We woke up 45 minutes before the 6 am start and ate as much as our nervous stomachs allowed before saying bye to Andre and hopping on our bikes to the start line. We said hey to the couple people we knew, wished Luke well in his race for the front, and checked out the other racers. Who would we never see again? Who would be our rivals? Who looked wayyyyy in over their head? We laughed at our inexperience but kind of knew we’d at least prepared mentally better than most.
Heads up to anyone starting the Trans Am: one of your toughest obstacles will be the ramp coming out of the Maritime Museum parking lot. Watch the video of the start and watch 131 riders suffer an unexpected slope in the wrong gear. Amy’s race came to a grinding halt 30 feet into it when her bike fell over, but others suffered even worse and hit the deck themselves. I believe 131 riders emerged, but I would have understood if some decided the indignity was too much to continue. It was hilarious and embarrassing for everyone, and thank god it’s on film (link below).
We emerged from the lump at the back of the bunch, and I suppose it was a good boost to be able to pedal past a bunch of people while we worked our way into the front. Nathan facilitated the neutral start through town until one rider decided the time trial had begun, and jumped off the front in full sprint/full aero intent on finishing their ride that day and never seeing anyone again. No worries, I would see Rob English again both on the climb up McKenzie and again after he called his race in Darby, Montana due to knee pain. As one rider pointed out, Rob is a strong AF rider who will be a force to be reckoned with once he gets the endurance thing figured out.
As the neutral start faded (never quite sure when it was over), the group in front of me started to disperse and I focused on trying to settle into my pace, whatever the fuck that was, and finding a crew to help keep it. I wanted to stay conversational and keep my heart rate super low, but, without a power meter or heart rate monitor, this was all done by feel.
As we worked our way to the coast, I seemed to be surrounded by club riders and old guys, and worried that I was way too far back already. Where were the racers like Evan Deutsch, Janie Hayes, and Luke Kocher? The image of Rob riding off the front stuck with me and I felt like a whole host of people were already riding away (this was not the reality, I would find). I figured I should keep my eye on known contenders like to get a feel for where I should be. But I reminded myself it was a long race and I didn’t need to go hard to try and ride with glory for a day. Anyway, I’d later find out that some of those guys were behind me, so I was actually doing far better than I thought.
In the build up to the race, people would often ask Amy and I if we would be racing together. We would say yes, we would both be racing, but we certainly weren’t intending to race together. We were absolutely competing against each other. We both expected that the last time we saw each other on day 1 would be the last time we saw each other until Yorktown, and that was how we wanted it. From our previous year of riding, it wasn’t really clear who would be faster over this distance. My average speed is faster, but Amy is super consistent, rarely bonks (unlike me), and never gets off the bike, so we would often end up with a similar time on super long days.
A couple riders ahead of me, she ripped through the first ten miles at a super fast clip looking really strong, and I wondered if I would be the one to get dropped. But, after a couple miles of riding close by, I started to pull away as we hit the rollers on the way to the coast. We never said goodbye, and I’d next see her pulling up to the Yorktown Monument with Anton Lindberg three weeks later.
Cruising up a hill in front of me alongside a few riders, I recognized a massive figure clad in an American flag jersey in front of me as Michael Wacker. I knew he was a dude and that if I was near him, I wasn’t falling off the pace (phew!). Michael was a sight to see in those hills. At ~210 pounds and a German flatlander, he knew climbing wasn’t his strong suit so he lightly spun the smallest gear he could on anything resembling a hill while the riders near him charged past. He’d later tell me that his goal was to never go over 200 watts. I don’t know how he got gears small enough to accomplish this, but I looked at my minimum 34/28 as compared to the metal medium pizza sitting on his rear wheel and felt like I’d made a massive error already. I was boosted, however, to be riding near someone I knew to be a contender, even if just 20 miles in. Watching him execute his plan from mile 1 while other heroes charged past as if leaping over the Rockies in one pedal stroke reminded me that this race was about patience and an intentional approach. You gotta have a plan mannnnnnnnnn.
I’d ride by Michael on the hills, and he’d come charging past on the descent. I found myself near Bo Dudley as well, so was stoked to ride with some dudes I knew were strong. The route exits from 101 and heads to a coastal town at one point and a lot of riders missed the exit. I’d learn later that day that some riders would miss the turn but not double back and instead meet back up with the route down the road. It was disappointing to know that people weren’t abiding by the rules, especially top (top) contenders, but the reality is that small incidents like that don’t affect the race outcome, only the perception of your race. I made the right turn just behind Michael, but after stopping for a pee a few miles later, I was caught by Jon Lester, Bo Dudley, and a couple others who had doubled back when they missed the turn. Fuck yeah, I was still in with the dudes!
