West Texas Showdown Recap

Punch line: I scratched after about 13 hours of racing, in 8th position, 2.5 hours ahead of schedule despite a 45-minute trailside attempt at repairing my front brake, which I had been finicky with since about mile 20. Six other riders had stopped at a motel in town, but I was planning to swallow the next 40–80 miles of paved road through the night. I knew my Donkey and big gears had a more than unfair advantage then.

A few weeks ago, I had decided to attempt an Ultra to hang with my good friend Magnus, to learn about myself, my demons, and refine my resilience mechanisms. I thought a 300-mile event would be a good start. I had to cancel Central Texas Showdown in October because of work. West Texas Showdown a month later looked possible, but it almost came undone when I realized that the WTS had sections of harshness similar to those of White Rim, my only bikepacking experience so far. The organizer of WTS even told us to leave our gravel bikes at home. YouTube videos were similarly discouraging of drop bar rigid steeds. I guess he just didn’t know how versatile a Donkey is. Even with those warnings, I still felt well prepared for these conditions on my chosen bike. I had ridden consistently all year, had a great time in the Dolomites, and really wanted to test my mental strength.

Work, as had been a trend, had gotten in the way of having adventures like this. Preparing the house for my daughter’s arrival is front and center as well. But adventure also called: I had to do this for myself, but also to hang out with Magnus, whom I race with every year and hadn’t seen in a year or so. The schedule was tight, but I had to make it happen; fail or succeed, it’s a race to (re)define my identity and newfound agency.

I had a solid plan, bike setup, race plan, and nutrition, but the four weeks leading up to the race were hectic. Work had been a bundle of nonsense, weather had gotten very cold, making every mile of training excruciating. Squash season resumed, and our roster is so short that I felt compelled to play, although not wanting to. Social life had been busy: birthday parties, farewell parties, a couple of hangovers. Not the best setup, but I still felt strong and determined. On the bright side, Stephen at Rodeo was in my inbox, reassuring, sharing tips, and encouraging. Reigna was totally supportive of me fitting in this adventure as well.

Wednesday, with the start three days away, I land in San Antonio at Magnus’ house with a fever and a cold. I my health and sleep tracking told me that I have a body battery of 45 (against a solid 100 most days); my baseline resting heart rate is 30 bpm higher than what it usually is. I put the bike together. There were some issues with the rear brake on the shakeout ride (it needed a bleed), and I had to swap tires for the 2.25 Ricks and my 44 chainring for a 40. I was also super stressed because my flight schedule only gave me a maximum of 36–40 hours to finish the race and catch the flight home to Boston.

Thursday: The local bike shop accommodated all of that… except the chainring. I had packed the wrong one. Turns out you can’t fit a 104 BCD ring on a 110 BCD spider. Seven bike stores later: No luck. I ordered from Amazon next-day delivery, hoping it would deliver before 11 am, the time we had to leave for the start in Big Bend, a seven-hour drive away.

Back home—load the bike—and off we go on a test ride. I’m still bursting with fever, popping Tylenol cold and flu like candy. My body battery is at 5 (the lowest it can get). We roll in the night for a 20-mile ride, and two miles from home, I crash at 20 mph, leaving my left side badly scraped. Work is crazy, but I’m “supposedly” off. I still manage to clock full 8-hour remote workdays.

Things twirl in my head: I am sick, I have gear issues, it’s a seven-hour drive. What’s the point of going? But every time a voice in my head says you’ve made it this far, take it day by day. What if you feel better tomorrow? You’ll never forgive yourself for bailing without trying. You have a strategy, legs, an exit plan, and a friend ready to get you and drive you back—when have you had that much safety net in your life?

Friday morning, still feeling sick, but here we go. We drive to make it on time for the pre-race meeting without the chainrings. Patrick, the race director, raised my anxiety to the next level: it’s overgrown, looser, and more washboard than ever. Rattlesnakes and bears have been spotted, and it’s hot. The desert never forgives the unprepared.

Saturday rolls around. I am laying in bed and feel like I really don’t want to do this thing. My body battery is an all-time 44 low, all the signs are telling me it’s going to be bad, and here we are. Neutral rollout, eight miles of paved road until the singletrack trails. My throat is sore and hoarse despite the cool air; I sweat like it’s 100 degrees, and my HR is already bursting at 160 bpm. I am thinking to myself, there’s no way I enter the park. Let’s make it a 20-mile ride, turn around at the entrance of the park, and go hike for the day with Magnus. Then on a long downhill, my TrailDonkey flies, big gears at work, slowly catching up with the pack as we enter the singletrack trails. I calm down and tingle with excitement—let the fun begin! Hell yeah! I’ll at least make it to the aid station.

