El Tour de Tucson is an annual 109-mile road race that circumnavigates the city, with a couple of quarter-mile dry river crossings thrown in just for fun. The goal of many riders is to break the “five hour” barrier (six hours for girls); those who do are awarded “platinum” status which allows a rider to start in the front section of the pack for three subsequent years. This year over 3600 riders finished the race; the winning time was 4 hours 17 minutes, a little faster than last year.
Team Sub5 is now at the end of its fourth season and once again we trained hard all through the summer and fall for this race; it’s the high point of our year after the Spring challenge at Breathless Agony. Last year there were nineteen riders in the squad, thirteen of whom achieved a platinum time; this year we were 20 strong, with 13 of our alums back for another year and seven rookies. We were in great shape and hopes were high for a good result.
Five of us had raced at the 12 Hours of Temecula endurance MTB race the previous weekend and we had taken special care to pamper our legs in the week running up to Tucson; it sucks to get old, recovery becomes much harder and slower than it once was!
We have a couple of rituals that we go through on the day before the race; in the morning we ride to the first river crossing to check out the conditions in the wash, this year it was the best ever, the kerbs at the entry had been “ramped” so we could ride over them and the dirt had been packed and graded so the entire crossing was rideable. This easily buys at least two minutes compared to the “cattle crossing” that it has been in years past!
After lunch we drove out to the second river crossing which was also in pretty good shape but littered with goat heads – care would be needed here. The first part of the wash is a nice dirt road; however, it deteriorated later into a sandy, thorny mess.
The final ritual is the team dinner where we carbo-load unashamedly! This year Caruso’s Italian Restaurant took care of our needs.
The highlight of the dinner was the presentation of the well deserved “coaches gift”; Perry & Ginger seem to approve:
After dinner we attended a pre-race advisory meeting where the much sought-after platinum passes were distributed allowing access to the front paddock at the start line. A rider with such a pass can sleep late and show up at the paddock whenever they feel like it; for everybody else (~4000 riders) your place in the line-up depends on how early you get there. The keenest riders show up before 4:00am…
And so to bed for an early night.
I rarely sleep well the night before a race and this time was no exception, when I did sleep I dreamed about a weird set of circumstances that led to me missing the start of the race! I was rooming with Tim D and we rose at 4:55am before the alarm even went off. Over the years we have polished our pre-race prep to a fine, shiny thing and we set to it; a rinse in the shower, a very light breakfast of coffee and half a bagel, then the most important and useful part, a 15-minute static trainer warm up. Why is that important? The initial seven miles of the race is a max-HR test all the way to the first river crossing; cold muscles can cramp and tear under these circumstances. Just fifteen minutes of spin, even 90 minutes prior, gets the blood flowing and the muscles into shape. On the way down to the hotel lobby I remembered that I had not inflated my tires, I had to run back up and get it done quickly, with a weird feeling of déjà vu…
At 6am we met up and caravanned over to the platinum pen at the start line. Our gold riders had been there since 4:15am (!) bundled up in warm clothes in a prime spot at the front of their group; this paid huge dividends for them because at 6:50 the race organizers moved the barriers and allowed the golds to fill up the space in the platinum pen, so we all started the race together.
4:30am: Gold Riders Bob & Cynthia Try to Keep Warm:
Ready to Rock’n’Roll, Sub5 Riders Mike K, Cynthia, Lori, Ryan, Jon & Bob in the lineup:
After the national anthem and the race dedication it was time to clip in and get to it! Adrenaline was pumping, heart rates were rising, riders were checking their bikes one last time and BANG!! Over on the other side of the grid a tire exploded! Sounded like a gunshot… After we settled back down the countdown started, the horn sounded and the race was on! There were two corners to negotiate in the first quarter mile and both of them made me very nervous; the pack had not had time to sort itself into speed/ability groups and you had no clue what the riders around you were going to do; water bottles were flying across the road (why does that always happen?), riders were colliding and sometimes crashing, the whole thing was a mess until we completed the turn onto the southbound I-10 frontage road and the course straightened out for a couple miles; this is where racers put the hammer down and the sorting process began in earnest. I knew that our elite rider Brent was ahead somewhere and when I risked a quick look over my shoulder I could see Perry too; it turned out that several other Sub5 riders had also made the jump at the start and were lined up behind Perry. We roared south down Mission Blvd at over 30 mph, covering the 7.75 miles to the first river transition in just 18 minutes. The peloton ebbed and flowed as crashes occurred, bikes and riders strewn across the pavement but none of it mattered as long as it was behind you!
