FITNESS CONFIDENTIAL (19 page)
Read FITNESS CONFIDENTIAL Online
Authors: Vinnie Tortorich,Dean Lorey
(Mile 251.7–325.3 / Total Elevation Gain: 24,670’)
While the crew checked me in, I ate some of the mozzarella sandwich and then greased the inside of my thighs with chamois cream to help prevent chafing. Some riders, at this point, like to change into a fresh pair of riding shorts because they think it helps them avoid blisters. My attitude is, if the first pair is working, I’m going to stick with them.
David walked up to me. “You’re in seventh place,” he said.
He probably thought I’d be upset by that, because earlier I’d been as high up as second, but I didn’t care. My only goal was to finish. Besides, seventh place was great. I was just glad to be on what I considered the “right” side of the Pass. Most of the pack were still either on it or dreading the thought of it. Some of them wouldn’t get to where I was standing until morning.
I climbed back on my bike and, with the van only a few feet behind me, left the little oasis town of Furnace Creek and headed into the long dark of the desert. For the next couple hours, my stomach felt solid and my legs were strong, considering they were nearing three hundred miles of straight pedaling.
Even though I felt good, it was like riding through a black abyss, which made everything more difficult. Even something as simple as controlling my speed was a challenge because I had no reference points. I could see only the road beneath my wheels, lit by the van behind me. Looking anywhere else was like looking into a dark curtain, featureless and dead.
And then, a breakthrough.
I began to be able to make out shapes. The spindly branches of the Joshua trees, the barrel cactus sticking out of the ground like fat fingers. Even the salt flats were beginning to shimmer. But it wasn’t sunrise, that was still hours away. I looked up to see that the storm had passed and the clouds had cleared, revealing a bright, full moon that lit up the desert.
I’ve always thought of Death Valley as one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It’s stark and vast and empty, like the ocean floor it once was. I’ve often wished that the 508 started in Death Valley, so I could ride through it during the day, but it was almost as spectacular at night. Just seeing it gave me a little boost.
I continued making my way through its alien landscape until the road swept left to reveal the foot of Jubilee Pass, the first of two climbs that provided our escape route out of the deep bowl of Death Valley. It rose over fifteen hundred feet above the desert floor.
I started up, followed closely by the van. I was doing okay until, suddenly, I felt the first pangs of the thing I dreaded most.
My stomach started to shut down.
It’s like this. When you’re racing for an extreme length of time, you get most of your fuel from the food you put into your body. If you stop eating, you run out, just like when a car runs out of gas. But even though I was only feeling mildly nauseated, I knew from experience that the feeling would increase ten-fold as soon as I started chewing. Even the concept of food was upsetting my stomach. It became impossible to even think about eating, much less eat, much less keep food down even if I could. But if I couldn’t eat, I was going to run out of gas, fast.
And that wasn’t the worst of it.
Even more important than eating is staying hydrated. If you fall behind on your calorie intake, you can sometimes fight back after you get some food into your stomach, but there’s no fighting back from dehydration. You’re done. Game over. It’s like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube.
Which is why I had to figure out a way to get some food and liquid into my body during the climb. Because chewing was a guaranteed route to puking, my only shot was to take in liquid nutrition by drinking a product called Pediasure, designed to give sick kids the nutrients they need during their illness. The problem is that it’s filled with sugar, which can shut you down on these long races—but I was out of options.
I drank some and it gave me the calorie boost I needed. Unfortunately, the sugar was causing my stomach to feel bloated, which made me feel like throwing up. I needed another plan, and fast. Even though we weren’t talking about it, it was hard to escape the fact that this was looking like Race Across Oregon all over again.
I pulled over and we decided that the best course of action was for me to take short breaks, two or three minutes at a stretch, to let my stomach settle enough so that I could try to eat some simple foods that would help soak up the acid and clear the nausea. Saltines, bread, accompanied by some water. This helped, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a long-term fix. With close to two-hundred miles left in the race, Band-Aids weren’t going to do the trick.
Steve, one of my other crew members, suggested I try an over-the-counter antacid that he happened to have on him. I was reluctant. One of the most basic rules of sporting events is that you never change anything on game day. If you haven’t tried it in practice, don’t do it during the game. That statement is never truer than in ultra sports. Because of the extremes of time and distance, everything becomes magnified. Even something as simple as trying new shoes or shorts is an almost incomprehensible gamble.
With that in mind, I decided to pass on the antacid. I wanted to try to get to the top of Jubilee climb, followed by the even more severe Salsberry climb, without taking such a huge risk. I figured that once I was out of Death Valley, we could reassess the situation.
