The GAPCO solo unsupported FKT
On May 21st, 2023 I set out to ride all 334 miles of the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O towpath as fast as I could. I finished in 22 hours and 34 minutes setting a new fastest known time for a solo unsupported rider. This post breaks down how I planned, and what happened on race day.
Together the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O towpath (sometimes referred to collectively as the GAPCO) form easily the longest continuous gravel and dirt multi-use trail on the east coast of the US, stretching from Pittsburgh, PA to Washington D.C. There is nothing quite like it. From start to finish the ride is primarily in the woods, passing through various trail towns. On the whole, it is a very very chill ride — the GAP is mostly a very well-graded rail trail composed of crushed stone. The C&O is much more “rustic” with surfaces including dirt doubletrack, and rough gravel doubletrack, although some sections closer to D.C. have been resurfaced.
The trail strikes a pretty remarkable balance of being stunningly gorgeous the entire ride, and feeling very remote, while in actuality you are never very far from civilization. Water resupply is easy with drinking fountains at the larger GAP trailheads, and water pumps almost every 4 miles on the C&O (as of 2023 these do not offer potable water and need to be treated). This peanut butter & jelly mix of easy but interesting riding in a gorgeous setting draws cyclists from all over — and you’ll find every kind of rider on the trail: casual/inexperienced cyclotourists making it a week+ long adventure, perhaps their first bike tour ever; right there alongside well-seasoned cyclists. This is one of the things I love about the GAPCO — it’s for everyone, and it’s never boring. You can make a full ride of the trail as chill or as challenging as you want — do it in as many days or as few days as you like. This mindset is sort of where my story begins.
Why so fast?
Sometime in 2021 I was on a chill bike tour of the GAPCO and I found myself wondering — if I really went for it, I wonder how fast I could do the entire trail? Back in 2017, I had done it in 2.5 days, but back then I was still pretty green as a cyclist. I did some quick math for how fast I would need to go to do it in under 24 hours, which came out to around 14 MPH. That seemed totally doable! I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, so when I got home I started searching around to see if anyone else had done it before… perhaps looking for validation that it wasn’t a dumb idea. I quickly came across the fastestknowntime.com page for the trail, and although they only posted official times for hikers, the comments section was full of cyclists who had not only done it in under 24 hours but since 2019 had been progressively setting new fastest known times. Seeing these incredible rides, and reading their incredibly generous ride reports completely invigorated me. Not only was doing it in under 24 hours possible, but here these folks were showing that something much faster was possible.
23:51:49—Sean Crandell
The first to post an FKT in the comments section — Sean’s ride was supported, and used pacers.
23:43:10 — Chris Shue
Chris shaved time off the record and as far as I am aware was the first unsupported sub 24hr ride. I was on the edge of my seat while reading Chris’ ride report — now this was just the kind of stupid ride I was looking for.
23:06:50 — Aedan Hale and Spencer Ralston
Eight months after Chris’s ride, this duo managed to shave a decent amount of time off the overall record. They called their ride “self-supported” but I’m not sure what they meant by that.
22:53:47 — Kevin Beck
Riding solo and unsupported on September 12th of 2020, Kevin further shaved time off the record. His lengthy ride report much like Chris's’ was riveting and continued to light a fire that I had to do this ride.
21:36:17 — Jeff Koontz
Only thirteen days after Kevin’s ride, on a supported ride Jeff totally crushed the overall record.
20:52:58—Dylan Stagner and Jeremy Gardner
Eight days after Jeff’s supported ride, this duo completely crushed the overall record. Their ride report and their interview on the Big Dumb Ride podcast both served as a massive inspiration.
Over two years after Dylan and Jeremy set the overall FKT, I set breaking this as my absolute goal. Why? Why not! I dabbled years ago in competitive cycling but never really caught the bug completely. But there was something about this individual-time-trial style of competitive long-distance endurance riding that was exceptionally appealing. It’s way more accessible than the time and cost of doing something like Tour Divide or the AZT, and the camaraderie of the club of folks that had progressively set the record was really infectious. It felt more like a strange collaborative project rather than a bike race.
As well, as a queer, trans, nonbinary cyclist (pronouns are they/them thanks!) an unofficial/unorganized endeavor like this is appealing as participation does not require checking off a gender box that doesn’t apply to me and feels icky, or lining up in a gendered pack that I do not identify with. Some gravel races seem to be starting to introduce third gender-neutral fields (which is so cool), but at least so far it seems to be the exception. With an FKT it’s really just you versus the clock and nothing else, and I love the simplicity and purity of that. I don’t have to think about anything but that.
So needless to say, I was all in. Now the question: how does one prepare for a 334-mile solo unsupported ride?
Training
I’ve had a very hot and cold relationship with structured training — there have been only a handful of periods where I’ve really focused on training for a specific event. I’ve never really understood the principles too well, or fueled my training properly, and as a result, I’ve never seen the benefits of year-over-year consistent training. The below chart is my “fitness and freshness” chart from Strava spanning the past seven years or so.
That first big spike is from 2016, shortly after I got my first road bike and started going on long rides. I wasn’t training back then, just logging big miles and having fun with NYCC and Kissena. When I started training for the GAPCO FKT in November 2022 it was the first time I set out to train for a specific event since 2018 when I did the AZT. I had been doing a bit of Trainer Road recently just for fitness, but nothing really serious. So when I started training for the GAPCO I wasn’t exactly starting from zero, but I certainly wasn’t starting from any kind of place of strength. I knew my FTP was likely lower than it had been in years past.
I started out with a custom Trainer Road plan using Plan Builder and just plugged in the details of my event, and picked a high-volume plan. I followed this plan for about three months and was loving it. I started seeing regular bumps in my FTP, and around this time discovered and got into the Trainer Road podcast which I have to say completely transformed my relationship with structured training. I started focusing more on my nutrition, fueling my training sessions, and became completely obsessed with recovery and how everything off the bike supported my training goals. I can say without a question this was the first time I really ever truly enjoyed the training and I think this is because A) I had a very specific goal that was meaningful to me, and B) I felt like I really understood the science and principles of good periodized training for the first time ever.