Unfortunately two of our riders went down in this section; Dom pulled his cleat out of his pedal and couldn’t recover from the resulting imbalance, Mike K hit a loose water bottle at the wrong angle and also crashed. They both broke a collarbone and Mike also bumped his head pretty good. Both riders were treated and released from hospital before dinner that day; we wish them fast healing and good drugs J
I made a tactical error at the entry to the wash, I was not aggressive enough in getting past the lollygaggers; by the time I got to the other side the lead pack was ~50 meters ahead and had taken off on a mission! I tried to bridge for a couple miles but in the end I was risking a blowup so I sat up and waited for another pack to catch me. Scott raced ahead to try and catch them but he also had to give up and wait. Brent’s hard work at the beginning got him into that front group and we didn’t see him again until the finish line.
As we swung south onto Nogales Highway the pack settled down into a steady pace and riders took the opportunity to eat and drink, feeding the machine; it’s important to do this at regular intervals to keep energy levels high for the surges to come! One such surge is very predictable, it happens on the transition from Nogales to the airport area, a hard left turn across railroad tracks and a rapid narrowing of the road; the pace increased noticeably and hard decisions had to be made, to hang or to drop. Well, we all hung and I saw Perry, Jon, Ryan, Scott and others in the pack. There was no need for us to group up yet, that would have given the pack expectations that we were going to do some work J so we spread ourselves around and hooked up onesy-twosy to compare notes. Everyone was feeling good so we settled into the pack dynamic and kept our eyes open and our brains in gear.
After an hour of racing we had covered 23 miles and were four minutes behind the leaders; this was good and predicted a finish for our group ~20 minutes behind the winner.
As we crossed I-19 and swung north onto Kolb road the pace picked up once again to a steady 30 mph; I was expecting an attack from the pack leaders at any moment and, after being dropped at this point last year, I was paying special attention! However, this year the pack showed amazing civility and rode a steady tempo down the wide boulevard, with everyone sitting in and comfortable. This continued until mile marker 38 when guys started jockeying for position, anticipating the bottleneck to come at the second river crossing ahead! Things got silly on the outside of the pack so I retreated to the relative safety of the kerb and tried to move up anonymously, one rider at a time. I got a lucky break at a left turn at mile 40 when the inside riders got hung up on each other and had to slow down, I made about 50 places by taking a wide line and avoiding the mess so when we hit the transition to the wash I was only 15 riders from the front. You can see me in this photo taken just before the crossing, I’m on the left of the pic with red arm warmers:
We hit the wash at one hour fifty nine minutes, giving us a speed average of 25mph for the second hour of racing.
Nobody was able to ride the entire wash, the sand was deep and dusty; even the pros had to dismount and run:
The whole thing was a mess, guys falling over and causing others to fall over them; I got off my bike and booked it on foot to the other side. I checked my tires for thorns, remounted and hammered to our team sag about a half mile further on; Beth and the crew were ready and waiting and had me back on the road with fresh bottles in less than 15 seconds! Thanks girls! J
A Quick Sag Stop:
Nobody behind me…
Back on the road I was by myself so after dealing with “Snyder Pass” I settled into a comfortable solo tempo and waited; soon enough the train came thundering by and I hopped a ride in mid pack! The third section of the race is fairly hilly with 1200ft of climbing, which dropped our pace a little to 22mph; we kept a steady pace on the climbs and slowly the front riders inched away from the main pack. I didn’t even realize this was happening until we reached the long descent at Tangerine road, I looked back and everyone was gone! So a small group of riders made our way lazily down the hill, fueling and relaxing a little in anticipation of the final southbound hammerfest into the finish. Familiar landmarks rolled by: the cement factory with the “gotcha” railroad tracks, Avra Valley with its little gutcheck hill, Silverbell Avenue which indicates 15 miles to go…
A tap on my shoulder and there was Tim D, Mark and Scott, their group had chased us down finally! We settled into what felt like a fairly mellow pace, nobody wanted to push it until one guy got fed up and took off from halfway down the pack, we all increased speed to reel him in and then settled into the faster pace, rotating every minute or so.
