Shenandoah 1200 – Ride Report

The Ride

This 770-mile grand randonneur through the Shenandoah Valley (including passage through Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and, briefly, West Virginia) offered a tour of several important American Civil War battlefields, trajectories through state and national parks, spectacular vistas, smooth roads and friendly, helpful volunteer support. For most riders, the majority of the climbing on this ride was encountered in the first two days and by consensus the total elevation gain seems to have been 45-50,000 feet. This inaugural event was scheduled earlier in the season than usual, with an expectation of normal temperatures in the 70′s and 80′s. On the day of the start, however, record high temperatures in the 90′s and above were anticipated. Of the 56 starters, 30 finished, with a majority of DNFs occuring on the 2nd day.

Day 1

The night before the ride, the region was hit by torrents of rain and some violent thunderstorms, wind and tornado warnings. This promised humidity with the anticipated heat but also a cool morning. At the start, 56 riders rode off easily in a pack but within a couple of miles I found myself at the front of it, with another rider or two up ahead. I was feeling strong and happy and bridged to them and then we took off together. A few more miles down the road in the 5AM darkness we were alone, blazing the path of the ride. Trees were broken at the side of the wet roads and debris was scattered everywhere, which made for some extra hazards in our way. Watertown was totally dark and a power line lay frankly across the road and we ducked while walking our bikes to cross under it. On into Maryland I recall rider Kelly Smith meeting with George Hiscox, Richard Carpenter and me, as we rolled through Burkittsville, site of the Blair Witch Project. At one point I looked over my shoulder and was surprised to see maybe 20 riders behind us, and a little later, there was no one but us 3 in sight. Was this a dawn apparition or a yet another hallucination endemic to Burkittsville?

As we made for the Catoctin Mountains I thought to slow a little to take in some extra nutrition for the climb and the following pack soon overtook me. Before I knew it, we had climbed the first major bump of the day and were on a screaming descent down the other side. Jim Solanick of Florida was just behind me as I was paced by a careening pickup truck at 30-35MPH. I was feeling strong and was spinning up a sustainable speed, but wary of the increasing temps of the day. The pack was just ahead on the highway to Gettysburg and I tried to bridge without redlining but couldn’t. I knew we would all be in line together at the next control anyway.

After the control the route took us through a section of the Gettysburg battlefield, which I remembered from a visit as a teen. It seemed smaller and the density of the monuments was greater than I recalled of it. I was now riding with Tim Laseter, fellow Ohioan Paul Rozelle and Kelly Smith as we made the turn to the next control of Sharpsburg. Ahead we saw some riders and then someone and then another went down in a crash. We spread across the road to slow the traffic behind us and came upon Andrea Matney, whose pedal had fallen off, with a scrape on her arm but otherwise OK. The riders with her seemed to have everything in hand, so we moved on.

We made it to Sharpsburg, the site of the Antietam battlefield and were shocked by the number of downed trees and the debris scattered in the road. With many older trees down, the winds of the storm must have been stronger here than, like, ever! The temperatures were now frankly hot and it was indeed humid and I was pounding down the fluids. I wasted no time at the Sharpsburg control and took off after 5 minutes. At this point I was at least 1 hour ahead of my “schedule” to try to complete this ride in less than 65 hours and feeling good, but very wary of the temperatures and their effect on me. I was taking 4 Enduralyte capsules an hour, plus another 4 capsules dissolved in 24oz. bottles of HEED that I was drinking every 1.5 hours. Salt was crusting on my shorts, which is always scary, if not ominous, but all systems seemed to be functioning well.

I had arranged to meet my wife at the next control in Winchester, in case I had mechanical problems and to otherwise load up on my drink mix and bottles for the next leg. On the way there I had a slow-leak flat front tire and my front derailleur inexplicably jammed into the big ring. I stopped half-way up one of the longer climbs of this section to pump the tire with my mini pump and to try to unstick the derailleur, but it did not budge. The tire soon went flat again and I found myself working extra hard up the hills in the big ring. But I did not have far to go, so I decided to pump some more and make the best of it.

