So you think you're tough?

Here is a great recap of Alec Petro's Alaskan MTB adventure:

A number of people asked me to write up my race experience in Alaska. It took a while to gather my thoughts and put the pictures together but here it is... I apologize for the length but the race took 6 days and 9 hours so it was hard to put it in just a few paragraphs.. ....

Iditarod Trail Invitational, Alaska
March 1 - 7, 2009
By Alec Petro

Photo Gallery:

http://www.kodakgal lery.com/ ViewSlideshow. action?&collidparam= 32531728813. 288871242113. 1237287396225 (copy and paste link)


First, I would like to thank my extremely understanding and supportive wife and family for putting up with this “adventure”.Without it I couldnt have attempted it. I don’t think there has been any race (including Race across America ) where there was so much “non-training” preparation. From learning about the appropriate gear and accumulating it, to learning from ground zero about winter survival, it was a daunting task. Three years ago, I didn’t know you could race mountain bikes in the snow. I did not know about the special snow bike called a Surley Pugsley. I had never camped in the winter nor did I have any desire to ever to do so. While I like the cold and spend a lot of time skiing, it’s only for relatively short periods of time where you can go into the lodge if you need to get a hot chocolate. So, it was with much trepidation that I signed up for the Iditarod Trail Invitational shortly after coming back from competing in La Ruta des Conquistadors in Costa Rica in November. That race was a four stage grueling affair which climbs 45k feet in the span of 20-24 hours of racing. I had traveled to AK with my brother Heli-skiing last winter and read about the Iditarod race and thought it would be an interesting challenge with a lot of different components and also a great way to see a piece of the last frontier, Alaska. The Iditarod Trail is one of the longest and most famous trails in the world named for a trail which was broken in 1925 when a deadly Diphtheria epidemic broke out in Nome , Alaska . A few courageous dog sled mushers broke a 1000 mile trail from Anchorage in the middle of a bad Alaskan storm to deliver a flu serum. This serum was delivered to Nome and the vast majority of the sick children were saved. This trail became the site of the famous dog sled race in 1967.
After I ponied up the $800 race fee for the 350 mile race which goes on the most challenging and scenic trails of the most famous dog sled race in the world (and AK's annual equivalent of its own Superbowl), I started to research what was needed in terms of gear and know how to compete in the race. I knew as a first timer, I would have a very steep learning curve and make a lot of mistakes in gear and race assumptions (and I certainly did!). I already owned a Pugsley and had raced and won the last two Jay VT Winter Challenge MTB races in the snow (only 30 miles) in 2007 and 2008, so at least I knew I could ride competently in the snow. The Iditarod race is different. It’s a non-stop race for however long it takes to complete. There are only a few rules: one must carry all gear other than extra food and batteries from the start of the race, there are two 10 lb food drops where you send your supplies ahea at mile 160 (Fingerlake Check Pt) and mile 210 (Rohn Check Pt) on the other side of the fabled 3600 ft Rainy Pass) and there is no outside support allowed.

In the beginning of the pre-race planning I was really worried about keeping my hands and feet warm through the potential -30 degree temps (We rode two mornings in -30 degrees – my newly grown beard came in handy and I only got frostbite between the top of my beard and the bottom of my goggles and the tip of my nose :) ). I built special over-boots, with a lot of help from Arnold Roest who was invaluable through my whole preparation. Arnold and I also built and tested a ski with a carbon fiber cradle which seemed to be very promising on the flats, at least where I was able to test it vs. the regular front wheel.

As far as training goes, while I had been riding consistently, I had limited success in getting some long winter rides in. I had no training rides longer than 6 hours and only had 5 rides over 4.5 hours since November. I was also running twice a week because I understood there was a high probability that there would be some bike pushing if there was any deep snow. It was hard trying to train and ride so much in the winter, so I wound up riding a lot of miles inside on my trainer. Even so, I knew I had put a lot of miles in over the course of training for La Ruta and I probably averaged 15-19 hours or riding for the 9 weeks leading up to the Iditarod race. Not exactly my plan, but I figured if I rode smart I could survive with that amount of riding. It would turn out that I would bike/push 101 hours (taking out rest stops) over the course of what would be a 6 day and 9 hour race.

