24 Hours of Complete Misery

I'm not much of a glutton for agony, and certainly don't function well on little sleep. I get cranky when I'm hungry and unable to immediately find food, and I don't deal well with cold temperatures unless I'm overly dressed. So, how I managed to find myself climbing up "The Wall," the steepest slope Snowshoe Mountain resort has to offer, on my mountain bike at 2:50 AM in a slight drizzle on an unseasonably cold June night in the high 30's, wearing only a short sleeved jersey and cycling shorts, hungry to the degree that I felt malnourished, is completely baffling. But, there I was, and the two reasons I didn't fall over and surrender to the mountain are named Marty McKeon and Justin Leidy.

Marty and Justin were my teammates in the 2004 24 Hours of Snowshoe, a relay-style mountain bike race held at WV's most notorious mountain resort deep within the peaks of Pocahontas County. We called ourselves the Fighting Toads. In a previous life, Marty and Justin were subjected to the arguably harsh training regimen that I designed for them as their rowing coach, a thankless job that, perhaps due to its thanklessness, often becomes as much a competition between coaches as it does between oarsmen ("Oh yeah? My rowers work so hard that . . . "). Because of the historical dynamic of this trio, I simply had to continue. Then, of course, there was that survival instinct telling me that surrenduring may provoke an early demise.

Our 4th team member had dropped out of the race just before sundown after taking two laps through the mud-choked course. That was about eight hours after Marty started the race in our pole position, and about sixteen hours before it would end at noon the following day. This meant that each of us had about 3 or 4 hours of rest between consecutive excruciating laps, but it also meant that my dropping from the race would be devastating to my teammates.

The next series of events represents a time I consider to be my life's most trauma-inducing, and it happened after completing that ridiculously late night lap. Upon stumbling into our pit, a campsite among a sea of campsites, I began firing up my post-lap routine, this being the fourth time I'd done it. Drop the bike. Grunt greetings to the half-passed-out racers and their next of kin. Open the hatch of the Escape Pod (photo, left) to reveal the mobile kitchen. Jam the ski pole into place to hold the hatch up. Take anything edible, place into blender. Switch the switch to on. Add soymilk as needed to thin. Chug.

You'd think that an entire Cuisinart carafe full of oatmeal, soymilk, bananas, Gu, chocolate, and probably dirt, chain grease, and grass would be difficult to drink. I must admit that it goes down surprisingly fast after about 1.5 hours of pushing, carrying, and (sometimes) riding a mountain bike through bogs of knee-deep mud, down screaming descents, through fields of basketball-sized boulders, and up gravity-defying steeps. That's about 1.5 liters of quasi-solid food, and I chased it with about a liter of water. I didn't feel hungry after that, but was as aware as one can be in this situation that I needed more. I grabbed a loaf of sandwich bread and another bottle of water and slid into my tent.

Getting into a tent while covered in mud, wearing a bike helmet, cycling shoes, and hydration pack, is not an ideal situation. But, I did it anyway, shaking head to toe. I covered myself with everthing in the tent, including all of the gear Justin had left behind when he vacated the tent to receive the baton from me at the transition area. I saw in his eyes that, as much as he'd appreciated my completion of the lap, he'd have been perfectly fine if I hadn't showed up for another hour.

I put a piece of bread in my mouth and it immediately absorbed all of the moisture in my mouth, coagulating into a big ball of sticky mush that I was unable to chew. Dashing out of the tent for the Heimlich to remove that ball of mush would have been far more than I could handle at this point. I squirted water over it in an attempt to break it up, which was successful. I continued this a few times while drifting off to sleep, but I first took a moment to ponder the possibility that I would not wake up, which actually didn't sound too bad since waking would have to happen in a short three hours with the knowledge that I'd have get up to ride another lap. At least it might be light out at that time.

I did that next lap, and it was light. It was a surprisingly fast lap, the early morning sun simultaneouly warming me and the mountain. We were both steaming.

To this day, the desolate, desparate, and disoriented feeling I felt that night on "The Wall" returns to my gut every time I hear the song that the race promoters pumped over the sound system at the start of the race. It was the Black Eyed Peas, "Let's Get It Started," and it smacks of a WV moment I'll never forget, as much as I'd love to.

Git 'r Dun.