Ngede Challenge Recap

Apologies this has taken so long. It's been well over a week since the race, but life has been busy! We've been packing for a week and half which includes a triathlon for each of us, a week at a resort, a stay at a hotel, two days with my parents, and of course there's a baby involved, so it's possible the packing has taken longer than the vacation. But anyway... on to the story.

This year started out with the hope of completing my first Olympic distance triathlon. Well, it didn't work out that way. The dates just didn't fit right, and I didn't have any more Sundays to take off. So, I needed a challenge. Naturally, I wanted to pick up where I left off last year and work toward a 100-mile "century" ride, but again the dates didn't work. All the big rides around these parts fell on days where I had weddings or Sundays. So, on to plan C: A revisit to the Ngede Challenge.

Two years ago I did this race (see recap here) and it went well... or as well as something that really hurt, left me heat exhausted, and included a busted up bike and a hurting back could go. Anyway, I finished in under 3 hours then (2:59:10 to be exact) and my goal was to improve on that this time. All in all it should be doable: my physical condition was as good or better, my equipment was in better shape, and I was two years older and wiser (not sure if that last one is really a help or not).

So, what is the Ngede Challenge? Four parts: A 10k road run, 10k mountain bike, 25k road bike, and a "5k" trail run. Notice the "5k" in quotation marks. We'll get to that.

10k road run

No matter how prepared I am for a race the start line is a place of jitters. But this time I felt like I had things fairly together. The weather was nice--maybe a little warmer than I would like--but it wasn't overly muggy. My transition zone was set up precisely according to my pre-list instructions. Kate was there with Natalie to cheer me on. Basically, things were good.


Then the gun went off and I forgot all plans and preparation. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration. The first part of the run is uphill for almost a mile. This stinks. It also makes pacing a problem. I settled into a gait that was comfortable, but I had no idea if I was too fast, too slow, or just right. I would have to wait and see.

This year's race was small. They always are, but this one particularly so. Only 12 people were out on the road, and of those I think 4 or 5 were relay teams, but I didn't know who was a team and who was an individual. So, as we started the run I sized up the competition. The first guy on the road is ridiculous. His name is Craig and he's won this race every year. I didn't need to worry about Craig, except to see how far ahead of me he was going to be on this leg and then again when he was coming back on the road bike. Second on the road was a guy I didn't know who seemed to be trying to keep up with Craig. Then there was a high school kid in a blue shirt who was running fast but whose form didn't look good. Then a guy, Corey, who I finished in front of two years ago but who looked much stronger now. Then a woman in purple who seemed to be a runner of similar ability to my own. Then me.

The start. Notice how I actually started in the back! Wisdom.

I didn't care about who was behind me. Actually, I didn't really care about who was ahead of me, except to what extent they could help pace me and beat my time from 2012. So, as the run evolved the woman in the purple and I kept a steady pace side by side for a while. We gradually reeled in blue shirt guy, as Corey passed him and continued up the road. After a while we caught and passed blue shirt guy, who happened to have himself a nice puke on the side of the road just at the moment I caught him. After he assured me he was OK I continued on to the turnaround 3.1 miles (5k) into the run.

Everything was pretty much going to plan. I grabbed a bottle of water from the 3 mile water station and ate a Honey Stinger Fruit Smoothie gel, finishing the water as we came back. This gave blue shirt guy a chance to catch back up (apparently the puking did the trick) and I gradually lost contact with the woman in purple. I began to suspect--hope, really--that she and blue shirt guy were on relay teams, which meant I was in 4th, maybe 3rd among individuals. This didn't matter to me much, though I watched Corey running away and I was thinking, "Man, either I'm a lot slower or he's a lot faster... or both."

Well, I was a bit slower. At the turnaround 5k mark I was at 24:30. That sounds so slow to me--glacial, really--but I'm usually not running a 5k followed by two and a half hours of further exercise. A couple of things I had to remember: 1. I was running over some serious hills, and 2. I had three and a half more legs to go.