I rode in this crew for a bit, and got a massive lift when we caught Luke Kocher with his d**k in his hands on one of the larger rollers. I saw the orange and white kit and orange backpack and I was STOKED. I knew he was super strong and very much trying to contend for a top spot. So, to catch him meant that I wasn’t that far behind the front and was riding as strong as I felt. Fuck yeah. It was the first of two times I would find Luke on the side of the road during the TABR2017, though the second time it was his wheel he had in hands in the middle of Wyoming. Luke, Bo, and I rode side by side and chatted for a bit, I think feeling the camaraderie that we were all 20-some year olds doing pretty well.
Take a look at the top 20 or 30 on day one in any Trans Am race and it’s pretty obvious that your position in the early days is almost completely irrelevant to your finishing place. Everyone goes hard and rides strong on day one, but who can keep that level up for weeks? Only the few, super solid, experienced riders. And yet, the reassurance that I was riding near the front gave me a ton of confidence and a super positive perception of my riding. One of the biggest factors in how well you ride is how well you feel like you are riding. If you are mentally beating yourself up at any point, saying, “You’re not going fast, you’re slipping, you should have been X far by X time,” you are going to slow yourself down. I wish I could say I never did this, but as you’ll see, I did it plenty.
I really needed to pee, but didn’t want to stop and lose my spot with these guys in case I never caught them again, so I held on as long as I could. We were 40 miles into a 4267 mile race, but this seemed very important in that moment. At the bottom of a nice hill, I finally caved and let it go, knowing they couldn’t get too far ahead of me on a climb. The relief was sweet but short lived when a toot turned into a poot and I quickly had a small mess in my pants that I knew I needed to deal with. I had a choice — dip into the woods to deuce and clean myself quickly but lose the pace, or deal with the mess, jump on my bike and hold the fucking wheel? I held the fucking wheel, but knew that I’d pay for it with saddles sores in no time. Whatever, harden the fuck up.
I got back on the road just behind Jon Lester, and made up ground on the climb but felt disgusting and swore to keep an eye out for the next gas station. I’d make up ground on the climbs but lose a bit on flats and descents. I could keep pace, but didn’t feel stellar and didn’t want to push too hard, so gradually I let Jon’s light fade out in front of me with the others just in front of him. I found a convenience store, cleaned myself and filled up bottles, then charged on.
At a stop light in Tillamook a few miles down the road, I was caught by some small dude on a Cervelo looking pretty chill. He remains the only true savage that I’ve ever come across riding a Cervelo. We chatted for a second and he said he was from Oregon and maybe said he was a doctor, and I recognized this hero as Evan Deutsch, although he looked quite different clean shaven. He was super chill, kind, and complimented the salty nut mix that I had in my feed bag. Twenty days later, he’d remember that mix and ask about it at the finish line. He told me that he was riding much faster than he had the previous year, and wasn’t worried about whoever had charged out in front of us. Long race, consistency, all that. His plan was apparently to sleep more than he had the previous year and ride faster, since a lack of sleep was what had derailed him in the year before. I said that sounds dope and good luck, and he encouraged me to push hard. We rode near each other for 10 miles or so but I was feeling a minor suffer and needed to refuel with some food and drink. As I did so, Evan rode on and I thought that he must not stop for hundreds of miles. He’s a badass.
Rolling through Pacific City, 100 miles in and just before noon, I was feeling pretty good about my first day, but I had been slipping for a bit and the top people seemed to be riding away from me. I was low energy, still had poop residue in my pants, and was a bit concerned. Was I falling off? Could I continue this pace for the full day, let alone many weeks? What if I was cracking and only rode 200 miles? Luckily, the next 10 miles would be a turning point for me, and, as ridiculous as it is on day 1, a massive springboard in my race. The first thing was the cheesy, greasy, salty pretzel that I ate in the gas station on the southern end of town. Oh my god it was good. I ate it and watched Simone and Sofiane ride past the gas station. I got a couple pretzels for the road along with some other snacks and felt energetic again as I got back on my bike.
I rolled on feeling strong but not sure where I was and thinking everyone relevant was way ahead. Distracted, I missed the turn to the first inland climb. Doubling back to the route, I ran into a rider in blue. He greeted me in a thick Irish accent and I recognized him as Donncha Cuttriss of IPWR, Trans Am, and RAAM fame. I’d watched this dude slug it out in the IPWR with Mike and Kristof, and I’d pinned him as one of my favorites for the race and was thus so stoked to run into him at this point. I’d recovered from my short suffer feeling better than ever and, though I had been worried I was fading in the pack, if I was near him and feeling strong, I was good. As I look back now at the race replay on Trackleaders, I can see that I was barely behind most of the contenders and not even that far back from the sprinters out front, but I had no idea at the time. I wonder what I would have done and thought if I’d known this at that moment. Again, the perception of your race can do so much to your actual racing.