I think I was second into the Winchester control, a Sheetz gas station, and there was my wife Lisa, waiting for me in the shade of a tiny tree at the edge of the road. I quickly set to rehydrating, replacing the tube of the front tire and trying to fix the derailleur. It turned out that I only needed to release its cable and then reset it . I do not know what the problem was, but I think it might have jammed with some sand or other roadway debris on the underside of the frame. I did not have any similar problem with it for the rest of the ride, except for the odd dropped chain.

The next leg, one of the longest, was to Harrisonburg and promised to be increasingly hilly. In the mid-day sun, I became overheated and my water and HEED became too warm to drink. There were few services along this section, and the normally prominent veins on my arms were disappearing (another ominous sign of dehydration for me) so I grew a little desperate to find something cold to drink. I lucked out when I came upon a friendly gentleman in his yard with a hose and could cool off in some urbane conversation as his son ran relays to fill my bottles as fast as I could chug them. A little further on was a country store with a big porch where I could stop to break with more cold water and a Coke. Paul Rozelle came by and stopped too, then Tim Bol and Jim Solanick. Ted Lapinski of Massachusetts passed us by but I would catch up to him later for a spell.

At the Harrisonburg control most of the riders who arrived ahead of me were going to take a sleep break as the night had fallen. I ate and changed and head out within a half hour to ride into the cooling night. I do not remember so much of this section other than that it was probably the easiest so far, with a series of gentler yet constant climbs to the next control of Deerfield. By this time I was a little behind my schedule and was thinking of my wife, who had agreed to wait for me in Clifton Forge for a short sleep break. I was going to be a few hours late, it seemed.

At the next control in Deerfield a couple of riders were sleeping but Ted Lapinski and George Hiscox were ready to go. The volunteers at the control were cooking up lots of food in anticipation of the riders who were to come later in the morning. I had my first solid food of the day here, I think– a turkey sandwich and some yummy bean soup, which really hit the spot! George, Ted and I head out, the first off from this section, according to the volunteer. The night was moonless as the sliver of moon that was up earlier was now set behind the surrounding mountains and so we three rode with our lights bunched together for safety. The most memorable section of this ride was through a national park with what seemed to be winding, cliff-face lined roads, as we ground wordlessly over the sanded surface. Despite the elevation profile that I carried with me, it felt to me as though we were heading uphill for a good deal of this section. We made a wrong turn or two as our mileage disagreed with that of the cue sheet, but putting our 3 late-nite half-wits together, we managed to stay on track for Clifton Forge.

The control for Clifton Forge, The Bullpen Restaurant, is next to a very active railroad switching yard and there I found Lisa waiting for me. I told Ted and George that I would join them after an hour of shut-eye, which I did not really need then, but thought I should have before the most difficult climbing section of the ride. In retrospect, I probably should have stayed with them and pressed on. I put earplugs in, covered for an hour and dozed off. I awoke feeling pretty refreshed, had a quick breakfast that I was not so hungry for, and head off alone into the sunrise, just as riders Richard Carpenter and Jon Pasch arrived on the scene.

Day 2

The next section promised something like a 1500ft climb over several miles. It took a while to get to it, but once I did I was a little relieved to find that I did not have to stand on the pedals to get through the worst of it. The scenery along the way was truly beautiful, with oat fields and pines and generally a smooth, traffic-free road. The intermittent direct sun warmed me through the grey-blue shadows as I continued to climb. When the road finally turned downward, I thought I was through with the climbing for a while, but no!