It took a lot of testing but I figured out the correct hand/glove configuration was Craft Lobster gloves with liners. When I was hot and sweaty I could ride with the liners and take the lobster gloves off. It is also impossible to ride in the bitter cold without something called “Pogies” which are insulated handlebar covers which you slip you hands into when you ride. This protects from wind and really makes an amazing difference in comfort when riding. After some more research on the web I commissioned Carousel designs in California to make a custom packing set up with a seat post bag, triangle frame bag, and cradle over the front wheel, which held my -20 degree Northface down sleeping bag/mat over the front tire in a water proof “bivy sack” and also held extra clothes. Supplies like stove, food (5-8 lbs at a time), 2 head lamps, glasses, goggles, Leatherman tool, park tool, pump, extra tube and more went into the triangle bag. The seat post bag that extended over the rear wheel which held more food and emergency supplies like wire, tape, first aid kit, fire starting kit, and a host of other little necessary items. I drilled a water bottle holder underneath the down tube near the crank to hold a 22 oz white fuel canister for my Simmlerlite stove. A stove would be necessary (for me at least) to melt snow for water in case I ran out, and to cook any hot freeze dried food in case I got stranded anywhere. This would come in handy on Rainy Pass during our 46 hour/two night treck over the unbroken trail. I had a Garmin 60 csx GPS mounted on the handlebars loaded with the trail way points and a Nalgene bottle in an insulated carrier over the stem. All tolled, my fully loaded bike weighed about 74 lbs. Lastly I carried a 100 oz custom cold weather insulated camel back which still had to be kept under two layers of jackets most times (to prevent from freezing in the bitter cold) and still managed to freeze at moments every day. When I did freeze my fluids, and I was unable to get any water, I would have to take the end tube and place it in my armpit under all my layers to thaw it out so the hose would start flowing again. I was worried whether my back could handle wearing this extra large camel back weighing probably 4 lbs over the course of the race, but surprisingly my back got used to it quickly and never really bothered me.

I had shuttered at the idea of camping in the winter but knew I had to practice sleeping with sweaty clothes in the cold and snow. Luckily, our family travels to NH every weekend to ski at Loon Mt in Lincoln , NH . I gently started this training process by sleeping outside on the porch. The first night I attempted this I made it a full 3 hours and then had to come in because I was too cold. Gradually I learned a few tricks to make it bearable like sleeping in bike boots, hat, down jacket, and mittens inside the -20 sleeping bag. Amazingly, if you keep warm enough in wet clothes inside the sleeping bag, after 3-4 hours, your body heat will dry your wet clothes and the moisture will escape through the breathable down sleeping bag and just leave a crust of frost on the outside of the bag from the moisture when you wake up. So after 3 months of lists, gathering food and other supplies, and reading everything I could read on the internet about the race (and completely terrified after reading most of the race accounts). I arrived in Anchorage three days before the race to get acclimated to the 4 hour time difference since the race oddly started at 2 pm on March 1st. I was lucky enough to nab an empty seat for Heli-skiing with Chugatch Powder Guides at Mt Alyeska outside of Anchorage two days before the race. It was a nice way to start the journey and we had a great day and skied 21,000 vertical ft on a perfect blue sky day. My legs felt fine after skiing as I have been skiing/biking every weekend day in NH for training since December. My friend Mike Mitchell, a former room mate at the National Sports Academy in Lake Placid had graciously offered to come up to Alaska at the same time as the race. He not only helped me get prepared leading up to the race, but also drove me out the the starting line in Knik, a 45 minute drive from Anchorage. Mike rented a snow machine and served as the unofficial race photographer for day one, and took alot of the pictures in my photo album. He also is a former army ranger and veteran pilot and flew us over the Dog Sled race on the first day to watch the race from the air.

