Desperado Dual 2010: The Short and Long of It, Part II

A note from J.B: Sorry for not following up yesterday. I didn't feel like writing. Anywho, the saga continues, and ends.

When Warren, Anthony, Taylor and I did this ride last year, we made a few critical mistakes, one of which was taking WAY too long of a break at the Merc, the location of the rest stop in Antimony. We pulled up some chairs and must have sat there for a half hour just talking and hanging out, as if we had all day to finish this thing. Well, once we got on our bikes again, our butts were sore, our legs were no longer working and we still had a good 50 miles ahead of us, each and every one of which would be absolute HELL. It was at this point last year where I got mad at the Desperado Dual.

It was in March or April of this year when I was starting to find some sort of form on the bike and decided that last year's pain and anguish must have been a fluke, and that not only did I want to improve on my time, but I wanted to, in the words of Bob Roll, "Cut this race open and feast on its heart." With that, I put my pink ipod shuffle on "Ridin' Solo" and the four of us headed out.

To get to the next rest station, which was in Circleville, we would head north and west, passing Otter Creek Reservoir. Then we entered a deep, rolling canyon that follows the Sevier River until hitting the 89 and going South for a few miles before entering Circleville. It was heading down this canyon that we first encountered the ferocious headwind that would stay with us for the rest of the race last year. This year, there was only a mild breeze for the Chasqui train to cut through. It was also cool to have Chasqui Cash and Sam following along in Chasqui 1 and leap-frogging us all the way to Circleville with shouts of encouragement. While en route, we caught up to an older guy that rode with a rear-view mirror on his left drop bar and a cocked left foot (a la Chris Horner). He was really moving, so we tucked in behind him for a few miles. Once he had looked at me about 18 times in his rear-view, I started to feel a bit awkward, so Taylor and I pulled in front of him to give him a bit of a rest. Eventually, he dropped off the back but caught up to us at the Circleville rest station, where we thanked him for riding with us and he reciprocated. Cool exchange.

This is where things got gnarly. When we arrived at the Circleville exchange, we were about 4 hours 55 minutes into the ride. We hung out for probably about 8 minutes and then realized Chasqui Warren was gone. He was nowhere to be seen, so we figured he had taken off and we had better catch him. There were about 28 miles between Circleville and Panguitch, and despite talking about staying together to pace each other, a fierce and unrelenting headwind decimated our group within the first 8 miles. Some of us still had legs to keep going, others had spent everything in an effort to get us to where we were.

Taylor still had some motor left in him to keep going, so he dropped Nick and I, passed Warren up in the distance and just kept going. Since I was fading fast, Nick was the next one to take off, and he was able to catch up with Warren and they were able to work together for a few miles, until something that was eventually bound to happen to one of us, finally happened.

Nick was drafting off of Warren and was right on his rear wheel. Warren stood up to get out of the saddle, and naturally, his bike shifted backward. Wheels overlapped and Nick went down. Sure, this was a bummer, but as I said before, it was going to happen sometime. In this case, we need to be grateful for three things:

• There was a headwind and they were on a slight incline, so speeds were low.
• Nick fell into a traffic lane on High way 89; we are lucky no cars we coming.
• Most importantly, while Nick suffered a little road rash, his Chasqui kit went unscathed.
  

I was a good hundred yards back, so I only saw Nick go down, get back up and then take off in what I can only assume was a fit of blind fury. I didn't see him again until the finish line.

As for me, I was both mentally and physically D-O-N-E. I can only assume that Warren found himself in a similar spot of bother after his massive effort to catch up with us earlier that morning. He made frequent stops to get off the bike, get blood flowing and regroup, so eventually I caught up with him for a few seconds, then lost contact with about 10 miles ago. He would stay a few minutes ahead of me the rest of the way.

Once I hit the 100-mile mark, the question that kept repeating itself in my head shifted from, "Can you really finish this thing?" to "When you do finish this thing, what is going to happen to you?" I was fully anticipating either a puke or a faint or a combination of the two.

I kept looking at my Garmin 605 as my speed ranged between 8 and 13 mph. "I will NOT stay on this bike for another hour just to finish the last eight miles of this race." And so I kept going, and I finished. If you'll remember, it took us 4:55 to get to Circleville (mile 80). The final 26 miles took me almost 3 hours to finish. It didn't seem quite that long, but that's what the watch is telling me.

Nonetheless, we finished. I didn't faint. I didn't puke, but have not been so close to doing both in quite some time.

Team Chasqui official elapsed times:

Taylor: 7:15:35
Nick: +21:03
Warren:+26:05
Jordan:+ 28:32