#projectflowstate

still the dumbest thing i’ve done. this month, anyway.

if you missed the initial post, here you go. please help where you can!

meanwhile: you have questions (at least one of you). i have answers (of course i do).

why did you do this?

excellent question. the shortest possible answer is: i like, and respond well to, structure and projects. covid-19 has thrown the world for a loop. many of the things we’ve taken for granted in our lives are, at the moment, simply no longer safely possible. i’d been looking for ways to stay motivated in my personal life, but also keep myself and my family out of harm’s way. normally i’d be knee-deep in mountain bike race season this time of year. racing is not happening for the most part in north america this season, and speaking personally, i’ve decided that i won’t participate in mass gathering events, even if they do occur, until a covid-19 vaccine is available (there are several immune compromised people in my family, first and foremost, and further, i am simply unwilling to be a transmission vector in my community and beyond - i don’t think we should be mass-start racing or gathering in large groups, even outside, to be clear). so we have challenges like this one to keep us reaching. i wanted to do it alone, no support. 

i confided my intentions to only a very few: my wife and daughter (they were not thrilled), a close friend (i wondered aloud about the possibility that i might be able to complete the goal on a slack DM - the place where most bad ideas are born, these days), and my longtime coach, al donahue (he was excited?). i wanted to make sure i did the thing. i didn’t want to talk about doing the thing, or get overloaded with input about how or why i should or shouldn’t do the thing. less talk, more do.

so i started putting together a plan. 

and then things got [even] worse in america. george floyd, breonna taylor, ahmaud arbery… a country consumed by shock, anger and protest. a lot of us went necessarily silent, became introspective, listened, tried to become allies, demonstrated for change however we could. more or less concurrently, a continued wave of infection and federal inaction overtook our country.

as i took a look around, it became clear to me that, while in some respects i still just wanted to ride my bike out of self-preservation if nothing else, at the same time, i thought it might be possible to raise awareness and direct attention back toward those who were and are still fighting the good fight, as well as toward those in need (sometimes these are the same people). that’s what this project became, as it evolved. (you can still help.)

why didn’t you list black lives matter in the charitable section of your first post?

this was the toughest call that i made during the last two months preparing all facets of this project. first, i 100% support black lives matter. hup united, my longtime team, have been vocally and visibly supportive of the movement. we’ve raised funds through organized [socially distanced] rides. several of us have launched personal project fundraisers designed to benefit black communities. i’ve personally donated to the movement and did my own DIYBLM ride. i’ve tried, and continue to strive, to be an advocate for people of color in my community.

in the end, i concluded that adding black lives matter to a personal bike project unnecessarily diluted the message of the black lives matter movement. it stands on its own and i didn’t want to diminish its importance by attaching it to this particular effort. 

in my mind, covid-19 and systemic racism are the two biggest issues my country faces (along with voter rights), and the overlap between the two (or three), along with the fact that covid affects communities of color at much higher rates than white populations, is heartbreaking and must be addressed. i just didn’t think a white guy going up and down a hill on a bike was the right way to shine that particular spotlight, right now. i’ll continue to listen, learn, support and encourage feedback.

did you train for this thing?

i. did? [hangs head in shame]

what does training look like for something like this?

a lot of long-ish rides at low-end endurance heart rate and lots of muscular endurance around lactate threshold, basically. a couple of easy days per week, and hopefully a fun ride mixed in (around tempo). i had a pretty strong aerobic base going in, from lots of skimo training over the winter, and fairly structured, largely aerobic (vs. anaerobic) efforts (cycling, running and hiking) in the spring. i also did a ton of trail building and landscaping around the house, which is pure suffering, along with the same somewhat minimal core work i [try to] always do. sucks getting old.

i didn’t do any 12-hour rides. that’s not necessary, practical, or smart (for me). save the juice for the party punchbowl, am i right? i did a number of endurance-pace mountain bike rides in the 3-5 hour range - basically my weekend - leading into project day. 