Ten miles to go and the pace was falling off once again; the last section of the ride is a gradual ascent and tired legs were unwilling to work any harder. I had been doing some mental arithmetic and figured that we could finish in less than 4:40, but not at this pace! I talked to Scott and Mark, they were whipped from the chase and weren’t interested in anything other than sitting in; Tim was further back in the pack, he had legs but I couldn’t find him; sorry Tim!… At 100 miles my patience snapped and I attacked, putting a huge effort into gapping the field, hoping that this would make them chase me down! It didn’t work quite the way I intended…. I heard huffing and puffing behind me and another guy gasped “we gapped ‘em, lets go!”; I looked around and he was the only one, the rest of the group was disappearing behind us.
Here’s a shot of my data from the last part of the race:
Red = heart rate
Blue = speed
Brown = elevation
You can see the HR spikes where I was working the front of the group (ringed in red) but notice that when I’m sitting in my HR was firmly in the green (tempo) zone; after the attack I’m pretty much stuck in the yellow (VO2max) zone all the way to the end. After a few minutes four other riders made the bridge and we swept up a guy ahead, so seven of us rode the last five miles of the race together, with me watching the clock, desperately chasing that elusive four-thirty-something finish time. As we made the turn onto Congress St and the final quarter mile the clock ticked over to 4:40 and my race was over; I let the other six guys sprint into the finish a couple seconds ahead of me and stopped the clock at 4:40:42, a new PR.
The Finish Line, a Welcome Sight!:
The old mantra for El Tour is “Never pull!”; however, imho this needs to be modified to “Never pull unless it buys you something!”. What it bought me was an unexpected top-200 finish, something that has been a stretch goal for years.
I was wiped out, completely drained by the effort of the final few miles but with the satisfaction of knowing that I gave everything I had and could not have done any better. A local photographer snapped a picture of me immediately after the finish, I’m stoked but hurting:
And yes, my sponsors have already talked to me about zipping up my jersey :-)
After this I waited at the rails of the finishing chute to welcome back the others; Mark, Scott and Tim D were around a minute behind me, fifteen minutes ahead of their previous PR; Perry came in a few minutes later, and Troy, then the really good news started: Timmy came through with a grin so wide I thought his face was going to crack J Shortly after came Jon, claiming platinum at his first attempt! The clock ticked down to 5:00 hours elapsed and there was DJ in the chute, 4:59:12!! Way to go DJ!
Cynthia arrived at 5:17, also claiming platinum at her first attempt! Nice…
Team Sub5 at the Finish Line:
Andy, Perry, DJ, Timmy, Ryan, Mike H, (Sandra), Tim, Scott, Mark, Troy, Rob, Jon.
Brent was the fastest Sub5 rider ever, finishing in an awesome 4:31! Brent… dude!
New Platinum Sub5-ers Brent, (sandbagger Troy :-), Timmy and Jon Showing Off Their Medals:
Dom was at the finish line, back from the hospital with his arm in a sling and dressings on his sutures and road rash; he was in good spirits and very philosophical about his crash.
We waited by the chute until all of our riders were back, then went to shower, nap and prepare for our victory dinner.
I want to congratulate the entire team for their efforts throughout the 2009 Sub5 program, particularly coaches Perry & Ginger for their endless enthusiasm and encouragement.
Special thanks also to Beth for marshaling an awesome sag J
I get more stoked about the Sub5 program every year; new friends, old friends, good times!
Oh yeah, one last thing:
Ride on!
Andy
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