The Final Leg
Day 1: 7/26/2024
174 miles, 12,165 ft. elevation gain
The last training block in my Pan-American training schedule has lived in my mind with infamy for the past 18 months. Since I first put pen to paper and pegged the fall of 2024 as my start date for my journey this elusive final training block has had a constant presence in the corner of my mind. A symbolic, yet unknown and almost scary 4 weeks of all-out training to propel me into the best shape of my life. The training block existed only in my mind and as a literal block on my calendar until the first week of July 2024. Now, that block is over. I’ve given this training process my utmost devotion over the past 9 months and now it is over. This weekend was the final leg of my final block in the training process. I have a lot of emotions surrounding the conclusion of my training which I hope to address in a separate blog soon. I’m proud of how far I have come, but scared I haven’t done enough. At least I can rest easy knowing that I gave it my best effort. This is my first time training for a 14,000 mile 80+ day effort. I didn’t have all the right answers, and I still don’t. But I’ve made do with what I did know and learned from what I didn’t know. I wanted to end my training with a symbolic bang, so that was the goal of this weekend trip. Here is the story of my culminating experience in my final training block.
After finishing up some schoolwork on Friday morning, I set out from Hanover intent to have a fun weekend. I had COVID last weekend which totally took me out for three days. I never felt that sick, but I was off the bike for the better part of a week between COVID and all the school and social obligations that I missed because of it. I wasn’t sure if any lingering COVID was going to affect my riding. I felt sluggish and my legs were not as responsive as usual, but as the day wore on, I felt better. I made my way through the Green Mountains in the afternoon, cutting straight down the heart of Vermont on beautiful roads with constant climbs. In the late afternoon, I reached Massachusetts and was met with the hardest half-mile of biking I have ever ridden. As I turned onto a small ill-kept road just south of Readsboro I was confronted with a pavement wall of 26% for .45 miles, 14% for 1.95 miles. My Garmin read 31% at the steepest pitch. I was crawling up that hill, but it was enjoyable in its outlandishness. The road was so steep the pavement was patchy and half-washed away. It was nice and hot all day, but it started cooling down in the evening which was fantastic.
Since I started after 10:00 am the day felt pretty short and after what seemed to be a weak 173 miles, I called it a night. I’m pretty happy to be so mentally and physically strong that 173 miles feels like a half-baked day, especially since I only need to average 163 per day to get the world record on the Pan-American. Because it was supposed to be so warm all weekend, I had made the bold call not to bring a sleeping bag or any change of clothes. I was carrying with me only my bivy, ground pad, some bike tools and parts, a toothbrush, and a battery bank for my electronics. All of my gear fit into a 5-liter bag which I had attached under my aerobars. I was truly running ultra-light. I didn’t account for the chill of the night though. Even though the high was around 90 each day, the low was 53 F. I was butt-ass naked lying in my bivy and didn’t sleep that well given the chill. Recently when it has been in the 90s during the day the low doesn’t drop much below 70, but for some reason this weekend was different and I hadn’t checked the forecast to know that. Oops.
Day 2: 7/27/2024
232 miles, 13,323 ft. elevation gain
I woke up around 5 in shivers. I debated just starting my ride, but decided instead to take advantage of the soon to be warmer temps to get some more sleep. So as the sun rose, when I would normally be setting out for the day, I was all cozied up getting another hour and a half of beauty rest in the first morning light. It was a smart decision and I knew it t the time, even if I wasn’t super stoked to be ‘sleeping in’ when I should’ve been riding. I still managed 230 miles on the day so in the big picture there was no love lost here. I had spent the night on the edge of a corn field near Pittsfield, New York. I set off and headed south towards Peeskill where I crossed the Hudson River. After riding through some of Army’s (the school Army) shooting ranges and training lands I made my way to Point Jervis where I crossed into Pennsylvania and entered into Delaware Water Gap. The sun set as I made my way through Stroudsburg. By Leighton it was totally dark as I climbed up to Hazelton before dropping back into another valley where I found a solid field to camp in under some powerlines. It was once again a chilly night, but I was feeling great and had no trouble drifting off to sleep. The cold didn’t bother me until the early hours of the morning just before sunrise when the temperature was the coldest.