In March I decided to start working with a coach. I love TR but I wasn’t sure how to start integrating bigger miles into my plan. I wasn’t worried about the big miles as I’ve always been an endurance monster and love doing big rides, with plenty of 100+ mile rides under my belt. I know what a long ride feels like, and what to expect. I wasn’t sure however how to integrate that kind of riding into a training plan, if at all. I had found a 24hr MTB race training plan that seemed good, but I really needed the comfort of being able to work with a human who I could ask questions. Being able to fully understand the why of training is very important to stay motivated and focused. I used Training Peaks’ coach matching service and was paired with Kaitlyn Mittan, who seemed like a total badass and was a Master’s National Champion in Individual Pursuit. Most importantly she seemed to “get” my silly goal.
In general, I would say that the composition of the plan that Kaitlyn put together for me kept me focused on building my sustained power and raising my FTP. We really didn’t integrate big miles much at all, with the exception of a 150-mile race day simulation ride that was meant to battle-test my nutrition plan, pacing, etc. I think this approach was hugely effective, and it aligns with things I’ve heard from athletes on Trainer Road’s “Successful Athletes” podcast — I’ve heard interviews with several folks that used TR to train for an ultra-endurance event and didn’t integrate any big miles at all. In general, if you are familiar with “what happens” on very long rides, then the need to have big long rides as part of your training is very limited IMHO. If you want to get faster for a big long ride, then you need to be doing training focused on raising your FTP and sustained power. At least that’s what seems to work for me.
Getting my nutrition dialed in was also a huge component of my training. I’ve struggled with various forms of disordered eating pretty much my entire adult life, and unfortunately, a heavy training load seems to be a trigger for some of these issues. I decided to work with a nutritionist so that I had someone to keep me accountable and ensure that I was eating in a way that was supportive of my heavy training load, and to navigate my various food-related triggers. My eating wasn’t perfect in the months leading up to the event, but I’m confident that it would have been pretty off the rails without Katie’s help. One of the huge things that she helped sort out also was night-time restless leg syndrome that was severely impacting the quality of my sleep. It’s something that’s tended to flare up persistently when I have a high-volume training load. It’s impossible to say 100% what was causing it — could have been under-fueling, or the other theory was a magnesium deficiency. I think it was the latter as it went away completely a few weeks after starting a magnesium supplement. In general, my diet was focused on metabolic efficiency, which in practical terms looks like a pretty simple and well-balanced diet, with an emphasis on ensuring each plate has a balance of carbs, protein, and healthy fats.
On the bike, I started fueling my training sessions. Initially, I was using Skratch, but that was so expensive so I started looking into alternatives. I wound up settling on a DIY drink mix recipe that was a variation of Jonathan Lee’s recipe where I added MCT powder (an idea borrowed from the GCN cookbook). I liked this approach not only because it was affordable, but it allowed me to know 100% of what I was consuming, and the literature shows that the 2:1 glucose/fructose ratio facilitates greater carb absorption than possible with just one type of sugar/carb. I used varying quantities of this during training not only for more optimal training sessions but also to train my gut to get used to consuming anywhere from 75–90g of carbs per hour. Anecdotally I can say this worked fantastically for me — never had GI issues, and my perceived exertion was lowered significantly on hard training sessions.
My desk for my home office is an adjustable standing desk on wheels, so I was able to use it effectively as my indoor trainer entertainment station — on harder sessions I would watch POV bike race footage muted, and listen to a live set by Amelie Lens or Charlotte de Witte. Also, on my last bike tour of the GAP + C&O, I shot hours upon hours of GoPro footage of the trail. I watched this a lot while training, which helped me memorize all of the water stops and any of the tricky parts — i.e. routing from the start out of Pittsburgh.
All in all, I was training around 10–12 hours per week, around 600 TSS on peak load weeks, and raised my FTP by approximately 50 watts from when I started in November 2022. I am very lucky in that I run my own business and work from home, and am able to really shape my own schedule and hours. This gave me the ability to prioritize training, recovery, and nutrition on a level that folks that have kids or a more hectic schedule, in general, would not be able to. I set my race day for the last week of May and stuck to the plan above all else.
The Bike
Ever since the first time I laid my eyes on a Seven many years ago, I knew that someday I would own one. They are just so damn pretty and it was pretty alluring to be able to design a bike from the ground up, dialing the handling and geometry to my liking, and ensuring it had as much versatility and tire clearance as I wanted. After a lot of thinking about it, I decided that my GAPCO FKT goal would be a good excuse to finally build the bike of my dreams.
Some build details: clearance for up to 700c x 55mm with fenders, moto seat stays for extra compliance, internal wire routing for rear dynamo powered light, Zipp 303 firecrest wheels, SON dynamo hub, Enve adventure fork, SRAM Eagle AXS derailleur, 10–52 Eagle cassette, AXS rival road shifters with hydraulic brakes, 38t front chainring, Fizik Argo saddle, Ritchey Comp Beacon XL bars, K-lite Ultra v2 Gravel dynamo powered lighting system with a rear cube. For the FKT I ran Rene Herse Hatcher Pass (48mm) in endurance casing.
The frame bag is custom by Andrew The Maker, who makes incredibly durable bags. I had one years ago that I took on the AZT and used it for years after and held up great. In the lower compartment, I carried a 3L Apidura bladder and cut a hole in the inner wall of the bag so that I could route the hose into the left-side map pocket. This way I could unzip the map pocket and pull the hose out whenever it was time to drink. Initially, I had routed the hose to the cockpit but never found a good place to attach it and found it tended to get in the way. The upper compartment would be dedicated to food storage as well as storing the USB charging brick for the K-lite system, and the seat bag contained all of my repair tools as well as some extra food storage.