I had a very sick feeling in my stomach when we lined up at the start at Knik Lake, having really no idea what to expect in terms of how my body was going to handle the long term effects of cold, sleep deprivation, and overall fatigue. The only “all-nighter” I had ever experienced in my life was the 24 Hr Solo World MTB Championships in Atlanta in 2006 and that was very hard. This was also different from RAAM where we were on our bikes, riding hard for 30-45 minute stints. There was relatively no rest here and the cold added a dangerous element where controlling the amount of sweat one produces was important for survival. In the temperature we were riding in, one tended to start to get really cold after about 3-4 minutes of stopping because of how wet you were underneath your 4 layers from perspiring. I packed about twenty 50 gram caffeine pills for piece of mind. I wound up consuming all but 4 over the course of the race. I gave those 4 to other racers.

We started on Sunday March 1st at 2 pm on Knik Lake . The 50 skiers, cyclists, and walkers scattered across the lake in different directions. It had snowed about 10 inches in Anchorage the day before, so we were a little nervous the trail wasn't going to be ridable, but luckily the trail was fairly hard packed by snow machines in the beginning and we were able to ride the first 20 miles. The weather was perfect and the temperature comfortable, about 16 degrees and no wind at the beginning. I had started the race using the removable ski that Arnold Roest and I had built. I had tested it for speed (on the flats at least in NH) and it seemed to go faster than a regular front. But after the first 10 hilly miles into the race, for some reason I was having a surprisingly hard time keeping with the top 5-7 riders, especially on the hills. I thought it might have something to do with the centrifugal force and momentum of a wheel when going uphill. I was worried there was something wrong with the ski and I couldn’t imagine having these issues over the course of the next 4 days, so at about mile 10 I saw a spectator on the side of the trail, I stopped, removed the ski, and handed it to him and asked him (since he lived in Anchorage) to deliver it to the Speedway Bike shop which I had frequented in the days before the race. It was 3 lbs off my bike as well. Little did I know at the time that my bike would still be about 10-12 lbs heavier fully packed than the rest of the guys I was riding with. The next 20 miles turned windy and as the sun went down I experienced my first Alaskan evening “cool down” where the temp would go from +15 to -15 F in the space of 5 or 6 hours.

