It Has Begun

More Gold

8/28 At the entrance to Lower Loop. A few yellow leaves on a baby aspen.

Look What I Found

I came across this around 9000 feet on Aug. 26. Just a few spots of yellow leaves near the ground, in the shade. An anomaly really, but Autumnal Bliss will arrive soon.

24 Hours in the Sage Report

Hi. 48 hours later and I'm just finishing unpacking the car and doing one of the foulest loads of laundry ever. Before I get into the details I want to say thanks to some folks:

John and Jake: for spending 24 hours setting up, tearing down, feeding, maintaining, and supporting. John for pacing me on some very difficult laps. Would have been impossible without those guys.

Courtney and Jared: for the moral support and for coming down to hang out only to drive back to CB at 1am.

Zach, Mallory, and Sarah: for seeing me off and the high fives

Rachel: for being at the finish line

The Alpineer crew: for helping with my last minute chainring bolt crisis and the encouragement

Kay Lynn and Trent: for the pop-up camper.

Ellen at Cateye: batteries!

All went very well. There was some weirdness but that's expected. I had some slow times on my night laps because of some serious light issues. My Cateye Double Shot was flawless. I was so grateful for it because my HID light from another company would not turn on. My backup light from that same manufacturer went dead after five minutes. I rode two laps with just the Double Shot and took my time on the descents. A guy in the campsite next to us graciously loaned me his helmet light. Thanks man! Having a second light took about 15 minutes off of my last night lap.

Jake and John took turns staying up to help me out between laps. Things get confusing in the middle of the night but those guys were there to keep things straight, keep my bike running, and make sure that I was eating and drinking. I started falling behind on food and decided to catch up by drinking an Ensure and eating pretzels, clif bloks, a turkey sandwich, and a banana in the span of 5 minutes. It was all I could do to keep all that stuff in my stomach on the first climb of the 4th lap. I had to get off and walk to keep myself from hurling. I got back to the start/finish and couldn't eat a thing. Miraculously I was able to drink some coca cola mixed 1:1 with water. I didn't eat much after that; I'd take some clifbloks every once in a while and let them dissolve in my mouth while riding. Not recommended unless absolutely necessary because it leaves a disgusting film on your teeth.

My bike hung in there. I blew a fork seal and my crankset came loose, but it didn't cause massive complications.

I was extremely tense and nervous in the hours leading up to the start. I tried to lay down, I tried to walk around. The only thing that worked was fiddling with gear and being kind of a butt-hole. As soon as I started riding I felt awesome....totally having fun, enjoying being on the trail, enjoying the people around me. The course was outstanding. The conditions were perfect. It had rained a bit the day before which kept the dust down and the trails from getting too loose, but not enough rain to allow the surface to get churned up. I was able to keep going through the whole race, getting off the bike to make some adjustments and eat a little. I spent a few minutes stretching before the final lap, but the time in the pits was minimal. I didn't have to stop to sleep!

The absolute highlight was watching the sky getting pink around 5:30. I had an overwhelming sense of gratitude and hope. Other fun stuff: threading my way through The Notch in the dark was a welcome diversion; getting a "good job" from the passing riders; long, steady climbs up The Luge with no one around; having John help me break the course down into sections; watching people having fun even though they were suffering; the volunteers and KOA staff giving high fives, staying up all night, yelling encouragement; for the first time in my adult life...not finishing last.

I'm pretty tired. My head hurts and I don't have much energy, but my legs actually feel fine. I don't feel the need to be on my bike for a while. I dropped it off at the Alpineer to get the fork seals fixed and told them to take their time; I'd rather have it there so I'm not lulled into riding it.

You can still donate to ERDF. Never too late. There's a link to the right of this post toward the top of the page.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement and support.

It is Over

6 laps
12.5 hours
83 miles

More to follow.

26 Hours To Go

It's coming. I wasn't nervous until I went to pick up my packet. I'm exhausted and hope that means a great night of sleep is in store.

Someone asked today if it's too late to make a donation. Nope. You can donate to ERDF before, during, or after the race. www.er-d.org will ask you for a total donation amount, not the number of laps or amount per lap. Your donation amount per lap is up to you and is a very loose, informal thing.

I'm shooting for 5 laps. If all goes really well then I hope for 6. If I'm on fire then I'm hoping for 7.

Had a wonderful day with the Copes sharing pastry, paddling Blue Mesa, swimming, and sitting by the fire. Thank you, thank you for a relaxing, supportive day to calm my nerves.

Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight piles of gear and bins of food.

Mountains of Stuff

Piles of gear are everywhere around the cabin. I made it about halfway through my prep-list. Still need to do a solid once-over on both bikes, make oatmeal cookies, and do a bit of food shopping. 48 hours to go!

