately I had suspected that or I probably would have come unglued with them.

I kept looking at the time and knew I was barely going to make the time cut-off if I even did. I was getting pretty concerned and kept pushing myself. Strangely my crew didn’t seem concerned even though it had been a big deal earlier in the day. I finally made it to the time station with 4 minutes left to the time cut-off. Only then did the crew tell me that they had found out that RAAM had decided not to make Jefferson City a time cut-off but they hadn’t told me because they wanted me to keep pushing.

Jefferson City was the 3rd mandatory 2 hour stop for the Enduro category. It was early evening so again it wasn’t an ideal time for me to stop but I was having trouble staying awake. One of the time station volunteers was a massage therapist and she agreed to give me a bit of a massage. Then it was time for 90 minutes of sleep.

Tags: cycling, RAAM, Race Across America, ultra cycling

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