After the rolling hills we got onto Flathorn Lake and a river system where the where the wind picked up from the north and the temperatures dropped considerably. At night time it was around -20 and several people got frost-bit toes during this section. This stage was considerably more windy and harder than I was expecting, and I started to have some concerns that if this was the easy part, what was the hard part going to be like? We rode into a stiff headwind for at least 3 hours before we got to the first check point. A couple of people stepped in overflow on the lake along the way and had to drop out unfortunately. The first check-point was Yentna Station, 57 miles from the start, which I reached at 1:20 am. Yentna Station is a simple "lodge" on the river and it was really nice to be able to get inside and to get some real food after 11 hours or riding. The owner made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and I gobbled it up quickly and tried to get some rest. I lied down at 2:15 am and just tossed and turned. I was still nervous and hopped out of my sleeping bag at 4:45 am. I got up and got out the door at about 5:45 after getting some hot oatmeal and hot chocolate. I didn’t ask what the temperature was before I left but I knew it was really cold because I needed to add extra toe and hand warmers an hour into the ride. I would later find out that it was about -30 degrees when I checked out of Yentna. From Yentna Station we continued riding the up the winding Yentna River . It was clear and crisp as the sun came over the Alaska mountain range. I could see Denali ( Mt. McKinley –Elevation 20,320 ft) to the northwest. It looked quite close because it was so big but it was actually almost 100 miles away. Mileage is a whole different story in Alaska . If you are riding on hard packed snow with a 74 lb bike on the flats you can go up to 7-8 mph. Soft snow was about 4.5 mph (in your granny gear) and pushing is about 2.5 mph if it wasn’t ridable but was flat. Our speed which we were trail breaking over Rainy Pass was about ½ MPH and that was the hardest work of all!
At Skwentna, I came in at 6th place at 11:45 am and stopped for a large bowl of Spaghetti and a burger. I also tried to take an hour nap but was too wired to sleep so I left at 2 pm after I had dried out most of my sweat frozen gear and refilled my camel back and Nalgene bottle. I took off with a couple other riders, 3-time La Ruta des Conquistador Champion Lousie Kobin and Eric Warkentin, but soon after pulled away from them and rode most of the 39 miles to Finger Lake by myself. I stopped at Shell Lake Lodge for another food pit stop on the way. This was a really cozy little lodge over looking the 3 mile long lake which served food and had little cabins to rent. I spent 45 minutes there and then continued on to Finger Lake , where I hoped to sleep the 2nd night. The route from Shell Lake to Finger Lake climbed from 500 ft to 1000 ft above sea level and crossed about 15 frozen lakes. It was a bit eerie crossing these lakes, sometimes not being able to see the other side as I arrived to them, in the dark and alone. I arrived at Finger Lake at 10:15 pm where Jay and Tracy Petervary, James Leavesley, and Chris Wrobel were just sitting down for a quick meal of chicken, beans and rice before trying to get a decent sleep. I got a plate myself and quickly devoured it. I didn’t know when they were planning to leave in the AM but my plan was to leave with them, whatever time they chose, as I didn’t want to ride the next stage by myself as I knew it was going to get more difficult as we kept climbing into the mountains. Someone also told me there was a 12 foot cliff on this part of the trail which you have to get over on the next stage and I didn’t want to tackle that alone if I could help it.
At Finger Lake Lodge we slept in a walled tent set up for the riders to sleep and dry out clothes. It was quite cramped in the tent with the five of us in a small space and everyone’s sweaty clothes hanging up to dry next to a small electric heater. At 4 am I heard the others moving and I quickly jumped up to get my dry clothes together, pack my sleeping bag and get ready to go. Finger Lake was also the first “food drop” and our supply bags were in a pile outside next to the tent. I grabbed my bag and went to the main lodge to have a quick bite before we left. I ate 3 bags of Instant oatmeal and two cups of hot chocolate, which was tasty and filling. We left for Puntilla Lake , the beginning of Rainy Pass at 5 am in the dark.This route to Puntilla Lake is one of the most memorable and challenging stages. It was 35 miles but extremely hilly. The five of us rode the first 15 miles together and hit the “cliff” that I heard about. It was so steep that I had to help lift each person’s bike and someone on the top had to grab the front wheel and pull it up. It was extremely difficult and I’m not sure I could have done it alone without a rope. I can’t imagine how the dog sleds get up this, but this stage is where most of the Dog mushers get hurt and break bones. After the cliff and another really steep 400 yard hill we had to climb up, I rode my own pace to Puntilla Lake and wound up putting about 30-45 minutes on the others, and came into Puntilla alone in 2nd place at around 11:45 am. I had no intention of leaving the group after Puntilla because it was the beginning of Rainy Pass but it was nice to feel that if we were riding the bike (and not pushing) that I could ride away if I wanted to. Puntilla Lake is a famous Iditarod check point run by a really nice family with 5 sons. They own a lodge where people come to hunt and fish, and they also have 10 smaller hunting cabins around the area. It is a really amazing setting and the lake serves as a great winter high altitude landing strip.

After eating a can of ravioli and a couple large cups of Hot Chocolate we started to get ready to start the march over Rainy Pass and we left at 2 pm. It was sunny out and at this point we had no reason to think that there wasn’t a trail broken by snow machines over the top of the pass. The race director, Bill Merchant, had promised that he would be able, with his monster snow machine, to break the east side of Rainy Pass to the summit while the Iditarod Dog sled race officials would simultaneously break the trail from the Rohn check point (mile 210) backwards up the other side of Rainy Pass. Each side was about 15 miles of trail breaking. It had 3-4 feet of snow on the pass in the week leading up to the race but I could not imagine that the snow was too deep for them to break at that moment. It would turn out that the one of the snow machines trying to break the trail from the other side broke through the ice on the river and went through. This made them halt the trail breaking process that we were depending on, turn around and go back to Rohn.