Did you know that one box of clifbloks contains 3600 calories? Man can not live on clifbloks alone. My grocery list includes Barbara's Bakery natural pop-tarts, boulder canyon potato chips, chicken strips (seriously, I ate 3 before I went out for a ride the other night and they were awesome), honey stinger bars, bananas, oranges, peaches, coca cola, chai, bagels with turkey, hot chocolate, yerba mate, ginger beer, instant oatmeal, ensure, and a bunch of treats for the crew. I need to ingest 300 calories an hour for 12 hours. It's usually pretty easy to do on 3-6 hour rides - a bottle of accelerade and a package of clifbloks or a bar every hour....but then sometimes my stomach doesn't feel good about anything. A friend told me that practicing eating while riding is as important as practicing riding. Sometimes it takes a lot of discipline to get stuff in your stomach and hold it down. It's never happened to me on long rides but the fact is that if you fall behind on calories your race is over. Hopefully no worries there; I love to eat and am hauling a bit of reserve.

Ok, off to sleep.

Don't Forget To Tighten Your Chainring Bolts

Trial Run

I just got back from pre-riding the 24 Hours in the Sage Course. I took a lap in the day light this afternoon. It took about 1:50 but I was stopping to pull out the map to make sure I was getting the course straight, and chatted with a couple at the Sea of Sage/Rocky Ridge intersection. It was tough to figure out all the turns. I'm somewhat familiar with the Rocky Ridge/Sea/Broken Shovel/Becks side of Hartman but had never ridden Behind the Rocks and Alonzo's. I felt pretty good.

I waited for the sun to go down. Had a snack and a good chat with a couple of riders in the parking lot. My lighting strategy involves using a Cateye LED light on my bars and an HID on my helmet. LED lights have ridiculously long burn times with a good quality spot. HID lights burn extremely bright but don't have the long burn times. I planned to use the LED on climbs and switch on the HID only on downhills. Maximum light and battery life. So I'm riding along, enjoying solitude and the meditative sounds of tires on dirt, a whirirng chain, the occasional kurchunk of a derailleur, and long, slow breaths. I don't have a lot of experience with the HID light and learned the hard way that it has to go through 10 charge/discharge cycles before the battery is conditioned to take a full charge (I just learned this by using the google). About 3 miles from the trailhead the HID completely shut down. I say to myself "no problem" because I've been riding with just the Cateye light alone for about 4 years. Then that light starts to flicker because I'd neglected to fully charge it after my last ride. I had a lot of thoughts flash through my head: how would my parents take hearing that their son was eaten by a mountain lion, how many people would tell me that I'm foolish for riding alone/at night/alone at night, I was cold, it was too dark to find my way back, etc. But then the only thought that I could think was "I am going to make it back to the car". And I did. And it was close. I don't always go around calling God by his first name but this time I gave a personal parking lot prayer of thanks.

So I need to keep refining the lighting strategy. I wish that I could give you a solid estimate for an average lap time. My daylight lap was skewed. My night time lap needs to get thrown out because I was crawling along on a dying light and I took a wrong turn earlier in the ride (and bumbled into some poor guy's campsite and freaked out his poor dogs). 1.5-2 hours is my best guess.

I'm off to keep myself awake for as long as possible. I'm trying to fall into an extremely irregular sleep pattern to try to be ready for an all-nighter.

24 Hours in the Sage

24 Hours in the Sage is 6 days away. I'm registered for the 12 hour solo category. Stoked. The longest I've been on a bike is 8 hours. We'll see how this goes.

Just got in from my first night ride in a while. Wanted to check lighting systems, placement, and batteries. It's always spooky out there at night for me. Tonight I saw porcupines, deer, and cows. It's what I don't see that freaks me out. I also got to witness a very beautiful moon-rise over Mount Crested Butte. Sweet.

I start racing at 12:00am on Sunday August 16 and ride through until 12:00pm of the same day. The event is a 24 hour race but I've chosen to race the 12 hour option. I'm not sure if I aspire to ride a full 24 hour event. I'll have a better idea at noon on Sunday.

I've also chosen to ride for the Episcopal Relief and Development Fund. If you're reading this, you likely received the details. I'm asking friends to choose an amount to donate for each 13 mile lap completed. ERDF is a very cool organization. I struggled about the decision to ask my friends to donate to a faith-based organization but I'm confident in ERDF's work and their goals are solid. You can check them out here:

www.er-d.org

Donate here:

www.er-d.org/donate-select.php

There are several funds you can donate to. They range from HIV/AIDS, specific regions, Women's Development, Clean Water, or Greatest Need. After you select the fund, you'll click through and enter your information. Please select the option to give in honor of someone and enter "Dave Dolph" in the boxes provided. This will help us keep track of how much money is raised from the race. After the race I'll post on this blog the number of completed laps.

24 Hours in the Sage isn't connected to ERDF. My fund raising is something I decided to do independently.

Please keep visiting the site for updated info. We're going to try to do live updates through the night and morning of the race...depending on how coherent Jake and John are in the pits. I'll try to write a few words between laps while we're switching batteries and water bottles. Thanks for your support.