Day 3: 7/28/2024
212 miles, 13,700 ft. elevation gain
When I woke up, just like the morning before, I was freezing cold and decided to snag another hour or two of sleep as the sun warmed everything up. Subsequently, I wasn’t biking until 8:00 am which is an incredibly late start for bikepacking. I felt a bit guilty about it but knew that in the days to come an extra hour here or there wasn’t going to make or break my training block. It was a beautiful day and I felt very fortunate to be out biking on new roads hundreds of miles from home. I wond through endless fields and long flat ridges that are so quintessential of Southern Pennsylvania. Dodging little packages left on the road by the Amish’s horses I made my way to State College by mid-afternoon. I didn’t linger, although I probably should’ve given myself a better tour of Penn State’s campus. As evening approached I had a couple of large climbs to work through which made it a very pleasant ride. I stopped for the night and took refuge in some woods just outside of Clarion, Pennsylvania. I was ready for a big day(s) to come. I had now travled over 600 miles in the past 3 days, but it was Sunday night and all those miles had been spent heading Southeast. I was a long way from home. I had class on Tuesday afternoon, I had planned on skipping that, but I had to be back to Hanover, New Hampshire by Wednesday morning.
Days 4 & 5: 7/29-30/2024
622 miles, 32,858 ft. elevation gain
In the spring of 2023 I did a 500-mile ride with no sleep. I was so excited about my accomplishment at the time, but I remember thinking before I even finished the 500 “so how far can I go next time?” I bounced around the idea of going for 1,000 miles but knew it would be better to go for 1,000 kilometers first. I knew 620 miles was manageable. The hardest part about 1,000 miles is that you have to ride through a second night and part of a third. With 500 miles you only need to ride through one night, and with 620 miles you only need to ride through 1 ½ nights. As a kid I was awful with sleep deprivation. Throughout high school and my first year at college, I would have really bad sleep-deprived hallucinations and delusions any time I tried to do an endurance event through the night. I’ve gotten a lot better about sleep deprivation now though and the prospect of riding 1,000 km through the night didn’t scare me. I was super excited. When I woke up on Monday morning, 7/29, I was super stoked to give 1,000 km my best shot.
I got about 5 hours of sleep and woke up to beautiful weather. I was incredibly excited and felt good on the bike all morning. I had a slight headwind for the first 70 miles, but it turned into a light sidewind by the time I turned due east. My legs felt fine but I was dealing with some chaffing that I knew might become a more pressing issue at some point in the next 30 hours. The first day kind of breezed by. Mentally I was totally prepared for a 620-mile ride, so I knew the first 250 miles should be a warm-up of sorts. I find that if I can adjust my mental perception of the length of a ride I can adjust my perception of how long said ride feels. That is, if I plan on going out on a 30 mile ride, then 20 miles feels like a decent distance. If I plan on going out on a 300-mile ride the first 100 miles usually go by in the blink of an eye. It’s all about tricking yourself into beleiveing it is easier than it really is. For this ride I just told myself that it was inevitable. I had nothing else to do, definitely nothing better to do, than ride my bike. I needed to get back to school for class too, so I had best keep biking. That was the thinking I forced myself to accept. As the sun set on my first day I was at just over 200 miles and I must admit, despite my best attempts to mentally evade the immensity of this ride, it felt a little daunting to have 420 miles left. I felt fine though so I just kept riding. I love riding through the night. It gives me a fantastic sense of joy that I cannot explain. It is undeniably more dangerous and generally speaking minute to minute it is not that fun, but I often fall into an incredible rider’s high for hours on end that propels me through the darkest hours. It always feels like you are riding faster at night. The whole world becomes irrelevant; nothing matters except the little tunnel of light cast by my headlight. Particularly once the early stages of sleep deprivation set in, the world passes by in a surreal manner. When my world is confined to the limited space illuminated by artificial lights it leaves a lot of space for the imagination to fill in the gaps. The world has an airy feel. Everything begins to look alike, but no two places feel the same. I love how the same place can feel so much different at night. On familiar roads, everything feels so novel, like I’ve never been there but at the same time I’ve been there a million times before. Almost like a dream of a place you know so well, but can’t quite capture in imagination.