Spitting up bile, I gutted my way to the top of Jubilee. After a brief downhill respite, I soldiered up Salsberry, which was almost another two-thousand feet of climbing.
Sometime after midnight, in the early morning hours, I crested the top of Salsberry and, looking down at the flickering yellow dots of the caution lights on the crew vans ahead of me, I began the welcome descent into the town of Shoshone. When I arrived at the checkpoint, I discovered that I had dropped from 7th to 13th place, but at least I was still in the game.
(Mile 325.3–381.6 / Total Elevation Gain: 26,856’)
3 a.m. Dead of night. The sun wasn’t coming up until six, which seemed like a year away. Those were the hardest hours, when exhaustion dragged at me like an anchor. Daylight seemed like a dream.
I was able to choke down some food in Shoshone and my stomach had settled a little, but eating was still a problem, as was drinking. In fact, at my pee stops, one of the crew members, usually David, would inspect my urine with a flashlight, studying its color and texture. Brown, foamy piss meant you were dehydrated, which is big time bad. Not to sound like a cheap beer ad, but mine was a nice amber with low foam, just what you want in a urine sample.
Since we’re on the subject, these stops took place alongside the road. The desert has a surprising lack of port-a-potties. You do what you have to do. There’s no room for modesty in ultra sports. Hell, the daughter of a good friend of mine, while crewing for her dad, had to pee out of the side of the van as it raced down the road. Usually, when I stopped to go to the bathroom, so would the rest of the crew. Serena called it “splashing my boots.”
It sounds better when you hear it in a British accent.
The biggest problem during these long, dark hours was the terrible need to sleep. I’d been awake nearly one full day. It began to feel like torture, like I was a prisoner of war and they were trying to break me down.
At times, I would be pedaling and suddenly hear the van’s horn and realize that I’d actually fallen asleep on the bike. My eyes would snap open and I’d see that I had nearly veered off the asphalt or into the oncoming lane. I sometimes tried to stay awake by aiming my bike toward the reflective lane dividers (otherwise known as “drunk bumps”) in the middle of the road. The jarring helped keep me awake but, as I grew more tired, they became blurry and then doubled in my vision and I had trouble even seeing them to hit them.
And falling asleep wasn’t just a problem for the riders. The crew struggled as well. They had been awake as long as I had and the monotony of following a cyclist, hour after endless hour, took its toll. Even though they took turns driving and napping, I still found myself nervous about them falling asleep at the wheel and running me down.
They were, after all, only ten feet behind.
Even though my stomach had settled a little, I still hadn’t eaten anywhere near enough calories and I was running on fumes. We tried to do a “sleep reset” where I pulled over, got into the van and slept for five minutes before being loudly shaken awake by the crew and hurried back onto my bike. In the past, this technique had helped reset my body’s internal clock, leaving me awake and refreshed, at least somewhat. But, after two tries, I realized it wasn’t working. Not only that, my stomach was growing worse by the minute.
It was time for drastic measures. If things didn’t change quickly, I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my eyes open or swallow any food or drink and the race would be over. Out of desperation, I decided to try two things.
First, I agreed to take some antacid to settle my stomach, even though trying an untested medication during a race went against the most fundamental rule followed by ultra athletes everywhere.
Second, I agreed to take a twenty-minute nap in the van, which meant that I would wake at sunup. The hope was that the small amount of sleep, followed by daylight, would finally reset my body’s internal clock.
With serious reservations but seeing no alternative, I took the antacid, climbed into the van and went to sleep. During the thirty minutes I was unconscious, David and the rest of the crew watched in despair as other cyclists ambled past, putting me farther and farther behind.
Thirty minutes later, I woke to find that my stomach was, amazingly, calm and, although still exhausted, I felt like I could keep my eyes open. I began riding again.
It was day two.
With the morning sun warming my face, I pedaled the ten miles to my next checkpoint in Baker. I was hurting bad, but compared to what I had been feeling, bad was an improvement. As I rode, I belched several times which opened up my stomach, releasing the bloat. Things were moving around down there again and, for the first time since Trona, I experienced a welcome feeling.
Hunger. I was starving.
Up ahead, I could see what’s billed as “the world’s biggest thermometer” rising into the air above the town of Baker. It would be hot by afternoon but, at dawn, it was still cool and pleasant. The thermometer wasn’t my destination, however, world’s biggest or not. I needed to eat and there was only one game in town.
The Mad Greek.