At the gravelly bottom of a steep descent was a cued left turn up Jamison Mountain Road, which was impossibly steep. I started up the thing, each pedal step a study of balance and inertia, as there was no momentum at all to maintain. I felt like a sort of a kinetic sculpture made of frame and cable, sinew, bone and vein frozen in space after each ponderous step as I wrestled my lightweight rig up the mountainside. Not surprisingly, I passed a Jamison residence along the way and nodded a smiling yet sweaty hello to Mrs. Jamison, presumably, as she unloaded her car. I joked later that the toes of her shoes were up-pointed like those of a roofer, or an elf. Everyone who made it this far remembered this road name and I would consider it to be the signature climb of the ride.

The long run-out after Jamison Mountain Road afforded a little cooling off before two more steady and long climbs going into the next control in Christiansburg. It was mid-day as I arrived and I was again a little dehydrated and feeling a little bonky. A bank-clock thermometer read an even 100F. I took a little extra time in the air-conditioned motel room to put some more fluids on and to try to eat something before heading off and I was felling a lot better once I did. At this point I think I might have still been in the third position but I was falling further and further behind the pace that I thought I needed to finish with less than 65 hours. The next section, the climbs to Hillsville, proved my total undoing.

After a little descent from town and a flat section through some farmland, I was on Indian Valley Road and pointed upward, looking for Indian Valley PO Road. My cue sheet read 6.5 miles ahead and I had already gone more than a mile further than that. Do I continue to climb or do I turn around? As I rode, I added up the miles on my sheet (which was a cut and paste transcription of a preliminary official sheet) and I was 10 miles off of what the total should be. (Note to Self: Proofread cue sheets before laminating! Doh!) I reluctantly turned around and screamed back down the hill to find Richard Carpenter coming along the same road. He told me that Jon was not far behind as he had made a wrong turn.

Richard said that as far as he could tell, we were on the right road and with a little more conversation I figured out that I had somehow dropped a digit from the correct “16.5″ to my “6.5″, hence my error. We climbed back over the same route that I had already climbed and then descended and with another 10 miles of climbing finally got to Indian Valley PO Road. I had gone at least 14 miles out of my way in the heat of the day. I felt a little dumb, but befuddled and dehydrated and tired as there was yet more climbing to do. Talking with Richard, climbing and reaching back for the water bottle in my pocket, I dropped my pump and had to stop. He continued on and I did not see him again for the rest of the ride. On a subsequent high-speed descent my cue sheet indicating the turns to Hillsville blew off (a first in 3 years of laminating my own cue sheets) and fluttered away. The only way that I could make it to Hillsville then was to read backwards the later cue sheet I had indicating the turns from Hillsville to Christiansburg, which proved difficult to do in my now very addled state.

This section was deceptively steep and almost entirely unsheltered from the sun and I had run out of water. There were no services along the way and I was sorely tempted to start knocking on the few doors along the way to beg for water, but I pressed on. Soon the heat proved to be too much and I pulled over onto the side of the road, sitting on the scant shoulder with my feet hanging in a ditch, bending to put my head in the little shade afforded by a single bush. Things seemed to be unraveling pretty quickly for me here! I stopped long enough to get my heart rate down and then remounted in a grim search for water.

I did not have far to go before I found myself coming to the turn in the route a T-intersection and… an open gas station! There I bought the largest cup of Pepsi possible and chugged it with relish. I think I also put something like 1/2 gallon of water away with a handful of Endurolytes and then iced and filled my bottles. I was half-hoping that Jon Pasch would be coming up behind me to help guide me to the Hillsville control, but no one else was there. (It turned out that he lost his wallet and money along the way and had to turn back) The rest of the ride to Hillsville was marked by smooth roads but with a descent and a long climb. Since my odometer mileage was off and I was guessing from my reconstructed cue sheet, I lost more time trying to locate this control.