My cockpit consisted of a stem mount for a Wahoo Roam, with an integrated GoPro mount underneath for the dynamo-powered K-lite headlight. For race day I added a Quadlock mount for my phone so that I could easily access it for referencing cue sheets, playing music, etc, without the risk of dropping it (and being slowed down by needing to stop to get it).
Planning and preparation
Looking at the previous FKTs and the pace I thought would be possible for me it was clear that I needed to keep my stops to an absolute minimum. I started planning with the assumption that I would carry all of my food, would only stop for water refills, and would have a 3L carrying capacity. I didn’t want to stop any more than was truly necessary, so I did a fluid loss test to see how much I really needed to drink. I found that at race pace I needed to consume around 936ml of water per hour in order to stay on top of my hydration. Turns out I am a pretty heavy sweater! I didn’t want to risk even getting close to dehydration since that causes a sort of death spiral where you stop absorbing your nutrition. Knowing how much I needed to consume per hour, and my rough pace allowed me to look at the route and find water resupply points that were optimized to make sure I didn’t run out of water, or stop too frequently.
So that was it — my stretch goal was to maintain a 17.3mph average pace and keep my stops to five minutes tops each, stopping only six times. Now the question remained, what time of day should I start the ride? All of the previous FKTs had started in the morning, with most of the C&O being ridden at night. Based on all of the ride reports I read this sounded harrowing. I’ve ridden the C&O at night, and without an incredible lighting setup, it would definitely be slower going with limited visibility, not to mention in a sleep-deprived state. Doze off while riding and you could wind up in the canal. Therefore I made the plan to start my ride at night — ensuring that when I got to the C&O and was reaching a sleep-deprived state, the sun would rise and hopefully give me an energy boost. This would only work if I shifted my sleep schedule of course — I wouldn’t want to start the ride at night after being awake all day. I planned on shifting my sleep schedule such that by the date of my attempt, I would be waking up at 8 pm, for an 11 pm start time.
This was the plan until I learned that the shuttle for the Paw Paw Tunnel detour is mandatory — if the shuttle is running, you are required to take it. I would have been fine with taking the shuttle as it wouldn’t constitute any kind of competitive advantage over the record holders that didn’t have to take the detour, as the first half of the detour was still a hike-a-bike and the distance of the detour was much much longer than the tunnel itself. The issue though was that the shuttle only runs every 30 minutes. This made it completely not an option — I couldn’t risk arriving at the detour and having to wait around for the shuttle to arrive. Therefore I decided to start my ride even earlier so that I would arrive at the tunnel before the construction crews had started work for the day — ideally 6 am. This meant I would need to start my ride at 7 pm.
Now that I had my start time set in stone I looked up historic weather trends for the areas along the trail, and based on the time I would be passing through added rough temperatures to my planning map. This was to help me decide on clothes, as well as making decisions around adjusting the frequency of water stops (i.e. it would be hotter towards the end of the ride, so I slightly increased the frequency of water stops).
I added these resupply points to my planning map on RideWithGPS, which I would have downloaded and available for reference on my phone, but I also wanted something very simple to refer to during the ride so I made a cue sheet.
This way I would have elapsed ride time, as well as time of day as quick references when reaching my resupply points to understand how I was doing. I set an “ideal” goal that would have me shaving more time off the FKT, and a “cutoff” time that was barely beating the current record. I knew that anything could happen out there though and that something could happen that totally made this goal impossible (five flat tires, a race-ending mechanical, etc) so I thought it would be good to have some backup goals to help me stay positive and motivated no matter what happened. As my backup goal, I decided that setting a new FKT as a solo unsupported rider (as opposed to the overall record) would still be pretty rad.
The cue sheets are tall and narrow as I designed them to fit as wallpaper for the lock screen of my iPhone. That way during the FKT attempt I could check the cue sheet by simply tapping my phone.
Now let’s say that something really went wrong and beating that FKT was also not possible. In that case, I decided that simply finishing in less than 24 hours would be my absolute last bailout goal. After all, wondering if I could do this in less than 24 hours is where this whole thing started. Accomplishing that alone would still be something that I could be proud of. Having these bailout goals was super important to me as it would be so silly to put all of this work, time, and money into preparing for this ride and then not have a fun time because something outside of my control rendered achieving my ambitious goal impossible.
What I planned to eat
I decided that sticking with the DIY drink mix that I used during training made the most sense. Not only was it super effective and my gut was very adapted to it, but it is also highly efficient from a weight perspective. There is almost a 1:1 ratio between the weight of the mix and its carb contents — i.e. 100g of drink mix is almost 100g of carbs. Considering that I would need to carry a lot of food from the start line, weight was definitely a concern, so the drink mix was a huge win in that regard. Compare that to a Cliff bar for instance, where a bar that weighs 68g only contains 40g of carbs. I experimented with different ways of carrying the drink mix. Initially, I tried behind-the-seat bottle cages along the lines of what triathletes use, but I found in training rides on the Eerie Canal that these would get ejected if I went over a few bumps and didn’t obsessively check to make sure they were secure. Losing a bottle that contained most of my nutrition was simply not an option, so I switched to using a hydration pack. This worked perfectly!
You may have noticed that three of the water stops on the cue sheet are marked with a star and a number 1–3. These are to indicate stops where I would need to refill the hydration pack on my back that contained the drink mix (as opposed to the bladder in the frame bag that contained water & electrolytes). This is where the planning got especially interesting — I needed to calculate exactly how much drink mix each of those stops would need, knowing I wanted to consume 75g of carbs per hour. Looking at my cue sheet I essentially calculated how many hours each drink mix batch needed to carry me, and adjusted the recipe accordingly. In my training sessions, I tended to make my mix concentrated so that I only needed to take three sips every 20 minutes. This worked well for me, so I also calculated what volume of water I needed to add to each of these drink mix batches as well. I knew that during the FKT attempt none of this would make any sense to me, and that all I would be able to remember is to take three sips when my Wahoo automatically reminded me every 20 minutes. Therefore I labeled each pre-mixed bag with its corresponding refill number, and exactly how many ML it should be after the water has been added. Pre-calculating all of this was invaluable in keeping my eating on the bike as simple as possible, which would ensure greater consistency.