We went up the climb together and, after he realized I was decently cool, we started chatting a bit and we rode side by side on this tiny road heading inland. He told me about the savage Everesting he’d done while training in Northern California (Old La Honda road what’s up) and how he’d done 22k vert in one attempt before his brake pads wore out, so he went back two days later to attempt it again and succeeded. Savage. He was super chill and I appreciated his riding. Didn’t go for the fancy gear, wore whatever the hell he wanted, and even seemed to have his own approach to pedaling, out of the saddle as he pleased. Later in the race he would even trade his bike shoes for tennis shoes. He had his own style and I was stoked.
We rode together for almost 100 miles and he made fun of the stuffy people on the race, chirped the guy in front of us for not saying hello (What’s up, Sofiane??), and generally represented the things I like about this kind of racing. Friendly, goes hard AF, and does it in his own style. He also encouraged me to continue riding strong and push myself as hard as I could. We cruised through the Willamette Valley, sometimes chatting and sometimes 100 yards apart, and I kept feeling good. At one gas station stop just north of Corvallis, the store clerk told us to help ourselves to whatever we wanted in the store, it was free since we were in the race. Fuck yeah, what a hero. This type of support means so much to riders and we cannot thank people enough!!!
Cruising through Corvallis around 5:30 that evening, I got frustrated with the red lights and stop signs, but Donncha laughed at me. Take advantage of the excuse to chill and spin the pedals, he said. Another reminder from an experienced rider that patience is KEY.
I put my aero bars on my bike only a couple days before the race and had really never ridden with them, so not once on day one did I drop into them. They somehow felt so foreign at that point, but that would quickly change as the race progressed. I also lowered my seat on day 3, which made them far more accessible and comfortable. One of the things I’ll work on before the next race is getting as comfortable as possible in the aero position so I can ride as often in them as I see guys like Michael Wacker and Luke Kocher do. But not so often I get Shermer’s Neck. Almost the entire time I rode near Michael on day one he was in his aero bars, and I think it makes an even bigger difference in terms of wind resistance for tall riders like us.
Despite all my obsession over the route and memorizing turns before the race, I really had no idea where on the map we were. Having resolved not to look at my race position on Trackleaders on day 1, I also didn’t want to know where I was on the route. All I did at any stop was look on my spreadsheet with mileage and know what my supply options ahead were. Names and numbers were all I was following, along with the zoomed in GPS screen on my aero bars. All this kept me focused on pedaling and just pedaling, something I should have done better throughout the race after day 1.
As would prove to be the case throughout the race, I would pass the riders around me and then they would catch me when I needed to stop to pee, head into the woods to deuce, or fuel up at a gas station. So, the last time I saw Donncha for a couple states was when I had to sprint into a corn field to take an emergency deuce while he rode past me laughing. We did 200 miles in like the first 13 hours of the race, and I was fucking baffled. I felt like I did in the best moments of some of my best long rides and like I’d hoped to feel at this stage. From my cheesy pretzel in Pacific City on into the night, I felt really good.
I began the slow meander up to McKenzie pass around Coburg and was fully settled into the race, feeling confident. My goal since I began dreaming of the race was to sleep in McKenzie Bridge and that felt well within reason, so I focused in on that. I had enough food to get to Sisters, and knew I could fill up in the Bridge or another station along the way. Looking back at the race replay now I can’t help but feel proud and fucking stoked at how close I was to the front at this point. I was very much in the mix and only a handful of miles behind guys like Evan. I wasn’t looking at the tracker so as not to get discouraged or lose my focus, but I wish I had so that I’d known how well I was doing and gotten the massive boost that would have given me. It may have inspired me to try and roll over the pass that night with the rest of them, and who knows how the race would have turned out if I’d done so (badly, I’m sure). But I had a plan and knew I was already outperforming myself, so it was probably a good thing that I didn’t get too greedy.
The sun went down and I caught up to a blinking light in front of me. Chris Miller was spinning his way up the valley and not doing too hot. He told me he’d crashed his bike not long before and done some damage to his knee, which was messing him up pretty bad. I questioned whether this was just a cop out for cracking 230 miles into a huge day (understandably so), but rode with him for a couple miles on the way to the final gas station in Vida for the night and chatted. I found out later that he’d torn his ACL and rode on that for a while, so massive props to Chris for being a fucking savage. Heal up for 2018! I rocked up to the gas station and met Ken Ray packing up out front and I snagged some last minute goodies just before it closed at 10pm. Chris pulled up just as I walked out but they locked the doors after me so he couldn’t get in and decided that he would settle in for the night. I felt fantastic as I rolled out a minute in front of Ken Ray. As I look at the tracker now, I was about 15 minutes behind Luke and very solidly in the back of a pretty closely packed leading bunch chasing the two guys out front, Jon Lester and Andrew Suzuki.