I arrived in Hillsville to find George Hiscox and Ted Lapinski heading back to Christiansburg. It was great to see them and they seemed to be feeling well after two hot days of riding. The volunteers at this control, Clare and Jim, told me that Richard Carpenter was just ahead and they sprung into action to get me ready to go. It turned out that I left my reading glasses and my night riding glasses at the gas station and I called to try to recuperate them but they were nowhere to be found. Jim ran out to his car and gave me a pair of drugstore reading glasses that he had on hand, which was really a great help. While I pulled myself together there, Curtis Palmer came in and we rode together to the next control, the turnaround in Fancy Gap, which was an easier ride than I had anticipated. “A regular brevet ride, for a change”, as I later referred to it.

Lisa was sitting pretty in Fancy Gap and there I changed into a wool jersey and ate a sustaining burger, rice and beans provided by the very congenial NC Randonneurs. I would have loved to stay and rest with the other riders that were starting to arrive but felt that I had to keep riding. I told her then that I was off of the idea of trying to do this in 65 hours, as I had made a few too many stops and mistakes to reasonably expect to stick to my “schedule”. After about an hour of break, Tim Sullivan of San Diego was ready to head back and so we motored easily to Hillsville. The cool night riding was some very comfortable going and we made some great time. Ride organizer Matt Settle had told me that the ride back to Christiansburg was easier than the ride out, and although I was incredulous, I was happy to stay on the road overnight as many slept at the Fancy Gap and Hillsville controls.

I rode alone for hours and saw nary a soul in almost pitch blackness as I made for Christiansburg. In the Indian Valley I stopped for a few minutes with my lights off to try to choke down a Fig Newton and to otherwise admire the hazy-brite Milky Way above. Fireflies in the trees lining the road twinkled in envy of the stars above, I laughed. As I resumed my way through the valley my sleeplessness over the last couple of days suddenly caught up with me and I started to, let’s say, see double, then hallucinate, then talk to myself. The road was curvy and I was pedaling pretty fast, somewhere between 20 and 25 mph. I somehow had the presence of mind to reason that the consequences of a mishap in the night would be pretty great for me. On a dark stretch of road I stopped and turned off my lights and closed my eyes while leaning on the bike and instantly nodded off. My knees buckled and jolted me awake. “Better to sit”, I thought, and moved a little further off the road, sitting next to my bike with my legs drawn to my chest, my back to the road.

The night was almost perfectly noiseless. Not a leaf rustled and the air was exactly my body temperature. All I could hear was my breathing and my heartbeat and with my eyes closed, I nodded off a few times. I was oblivious to a couple of passing cars, the first I had seen in hours, and I caught a few more winks before straightening up and getting back on the bike to continue on to Christiansburg. Within a few minutes a couple of volunteer fire department cars with lights flashing came flying at me to roar further down the road, followed by 2 police cars, and then I heard an ambulance siren and saw flashing lights coming from around a bend ahead. I pulled over again and the ambulance came up with another 2 police cars in tow. They slowed and the ambulance driver said, “You better get off the road, bud!”. They moved on and I complied, stopping and turning off my head and tail lights. Another siren and a sort of a paramedic’s truck came around the bend and stopped across from me. The window down, the driver asked if I had been lying on the road back there.

I laughed, no, I was sitting back there for a few minutes. He laughed too and told me that an elder lady had passed me and called in with a report of a motorcyclist lying next to his bike on the side of the road, the apparent victim of an accident. He called in to the dispatcher and told her that I, the cyclist in question, was standing there talking with him and that I was OK. On the radio everyone laughed, I think, and all the cars turned around and then passed me with friendly waves as we headed to Christiansburg. I am happy that they responded so quickly, but I am also happy that I was not as hurt as they thought I was. For my 40 winks maybe a dozen people were awoken at 5AM on Saturday morning, alas!

Day 3

The sun was just up when I arrived in Christiansburg, where Lisa was waiting with a motel room. I ate, showered and slept for 1.5 hours, got ready and left within maybe 2 hours time. Some other riders, including Tim Bol and Paul Rozelle were apparently just arriving and I was ready to go, so I took off without saying anything. The day was already becoming warm and this was going to be even hotter than yesterday. Matt was right, that the last section from Hillsville to Christainsburg was easier, and this section was also going to be easier too– more down than up! I was riding fast while the temperatures were low and recall passing Tim Sullivan and Bruce Taylor of Colorado, who had rested in Hillsville and passed me as I slept.