The only other thing I would eat on the bike would be homemade rice cakes, using the recipe in The Cyclist’s Cookbook (seen above). I cut the recipe and portion size in half — so I packed 20 tiny rice cakes, and each of these would deliver a mere 11g of carbs. In total, I would be consuming around 86g of carbs per hour, with 87.23% of it coming from drink mix, and 12.77% of it coming from the rice cakes. All of this was a lot to carry of course, but the good news was that it would only get lighter as I went!
The weather
Above I mentioned that I decided what week I would do my ride. I intentionally set aside a whole week where the ride might happen as I wanted the flexibility to watch the weather and pounce when the forecast looked optimal. I wasn’t too concerned about temps as it being late spring, it seemed like things would comfortably range from high 40s at the coldest to high 70s at the hottest. I was looking more at rain and wind. In terms of rain, I would prefer of course to not ride during a major downpour, but I was also looking at the days preceding the ride, as if there were multiple days of rain it would mean sloppy conditions on the C&O. In terms of wind, of course, I was hoping for a tailwind or at the very least not a bad headwind. I experimented with a few ways of checking the forecast, but the challenge I quickly realized was that I needed to be looking at the forecast for about six locations along the route, and adjust for the specific time I would be passing through the given location. I went into full nerd mode and built a custom forecast dashboard in Google Sheets using the Open Weather Map API. This gave me an at-a-glance view of my route and the time-adjusted forecast for each location, and conditional formatting to indicate optimal wind conditions.
I also used the Windfinder app on my phone, and mywindsock.com to validate what I was seeing in my hand-made dashboard.
The time has come
As my ride window of May 22nd-May 25th approached it was a pretty wild time — I had fully shifted my sleep schedule so that I was going to bed around 9 am and waking up around 5 pm. Thankfully there was a period of only about two weeks where I was fully living in this bizarro noctournal mode of existence. I found it pretty easy to maintain good sleep hygiene — the only real challenge towards the end was running errands — I would only have a window of an hour before bed and an hour after waking up when businesses were open. The added benefit of this approach was that for the final two weeks, all of my training was in the dark, giving me ample time to test my lighting rig and in general get more comfortable putting down big watts and maintaining speed in the dark. It was fascinating to get to know what my local trails were like at all hours of the night — and seeing what animals were awake at midnight, versus three am.
The plan was to drive down to D.C. on May 19th, leave my car there, and then take a one-way rental car back up to Pittsburgh. I figured that being exhausted at the finish it would be a help to have my car at the end and not have to deal with anything complicated. Once in Pittsburgh, I had an Airbnb reserved for the week and the idea was that I would hang out there until I saw the perfect forecast, and then I would pounce.
About three days before I was supposed to leave, however, as the next week’s forecast started to come into focus, it looked as though the optimal day was actually outside of my window. Sunday the 21st was looking perfect: a tailwind the entire route, no rain, and perfect temps. All of the rest of the week had headwinds that would totally kill my pace. I made the call and changed all of my travel plans and reservations. Instead of the original plan, I would just drive directly to Pittsburgh in the middle of the night Saturday, arriving Sunday morning. I would check into a hotel, get in a full “night” sleep, waking at 4 pm for a 7 pm start time on Sunday.
My neck, my back
I have never in my life ever had back issues. So I was a bit taken aback when I arrived in Pittsburgh, stepped out of my car, and doubled over in pain. I was frozen in place and felt like my body had been snapped in half, and that if I moved the wrong way that I would fall apart. I gingerly and carefully shuffled my way to the lobby, checked in, and rolled myself, my bike, and my suitcase up to my room. I was completely beside myself — here I was after months and months of hard training, meticulous planning, and at the last minute I suddenly had a crazy back issue for the first time in my life??? I thought laying down on the bed would help, and OWWWWWWW nope nope nope that was a bad idea. At this point I was nearly in tears, partially from the pain, but also the frustration that my body was betraying me at the worst possible moment. At that point, it occured to me that it seemed like it was only certain angles/stretches that caused the severe pain in my lower back and that maybe my position on the bike wasn’t one of those. I very very gently lifted my leg over the bike and lowed myself onto the saddle. Phew! Amazingly I was able to sit in my riding position with absolutely no twinges of pain in my back. This galvanized me — I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way. I ordered some extra-strength Tylenol on Postmates, took some, and went to bed.
Race day morning
When I woke up my back was ever so slightly better. I immediately prepared breakfast, as I wanted to give myself my usual three hours to digest before riding. I followed the “don’t do anything different on race day” philosophy to the T. My favorite pre-training breakfast is pancakes, so in my suitcase, I had packed an electric hot plate, frying pan, pancake mix, syrup, tea kettle, and yerba matte.
Having this breakfast three hours before starting my ride would ensure I rolled to the start line with my glycogen stores topped off, and fully caffeinated. After breakfast, I set about organizing my gear, including rationing out a day’s worth of extra strength Tylenol in a ziplock to bring with me on the ride.
I wore a dhb Aeron LAB Raceline Long Sleeve Speedsuit, Rule 32 aero socks, Pearl Izumi shoes, Velotoze waterproof shoe covers (useful when peeing off the bike!), some mid-weight gloves, Giro Eclipse Spherical MIPS Helmet, and Pit Vipers with photochromic lenses. The rice cakes and Nuun tablets went in my frame bag, but everything else you see went in my jersey pockets. This included Run Gum, a Dynaplug kit, iodine tablets, multitool, an extra AXS battery, headphones, and an inhaler (I know it’s a cliche that cyclists “have asthma” but I legitimately get bad exercise-induced asthma. If I don’t use my inhaler it’s like I’m breathing out of a straw after 100 miles). I got fully suited up and headed out to pre-ride the downtown Pittsburgh detour. This was new and I wanted to make sure I fully understood it so that I could roll out full gas without any second thoughts.
