Ultraman Canada Day 2 Ride Report

Riding to the Town of Headwind

Day 2: 170 mile (273.5 km) Ride, aka Snacking my Way Through the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys

Start Time: 6:00AM, and we started in pairs, based on the total time from Day 1. I think I was next to Lucy Ryan, who I took to calling LOO-SEE after Lucille Ball. There was much confusion at the start, but somehow our addled brains managed to get in line properly and take off.

Conditions: There is about 5,300 feet of climbing in this stage, which is not bad for the distance. I didn’t know the climbing amount until after the fact—it should be published on the race site, I think. The weather forecast the night before said it might be rainy, but when I woke up at 4AM it was really windy outside, and this worried me a bit. But as it got light the wind settled down. Weather Underground reports that the high for Penticton that day was 84F just like Day 1, but we went quite a ways away from Penticton, and clearly when we were along the Similkameen River heading towards Hedley it felt pretty damn hot, but I can’t find weather data for Hedley, which I renamed to the Town of Headwind. I guess the town doesn’t really exist. My guess is it got into the 90’s. On the plus side, though, the humidity was still very low. Another athlete reports that we were riding into headwinds for 80 of the 170 miles, and that seems about right. Weather data shows they were 10-15mph most of the time, just enough to make you work harder than you might like, but fine as long as you stayed tucked in aero position, and not so bad if you are tiny person like me!

Goal: 11 hours, including feeding and assorted stops. This is a pathetic 15MPH, which I figured I could accomplish unless the course was hellaciously hilly or windy, which it wasn’t, or I had horrible mechanicals, which I didn’t. It also accounted for potential slowage due to the effort expended on Day 1.

Actual: 11:03:50. Cool beans! I was happy with this considering the winds and heat, but just like for Day 1, I could reduce this by at least 15 minutes with faster and less frequent stops. In reality I would like to go 10:30 on this day which is 16.2mph average, but am fine with anything from 10:30-11:00. Again, I am a balanced triathlete (I suck at all three sports!) and not a seasonsed ultrarunner, so I need to have gas available for Day 3. My actual riding time was 10:36, so I have some more speed in me. UMH Day 2 should be less climbing but more heat and possibly more wind, so I’m not sure I can gain much more on this day there.

Gear/Clothes: I rode Skull Kingdom, same setup as for Day 1, same helmet and same shoes, although I did switch shoes with about 50km to go because I had never ridden that far in the white Sidi’s, and I felt something bugging the front of my left ankle and figured a shoe change was in order.

I wore hot pink tri shorts and a matching bra top from Desoto, with a white sleeveless Zoot bike jersey. Someone on another athlete’s crew thanked me for wearing the pink so they could spot me better! This is another wonderful thing about Ultraman—the other crews are rooting for you and everyone else as much as for THEIR athlete! The Zoot jersey is all kinds of ventilated, and I’ve had it for years, pulling it out for special occasions such as these. Once again, I had lubed my bike shorts with Chamois Butter, and somewhere around or right after Hedley I felt the beginnings of some crotch discomfort, so I stopped and reapplied. This was, I’m sure, a great sight for my crew—me jamming my cream-covered hand down my shorts and rubbing around! I wore the same kind of Wigwam socks that had been slathered with Body Glide, no gloves, but I began the ride with my new Zoot Arm Coolers, and they were good, but I removed them around Hedley, because the wind seemed to keep me cool enough on my arms just fine. I started the day covered in SPF 30 sunscreen that I applied before I got dressed, and never felt the need to reapply it.

Once again, an aero helmet would have been great to use for the first 100km of this ride (or maybe the entire day), as it was mostly flat. After that is when we began climbing, but we also had heat, so if I were to do this race again, I’d just use the aero helmet for that first 100km and then switch to a regular helmet. At least have it available in the crew vehicle, because the temperatures and wind seem highly changeable in the region.

Nutrition Plan

In the morning, I decided to go a bit lighter on the Ultrafuel, and I think I only drank about 500 calories of it, and I ate my usual Power Bar Triple Threat, so I had about 750 calories in the tank to start, and didn’t feel overly full or bloated at the start. While riding, my nutrition plan was the same as for Day 1. I ended up consuming a lot of Coke once it got hot because it tasted good. I had to pour cold water over my head when it was hot, too. The jello shots were awesome, and I think I managed some of a turkey sandwich, but don’t think I drank any Gatorade. I think I ate 4 devilled egg halves, and they were awesome! I think I hydrated well enough again on Day 2. I don’t remember how many times I peed, but it wasn’t a lot (crew needs to keep track of this), and I think I pooped once (inevitable when doing all this racing).