(Mile 381.6–416.5 / Total Elevation Gain: 29,776’)
I think I know what the Mad Greek is so mad about.
He must have woken up one morning, hung over from ouzo, and said to himself, “Why the hell did I build a Greek restaurant out in the middle of the desert?” Because of its proximity to Vegas, the only explanation for the existence of the Mad Greek is that the poor son of a bitch who owns it lost a bet. The faded sign on top promises “something for everybody,” and it’s not lying, as long as the “something” you want is a gyro, and the “everybody” who wants it has no problem eating in an outdoor dining area that looks like the love child of McDonald’s and the Parthenon.
I rolled up to the mini-me statue of David in the parking lot, leaned my bike against his junk, then walked inside and up to the clerk where I mumbled, “Double cheeseburger and a shake. Don’t worry, somebody will pay you, okay?”
He stared at my salt-crusted, gaunt face and nodded.
I shuffled to the nearest booth, dropped in and waited. Within minutes, Serena entered, clearly concerned. I could see she thought I’d given up.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Pretty beat up.”
“You want to take your shoes off for a minute?”
I shook my head. “I’m scared if I take them off, my feet will swell and I’ll never get them back on. Go take care of yourself. Get some food. I got some coming.”
She kissed me on the cheek, licked the salt from her lips and, smiling, said, “You taste like a potato chip.” Then she headed to the counter as David and Steve walked in the front door. Steve, being a rookie and not quite knowing what to say, busied himself by heading to the bathroom while David came over to me.
“You good?” he asked.
I nodded. “I’m gonna finish.”
He smiled. “That’s what I wanted to hear. You know you still have another twenty-four hours to do this thing. We’re all prepared to stay another night if we have to.”
“How’s Serena holding up?” I asked.
He shrugged. “She hates to see you in pain.”
I knew what he was talking about because I often crewed for him with his wife, Susan, during his races. There was no shortage of tears when things got rough, and they always did.
“You know, David,” I said, “we won’t need the whole twenty-four hours. I’ll get us to the finish before sunset.”
“That’s a good goal to have,” he replied. “It’s just not a bad idea to have a back-up plan.”
“We won’t need one. I’ve got demons chasing me. I gotta finish. This ain’t Race Across Oregon. I’m not leaving this course alive.”
He stared at me a long time.
Just then, my double cheeseburger showed up, along with a strawberry shake that had a straw and umbrella in it. Adorable. We both looked at each other and started laughing. I picked up the burger and took a bite. It was so damn good I made it disappear faster than an eight-ball at Charlie Sheen’s house. It was maybe the best thing I’d ever tasted.
And don’t even get me started on the shake …
After we’d all eaten, I went outside and pulled my bike off the statue of David. What was an Italian statue doing outside a Greek diner, anyway? Then I pedaled back onto the course. Daytime rules meant the van didn’t have to be tethered to me any more, so they left me on my own while they refueled.
The climb out of Baker was twenty-two miles and, although it wasn’t steep, it was long and I knew it was going to be tough to do on tired legs. But there was some good news. I’d finally been able to hydrate and replenish my calories.
The road to Kelso, which rose a hundred feet every mile, was made interminably worse by the fact that it took place on one of the crappiest roads in America. If there was an award for cracked asphalt, this at least deserved honorable mention. Any part of my body that didn’t already hurt started hurting now. Every fiber of my being ached.
As I gutted my way up that endless hill, I found myself flashing back to my time in the chemo ward at Cedars. The nurses who’d put in my PICC line. The other patients sitting in their recliners, faces gray and gaunt, hooked up to their IV’s. Hairless. How many of them were still there, getting their treatments, I wondered.
How many of them were still alive?
Truth is I didn’t get to know any of those people. Even so, they were still with me and, somehow, they spurred me on. I remembered my grandmother retching in her bed, agonized. There was no way the nausea I had suffered the previous night could come close to equaling what she went through. And yet, there on that long hill, I found myself pulling strength from her pain. From all of their pains.
Me finishing this race wasn’t going to miraculously make any of them better. Truth is, I wasn’t doing it for them. I was doing it for myself, to prove that I could. I’d been lucky to survive the cancer, that’s all. Even though my finishing the race wasn’t going to help them, I felt like I had to at least honor them by trying to do my absolute best with the break I’d been given.
Soon, the twenty-two mile climb was behind me and I found myself racing down the backside into Kelso.
Stage six was complete. Only two more stages left to go. That meant nothing, of course. As every racer knows, it ain’t over until you’re in the house.