After scoping out the detour I headed back to the hotel, drank my pre-ride Beet Elite and beta-alanine, and then headed across the street to Point Park where the GAP begins. I watched the clock on my Wahoo as 7:00 quickly approached, and once it arrived I rolled out!
The first 60 miles
Leaving the city I did my best to maintain my target power of ~180–190 watts, although that was somewhat easier said than done in navigating the busy streets that the detour took me down. In general, I told myself that I wouldn’t take too much stock in my pace or power numbers until the end of the first hour. Despite training my butt off for months and months, and planning like a maniac, I went into the ride with high hopes but zero expectations. I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of what kind of power numbers I would have to sustain to keep my pace where it needed to be once my bike was fully loaded and on this particular trail. By the end of the hour though I was elated — I was doing it! I was holding a pace of 17.4 mph at an average of 184 watts. That meant as long as I could hold that pace/power I would be able to crush the FKT. Seeing that was hugely motivating!
As the sun went down I flipped the lights on, plugged in my headphones, turned on The Downward Spiral, and settled in for 10 hours of riding through the night. At mile 60 I skidded into the Connelsville hiker/biker campsite for my first water refill. I timed my stop and it only took me 3 minutes to top off and get back on the road — half as long as I had budgeted for! My normalized power for the first 60 miles was 198, with an average pace of 16.9 mph (still above the cutoff of 16.6 to take the FKT). I was feeling fresh and frisky as I rolled through and out of Connellsville where the very slow and gradual climb up to the Eastern Continental Divide begins.
Miles 60–127
To call this section a climb is a bit of a misnomer, at an average of ~.4% it’s just a very long false flat. Even so, I was COOKING — averaging 200 watts and feeling super strong. This section of the GAP is so darn gorgeous. Thankfully I’ve toured the trail enough times to soak it in slowly, but there was something really neat about flying through in the dead of night with my lights illuminating the trees and seeing the occasional glowing eyes in the distance. I saw a skunk, opossums, and deer, and at one point while crossing one of the many long viaducts/bridges on this section I raced a raccoon to the other side. No kidding — it was hanging out in the middle of the bridge and had nowhere to go when it saw me but either end of the bridge, and I was certainly not slowing down so we wound up neck and neck for at least 20 seconds. Good times on the GAP. During this stretch, I had a Charlotte de Witte mix, Evil Empire, and Thunder Road on the headphones. At mile 117 I reached the Myersdale trailhead, which was my second water top-off and first refill for my liquid nutrition. This went pretty well, but the stop took me almost 9 minutes — I tried to reassure myself that the water-only stops would continue to be significantly faster, so it should all balance out to my ~7min max per stop. Back on the trail to finish off the last 10 miles to the eastern continental divide. All in all the false flat of this section took a toll on my pace — despite my normalized power for the whole section being 200, my pace dropped to 15.1, bringing my average pace for the entire ride so far to 15.9. I wasn’t too worried though as I knew that on the 20-mile descent into Cumberland, I would be able to make up for this somewhat.
Miles 128–177
After crossing the threshold of the divide, the trail starts dipping down — I ripped through the Big Savage Tunnel, put some Black Sabbath on, and kept the gas on (sort of) down the mountain. I say sort of as I did take the opportunity to take a bit of a break from the sustained power. After almost 8 hours at 199 watts normalized power I felt I had earned a treat, so I wound up averaging 148 watts on the 22-mile descent. Nonetheless, the equated to an average 19.8 mph pace, which brought the average for the total ride so far up to 16.4 mph — not bad! I was a little nervous about passing through Cumberland as I recalled there being a spot where there was a confusing turn somewhere. Luckily I recognized the fork in the trail when I saw it, and remembered the wrong turn I had taken on my last bike tour, so I kept on the gas and shortly I was passing under the sign indicating the end of the GAP and the start of the C&O. I was super curious to see what the trail conditions were like on this first stretch of the C&O. The first 50ish miles or so on are a little bit more rustic than the rest of the C&O, nothing remotely technical but you’ve got some roots, rocks, and if it has rained heavily recently the mud can be a little intense — downright rowdy compared to the smooth vibes of the GAP but in reality nothing too bad at all. I was elated to find that the trail conditions were perhaps the best I’d ever seen them. It wasn’t bone dry, but the mud was very minimal. I was hoping that my choice of 48mm tires, and finishing during daylight would result in me holding a more consistent pace on the C&O than the previous FKT holders, whose paces generally dropped off once they reached this trail. Before long I was at my first water top-off on the C&O — the Evitts Creek campsite. This stop took just over 8 minutes even though it was only a water stop, and this was for two reasons: first, the water sources on the C&O are old fashioned water pumps, and they can sometimes take a while to get flowing. Second, I noticed at this point that my back wheel was falling apart. I’d heard something rattling and it was the sound of a spoke nipple inside my wheel. So one spoke had come completely undone — I tucked it back into the hole of the rim. There were four very loose spokes, which if left unattended would likely come completely undone. I grabbed my spoke wrench and tightened them all to what felt tight enough that they wouldn’t loosen again. I’m proud that during this I totally kept my cool and just focused on fixing the problem as quickly and carefully as possible. At this point I was still within spitting distance from taking the FKT — I was managing to still hold decent power on the C&O at 180 watts for this first section, and although my pace had dropped to 16.1 mph it seemed like things were still close enough that I had a real shot, especially considering the first section is the slowest going. In either case, before long I was back on the trail, and inching closer and closer to the dreaded Paw Paw Tunnel detour. The sun rose as I approached, and I arrived at the detour at 6:10 am, so only 10 minutes behind the cutoff for the overall FKT — not bad, and well within the margin of something I could make up for over the coming miles as the trail conditions improved.