The terrain ahead is hard, but I happily keep up with mountain bikers. I lose some time on a navigation error trying to roll on a very loose Arroyo, but finally, back on solid ground, here I am. My HR is still bursting in the 160s, but my lungs and legs still feel as if I am in a Z2 situation. All of those contradicting sensations and data points are very hard to reconcile. It’s blazing hot. The overgrown thorns go after my scraped lower leg like a thousand paper cuts, and it hurts. The colloidal on my upper leg slips, and my bib rubs the scrape for a few miles until it gets numb. Big gear now. I walk more than I want to, but I also save energy and do not have to test my handling skills as much. I am nervous because we’re in 60 miles of dead zone. I spot (and stop for pics) a tarantula on the trail. All I can do is keep trucking along. I feel good. I cry at the unforgiving landscape, liberated that I’ve made it this far, at the idea that my daughter to be born has a relentless dad that beat the craziest odds to be at the start of that race, that I have the support of my lovely wife to test myself in that endeavor. I also marvel at the information I collect—about how I face this hardship and how to use it in real life. This race is against myself, not the other riders, or so I choose to believe, I know.

I pick up a rider here and there, and as we get to the double track, my heart is still bursting to the seams. Still, I can open up the pace a bit, picking off some heavily loaded mountain bikers on the climbs. My Donkey does feel like a great choice at this point. And then my front brake gets finicky; the piston won’t release. I am praying that the aid station (situated at the intersection of the two difficult loops) that I reach an hour ahead of schedule has some tool I can use. As I roll in, I gobble a Coke, a seltzer, two bananas, and half a burrito that overheated in my cargo pocket. A volunteer looks at my brake: No dice, no bleeding kit. It turns out my Zeno connector came loose and I’m leaking oil. I’ll have to finish without a front brake.

We’re at mile 40 with 260 to go. I feel I can manage double track and paved road, but there is no way I can finish the final loop of singletrack trails in the park I came from safely. I had promised Rei I wouldn’t be reckless. The plan becomes to go as far as I can push, learn, and see. My first “pre-planned” exit point is in a town called Marfa, 80 miles away. So many thoughts run through my head. I could take a loop doubling back to Terlingua as well, about 80 miles ride total, good enough of a ride, but no, I’ll keep rolling and learn. Another small issue: the zip ties came undone, and my tracker went flying while cruising downhill. Emergency stop on one brake. I hike up, find the tracker, dug up zip ties at the bottom of my saddle bag—another 15 minutes lost.

Meanwhile, I am happy with my nutrition discipline of 50g of carbs every 45 minutes. I gobble Tylenol every 2–3 hours, hoping it helps keep my heart stable at a staggering 155–165 bpm. Any Snickers I had has completely melted at this point. The first solid food option is in Marfa, 80 miles away. I am dying for a hot dog. The spring-mix oats help calm my stomach cramps; I gobble two in an hour and keep trucking. The sun is slowly arching down.

I start leg cramping on climbs. My mind is going in weird places: What were you thinking? You brought too big of gears. You have a cold. Why are you doing this? It’s dumb, you’re not made for this stuff. You’re a failure.

Then it dawned on me that I may just be dehydrated. It’s hot, it’s dry, and my blue kit has salty white streaks all over. I had been stingy with water, and didn’t bother to stop for the water cache at mile 60, knowing there was one at mile 80. I decided to drink up one of my safety bottles and perhaps a third of my 3L bladder. My lower back hurts, so I lower my seat by a few mm. I immediately feel better and keep cruising. More dirt, more fences, cow poop, cattle passageways, washboard, loose, very loose sand where I can spot the paces of riders ahead of me. I keep up with the plan: power, cadence, pace. HR is still 10–20 bpm above what it should. I blame the cold and fever, in hindsight the heat and altitude had probably something to do with it; I live at sea level, and here in the race, we are oscillating between 800 and 1400 meters.