As we worked our way up the early miles of Rainy Pass , I didn’t know what to expect but it looked clear at the beginning. As we made it over a few foothills we could see that clouds were locked into the pass that we were headed into and it looked ominous, but we had no choice but to keep pushing. The snow was soft so we were pushing but it wasn’t that deep until we reached about 2200 ft in elevation and then our foot steps and bikes started to break through the deep snow as we pushed. We were following the Iditarod trail markers which were large wooden tripods, and there were faint snowmobile tracks. At about 9 pm, as the snow got deeper, we came upon a large snow machine stuck in the deep snow, abandoned and the trail just came to an end. Little did we know that was Bill Merchant’s snow machine and he had given up breaking trail. We kept pushing up the pass until about midnight when the snow got to be about chest deep at points. We saw a small, broken down cabin with no roof and figured it was time to rest. When we opened the door, after seeing snow drifts inside covering the stove, we saw two people sleeping in makeshift beds in sleeping bags. One was Bill Merchant, and the other was the race leader Jeff Oatley. It was right then I realized there was a big problem and there was going to be no trail over the pass. We chatted for a few minutes and then hopped in our sleeping bags to get some needed sleep. Even though there was no real roof on the cabin (it had blown off this winter) it protected us from the wind and snow for the night. Biker Phil Hofstter arrived the shelter at 4:30 am and we all woke up around 6 am.

In the early AM after some discussion, it was agreed that the 7 of us would work as a team to break the new trail over Rainy Pass for the next 20 miles. We left the safety cabin at about 8 am and climbed another 700 vertical ft up before we reached the summit. The wind must have been blowing 35-45 mph at the top and it was snowing pretty hard. It was obvious people trailing us would have a hard time following our broken trail because it would be covered and wind swept very quickly. For the next 19 hours, with a few water breaks in between, we worked as a team to break the trail, alternating who would lead the line. This is where I realized my bike was heavier than the others as my front wheel kept breaking below the snow and I would have to keep lifting it out and forward. It was quite tiring and frustrating at the same time. My right knee started to hurt because of the lifting; it was kind of like doing squats every time my bike broke through the snow as I had to lift it back above the crust of the snow. This began to wear on me and especially my knee. Most of the other people in the group had gone over the pass before but I had no idea how much longer it would take. It seemed to go on forever. At 1 am we decided we needed to sleep and we found a couple nice Spruce trees and set up our sleeping bags underneath them, even though it was snowing pretty hard. I hopped into my bag fully clothed with my boots, down jacket, down mittens, and hat on and actually slept really well until about 6 am. We packed up and broke trail for another 2 miles and then miraculously found a broken trail that the snow mobiles had broken the night before. I knew we were pretty close to the Dalzell Gorge and Rohn at that point and it was an amazing feeling of relief.. Down the gorge we went over at least 12 ice bridged they had made the day before to criss-cross over the river. These bridges are made every year for the dog sled race, and they looked like they had been there all winter, but they were only a day old! It was then I started to realized that my right heal was developing a huge blister as my feet were water-logged from being walking/pushing in my boots for 3 days. My double boots had been tough to walk in because, unlike most of the others, I had brought biking boots with carbon fiber soles that didn’t flex when I walked. 2 hours later I limped into the Rohn check point, afraid to take my boot off to see what my foot looked like. The trip over Rainy Pass , from Puntilla to Rohn Cabin, had taken us an unimaginable 46 hours to cross. Last year, this took the leaders 12 hours with a snow machine broken trail.