Miles 178–210
Of all of the many times I’ve ridden this route, I’ve unfortunately only had the pleasure of riding through the creepy creepy Paw Paw Tunnel once — for a while, they were doing work on the tunnel, and shortly after that there was a rock slide on the trail on the other end of the tunnel and they’ve been scaling and securing the rock surface for a couple of years now. Therefore I had the distinct pleasure of taking the detour, which southbound starts with a hike-a-bike (unless you were on a mountain bike with no load perhaps), and ends with a steep winding construction road that used to have gravel, but by now it is just 100% mud and not easily ridable on slick tires. Unfortunately for me the previous FKT holders did not have to take this detour, so this wasn’t working to my advantage. It was absolutely slow going, but I was taking it all in stride.
I was still feeling super strong at this point and was confident that on the upcoming sections of trail that had resurfaced in recent years, I would be able to get my pace back up and compensate for this lost time. Although this detour felt like it was completely tanking my time, looking at my ride file, and looking at the previous FKT rides it looks like it only cost me 8 minutes more than riding through the tunnel. Not bad! A few miles down the trail, however, things went a bit sideways.
I should say before we proceed that I think a good portion of the success that I had been having so far on the ride was because every last detail of my rig and nutrition had been meticulously battle-tested. Every tiny last little detail — no stone unturned. With one exception: my iodine tablets. Up until recently the water pumps on the C&O were maintained, treated, and would be marked as potable. I’d noticed increasingly over the past few years though that some pumps would have their handles removed due to the water not being potable. The national parks service recently made what I think is the right call, and that is to mark the water as not potable, which allows them to ensure that all pumps are available and simply leave filtering and/or treatment up to the user. I found out about this only a few days before my ride, and I wasn’t worried about it at all as I’ve used iodine tablets before and was familiar with them. I picked up a new bottle and that was that. I didn’t test out using them in my water or liquid nutrition. Shortly after the Paw Paw Tunnel detour, I reached the Stickpile Hill campsite, which was the first stop on the C&O where I needed to not just top off my water, but also mix the next batch of my drink mix. Although I knew that you’re supposed to let iodine do its thing for 30 minutes before adding anything, I figured I would risk it and mix everything all at once, hoping that the water wouldn’t make me sick. I set about emptying the drink mix into my hydration pack, and unfortunately, I somehow messed up and a good portion of the drink mix wound up on the ground, which was not only bad because it meant I was losing calories and carbs, but I also felt terrible for spilling sugar everywhere and making a mess that I had no way to clean up. Not cool, and very against the leave no trace ethos which I am religious about (I’m obsessive about leaving campsites better than I found them). Between the water pump being a difficult one, struggling with my drink mix, and needing to re-tighten a few spokes again on my back wheel, I was at this stop for a total of 15 minutes. Brutal! Not good not good. I was still committed to pushing hard and felt pretty great still, considering I was over 180 miles deep. I figured with 150 miles left that was ample time to make up a lot of time by just staying consistent and pushing a tiny bit harder. Let’s do this.
A few minutes later my computer beeps at me and tells me it is time to have some drink mix — I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet at this point that I had my computer programmed to remind me to feed every 20 minutes on the dot and have a rice cake at the top of the hour. Three sips of drink mix every 20 minutes — this delivered the 100% consistent drip feed of 2:1 maltodextrin: fructose, or liquid speed as I like to call it. I go to sip from my hydration vest and… nothing. Nothing comes out! My immediate thought was there must be a kink in the hose, so I pull over and remove the vest to investigate. I don’t find a kink in the hose but it looks like I did a poor job of shaking up the mix and it is a little clumpy — that must be why it’s not coming out. I shake up the bag, try to sip and it comes out, so it seems we’re back in business. I pack it back up, put the vest on, and get back on the road. That first stop cost me 1 minute, 12 seconds.
Further down the road, I decide to take a sip to make sure it’s still ok. Nothing comes out again. I stop to mix it up better. I’m still not sure if it is working and it’s starting to seem like the clog is getting worse, but I have to keep moving. This stop costs me another 1 minute, 30 seconds.
Repeat. A few minutes down the road I try to sip again. Still nothing. I stop again, and this time massage the heck out of the bag. I also see if I can get the clumps unstuck from the bottom of the bladder where the hose connects. It seems hopeless at this point. I need to keep moving. This stop cost me a whopping 4 minutes.
I’m rolling again and now I’m just pissed off — keeping my stops to an absolute minimum and as fast as possible was a huge part of my strategy and this was destroying that, but I didn’t know what else to do — this drink mix was my lifeblood, and this batch, in particular, happened to be one of the bigger ones. Without it, I would be screwed. I sip again. Nothing. I am now sucking on this hydration bladder with all of my strength, praying that I can just unclog it like that. I can’t. I’m rolling and wondering what else I could try. I decide that it seems like the clog needs to be dislodged from the inside. I wait until I see an ideal stick, come to a stop, unpack the bladder, open it up, and insert my entire forearm and a stick into the thick, sticky, syrup-like sugar water. Now that I was truly operating on the clog I could see how bad it was. I tried my best to clear it, but it simply wasn’t working. It was horribly clogged and the clumps of the mix I was seeing were simply not normal. I knew what it looked like when I’d failed to properly shake up a mix, and this was something different. Seeing that my attempt to clear the clog was failing, I close it back up and simply start riding again, and start thinking about what I am going to do. This last stop cost me 5 minutes. Ughhhhh.
I’m thinking it over and wondering what happened, and then it dawns on me: the iodine tablets. I’d never seen the drink mix act like this, and the only new element at play was the iodine tablets. I now had a theory that there must have been something about the iodine tablets causing the drink mix to sort of coagulate. Ok. This means two things. First, this batch of drink mix is toast. Second, I need to clear the clog so that I can at the very least make the next batch. Without clearing the clog I will be almost entirely without any carbs or calories. I’m racking my brain, and suddenly it dawns on me that I don’t think I have passed the town of Hancock yet. Anyone well acquainted with the C&O is likely familiar with Hancock due to C&O Bicycle — a cute bike shop that is no more than 50 feet off the trail. Truly the only bike shop (or any shop really) that is close to the trail. I don’t think I’ve passed Hancock! The only place on the trail where I could likely get access to a sink or hose just seconds off the trail. I check on my phone, and not only have I not passed Hancock yet, but I’m only 34 minutes away, and the bike shop is open! Salvation! I start cooking and try to get there faster.
