Week 21: Failed Ride to Las Vegas

Date
May 23, 2017

Distance
115 miles

Strava Link
Part 1     Part 2 (Week 21)     Part 3 (Week 21)

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report 

I’ve been talking about riding across Nevada for a while. Since time is running out before I ride across America from south to north beginning on June 12^th, I decided to ride to Las Vegas instead. The distance is about the same (a little extra, actually) and it is much easier for me logistically. Instead of driving across NV, parking my van at the border, then riding my motorcycle home, I could just ride to Las Vegas and get a one-way rental car back. The weather looked favorable and I found a one-way rental for about $75, so why not give it a shot?

The Route:

It’s a good route, and I have a good mixture of experience driving and/or riding pretty much the whole route. 395 has shoulder almost all the way from Bridgeport to Lone Pine. NV 160 is a little sketchy in Pahrump, so I should have taken some of the back roads to Manse Rd, perhaps. That was really the only problem with my route.

I left home at 12:15 PM. There wasn’t much strategy behind that decision, honestly. My main concern was being sleepy at night, so I figured it would be good to keep the night riding portion relatively early on in my ride. I also figured that I’d ride most of Death Valley in the dark that way. Despite the fact that I was overly optimistic about how fast I’d be, that ended up being true. I was pretty happy with leaving at 12:15. I made a lot of mistakes before/during this ride, but I don’t think the start time was one of them.

Things started out pretty well. I was making a conscious effort to ride at a slow pace. I did the first 100 miles in about 6:50. At that point I was eating and drinking well. It got dark probably around 8:30, which was nice because that was a little later than I expected. I hit my first rough patch somewhere around mile 160. My legs felt slow and I was getting sleepy. I thought I could push through it, but I started swerving too much and decided it was time to stop. I stopped by the side of the road for about 15 minutes to eat and take a little break. 

That helped a little, but not enough. Soon I was feeling sleepy again. I stopped about 7 miles later to take a little nap. This time I stopped for about 30 minutes and had a few brief periods of sleep. It didn't seem like much, but made me feel much better and I got a second wind. I didn’t have any problems feeling sleepy for the rest of the night, believe it or not. I ended up doing the 2^nd 100 miles in about 7 hours and 10 minutes thanks to a lot of flat and downhill in that stretch of road.

One problem: I was tired of eating. I brought a ton of Clif Bars and Lara Bars with me (35, to be exact). I was planning on eating one per hour. That worked for probably the first 7 hours. After that I switched to liquid calories, figuring I'd eat more bars a few hours later after my stomach settled down a little. Here's the thing- I'm used to riding in the 6-8 hour range. My body is very well adapted to that and I can get away with pretty much anything from a nutritional standpoint. I believe that, on a cool day, I could ride a full 100 miles with no calories or water at all. I've never actually tried it, but I have used less than half of a bottle before and have also gone under 300 calories many times. Point is, I tend to eat less than I should, but I can usually push through that because my rides are short. When I do a double or something like that, I tend to pay the price. That's what happened today.

At first my stomach felt a little off and my legs felt a little dead. I attributed that to all the extra weight I was carrying. When I made it to Towne Pass (250 miles into the ride), which is 8.6 miles at 7%, my legs felt pretty empty. Again, I didn't worry too much about it. It was late into the ride and my bike was heavier than normal, so I figured I'd just stop at Stovepipe Wells and recover. I stopped at the little store there and bought some crackers. I hadn't eaten any solid food for a while, and Clif Bars didn't sound appealing at all. The crackers were pretty good, but I was only able to eat maybe 10 of them before my stomach started hurting and told me to stop. I wasn't too worried about it, aside from the fact that those were some very expensive crackers. I thought I was going to be fine on liquid calories. Here's the problem- I was severely underestimating how many calories I was actually taking in per hour.

I left Stovepipe Wells and continued on towards Furnace Creek. I was still feeling slow, but Death Valley is a difficult place to ride. It's almost always windy out there and a lot of the uphills are long and straight, which makes them look flatter than they actually are. I stopped at Furnace Creek to stock up on bottles because I knew it was a long, difficult stretch to Pahrump before I could refill again. That stretch ended up killing me.

I knew what to expect. I've ridden it before. It's long, slow, mostly uphill, and was windy the last time I rode it. Again, it's one of those long, straight roads that's steeper than it looks. It can be demoralizing. I expected to be slow, for sure. I was more than slow. My body just shut down. I had to stop to take a break, and I was only 8 miles away from Furnace Creek. I found the only shade I could underneath a rock and had to lie down. Even after doing nothing for 10 minutes, I still couldn't catch my breath. I sat up to get my bottle from my bike, and you would have thought I just ran a sprint or something. I've had this happen a few times before. I've had it at the Alta Alpina Challenge before the final 2 monitor climbs. So is it from riding too hard too long without enough to eat? Well, I also had a bad case of it in Oklahoma once, and that was only on a 100-mile where I wasn't riding especially hard. Allergies, asthma, panic attack? The symptoms don't really fit any of those.

Anyway, I couldn't seem to shake it off. I felt like I needed to puke. I tried, but nothing was coming out. I was in a rough spot. Part of me wanted to keep pushing. That would have been easier if the next town was 10 miles away. Unfortunately, I was still about 50 miles from Pahrump. I didn't have cell service. It was starting to get hot out there. Things had the potential to go very wrong. I'm not usually the type of guy to worry about this kind of stuff. But I wasn't my normal self in that moment. I debated what to do. I had been stopped for an hour and at that point even just walking was still making me short of breath. I decided to head back to Furnace Creek. Was it quitting or being smart? Felt like quitting to me.

I had dreams of finding a ride to Las Vegas, but that didn't happen. I got a super expensive (but very nice) room in Furnace Creek and woke up super early the next morning to finish the ride. I only got 5 hours of sleep, but I did get some food in me, so I was hoping to feel better. I felt fine at first, but that didn't last too long. Everything was in slow motion. I couldn't hold a decent speed. I just felt terrible. I'm sure the 11.6 mph average speed tells that story. I wanted to quit. I stopped 40 miles outside of Las Vegas and tried to find a taxi. I called a few, but none would come that far to get me. Believe me, I would have quit if quitting was an option. The last 22 miles were mostly downhill. That's the good news.

It was a disappointing weekend, that's for sure. I'll try to learn from this and take something positive out of it, but that will have to wait. For now I'm just disappointed in myself.