Lynda – thanks so much for giving me the training, advice and motivation to achieve my goal! 

Two years ago on a Wednesday morning some friends asked if I wanted to race the 24HofA that weekend. Sure, why not! It was lots of fun, and I was happy with my middle-of-the-pack lap times. But my biggest takeaway from that event was seeing the solo riders. I just couldn’t get my head around how someone could do something like that. It really blew me away.

Some history; I’m no racer. I just like to ride my bike a lot. I have raced at the velodrome here a little over the years, but not at a high level.  At 44 with a very busy job, plus a 3 and 4 year old, I see less of my bikes than I used to!  But with the psychological milestone of 45 looming, I thought back to the 24H. I looked at the 24 Finisher plan, and asked you Lynda if the mid-week workouts could be divided into two-a-days so that I could do them on my commute.  Otherwise I'd be taking too much time away from my family.  You said no prob, get on it! 

I commuted all winter – which is a heckuva long time in Calgary! Lots of very, very cold mornings. I did weird stuff too, like intervals in a local park on Sunday nights after the kids went to bed. Sometimes dodging deer in -20C in the dark, and slipping on ice and snow, really had me questioning my sanity!

I did a reasonable job of sticking to the workouts. I moved them all over, repeated a week when work took me away, and gave myself permission to do what I needed and skip what I needed in order to make it work.  We have a long winter here, and it’s hard to keep training on the stationary bike for six months! I also moved the whole schedule back a day. So Saturday was an easy stretch day at home, Sunday was a long ride, and then I’d do the scheduled Sunday workout after work on Monday.

The last obstacle came in June, when Calgary and the mountains west of here were very badly flooded. I missed a week of training to volunteer around town with the cleanup. Heck, I couldn’t ride the mountain bike anyway because every riding area was closed due to bridge or highway washouts! Some areas just opened up last week.

To add to my stress, I changed jobs just two weeks before the race.  Going through interviews and all that in the months leading up to the event was quite difficult.

Finally, race day. Volunteers and staff at the Canmore Nordic Centre did an amazing job of rebuilding trails that were destroyed by the flooding.

I think there were 350 teams entered, including about 40-45 solo racers.  I almost walked the run, as I hate running and never do it… Once on the bike I tried not to let my ego get in the way and race with people who I knew I was quicker than, and instead I tried to settle into a pace. The plan says keep it at level two. Well, hauling my 170-175lbs butt up those mountain trails just does not happen at those rates!  I’m really built better for the velodrome! Anyway, I would climb in the 150-155 bpm range. Your advice to put on lower gearing was key to being able to repeat this effort!  The climb out of the Nordic Centre to start earch lap was particularly crushing though. I think it must be 15 or 20 minutes of non-stop climbing. Maybe it just seemed that long…

Things were going ok until around the 7-hour mark, at which point my stomach was feeling like a balloon. I had trained on mostly liquid nutrition (Hammer Perpetuem), plus some real food, during the longer training rides. But on my last big (8-hour) training ride it had been really hot, and I just couldn’t take in much of that stuff in the heat, and ended up fading badly. I should have stuck it out in the race and kept with it, but I tried to switch to mostly solid food. I just didn’t have the right mix (too many carbs), and I was doubled over when I tried to eat anything. I thought briefly about dropping out, but instead did another lap just on water to try to reset things a bit. I then supplemented with some Perpetuem once my stomach settled. It helped that it was early evening, and cooler by now. I was a little frustrated though, as I was about 45 minutes behind my training ride time at the 100km mark. I was just below mid-pack by this point. But as the sun went down and the lights went on, I just started feeling better and better. The hills felt not too bad, and I was having lots of fun riding. I started feeling pretty quick, and guys would pass me saying things like “looking really strong there solo!”  The volunteers and fans along the course, and in particular the timing tent and start/finish area were also just amazing cheerleaders. They would just go nuts every lap for every solo rider! It just was so much fun to be out there riding these amazing trails, surrounded by such great people. Even at three in the morning, there werer no inner demons or anything weird! Just really loving riding my bike. The night stayed warm too, which was nice. 

As the sun came up the deep fatigue was settling in.  I was probably a bit closer to survival mode then I would have liked! But it wasn’t epic suffering or anything – just ticking off the laps as best as I could.  Keep moving forward. A slow lap is better than no lap, right? 

That last lap I finally allowed myself to walk up a couple of climbs – including the last set of switchbacks that had killed us all every lap. I had ridden everything up to that point. Three days before the race they took out a long, easy jeep-trail climb that you could sit up and eat some food on and replaced it with a soul-destroying, epic series of switchbacks. No matter how good a lap felt, it would always be crushed by that climb. Ugh.

Anyway, in the end I wished I hadn’t pissed about so much on the last lap! I hadn’t been paying attention to the placings hardly at all, as I wanted to focus on my effort. But I missed the guy ahead of me by two minutes, and the guy ahead of him by 15.  I also lost around 15 minutes in the night when I stopped to help a rider who had crashed and broken his ankle. But in the end – 7th place in over 40 out of 23 starters (which would have been 7th in under 40 too). That felt pretty great!  I had done it! I had set a goal that was a pretty good reach for someone like me, and I achieved it! What a great feeling. Thank you so much!

So…. it took about three days to sign up for next year! I’m going to try to work out a training schedule to fit my life. I don’t want to ask my family if it’s okay if I take off every Sunday for 12 weeks again. I think I might keep the 5,6,7 and 8 hour rides to build up some endurance, and do some intervals on the other Sundays. I bought the PR 24 plan, but it’s just more than I can manage. I will come up with something though. I think I could pick off fifth place next time. The top four were really quick though. Their lap times were much quicker than mine. But maybe we can talk about raising my VO2 max a bit.  Heck, I’ve got a whole lot of winter ahead of me to work on that!

Thank you once again for helping me achieve my goal!!!  This is on that top ten list of personal accomplishments, and you made it happen!!