the basic idea: i needed to concentrate training in the zone allowing me to meter out a practical effort that would get me through 10-15 hours on the bike. that meant the low end of endurance heart rate, for me. i paid almost zero attention to power output, other than to set ceilings for “this is going too hard.” efforts over threshold will tank an endurance attempt like this one, so keeping those in check was key.

i wasn’t going to be successful just winging it. i’m marginally talented, at my very best.

did you concentrate on anything in particular during the ride? how did you stay focused? did you stay focused?

the single most important thing on something like this (for me) was hydration/nutrition. that was the key point coach al impressed upon me during our first conversation about an attempt, and was something i practiced during training rides. if you get in a hole in either of these areas on a very long effort, you’re sunk. period. you can’t recover. i did not want to be defeated due to not taking care of myself. i’d put a lot of time into this thing and didn’t want to make stupid mistakes. i had a cooler full of water bottles at a small aid station at the lap turnaround point at the bottom of the circuit. i made myself drink a bottle an hour. drinking was only possible (for me) on the uphill. if i hadn’t finished a bottle within the hour while riding, i finished it at the aid station. in the end, i consumed 13 bottles of water (with skratch electrolyte) and a recovery drink after (it took me about an hour to get it down). the water consumption actually turned out to be more than i needed in order to replace sweat, but i don’t have regrets (i love to pee, it’s great). i had a staggered schedule for consuming food, which consisted of clif bloks, skratch bars, bananas, peanut butter sandwiches, and rice cakes. i ended up eating a little less than i’d planned, but still managed to get through most of it.

the second most important thing was not going too hard. i watched heart rate, not really like a hawk, but i kept an eye on it, again, just trying to stay below a ceiling (i have a weird heart: low maximum, narrow working range, resulting in lower numbers for given efforts than most athletes my age). i had to be honest in terms of logistics in order to maximize the chances of a successful outcome. it was very, very difficult to get my head around what it was going to take to be on the bike for 10+ hours. there are riders who make a practice of rides like that. i’m not really one of them. six hour races are the max length i’ve ever done, and i think i might have done an eight-hour ride once. two- to four-hour races (or shorter, shorter is fine) are more my speed. this was not a race. this was not a race effort. i did a couple of test “hours” on the track prior to the attempt where i tried to benchmark how many laps i could comfortably do in an hour at low-end endurance heart rate (7 laps). then i had to take that number and factor in how many i could do… over the space of… 10-15 hours (the fastest i figured i could go, to the longest period of time i figured i’d be capable). that turned out to be 5-6 laps per hour, with a brief break each hour (moving time was 11:43:22 when i shut off the garmin - meaning i lost about an hour and 15 minutes eating, drinking and peeing). that meant a 13-14 hour day, which was kind of crushing to consider, at the outset. i’d loved to have gone faster, but i knew it wasn’t going to be possible (for me) to complete the overall goal if i just went hahdah dyude. one interesting thing in terms of heart rate is that i saw mine steadily drop in the last four hours of the ride, which al told me would happen. i’m used to shorter, 2-4-hour efforts, where heart rate increases with fatigue. but then you, you know, stop, after 2-4 hours. i wasn’t going to be stopping. in the last four hours of the attempt i started to see my heart rate slowly but steadily decrease from the ceiling i’d been hitting on the climb, even though i was still pedalling at the same cadence and rough power as before. at one point i got down to 108bpm, which was crazy. it came back up a little in the last hour but was still comparatively low. 

the third most important thing was simply wanting to see this through. 177’-ish vertical feet isn’t much. it was, at times, somewhere between mildly to incredibly disconcerting to see just how slowly the laps added up in terms of overall ascent. if you’re a data person, i imagine you could work yourself into a lather just worrying about pace and averages and various. i tried to do the opposite, as much as possible. noisy brain = no good. i did the first hour in the dark and felt fine (lotta toad activity!). i did the second hour as the sun rose and felt the same. i was in my head a lot during those early several laps, and at around the second hour i did briefly consider just how incredibly stupid it was to be riding 1.4 miles over and over and over. then i hit 3k’ overall ascent, and it occurred to me that i was 25% done, which somehow brightened my outlook. and then 4k’. 33%. 8k’, 66%, was pretty huge. i knew i could do it, barring mechanical or complete breakdown. at 2k’ ascent to go i knew i had it in the bag, but was not thrilled to be out there for much longer. the last two hours were hard. i just wanted to be done. the after work crowd was starting to show up on the trails and, god love them all, i just wanted to be out of there and out of everyone’s way. i was happy to simply be finished. i got through this by not thinking much, and just pedalling, which was what i’d hoped would happen, and why i named the thing project flow state. i think i basically got there.