It was after the turnaround that I began to have some issues. My left foot started to go numb. This is a problem I've been having for a little while. I had switched socks, hoping it would fix things, and it seemed like it had for awhile but not this day. I knew I was slowing a bit, hoping beyond hope to make it through the run without walking. All the while my foot just felt number and number.

Mercifully, the last mile of the run is downhill (amazing how that works!) and on the downhill the numbness lifted. (By the way, if anybody has any idea what's causing this I'd love to know... I have an elastic laces theory that's totally conjecture) But at about the same time I started to have an itch in the back of my throat--that familiar asthma feeling that I've had only a couple of times. Thankfully, I had my inhaler waiting in transition. I wasn't fast toward the end. In fact, I got passed in the last straight by one relay team and another individual, but it was an individual who was running the whole thing as training for an ultra-marathon. 50k of running for training. Crazy.

When I got into transition I looked at my watch and I was just over 50 minutes. That's about as slow a 10k as I've ever run, but a couple of things improved my mood: I was only two minutes slower than two years ago, and I felt like I had A LOT left in my legs. More to the point, I was actually excited to get on the mountain bike. I grabbed a bag of ice and shoved it in my back jersey pocket: this year I was prepared for the heat. I noticed as I took off that the woman in the purple shirt and kid in the blue shirt both were resting by the transition area: they were on relay teams, which meant I was the fourth individual on the course.


10k mountain bike

Putzing in transition, forgetting my inhaler.

So, the thing about having an inhaler in my transition bag is that you still need to remember to grab it. I didn't. And I was already regretting it as I started out on the mountain bike. The first mile  is, again, almost completely uphill. Yay.

I settled into a nice rhythm, but I didn't quite have all my breath. This was a little disconcerting.

For the mountain bike leg I had one goal: Do not get off the bike. Last time I had walked my bike three times, but this time I was riding with SPD pedals and, just as importantly, this time I knew what I was getting into. The mountain bike course is a lot of ups and downs with a mix of flats along ski trails. I hated the flats, because it was like riding through wavy, grassy, rooty undergrowth where pedaling a rhythm is impossible. It was hard to pick a line through the grass and ATV tracks made everything randomly bumpy. Weirdly, most of the uphills were easier.

After consistent uphill riding for the first mile I came to the first sharp uphill and pedaled over it easily. This had the potential to actually be fun.

In the middle of the bike course was a water station, which two years before I had ignored, but this time I was making certain to stay on top of the hydration situation so I stopped both times I went by, just grabbing a cup of water and downing it before re-mounting the bike. I could have ridden this course faster but I'm not sure I could have ridden it any smarter. There were two or three super steep dirt and rock inclines--places where I had some legitimate fear I may lose all my momentum and go falling backwards--but I made it over all of them.

In fact, I only had two close calls. One was in a terrible area where you go downhill fast into what I can only describe as a small beach. The sand was so deep that it wasn't so much that I was riding over it as I was riding through it. This was followed, of course, by a small hill made almost entirely of sand. That was terrible.

I definitely look like a mountain biker... or something.

The second place I almost bit it was in the last half mile where we join a nice single-track trail. I almost lost control early on, gripping the handlebars like I was on a road bike, because, well, that's what I do. That was a mistake and I almost paid for it by hitting a tree, but I quickly learned to correct that error, and the last half mile was by far the most enjoyable.

I actually had a load of fun on the mountain bike leg, but especially on that last single track section. It was downhill and technical but not so much that I couldn't feel like I could go fast. It was on this last section that I caught and passed the guy who had started out trying to run with Craig. I couldn't believe it was him. He easily had eight minutes on me in the run, but in less than 10k I had made that up. I felt a little giddy. (Here I should probably note that he was riding a girl's bike where the seat had slipped down so that his legs were comically bent if ever he sat in the saddle, but let's just ignore that)

I came into transition in a respectable time of 35 minutes and change. I was two minutes faster than two years ago, so I was only about a minute off that pace. And what was next excited me more... the road bike.