Training Notes

See my Day 1 report about my bike training.

Race Notes

I remembered that about the first 100km of the ride was flat to gently rolling, so in my head I was visualizing the day as a hard 170km ride with a nice 100km warm-up. Richard had cleaned and lubed my bike, as it’s important to me to race on a clean bike!

We had been warned about a cattleguard at 18.4km in, and were told there would be plywood over it so we could ride right over. Cattleguards here in the Midwest can be easily ridden over on a bicycle, but the kind they have up in Canada are a bit dicey to ride over. Well, we get to the cattleguard and there is no plywood and we are told to dismount and walk our bikes across! At the awards banquet we heard that a couple of intrepid riders went ahead and rode over, but the rest of us walked. I have my right bike shoe clad foot on one metal slat about 3” wide, my left foot on another slat about 2” wide, and I have my bike in my right hand. It was unsettling to walk across, but I don’t think anyone fell in, and I got back on the bike to keep riding, hoping that was the scariest part of my day (and it was).

The first 100km were just beautiful scenery and great roads, and I would yell at my crew to take pictures of the surrounding landscape. The winds were light, and I was in the big chainring a lot. We went through Oliver twice more, which gave me more opportunities to sing-song OWL-EE-VAH out loud to myself. I was pretty amazed at how “not bad” I felt and hoped it would continue through the day.

At 53.9km in, we turn around and begin backtracking. The turnaround point is a Husky gas station, and we literally rode through one of the pump areas and out the other road entrance. I don’t know why, but this seemed pretty funny to me at the time. We went back through OWL-EE-VAH. I think it was on the way out you could see Spotted Lake, and unlike Yellow Lake which is NOT yellow, the Spotted Lake IS spotted. Here is a picture of it. That was pretty cool to see.

After we go along Vaseaux Lake again, we veer off on another road that is taking us to “the wall,” which is a steep climb to Green Lake (which is actually green). At the pre-race meeting, they make The Wall out to be this beast, and I’ve ridden horrible climbs during Horribly Hilly Hundreds and Dairyland Dare rides which are in Wisconsin’s glacial area. In the Dairyland Dare, there is 13,500 feet of climbing in the 200k, and Horribly Hilly Hundreds has about 10,000 feet of climbing over 200k. Each of those rides has nasty, nasty climbs, so I figured The Wall would be one of those. Nope, it was just 8% for 2k, really not that bad, and it was the worst climb of the day. But any experienced rider knows that once you throw one of those in, it can take something out of you, so I didn’t try and be a hero on it or anything. And guess who was on there announcing? Steve King! We are in the middle of nowhere and we are climbing and you hear his voice and he’s talking about you and it makes you want to climb well.

The Wall is just the beginning of much climbing for the next about 45km, which takes us through desert that was absolutely beautiful! The wind began picking up here, too, but it seemed logical for it to get windy in the desert.

Once we descended out of the desert, though, it got windy AND hot.

I did not see this sign. Glad my crew did!

Now we were on our way to Hedley, or the Town of Headwind. It was beautiful riding along the Similkameen River that we could see below us flowing in the opposite direction, which is always a bad sign, since it means we are CLIMBING. It seemed pretty hot and there were people every so often tubing or just floating in the river, and I could even see people drinking beer, which made me want one. Aside: During training I drank 2 beers a day, religiously. I tell people that if I did not drink beer I would disappear altogether! The first beer would be my reward for making it through a training day and would be consumed while I stretched, and then the 2^nd one was with or right after dinner.

I had to keep riding and stay strong in the wind. I poured much water over my head in this section and drank much Coke. At one point I even put ice into the holes in my helmet so they could melt (slightly) slowly onto my head and face. That was nice! Also, it makes the high cost of the Catlike Whisper completely worth the money! I was also putting a cold sponge into my top and my shorts to keep my core temperature down, so each pit stop became sponge exchange, exchange my Infinit for a cold bottle, chug some Coke and then pour a bottle of ice water over my head.

After Hedley, we keep sort of climbing through some park to almost the 200k mark, and I could just tell when I was about 200k in. Just as on Day 1, I only looked at elapsed time on the PowerTap—no speed or distance. Then we make a few curvy jogs and get to the town of Princeton, where there is about a 60k total out and back section. Of course, as soon as we turn north, the wind changes to come from the north, so now we are climbing into a headwind, and it was decent climbing. I knew at this point I was pretty much on target for my 11 hour planned finish time. But this is when my left foot started to hurt just a little bit and I wanted to change shoes, only my crew was nowhere in sight! I about had a nervous breakdown, thinking maybe they had car trouble or something. When they finally showed back up, they told me they had to stop and get more ice, and I was nearly in tears. At that point, I needed to see my crew often just to feel like I was being taken care of. I changed my shoes and the other pair felt better on my ankle, but the bottom of my feet hurt in them because I didn’t move the insoles from the other shoes. DOH!