Still, I am anxious about the cramps and the high HR, making the end, making my flight, more negative thoughts about my ability. And then I have a resurgence: “Dummy, you’re here! You had planned for 2–3 scenarios. All the parameters of one and some are met, then I call it what it is: I can’t finish this race. I must action the exit point at Marfa, km 190. I am about 2–3 hours away. I am back in cell range, surprisingly in 9th position, with a handful of riders a few miles ahead of me. Twenty miles to the paved road for another 80 miles where I know I have an edge. I want to pass Marfa and continue so bad, but I still message Magnus to tell him I activate the exit point to meet in Marfa if he can. I tell Rei about the mechanical and that I activate the exit point. She’s proud of me and had been religiously following my dot; it warms my heart. Scratching feels like a win, yet I am craving to finish this—I am still a competitor at heart. Is a broken front brake good enough of a reason, or am I finding excuses? Twenty miles until the paved road arrives. The sun sets, the temp cools off, and suddenly my HR finally drops. 180W – 85–90 Cadence, 125–135 bpm. After nine hours, the plan all along is finally in reach. I go back in time—maybe I am ok, maybe I was just too hot. I stop at the next water cache right where the paved road starts. A volunteer on a dirt bike (checking on water supply) who had passed me some time ago lets me know that I have five riders in range and that they looked a lot more beat up than I do, so that cheers me up.

I gobble half a liter of clean water (that felt so good—at this point my body can’t take any more sugar!). Then I struggle to finish a Snickers that I leave there for the ants to go after. My cargo pockets are burly full of empty, sticky carb fuel gel packets. I toss them in a doggy poop bag in my frame bag, then resupply my back pockets, fill up all my waters, and enter TT mode. Magnus called. He finished his hike and will meet me in Marfa for pickup. At this point, I feel like a cheater. Is Magnus’ ride support, or is it the same as scratching and waiting two hours for the race pick up at the extraction point? It’s definitely helping mentally, marginally, or so I think—but everyone is given an exit strategy; mine is just better. So, let’s go! 40 miles, uphill low gradient. My body finally churns: pace, power, cadence, HR, swallowing the miles of asphalt. Then I realize, at the uncharacteristic low hum of my tires, that they rub slightly on the frame. My rear wheel is totally out of true. A roadside repair stop: “Gasp!” My custom paint is rubbed a bit but hasn’t eaten at the frame yet. I mend it just enough to keep going safely, but think, another reason not to enter the closing 40 miles of single trail again. Another thing in the way of me finishing this dang race. I finally turn my headlight on and keep going. Soon I see tail lights in the distance. I don’t succumb to the pull to push to chase pace—I’ll get them when I get them.

And I do: One rider, two riders. More blinking tail lights in the distance which turned to be cell towers, to my biggest disappointment. I keep pace with nutrition, turn right, and enter the State highway. Lots of big trucks, six miles to US Border Patrol. I queue behind an RV that took forever to be inspected. Thank God, an officer looking like half my age and probably used to seeing a few ragged riders at this point, doesn’t make me dig up for my green card. He waves me off with a “cool bike man.”

I thought of Stephen, the story behind the paint design, and had an internal smile. Four miles to Marfa. I got a text: Magnus is there waiting. I see and catch another rider in the distance. Despite all the issues, I am 2.5 hours ahead of my initial race plan. I am in the top 8. Six riders have stopped in town in a motel; he saw them all pull over. He looks at me and asks four times: “Are you sure you want to stop? You look great.” I did feel great. I am torn. How about I ride another 80–100 miles in the night and exit the race in 2nd position? The temptation is high, and then I think about Rei, about the learnings. Another 100 miles are not going to change what I had overcome, are not going to change that I can’t risk to finish on a bad wheel and a rear brake only (deep inside my heart I question, what would Stephen do… wheelie ’til the finish line, probably?). I decide not to look at the leaderboard any more.

I decide to come to term with the bigger reality: I have a house to prep for our daughter’s arrival, seven hours to drive, a flight to catch, an opportunity to hang out another day with a dearest friend, give myself (or so I thought) a good night sleep, a dinner at home with Claudia. I had a chance not to pack in a hurry, to get my bike safe home. I didn’t finish, I didn’t win, but I achieved all my goals and feel stronger for it. I know I’ll be back stronger and better prepared. Despite ambitious goals and preparation, sometimes circumstances are against you. Then you go at it. If you can’t beat it, you learn to recognize when forces are greater than you. Use what you learn to beat those circumstances the next time around. I am certainly getting old, about to be a father, not sure how many times around there are ahead of me, but I’ll surely be intentional at making them count. Meanwhile, I am packing this growth back to Freezing Boston, to real life, and to whatever work nonsense is ahead of me.