For the next few miles, I rode strong a two hundred yards in front Ken Ray’s lights, but he passed me when I stopped to pee and didn’t return my hello as he passed. As Donncha says, it’s a long fucking race, you should always say hello. We’d spend the next 3,800 miles no more than 60 miles apart before he sprinted to the finish, so we ran into each other a lot. I liked to give him a ton of shit, but the dude rode a savage race. He bested his goal, pushed himself to his limit, and just rode fucking hard, so I would ultimately come to respect him.
It proved to be a theme during the first couple days that, an hour or two after the sun went down, I would get super drowsy. On the first day, that feeling hit me about 10 miles before McKenzie Bridge, so the last couple miles into town were a small sufferfest. I realized later that this drowsiness was caused in part by forgetting to eat regularly once it got dark and could be overcome by eating well and knocking back a 5 Hour Energy or coffee to push through that initial wave of tiredness.
I rolled into town a little after midnight looking for water and a place to sleep, having accomplished my goal and knowing that I was in the same place where Lael Wilcox stopped the previous year. Granted, she had arrived a bit earlier and stayed for less time, but the small overlap stoked my confidence and I felt good settling in for a few hours rest.
I pulled out my emergency bivvy and tucked my sleeping bag liner inside, then put my puffy on along with a balaclava over my head. I left my shoes on and curled up in the grass across from the convenience store. Settling down, I started to wonder if I would even be able to get back on my bike the next morning after the most massive day in the saddle of my life.
Just then, I saw Simone Bailey pull into the light in front of the shop. I hollered and she came and set up her camp near me after filling up water. We chatted for a for a bit and both felt good after reaching our goal for the day. We both wanted to get up early to jet up the pass, so we set our alarms for 4:15 am and knocked out. I slept hard but woke up often in the cold, damp air, and thus learned my lesson about sleeping outside. You generally don’t sleep as well outside and open yourself up to a lot of variables that can disrupt your sleep, especially the cold.
Looking back now it is so tempting to wonder if, had I managed my nutrition and caffeine well over the next couple miles, I could have gone past the Bridge and further up the climb. From there, I could have slept but slept less, or gone over the pass and down to Sisters before sleeping, as guys like Andrew and Luke did.
But I had just ridden further and faster than I’d ever done before and was riding the race that I’d laid out for myself before it all began. Lael also wrote in her blog that she felt juiced up in McKenzie before sleeping there and thought about continuing on. Knowing that it was more important in the long run to sleep than to get caught up in a petty race for position in the first couple days, however, she ultimately caught a couple hours of sleep. As my sister said, “Where you are on day one matters only so much as it affects where you are on day 7, day 15, day 21. If you lead on day one but have nothing left for days 2–20, it literally doesn’t fucking matter.” My main focus was to not get caught up in that craziness in front of me, stay within myself, and recognize that it is a really, really long race.
Read More:
Trans Am Day 1: Astoria, OR to McKenzie Bridge, OR
Trans Am Day 2: McKenzie Bridge, OR to Prairie City, OR
Trans Am Day 3: Prairie City, OR to Council, ID
Trans Am Day 4: Council, ID to Lochsa Lodge, ID
Trans Am Day 5: Lochsa Lodge, ID to Bannack State Park, MT
Trans Am Day 6: Bannack State Park, MT to Cameron, MT
Trans Am Day 7: Cameron, MT to Lander, WY
Trans Am Day 8: Lander, WY to Cowdrey, CO
Trans Am Day 9: Cowdrey, CO to Alma, CO
Trans Am Day 10: Alma, CO to Haswell, CO
Trans Am Day 11: Haswell, CO to Ness City, KS
Trans Am Day 12: Ness City, KS to Rosalia, KS
Trans Am Day 13: Rosalia, KS to Ash Grove, MO
Trans Am Day 14: Ash Grove, MO to Pilot Knob, MO
Trans Am Day 15: Pilot Knob, MO to Elizabethtown, IL
Trans Am Day 16: Elizabethtown, IL to Falls of Rough, KY
Trans Am Day 17: Falls of Rough, KY to Booneville, KY
Trans Am Day 18: Booneville, KY to Meadowview, VA
Trans Am Day 19: Meadowview, VA to Daleville, VA
Trans Am Day 20: Daleville, VA to Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, VA
Trans Am Day 21 FINISH: Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, VA to Yorktown, VA
Ice Cream or Ass Cream: The Trans Am “Epilogue”
Stay tuned for more to come…