how hard did you go uphill? how steep is the track?

not very hard, at all. for the last couple of hours (hour 11-ish+) i switched into my little ring (i still run a double! i’m a relic!) on the steepest section of the up track, just to spin and save my legs from a little torque where possible. the uphill portion is about 5-6% grade. it never gets steeper than 7%, other than a very short section gaining the hayfield near the bottom.

how fast did you go downhill?

not very fast. at all. for a long attempt like this one, the best possible thing you could do to save energy is just… go downhill and not pedal. at all. that’s almost, but not quite, possible on the flow trail, if you stay off the brakes, which… i don’t. i was concerned about getting a little too loose and being a little too tired over 12 hours or whatever, so i rode very conservatively all day. the fastest i went, for reference, was a little less than half as fast as the top 10 KOMs on the downhill segment (which is insane - so damn fast). it’s not a particularly technical track, but there are frequently riders on it, there are trees, there are ways to screw it up. i just wanted to get down every lap without incident, and concentrate on recovery. i tried not to pedal wherever possible.

why did you choose this segment instead of something less stupid?

during the attempt i saw a few friends on the trails (sorry we didn’t chat more, folks, i still feel bad), one of whom asked why i hadn’t used a segment with more vertical gain, which would have made so much more sense (i don’t disagree). 

the truth is that there’s a continuing trail above the flow trail that would have roughly doubled the vertical ascent per lap. i told the friend mentioned above that i’d later explain why i didn’t use that segment, which is one i’ve ridden hundreds of times and is one i frequently use for dirt threshold intervals (it’s also a very popular downhill grand tour of the area, from the top). here goes. 

while there’s more vertical to gain going higher, there are some distinct disadvantages to that long segment, which i’ll work through from the bottom up. first, there’s a short, blind corner above the lap turnaround that i used. second, there’s a fairly long, not-very-technical-but-you-still-don’t-want-to-fall-off-of-it bog bridge that comes quickly thereafter, frequently the site of 2-way traffic and foot-downs. third, there’s a road crossing with a blind curve about 50 feet up the road on the rider’s left, with a fair amount of vehicular traffic, often traveling well above the speed limit. fourth, there’s a fairly steep, 2-way, primarily downhill trail to the top that sees a ton of rider and occasional foot traffic. starting at my aid station at the bottom of the valley, i’d have had to do about 30 laps of this circuit, in all, to get to 12k’ total (there are also a few sections where you actually lose elevation; gains are efficient, losses are not). so, for that particular route, which again, i’ve ridden many, many times, i’d have had to navigate blind corners, cross a bog bridge [fatigued] 60 times, cross a road 60 times, and most importantly, navigate a 2-way downhill with traffic potential 60 times, with covid-19 a concern all the while. the weight of worry alone on something like this almost guarantees failure (for me). i could have just done the top portion, set up an aid station on the road, i suppose, but that upper segment (which is actually a little less elevation gain - at ~150′ - than the circuit i chose) just isn’t what i had in mind, is significantly steeper and blind in sections, and wasn’t optimal for lots of reasons. so i had definitely considered it, talked with al about it, but it wasn’t right, for me. if any of you wanna try it, let me know how it goes.

what i knew i wanted to do was stay as local as possible (we live near the start of the circuit i chose), ensure safety in terms of traffic (hardly anyone rides down the up track i used at this point, and the flow creek trail is downhill only) and make setup and teardown of the aid station as easy as possible, because tired, coming and going. i feel like the circuit i chose ticked all of those boxes. there is one other trail in the area that would have been slightly more efficient for the goal overall (still, only giving me 2′ additional feet per lap in elevation over the circuit i used), but it would have been nearly impossible to stage an aid station without the help of a small army (i didn’t want to rely on external support), the descent is far more technical and consequential than i was willing to accept on a long day (it still would have been 40 laps), and there would have been significantly more traffic.