At Rohn, really in the middle of nowhere, there is a 25 x 25 ft cabin which serves at the most famous check point for the dog sled race. We were relegated to a 12 ft x 12ft tent with a wood stove and a cooking stove set up in it. We all rushed into the tent to grab space next to the stove to dry off all our wet gear that we had been wearing for the last 48 hours. I carefully took off my boots. When I looked at my foot and the blister I knew I had a problem, not to mention my knee was hurting badly. It took me a couple hours to dry my feet out and I just felt really bad. We had been going for four days and I was quite happy to come into Rohn with the lead group (last year the winners finished in 3.5 days) but we still had 140 miles to go. Also, we soon found out that there was no trail broken from mile 225 to 270 and the 15 miles that were broken were unridable because they were too soft. I just couldn’t fathom walking anymore with my foot and knee in such bad shape, and I had no idea how long it would take to get to the next check point which was Nicholai 90 miles away. It was then that I seriously considered calling it quits. There was a small landing strip at the RohnCabin and I inquired with the checkers when the next plane might be landing to take me out. Luckily I was told it might be three days. I couldn’t imagine waiting that long, especially with the race going on. For the next hour or so I dried my water-logged feet which had been sweating in my double boots for 3 straight days. At about 3 pm Jeff Oatley, Chris Wrobel, James Leavesley, Jay and Tracy (all of whom I’d arrived in Rohn with in the lead group) were getting ready to leave. With my foot still raw and unbandaged, there was no way I could leave for Nicholai with them. I still was unsure whether I would be able to finish at all. As Jay was leaving, I said goodbye and that I might see them back in Anchorage . Jay gave me a strange look and said to me “Whatever pain you are in now, it’s much less than you will be in next week if you quit this race now. I’ve been there. Don’t quit, just rest up for a bit”. These were tough but sage words of advice. Once my feet were dry enough, I visited a woman in the Cabin who was a trained EMT and she started working on my foot. She put blister bandages, a foam doughnut, and two layers of duct tape over my heal. I wasn’t sure that it could last for the next 140 miles but between that and Jay's message, I started to think I might be able to push on, but certainly fearful of what my lay ahead. About that time (5 pm, Day 4- I had been there for 5 hours) John Ross arrived into camp solo. I knew John as I had ridden with him the second day but pulled away from him after Yentna. He had followed our broken path over Rainy Pass and looked very tired. As he began to dry off, I asked him what his plans were to leave for Nicholai. After some discussion, we decided together we would leave around 1 am after he took a nap. This was quite lucky as really didn’t want to travel the next 90 miles alone, especially heading out alone in the dark.

We left Rohn at 1 am with the hope of making it to Buffalo Camp, a small tent middle of the wind blown “burn” 40 miles away sometime that day. There we could warm up at and get some food on our way to Nicholai. As we left Rohn, I had decided that I would make a decision on my foot (whether to turn around or not) at 10 miles from Rohn, as any further away would be too far to reverse course. After 10 miles of pushing through soft but shallow snow, my heel still hurt a lot, but it didn’t feel like the skin was rubbing too badly and the bandage seemed to be holding up. I kept my pain to myself and we pushed on. Since neither John nor I had raced before, we had no idea how long it would take to get to Nicholai, the last checkpoint before the finish. For 8 hours and 25 miles we pushed our bikes over soft trails and hilly terrain. At about 5 am, while it was still dark, we came across what looked to be a glacier that we have to climb over. I was an eerie feeling to see it as we couldn’t tell how big or steep in was in the dark, but we could tell it had to be an icy glacier of some sort. It was hard ice and very steep. John and I had to help each other with our bikes to get across the steep sections so we didn’t loose hold of our bike or they would slide into the abyss of the glacier and darkness.

We reached Fairwell Lake by 9 am and could finally get on our bikes and ride after three full days of pushing!! We got on the windblown lake and rode through a 30 mph side wind on clear ice where we had to lean sideways into the wind in order to stay upright on the bike, still it was great just to be riding and not pushing. John and I rode for the next 6 hours into “the Burn” (a notoriously windy 40 mile stretch where the forest had burned all the trees were very small) and arrived at Buffalo Camp at 3 pm. It was a nice surprised to get there in the daylight as we thought the trail would be worse. We were very cold and couldn’t wait to get inside and warm up as we had been pushing/riding for 14 hours straight. There was a stove going from the guys in front of us who had been there a few hours before, so it was easy to dry our clothes off, cook some food, and take a quick 1 hour nap. We regrouped and left for Nicholai at 6 pm. Nicholai was 40 miles away, but everyone I had spoken to told me that it was a longer ride than one would expect. We rode a broken trail most of the way, but it was extremely windy and cold. The wind had made some serious snow drifts across the trail. We could see from the tracks that the group ahead of us had been walking through these drifts. I pressed John to let me lead and try to ride through them by basically smashing through them, causing us to ride harder than we wanted but we saved a lot of time. By Midnight, we were still 12 miles away from Nicholai and the hard riding that evening was starting to set in. I could feel the cold and the effort was making me feel like my body was close to shutting down. I warned John that he had to keep an eye on me to make sure I kept eating and drinking until we got to the check point. It was a bad feeling and I don’t think I have ever been so physically tired as I was that evening. We arrived in Nicholai at 2:30 am and found someone driving a snow mobile around the small settlement to lead us to the home which was the check point. We walked in the house and saw everyone sacked out on the couches and floors. We had just pushed/ridden 22 out of the last 25 hours. I looked at the check-in sheet and noticed that Jay and Tracy had arrived 4 hours before us even through we had left Rohn 10 hours after them, so I felt pretty good that we had made up six hours over the last 30 hours of racing. The check point was home of a native Alaskan family who had been serving as the Iditarod Nicholai checkpoint for years. We took of our wet clothes and put in next to the very crowded stove to dry off by morning. I lied down on the floor in my sleeping bag and tried to sleep but my stomach, which had shut down hours before, felt like it was going to explode. I realized I needed to get some sleep for the last day, if only a couple hours, but my stomach was killing me. I walked into the bathroom and made my self throw up everything that was left in my stomach. This was something I had never done before, and hope to never do again. Once that was over ,I felt a bit better and it was easy to get to sleep. We slept till 5:30 am (only 2.5 hours) and then everyone in the house started to get up to leave. John and I agreed we needed to rest a bit more and get some real food in us before the last 50 mile leg to McGrath. We let Jay, Tracy , and Phil Hofstetter leave ahead of us. It was tempting to try to leave with them, but I was just too tired from the night before. Also, at 6 am it was -18F outside so we weren’t that excited to go out with only a few hours rest. I was grateful for the egg and sausage casserole that we had for breakfast at the house. It was very tasty and I had 3 helpings along with 5 pieces of toast and 4 cups of coffee. John and I finally left the house at 8:30 AM as it has warmed up to -5F.