I come practically skidding into the bike shop and blurted out something about trying to break a record, being in a huge rush, I’m so sorry, but do you have a hose I could use? They do! It’s in the back where they have the biker camping/hostel situation. I get to it. I dump the hydration pack in a slop sink and HOLY HELL the situation was far worse than I thought — the drink mix was hardly liquid anymore. At the bottom, I find the iodine tablets, which hadn’t even fully disolved. I turn the whole thing inside out and spray the hell out of it, blasting water through the hose. Clog. Cleared. Now the question is what the hell am I doing for nutrition for the remaining 124 miles?? I decide to mix up my final batch of drink mix, which was only meant to last for around 40 miles or so. I dilute it so that by my rough calculations I can take two sips every 20 minutes for the rest of the ride. Thankfully my nutritionist recommended that I bring some kind of disaster backup plan in case something happened. Wisdom! I had with me six Gu gels. I should say that I absolutely can’t stand the things, but the fact is they were the only thing that came to mind that I knew my gut wouldn’t have any issue with. 5 minutes and 25 seconds later, I’m back on the trail.
In total, the nutrition disaster and the stops that it created cost me a total of 25 minutes of stopped time. As I said I was only 10 minutes behind the cutoff when arriving at the Paw Paw Tunnel, and my analysis shows that the detour only cost me 8 extra minutes, so without the nutrition disaster I would have only been 18 minutes behind schedule at this point, with so many miles to go that was still within the margin of something I think I could have made up for. But now being 45 minutes behind? I started to wonder if it was time to switch to goal #2. Could I plausibly make up 45 minutes? I’ll never know for sure, but looking at my ride file, by my calculations it looks like even still at this point, with 123 miles left to go, if I were able to sustain around 16mph for the remainder of the ride I would be able to take the overall FKT with a decent margin. My pace on the initial rough part of the C&O before the detour was 16.1 mph, so maybe I could do this? The fact is though, I had to factor in the reality not just of the time penalties I had incurred, but also the nutritional implications of what had happened and what I had at my disposal for the remaining 123 miles.
The bonk
Let’s take stock of the implications of what has happened here. The batch of drink mix that I lost was measured to account for 6 hours, 15 minutes. It contained 471g of carbs. For the entire ride, I was supposed to be consuming 1,731g of carbs. Now, for the final 8 hours of the ride, rather than having approximately 86g of carbs per hour, I would have only 52g of carbs per hour. I had spent the past six months training my gut and metabolism to expect much more than that for the kind of watts I needed to put out, let alone 200 miles deep in a ride. Now at this point, dear reader, you may be asking: why didn’t you just buy some Skratch or other drink mix when you were at the bike shop? All I have to say to that, dear reader, is that is a very very good question.
Over the coming hours, my power would quite simply disappear. During the ride, I had somehow convinced myself that I was simply slower on the C&O and that was that. I didn’t realize at the time that I simply was close to if not fully, bonking. My normalized power on the C&O all the way to Hancock was 182 watts, not bad again for 200 miles deep. After Hancock to the end, my normalized power averaged to a measly 132 watts. That my friends is what happens when your carbs per hour suddenly decrease by 39.5%. It isn’t exactly 1:1, but it is interesting that the decrease in my normalized power was a 27.4% drop. If that’s not causation I don’t know what is.
Miles 211–303
At this point, I had run the numbers and could see that taking the overall FKT was simply not an option anymore. Sure I had enough miles to make up the lost time, but the problem was: my legs! I felt like I was giving it everything I had, but then I would look down at the computer and see the shockingly low power numbers I was doing. Despite the low power I was at least averaging 15 mph through this section. I am so thankful that I had set up a secondary goal for myself. In the past I would have just had a big crazy goal with no idea if it was doable, and no backup plan for something to aim for if the shit hit the fan. I’ve learned over the years that for me, having a backup goal (or two, or three) is crucial for me to maintain a positive outlook. I told myself when I was preparing that it would be the silliest thing in the world to have put in all of this hard work training, planning, plotting, daydreaming, and then to go out there and have a bad time because I wasn’t crushing it to the degree I’d hoped for. Sure I was out here to be competitive and try to do something ambitious, but not at the cost of not having a good time. I accepted the reality that at this point the big FKT had slipped away, and switched over to the cue sheet for my secondary goal of taking the solo unsupported FKT. The numbers were looking good for this!
I kept on pushing, and soaked in the sights — I was soooo happy with my choice to start the ride at night and finish during the day. The sun was warming me and keeping me alert and awake. Other than the fact that my legs felt like they had been mysteriously robbed of 50 watts, I was feeling great! This actually may have been the strangest part of the entire ride. I just felt… good! I absolutely didn’t feel as though I had ridden 200+ miles.
The other fun thing that happened: there’s this game that I think any cyclist plays with themselves towards the end of a long ride. You look down and see that you have let’s say 18 miles left, and although that seems like an eternity, you remind yourself that’s about the length of your daily commute. Well, that’s easy! I’ll just pretend I’m riding to work — no problem. The thing is, I started playing that game when I had around 85 miles left. After riding 254 miles, I saw the C&O mile marker 85 and thought to myself, 85 miles??? That’s it? I do 85-mile rides no problem! That’s only partially true, but at the time it made sense to me. I was cruising. I was on a quest.