so that’s why i made the decisions on the circuit, despite the short lap. in the end, you go with what you have at your disposal. and that’s what i think about that.

how did it feel to hit the goal?

on brand. pretty empty. 

i wish i was kidding. and i wish i could have felt joy. but i was just relieved to be done, and i wanted to get down safely, and get my crap out of there. and that’s what i did. my wife was probably happier than i was, according to our texts. i will say that, immediately, i was super stoked to have this out of the way and not have to think about it anymore.

did you have any problems?

i had a minor but noticeable drivetrain issue going into this event that i was frankly too busy to diagnose. it got worse during the day and became a cause for concern. i’m pretty sure it’s a freehub or hub bearing death, in process. i need to get it fixed. someday. soon.

i worried about my wrists. i wore wrist supports in the last six hours. i think they probably helped. no other issues really, other than feeling a little bloated from all of the water. my arms got a little bit crampy toward the end.

and one other thing i’ll cover elsewhere, eventually.

what was the hardest part?

waiting. i was ready to go late-june. i wanted to get it done before fourth of july weekend. i’d drawn a circle on the calendar around june 30-july 2, latest. i was not going to do the thing on a holiday, on a weekend, or during crap weather. i felt ready to go on the week of june 29, and then… so much rain. so, so, so much rain. it wasn’t going to do to ride wet trails, on some of the most frequented singletrack in the state, no less (please stay off wet trails!). and it wasn’t going to do to ride this thing with throngs of people out there. so i waited. until a monday, which was odd, as that’s typically an easy day for me on the bike. i got up at 2am, left the house at 3am, was set up by 3:30am, and started at 3:45am. there wasn’t any point in waiting any longer.

in terms of perceived exertion, this was less physically difficult than i imagined it might be. it was hard, but nowhere near terrible. the hardest part was just watching the numbers slowly, very, very slowly, accumulate.

were there any surprises?

i saw a weasel sniffing around near my aid station. it didn’t seem to notice me until i said, “hey weasel.” this was the best part of the day.

should i try this project?

i don’t recommend it.

hi. you’re probably here because of my dumb thing.

i appreciate your time. you can read about the thing in a minute, but first, please consider visiting one or all of the following sites below, reading what the organizations are about, and, if you’re willing and able, consider donating to and/or supporting them with your time and voice.

when we all vote

partners in health

world central kitchen

jazz foundation covid fund

musicians’ covid fund

musicares covid fund

sweet relief covid fund

jam fund cycling

1 pvd cycling

youth cycle project

and please support your local trails! grab a shovel, drag a rake, volunteer some time, donate where you can. trail use is way, way up in the time of covid-19 and we all need to pitch in where we safely can.

are you still here?

yeah. so. the best i can tell, by the numbers:

67 laps

13:22:45 elapsed time to 12,000 vertical feet (11:43:22 moving)

92.2mi to 12,000 vertical feet

i did a q&a after the fact. if you’re interested, here it is.

i also did a video thing where i talked a bunch of detailed nonsense. that’s here. 

total ride time was slightly longer than above because i had to get back down. if you want to dig in the data on my actual doing of the thing, here’s the ride. it’s not especially impressive, and was more about dogged pursuit of a small effort, metered over a long period, than it was about watts or sending. i’m not a regular strava user, but i recognize that the kids won’t be able to understand and that the ride didn’t exist unless i upload it, so: fine.

i can’t imagine you’d want to see it, but i did a preview lap of the loop i rode a few days before the attempt. the way i rode it, it’s about a 9-minute lap (i was slower than that, at around 10- to 11-minute laps, on the actual ride). the fun bit starts at around 6:00, if you want to skip ahead through the uphill drudgery. you’ll miss my commentary, though. here’s the short version.