There came a point however when I had to pull over to take a break in the shade at the top of a climb and later, by the time I arrived at the first signposts for Buchanan, I had to stop to rehydrate at a gas station, knowing that I had just another 6 miles to go to the next control. I was flirting with dehydration again and the heat and heavy air were making this easy ride much more difficult than it needed to be! The temps were at least into the high 90′s if they were not greater than 100F and so I took an extended break once I was at the control. In total I took almost 2.5 hours off of the bike in this town and by the time I left, at least a half dozen other riders had caught up to me, including Jon Pasch, Tim and Bruce.

Even though I was feeling refortified with water and food, I did not last so long down the road, as I stopped again for another half hour at a gas station and then another time at a McDonalds in Staunton. Each time I watched riders who had passed me once, pass me again, as I had apparently passed them as they stopped. Heading out of Staunton, my interpretation of my cue sheet seemed to signal a left instead of the correct right, so I managed to waste another 10 miles of fooling around until I finally figured out the right route. After dark and a seemingly endless ride into town, I found the control at Harrisonburg again, with the help of Tim Bol who arrived just behind me as equally perplexed by his disparate cue sheet mileage. I dilly-dallied here, eating lots of the scrumptious vegetarian chilli before nodding off on the couch to be awoken by the arrival of a couple of other riders.

Day 4

As I had planned, I slept here for 3 hours in a perfectly silent dorm room (thank you Eastern Mennonite University and punctual/helpful volunteers!) and ate a little more before heading out. I had awoken feeling really refreshed and strong and set out on this last day of riding in really high spirits. The road was a series of gentle rises and descents (more down than up!) so it was easy to get some speed in the wheels with a minimum of effort. I found it much more comfortable, saddle-wise, to rest with my elbows on my handlebars, thus enhancing my “aero” position. The sun was rising to reveal a perfectly idyllic, picaresque countryside and I was smiling and singing softly to myself as I rode. Up over a rise I found Curtis and his sidekick Mike Lutz stopped and they explained that they had just stopped to help a rider with a wobbly wheel, but that Curtis’ knee and arch were bothering him.

They seemed to have their situation well in hand so I moved on to see if I could catch up to the guy with the wobbly wheel. It turned out to be Bruce Taylor, who was still riding with Tim Sullivan, both of whom I kept crossing paths with over this ride. Bruce’s wheel looked OK for the duration and we three rumbled on over the gentle rollers toward the Middletown checkpoint. At one point Curtis caught up to us, and I recall that we passed him some Ibuprofen at an intersection, but he did not arrive with us in Middletown which signaled to me that maybe his knee was worse than he thought.

At Middletown were Christa and Chuck Borras as volunteers signing us in, with rider Martin Laudie sitting in the shade icing his knee after an apparent physical breakdown. This day too promised to be hot, so Bruce, Tim and I made for a gas station across the road to have lunch and to load up on ice and fluids. Once we rolled out Tim and I stuck together and Bruce yo-yo’d a little off of our backs to eventually fall off of our trail.

We had some truly beautiful shaded and traffic-free sections of road to ride in and so we managed to stay cool for the first part of this final leg and to have a nice conversation as we went. Memorable was a shaded passage or two along a river, along smooth roads. With this ride nearly completed and these easier grades, shade and pastoral scenery, I noticed that we were both smiling a lot. A long climb awaited us in the noonday sun, some 3 miles up white-hot pavement on a 6-inch wide highway shoulder, but we rewarded ourselves with ice cream (I had a triple raspberry sorbet!) and lots and lots of ice water at the Bluemont store at the foot of Snickersville Gap Turnpike.