Miles 304–334
Over the past 80 miles or so I had been occasionally doing the math on my pace, and distance remaining, just double-checking that I was on point to take the solo unsupported FKT. It seemed to check out and seemed like I was on track to take it with maybe a margin of 30 minutes. Alas, dear reader, I am not very good at math, especially not 300 miles into a ride. About two hours out from D.C. when the clock ticked over and the math became as simple as doubling my pace to see where I stood, it suddenly occurred to me that if I didn’t pick things up a bit I was hardly going to make it. That was unacceptable. I wasn’t going to go to all of this effort, have come this far, to only shave two minutes off of Kevin’s time. That’s just silly! I dug in, dug deep, and found every last little tiny microscopic bit of power I had left.
I am not kidding when I tell you that those last two hours are the hardest I’ve ever pushed on a bike. It felt like a two-hour Vo2 workout, or a two-hour Vo2 max test. Completely all out. Full gas. Only at this point in the ride, with the limited fuel at my disposal, that equated to an average of 145 watts, and raising my pace to 15.7 mph. RAW POWER hahaha. Truly though, this effort felt wild. I had to look at my speed every 3 seconds and force myself to hold it. I was talking, no — yelling, at myself to stick with it, and not to quit. Push push push push.
As I got closer to D.C. passing through the Great Falls area and other highly trafficked and populated parts of the canal I realized that I had struck gold — there were hardly any people out and about! I guess a Monday afternoon in spring is a good time in that regard. This was a huge help as I was able to simply keep pushing and holding my pace.
The finish
Just a mile or two more! There’s always the question of what is the proper way to finish this ride — do you stay on the canal, which actually doesn’t finish at mile marker zero, and then find your way to the mile marker? Or do you take the marked detour onto the Capital Crescent Trail, which essentially leads you to the mile 0 marker of the C&O? All the previous FKT rides have done the former, but I’ve never gone that way and was really worried about getting turned around or lost and it tanking my time. So when I got to the part where the two trails diverge and run parallel to one another, I took the Capital Crescent Trail. In hindsight I really wish I had scouted out the finish and gone the “purist” route. Not that it makes any competitive difference. Perhaps it saved me 30 seconds? A minute?
In either case, those last three miles were perhaps the most epic miles I’ve ever spent on a bike. It was in the bag at this point — I was doing it! I had a giant ridiculous grin on my face, or maybe it was a grimace? Either way, I was on cloud nine as I continued to keep on the gas. I weaved my way under the highway, into the park, around the corner, and onto the boardwalk, past the restaurants, to the boathouse, weaving my way around rowers, over the footbridge… to… the… mile… zero… marker! Stop ride. Save ride.
22 hours, 35 minutes, 28 seconds
I managed to shave 18 minutes, 19 seconds off of the previous record for a solo unsupported rider. The new time to beat is 22:35:28.
The next several hours were wild. I was shocked by how good I felt initially when I finished. I didn’t feel like I had just finished a 334-mile bike ride, or that I was totally sleep deprived. I was elated and so proud. This was the toughest ride I had ever done, and I had an F-ing blast doing it. I managed to achieve my #2 goal! The moment I finished I knew instantly that I would be coming back to do this crazy ride again and try to take the overall FKT — Dylan and Jeremy’s time remains unbeaten. Now that I’ve done the ride and experienced it first hand I’m confident that with a bit more training, and no nutrition disaster, I have a good shot. It’s too alluringly close to not give it another shot.
According to my original plan I was going to have family waiting for me at the finish line, but they weren’t able to move their travel plans up a day to match my improvised weather-induced adjusted schedule. I called my coach to share the news, we shared some laughs and hoorays, and then I decided I should probably figure out what I was doing before my body decided to shut down. I made my way to the local WaWa for some recovery chocolate milk. Cruelly there was a hill to get to it, and this is when I discovered that my quads simply didn’t work anymore. I walked the whole way there, and called some family on my way there to let them know I made it. I made my way to my nearby Airbnb reservation, realized it was a three-story walkup, and proceeded to embark on my final feat of athleticism: figuring out how to carry my bike up three flights of stairs even though I couldn’t seem to even walk up the stairs. Next time I would splurge on a nice hotel room as close as humanly possible to the finish line — no question worth it.
The immediate aftermath was interesting. I craved salty real food mentally, but once I had some I found that I really wasn’t hungry, and food wasn’t sitting well. My nutritionist explained that this is completely to be expected, that during a crazy ride like this something called vascular shunting occurs — essentially the body diverts blood away from areas not in use, and towards areas in use. So my digestive system was essentially in hibernation so to speak. It turns out that Shake Shack wasn’t exactly a wise move as my first meal. I showered, crawled into bed, and passed out almost immediately. I had four hours of intensely deep sleep — and then I was wide awake and couldn’t get back to bed. Unfortunately, the emergency gels I had to tap into were caffeinated, so during the final 8 hours of the ride, I consumed around 120mg of caffeine. Not a ton, but enough that it was still in my system.
My quads were the only thing that took time to recover — for the next two days I found standing up from a seated position, getting in and out of cars, walking upstairs — anything that required the use of my quads to be almost impossible. I had to rely on my upper body strength to pull myself up, or lower myself down. Good times! I did a lot of walking and touristing for a few days, and this gentle activity I’m sure helped with my recovery. Three or so days after the ride my legs (and the rest of my body) felt essentially back to normal, and I was back on the bike.
Anyone can do this ride
As many of the previous FKT holders have said, so many people can do this ride. Chris Shue wrote in his ride report that there are probably a million bike riders in the world that could do this ride sub-24hrs, and I am inclined to agree. If you’ve done a century, you can do a 334 mile ride no question. That’s one of the fun things that drew me to this FKT — it’s accessible, and it seems that there’s at least for now only a tiny group of like-minded weirdos who are inclined to do it. There are also, of course, plenty of super strong riders out there who could come along and easily shave several hours off Dylan and Jeremy’s record, but for now I kinda hope that FKTing the GAPCO remains this sort of weird cult of relatively average cyclists who use this completely unofficial, unsanctioned, weird idea of an adventure to push themselves, see what they are capable of, and join this growing club of whackos who have taken the plunge with this ride. I can’t wait to come back, do it again, and see what else I have to give to the trail.