as i’ve mentioned, while this was a terrible circuit for racking up vertical, it was nice to be able to tell myself, “sure, going up this thing x many times is going to be awful, but i get a sweet descent down a flow trail every lap.” in reality, i was pretty confident i could do the repetitive climbing, as long as i managed food and hydration (which i did - i peed so, so, so many times). i was more concerned about lapses in concentration on the downhill, which, though not terribly technical… at lap 50-something, i thought maybe things might get a little spicier. on the day, it wasn’t a problem. i started in the dark, the fog was a little tricky for an hour, but then it was fine. traffic on the trail was light and hopefully i wasn’t in anyone’s way coming or going. apologies to the dude on the kona with the dirt jump helmet who came in behind me at mach everything. i was at around 12.5 hours in at that point and wasn’t terribly interested in pushing it any faster, and pulling over/safely avoiding a crash while doing so wasn’t an option, given the state of my union. anyway, everything went more or less according to plan. 

all i can say in summary is that 170’ vertical feet* is not a lot of vertical feet for making up a whole lot of vertical feet.

you might be asking: why 12,000 feet of climbing (and descending, come to think of it)? 

it’s a relatable goal, and i thought it was doable, given the circumstances and the time i had, in a long day. it’s also the vertical relief of mt. everest (that mountain’s base is at ~17,100 feet on the tibetan side, its summit at 29,029 feet). 

it’s hopefully apparent, but i want to stress that i am not claiming to have ascended the full sea level to summit height of everest. this was not an “everesting” attempt. plenty of very talented riders have completed that challenge, including payson mcelveen, who did it at altitude, on freakin’ singletrack, which is insane (i was about two weeks in to my preparations when i found out he’d done it, and was sad). in truth, of all of the “everesting” attempts i’ve seen, payson’s is the one that i think is the coolest, and hardest. sounds like he filmed it. i’m looking forward to seeing it. for the record, if i’d done an everest attempt on this circuit, i’d have had to do something like 170 laps and it would have taken 2.5-3 times longer than my ride (35-45 hours?), provided i could have completed it (i don’t think i could have). anyway, that is not happening. ever. if you’re up for it, be my guest. it’s definitely possible to go faster than i went on this thing. it’s just not possible for me and i am super done.

finally, i’ll say, in the interest of full disclosure:

if i were to have done this absolutely by the book, i’d have done four more laps. the segment i’d planned is 170′ vertical feet. letter of the law for these things, i should have done four more laps (71) than i did (67). instead, i ticked off 12k’ on the garmin, watching the ascent numbers, and called it good (i was exactly 170’ shy of the goal prior to my last lap and so so so did not want to do another, and luckily didn’t have to). i found a few more vertical feet at the top of the loop on a number of laps (find my pee spot!) and those add up, over time. undulations in the trail also contributed to the accumulated ascent numbers. to be clear: I’M NOT GOING BACK TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT. EVER. (*and i won’t have to. see elevation addendum below.)

i accidentally hit pause on the ride on my garmin at some point in the last three hours of this thing, for about 10 seconds. it was terrifying. i managed to hit resume and kept the data flowing. sue me.

i think i failed to hit lap on the garmin a few times (2?). sherlock says it’s okay.

*important note on elevation. when i first started planning this project, i scoped the lap and settled in on 170′ vertical feet as the elevation gain, per lap. at the time i was using a garmin 810, and that was the rough gain it reported on the circuit. i also wasn’t paying terribly close attention. in the interim i upgraded to a garmin 530. the gps tracking on that device is considerably more accurate than the 810 (which is still a great unit). i’ve ridden the circuit with the 530 on multiple days, and used it on the day i completed this project. as it turns out, the lap truly is more in the neighborhood of 175-180′ vertical feet gained, per lap. i hit 177′ vertical feet on the majority of the laps, and in excess of that (180′) on numerous laps... because that’s the best height for peeing, on this track. true story. anyway, after re-doing this math, i feel comfortable saying that i verifiably did the correct number of laps and hit the true elevation goal i’d set out for myself. whew.

still not going back. for a long time. probably.

okay, i’m very tired. thanks for reading. please do continue to give some thought to helping others in these very difficult times.