I just kept pedaling and wondering when we were going to hit the turnaround, again I still wasn’t looking at distance or speed—just elapsed time. We were in an absolutely beautiful area , and we rode by several smaller lakes before we got to Allison Lake for the turnaround. Oh my, is that lake beautiful! But I was glad to say goodbye to it. On the way there, you could see other athletes heading back looking pretty happy. It was hard to tell your relative position all day until we got to the out and back, and I saw some people I was surprised were actually pretty close to me. So I guess I was doing OK.

Anyway, one guy yelled, “There’s a nice TAILWIND on the way out!” And for this I kept working until I got to the little U-turn (I do lots of these in training and am pretty good at them!) and now we began heading down. The tailwind wasn’t there all the time but at some point it kicked in for good, and I set my sights on whoever was in front of me and wanted to pass her just for something to do. I got into the big chainring and actually started hammering, can you believe that 243km into this thing? But I did, and it was fun, and I just kept going by my crew saying I was going in now.

Richard and me. I am happy to be done riding for a few days!

When I crossed the finish line, that was my longest ride ever! Previously I had gone 135 miles, but like I said, there wasn’t that much climbing on this ride so it was like 135 plus additional flatness.

I got another most excellent massage, and now we were in Princeton and the race had made a restaurant available for our post-stage meal. I don’t remember what I ate here, but it was probably less than I should have eaten, as I was tired and wanted to sleep and had to be up at 4AM the next morning to run. The one thing I DID do, though, was have a beer. Richard had one and when I got a look at it, I decided it wouldn’t hurt me. Nick M. asked how I was feeling and I once again told him much better than I thought I would! I mean I didn’t feel completely trashed, so I guessed that a) I must be fit and b) I must have paced this thing well for my abilities.

The race put us athletes and crew up in various hotels, and the one we were in, Sandman, had nice enough rooms, but only window air conditioners. When I am training or racing like this, I need my sleeping room to be around 68F in order for me to sleep. I cranked up the A/C, but the poor thing was having trouble mustering enough juice to really cool things down. I tossed and turned until finally I decided to try and sleep on the floor where it would be cooler. This happened around midnight, and when I got down there, I was worried whether I remembered to put my watch into my run shorts, and so I grabbed them in the dark and felt around, and I had remembered. I wasn’t worried about only getting 4 hours of sleep for Day 3, because I knew it was the last day, and I still felt way better than I’d anticipated.

What I Did Well
I biked at a comfortable but consistent pace that felt like a good “all day” pace. I climbed well, considering I hadn’t done much in training, and I think I hydrated well enough based on the color of my urine before I went to bed. I did not chafe, having a mantra in my head from ultrarunners that if you feel something, take care of it right away, and I did that for my crotch and my left foot. I did eat 4 or 5 deviled egg halves, and they were tasty. I have eaten hard boiled eggs on 7+ hour rides before, and knew that I tolerated them well. I don’t remember how many times I peed, but I guess it was enough. I managed to enjoy myself and keep my sense of humor except for my near meltdown when my crew went AWOL (note to UMH crew: If you are going to go off course, tell me about it please!). Once again, I remained in aero position except on steep parts of climbs, and I remembered to stand up periodically and stretch my legs, neck, wrists and back. There was no lake to cool the legs after this stage, and besides I just wanted to get my massage, eat, set up for Day 3 and get to sleep.

What I Can Improve On
Same comments as for Day 1 basically, and I would like to complete Day 2 in 10:30 or less total time. I will also try and eat more for dinner after Day 2, and I will hope that wherever they put us up that the room is COLD. Or maybe we will borrow a box fan from a local that I can use in the away hotels.

What Concerns me About Hawaii
The climb to Hawi can be dicey with crosswinds, but climbing isn’t as bad as descending in them, and we only go down that hill on the run. Heat will be a factor as will winds. I’m confident that my Infinit will keep my electrolytes where they need to be, but we might need to carry more water for myself and the crew to cool me down. I know where all the stores are on the Hawaii route, too, so obtaining ice might be an issue. Perhaps my crew’s local friend can have more ice at the ready to avoid pulling off the highway in the middle of the day, because I know what traffic can be like in the Kona area.