As we left, I was still feeling a bit queasy and weak from the night before but it was a clear day and we only had 50 miles to McGrath and the finish! We left Nicholai and a couple miles later got on the trail on the Stoney River . We were hoping the snow would be firm since it was so cold but it was really soft and the best we could do was go about 4.5 mph and stay in a really small gear to stay upright. I could tell it was going to be a tough day as my legs had nothing in them and John was pulling away from me, which was never an issue in the previous days of riding with him. I was also really sleepy and kept thinking about pulling my sleeping bag off my bike and throwing it in a snow bank for a few hours of rest. Actually, I was afraid if I did that I might not wake up for a day, so I kept fighting off the temptation. By about 11:30 am I told John to ride off without me as I could feel I was slowing him down, or at least he wasn’t going as fast as he wanted to go. He told me he felt great and I was extremely jealous. We shook hands on the trail and I told him I would see him in McGrath later in the evening. It was s strange feeling as I am not used to someone riding away from me like that but there wasn’t anything I could do but try to enjoy the clear day and stay upright on my bike and think positive thoughts. I was going to finish and given how close I was to stopping just 36 hours before, I should be pleased. I kept looking at my GPS, which I really hadn’t needed much before then, to see how far it was to the finish. The miles ticked off slowly. The next 9 hours seems to take forever, but I focused on thinking of all the things I was missing at home and glided into McGrath at around 11:00 pm. It was a feeling of unspeakable relief. The last 50 miles took about 14 hours. I walked into the host house and everyone was around the dinner table eating and celebrating. Jeff Oatley and Jay Petervary both said it was the toughest Iditarod they had participated in. Kathi Merchant, the race director, seemed to think it was the toughest one ever.

I was the 6th biker to finish, and was about 3hr 50 mins out of 2nd place. Given the 13 hour stop I made in Rohn to fix my foot, I was satisfied with my rookie effort. There were a lot of things I would have done different, but the experience was incredible. Going in, I knew it would be a lesson in pushing my personal limits, but I couldn’t have imagined it would be such a mental and physical test. In the midst of racing, I realized it would be very difficult to describe to everyone back home all the emotions one goes through during an adventure like this. I had plenty of solitude to continually question why on earth I was doing this crazy race but as it came to an end, I realized that the race would be indelibly etched in my mind unlike any other. It was also what I expected - a great way to see the vast Alaskan frontier from my favorite vantage point: my bike. All in all this was an experience of a lifetime, one I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Thanks for reading,
Alec


Photo Gallery:
http://www.kodakgal lery.com/ ViewSlideshow. action?&collidparam= 32531728813. 288871242113. 1237287396225
Race Website:
http://www.alaskaul trasport. com/alaska_ ultra_home_ page.html