I didn’t have too much trouble making it through the night. I was making my way through northern Pennsylvania all night on small winding roads. Constantly heading east, but never in a straight line. There were lots of hills, some really steep ones too, but they were never more than 500 vertical feet. The constant and abrupt rise and fall resulted in 15,000 ft of elevation gain through the night, a lot for just 160 miles in 10 hours. The sleep deprivation didn’t really set in until after 3:00 am, at which point I took my first caffeine of the ride and was set straight for the remaining two hours of darkness. By 5:00 the horizon started to bleed dark blues and light pinks with the first evidence of the rising sun. I usually get a rejuvenating kick of X from the rising sun, but for some reason, I never got this boost. Perhaps it was because I was on such an incredible rider’s high all night, I never really settled down into a rhythm, so the daylight felt like a relief of normality which lulled my mind off into sleep deprivation. Whatever the reason, I had a really rough morning. I was in New York by the time the sun peeked over the Catskills. It was good to be out of Pennsylvania. Mentally at least. Physically it didn’t really matter as the hills did not abate and the road kept winding. My chaffing was becoming more of an issue. I had a long way to ride and it was already incredibly uncomfortable to pedal. I should’ve been wearing my Black Sheep bibs if I didn’t want to chafe! By mid-morning I was in a state of “complete dissociation” as I described it in the moment. I can’t capture in words the unique ways that the sleep deprivation was toying with my mind. Partially because I can’t remember much of this time, and partially because it was a sensation unlike any other I have ever felt. This wasn’t my first time doing an endurance event through the night and into the next morning, but it was my first time riding 600 miles over three days with very little sleep into an all-nighter. I felt like I was floating like I wasn’t present in the moment. I had no memory and few thoughts. I kept forgetting where I was, who I was, what I was doing. I would look down at my bike and remember I was riding my bike, and that is all I could really think about. I was just following the purple line on my cycling computer that told me where to go. I stopped for a big lunch and tried to mentally reboot myself. Lots of caffeine, chocolate milk, pizza, and straight salt packets. I felt a slight sense of normalcy when I was off the bike, but as soon as I got on the bike again everything faded into delirium once again. I listened to the Outsiders on audiobook by S.E. Hinton. I was lazer focused on the words, and enraptured by the story, but I can’t remember any of the roads I biked while I was listening to the book. It was a surreal afternoon.
By the time I reached the outskirts of Schenectady and Albany I realized that in my hazy state it was too unsafe to navigate the rush hour traffic. As the roads became busier I had to keep my head up more often with lots of starting, stopping, and sprinting to avoid getting hit. I had designed my course with directness in mind, not quality of roads, so I was on some very busy highways. I stopped at a gas station on the outskirts of town to re-up my caffeine. There was a soda fountain that dispensed an energy drink. I sat there and drank over liters of “Nrg Kick” soda. At the moment I had no idea how much caffeine that was. I just knew that the cold sweet liquid felt good in the 90-degree heat. Retrospectively, I consumed about 500mg of caffeine in less than five minutes. I proceeded to fill my bottles with more sugary caffeinated drinks and I set off. As one might imagine, I came alive. Fueled by the copious amount of caffeine I had just consumed and riding with the concentration necessary to navigate the rush hour traffic of Albany, I managed to get back in a groove despite the constant start stop of red lights. I made it through Albany to the Hudson River and turned north. I was immediately embraced by a lovely tailwind that had been a nagging headwind for the past several hours. Even though I still had 140 miles left it felt like I was getting close. I’ve ridden through Albany many times on my way back to campus and 140 miles really isn’t that much in context. However, it is a lot when you are at hour 36 of your ride, when the sun is setting and you are riding into your second night without sleep. The blood running down my leg from my inner thighs as a result of my now grave chaffing situation made the 140 miles left seem very real. I managed to keep riding relatively well, but every time I sat back on the saddle after getting out of the saddle to climb or accelerate my chaffing would rack me with serious pain. I just clenched my teeth and kept riding. The pain would slowly become bearable the longer I rode without stopping, so I just kept pushing. I was gritting my teeth so hard as I neared the Vermont border that I actually chipped one of my teeth.
The sun set on me for the second time in the ride. I was still feeling incredibly strong physically and my mind was sharp as well. Most of my sleep deprivation had worn off and I had grown used to the hazy feeling at this point so it felt normal. At hour 31 (elapsed time 36 hours) I had just under 100 miles left and my legs were still feeling great. The goal of this ride was to completely bury myself and make myself crack. So for the next hour and a half I blitzed it. I rode tempo on the flats and really pushed all of the hills. I averaged 23.5 mph during my 31st hour on the bike. By the time I got to Rutland it was totally dark and I began pushing up Killington Gap. Near the top all of my sleep deprivation came back with a vengeance. I once again totally dissociated, but this time in a weird way. I was vaguely conscious of how out of it I was and it was a little scary to be honest because my reaction time and mental acuity were just not there. Even though my legs didn’t feel that tired, they weren’t putting out many watts no matter how hard it felt like I was going. I was definitely ready to be done with the ride. Unfortunately, I hadn’t mapped my route perfectly, or my GPS was a little off, because when I got close to Hanover I realized I was going to be eight miles short of 1,000km if I went straight home. So I threw in a quick out and back to add on the extra miles. Mentally it was a real challenge to turn away from my nice comfortable bed and keep riding extra. I wanted to just go home but I knew that wasn’t an option. I would’ve been furious at myself for giving up in the last 30 minutes. Although I was starting to get jaded with the riding, I woke up a bit mentally in the last hour and the sleep deprivation wasn’t so bad. Just before 2:00am I rolled into campus as my cycle computer read 1,000 kilometers.