We stopped again a little later for a 7-11 and a volunteer (actually a DNF’d rider who then went on to volunteer– thank you!) came out of nowhere to drape us with some tube socks filled with ice. As we approached Leesburg a charity ride was taking place and with it lots of wobbly cyclists were darting in and out of our route. This and some extra gravel in the road made me a little nervous to be sure. At another point someone came quickly up from behind us, bid a hello and surged forward. Tim turned to me and said, “Fresh legs!”, and I volunteered to race him, recalling how I did something similar during the Quadzilla last year. As it turned out, we simply maintained our pace and after a couple of, ahem, easy little hills, I noticed that the gentleman’s legs were redder than before and at the traffic light his breathing was somewhat labored. “Where are you guys riding from?”, he asked. I was tempted to answer simply, with a sly, “Leesburg”, but I gave a longer answer about 770 miles, etc.

We rolled into the final control with 83 hours on the clock, to the customary applause of everyone present. It was great to be done with the thing! Ted Lapinski, Jim Solanick and Kelly Smith were there, as were some of the riders who had DNF’d along the way. I showered and changed and made for the iced Budweiser as fast as good manners would allow. Awaiting us was a feast of country-baked ham and homemade baked beans, sandwiches and more Budweiser. I had a great and marveling chat with Ted Lapinski, who had finished first with some 67 hours and on just the 6 minutes of sleep that he had managed in Clifton Forge. I hope we get a chance to ride together again sometime this year!

Epilogue

I also hope this ride is organized again another year! It’s hard, but “doable”, especially if one can get past the first couple days of adversity. I would do this again in a twinkling! The record-setting temperatures were unexpected and it was to avoid the heat that the ride was scheduled so early in the season. For me and, I think most other riders, the temperatures were greater limiters than the great elevation gains over those first days. Riding slower during the day meant less sleep and so this ride became more difficult for those who required more sleep or for those who were otherwise uncomfortable with riding during the night.

As a northern Ohioan, I have had some bad luck riding in the first hot weather of the year (once losing 15lbs in a day ) and so I was a little afraid of the possibility of spending the Shenandoah 1200 in a dehydrated and cramped state, slow, in pain, and always behind the electrolyte eight-ball. To prepare, I cut as much sodium as I could out of my diet for a week, visited a steam room to sweat, and rode from my home in Cleveland to the Leesburg, VA start in a rental car with the windows rolled up and the heater on full blast. I drank a gallon of water each of the last two days before the ride. I also stuck to my 4-capsule per daylight-hour Endurolyte regimen for the first couple of days of riding, until I seemed to not be sweating so much salt anymore. I did not have any cramps, not one, over the entire ride!

As I was hoping to finish this ride in less than 65 hours, I tried to plan for this result with a spreadsheet that ride organizer Matt Settle had provided to riders to take account of distances, MPH, time off bike and time off of controls. Of course I was optimistic in estimating my speed along the way and I planned to not stop at all between controls, etc. but I knew I could limit my sleep time to some minimums for at least the first couple of nights. So much could go wrong (or well) in 3 or more days of cycling that I later felt a little silly estimating my time of arrival to controls in the later stages of the ride.

Realistically, I planned to ride slower in the cool of the night and to back off of speed in the mid-day. But my “backing off” turned into “stopping” as I felt I needed to take care of myself in face of the extremes that we were facing. I knew that I could make up deficits by riding at night, which I had planned to do anyway. By the last day of the ride, I was really happy to have been able to survive this test, and this despite my go-fast/stop-often way of riding. I note that the steadier riders, and those who did not get lost as often as I, finished sooner than I did. I think that had I ridden with others, such as with Ted and George, or Tim and Bruce, I would have had a faster finishing time. I feel as though I finished stronger than I have ever finished a 1200k, without aches, soreness or swelling to speak of, for a change!

Thank you to Matt Settle, the many volunteers, and friendly Shenandoans for a great, great time!