25k road bike

Two years ago this leg was basically a disaster as I had a chain that was skipping on the gears, which meant I had no power and was always on the verge of losing the chain completely. But this time I was set to pound off a great tempo and really have a fast time. But I ran into one teensy little problem: I forgot my inhaler again. See, as much as I enjoyed the mountain bike I was starting to feel the asthma more and more, but in the transition area I was so excited to move on to the next leg that I completely forgot about it. I can be excused a little bit because, joining Kate and Natalie, were my parents and so I had some hellos to say as I switched bikes and shoes (I am using LOOK pedals on my road bike these days). The problem being that, once riding (uphill again, of course) I remembered my mistake. Breathing was becoming harder.

In spite of that I rode OK. I passed the same guy who I had just seen on the single track. He had a faster transition than me in large part because he didn't have to change shoes but also because I suspect he actually treated transition like part of the race. I was drinking and loading up with more ice and practically camping out in between legs. Every stop meant pouring cold water over my head and checking my bearings. I was not overheating this time--not if I could help it.

Beyond the guy I just passed was another guy. This was the dad of blue-shirt kid and they were doing the race as a pair. The dad did both the biking legs and the son both the running legs. I didn't know this at the time, and I wouldn't have any opportunity to find out because the dad and I were biking the exact same speed pretty much the entire time. As we reached the turnaround he was maybe 30 seconds ahead of me and I never closed the gap. I was wondering if I could close it down but that nagging asthma feeling bid me to play it safe. I was getting more and more worried, thinking more often about that inhaler back in my transition bag. I knew this was something I didn't want to mess around with.

As we crested the last hill before coasting down to transition we passed a girl on a relay team who was really blowing up. It made me feel fast, but it was pretty much an illusion. She was seriously bonking, just soft pedaling her way up the hill to coast in. I really pushed up those last hills, standing up on the pedals and feeling relatively good. I knew I was riding decently. So, as I coasted into transition I was pleased with a time of 50 minutes and change. Three minutes faster than in 2012. Better still, I was on a better pace overall for the first time.

"5k" trail run

The cruelest leg of the Ngede Challenge is undoubtedly the trail run. Firstly, it's called a 5k in order to keep the nice rounded number of 50k in total racing, but it is decidedly NOT a 5k. It's actually more like a 6k... plus another 1/5. So, like 6.2k. Almost 4 miles. To recap: not a 5k. All of this is very important when you're out there running the same kind of terrain on which we mountain biked. In fact, much of the courses are the same. That single-track section where the mountain bike leg finished was where the run started, except uphill (obviously). I had realized when biking these trails that there was no way I was going to make it up all the hills on this run without walking occasionally. Before the race I had some grand vision of me sprinting up all the hills, but yeah, that was silly.

I had a bit of a costume change before the final 5k, but that's me in the white gallavanting like a crazy person

I had another problem, as well. I forgot my inhaler again. I know I'm an idiot, but in the excitement of finishing the road bike I had forgotten my breathing problems and hopped in my shoes ready to run. My mind basically shut down from leg to leg, forgetting everything important, including the one thing I had been thinking about for pretty much the last hour straight

Less than a mile in I came to the first hard uphill where I knew immediately I was walking. That was OK. What was most important was that I made sure to start running again. That's always that risk with walking--that you just keep walking when you get to the top of the hill. I did pretty well with this. Nine times in all I walked. I counted. Hills #6 and #9 were the worst--the steepest and longest. But every time I started running again.

Finish!

The nice thing about this course is that the last 3/4 mile is all downhill again. Everything goes down to the transition area. So, in spite of the fact that I was feeling tired, I killed that last 3/4 mile. For a while I wasn't sure if I was going to beat my time from two years past, but on the last mile I put it beyond doubt. As I ran (yes, ran... I actually had some oomph left in the legs) to the finish line I looked up and saw 2:57:37.

All in all a good race. I cooled down and yes, grabbed and used the inhaler. And I felt great. Well, great eventually. A fun race, a good sense of accomplishment. Next year? Probably something different. But who knows?

 

My trophy. It was actually for coming the furthest. I like winning awards that require no racing skill. They suit my abilities.