Columns: Pain

So, the TransRockies Challenge came and went. I've got a lot to say about it, but that's another story than what I want to do right now. Suffice to say, it was otherworldly. It was a brutal, ugly, soul-cracking affair. BIKE Senior Photographer John Gibson and I somehow managed to sneak into the top 10 in the Open field. Go figure. I'm still not sure how that happened, but I think that the hideous rate of attrition, combined with a small field to begin with, helped our cause a whole lot. It certainly had nothing to do with being well prepared. Next year there will undoubtedly be more teams, and more fast racers, and more people ready for the kind of unexpected horror a race like that dishes up. And our kind of luck will be much harder to come by, if we have any at all.

This was the hardest thing I've ever done on a bike. It is probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, period. Two weeks after finishing the race, I have yet to ride a bike. It has only been three days since I can walk downstairs without wincing, and both my Achilles tendons are sporting knots in them that made my physiotherapist grimace. "You might want to take a few months off," he said as he massaged what feels like a pair of marbles in my left Achilles.

"Off what? Riding?" I asked.

"No. Everything. Lie down as much as possible. And don't try anything silly, like running..."

"Daaaaah!"

Oddly enough, that didn't seem like such bad news. Since returning from Canada, I've had to replace my bottom bracket, chain, cassette, every single suspension pivot bearing, pedal bearings, rear hub bearings (all four), repack my headset bearings, replace all my cables and housing, and install a fresh, new set of brake pads -- front and rear (this in addition to the four sets I ate through during the race). I'm still waiting on some new eyelet bushings for my rear shock, and noticed the other day that the leather is worn clean off my seat in a few places. And I've been sleeping more than 10 hours every night. The seven pounds I lost during the race hasn't been gained back yet. This is what riding 370-odd miles and climbing some 39,000 feet over the span of 37 hours (half of which is spent in rain and snow) will do to a bike and body.

Oh, I almost forgot. The three days of savage push climbing at the beginning of the race tore clean through the soles of a $240 pair of Sidis. Then the rain and snow of the remaining four days rotted out the uppers of my already-worn, favorite pair of Northwaves. So, even if I wanted to, I couldn't ride, because I don't have any shoes left. And my favorite pair of bib shorts looks like someone took a grinder to the chamois.

This got me to thinking. In the course of one week, I trashed more bike stuff than I usually do in a whole season. Most of the people in the race suffered the same fate. The winners of the race, Nick Kristoffersen and Robin McKeever, barely made back their entry fees, and still had to contend with the same amount of component attrition as the rest of us. Possibly more, since they were swapping out tires and replacing forks and slapping on new drivetrains almost every day in an attempt to head off any preemptive mechanical failure. And they were both wrecked at the end of the race, with Nick contracting some sort of horrible bronchial wheeze during the closing stages. I began to wonder, what is it that drives us to do this?

Someone asked me, just after I got back, after hearing other secondhand horror stories, if at least we rode any decent trails on the way. Two images immediately sprang to mind. One was of Oliver, one of our German enemies/friends, on day four. He was standing at the finish, looking like a shit-covered ghost, shaking so badly he could barely hold his cup of tea without spilling it. "You know," he said, "if there are 10 things maybe that you never want to do on a bike, I think today we have done all 10..."

But the other image, the one that is burned into my mind with a clarity so bright I see it whenever I close my eyes, is of this crystal-clear morning on day six. I was riding along this singletrack, which was buried under six inches of fresh snow, just pinned in the big ring, blowing in and out of the line and arcing through this dense, white powder. The sun was out, the air was crisp and the surrounding mountain peaks looked as if they had just been polished by God himself. Right at that moment, all the fatigue, the pain in my ankles, the crunching death of my bike, my numb feet and my creaking knees faded into insignificance. All that mattered was flowing along this groove of white, keeping it pinned as hard and as long as I could. Not caring about racing, or about conserving energy, or about safety. Just railing along, feeling invincible. It was perfect.

It made everything else disappear. Already, just two weeks later and surrounded by the wreckage of this year's TransRockies, I'm forgetting the misery. I'm forgetting about how I cried and how Gibby had to push me up hills on the last day. I'm forgetting what my physiotherapist said. I'm thinking about railing Tom Snow trail in the clean, morning air with a roost of powder trailing off my wheel, and hoping for a taste of it again next year...