Shawn's Tango 2009 Race Report

Quarter-Ton Tango 2009 Kinzua Country Tango Race Report (Shawn’s Perspective)

This is going to be even longer than Matt's. Sorry, I must have the details for future reference.

I arrived at the scene on Friday night. I met my brother at the Y where we attended the pre-race meeting, then went for a big dinner at Pizza Hut with the Defenestration Administration, the team containing Bart’s kids and their friends. My dad, Greg and Jane, support team members for us and the D.A. joined us as well. Upon completing that wonderful meal, it was decided that Bart and I should test our canoe, since we had not canoed together in years, and had never been together in this particular canoe, which was a really nice (and not very wide) Kevlar Wenonah. It was getting dark.

We headed down to the old airport and dropped the canoe in the water. It worked great. Greg and Jane thought they should probably try it too since they were going to be called upon to be our safety canoe on the swim leg. They cruised around on the river for a bit in darkness, wearing headlamps. Okay, we were all satisfied that we could operate the watercraft. As it turned out, practicing in the dark may have been one our best ideas.

We got back to basecamp, known as the Cerra’s house, at about 10:30PM, already past my hoped-for beddy-bye time. We then had to arrange logistics for all of the transitions. When you are a Tango Complete team, you don’t have any relay members to help out, so everything needs to be figured out. We had to do this for two different teams, so we worked out the Defenestration Administration first so they could get some sleep. After that, Greg and I went over all my personal needs for the race. Greg had an extensive and detailed list by the end, which was nearly midnight. I then had to create the bags I told him he would have available after he went to bed, taking me about until 2AM. There are a lot of bags! Every transition has new and different requirements. When you are burning through calories and sweating like we do, you better have everything in order. I then went to bed in the attic on a wood floor and slept for three hours.

I got up and headed for the race. My pre-race nutrition was working surprisingly well already. I was awake. That alone is saying something after a night like that. I started with a sugar-free Red Bull to try to cover the caffeine deficit without the volume. I then downed a few Clif Shot Bloks with caffeine too. Okay, feeling relatively normal.

We tried to line up in the back of the pack, but people kept trying to get behind us. We assured them that they would not be slower than us, but they didn’t believe it. The race began and they all promptly worked their way around us as predicted, and within 50 yards we were in last place. As we progressed, there were two people ahead of us moving at a pace that was not much faster than us, but just a little. We dubbed them Green Girl and Blue Guy. We have incredibly inventive naming conventions. Kathy, the safety biker who brings up the rear was right behind us. She was essentially the sag wagon, but that name doesn’t do justice to someone as beautiful as Kathy. At about mile three, after we asked her numerous questions, she decided she was going to be riding with us for a few hours so she might as well talk to us. That helped pass the time for the next 9 miles. We kept our pace pretty steady at around 12-minute miles. We figured if we could maintain that, we would have room to walk up a few hills and still make the cut-off time of 10AM. Crossing the dam in the morning fog was delightful. That’s not something you get to see often.

We kept cruising along, and amazingly at about mile 12 we passed two people! Yes, they were in the race. One was Blue Guy, but we never caught Green Girl. She stuck it out, finishing a few minutes ahead of us. We glanced at their legs and found that the two people we passed were relay team members. Somehow these relay teams picked people slower than two middle-aged (!) 250 pound men to run this leg of the race for them. We stayed ahead of those two all the way to the end, meaning there was one mile of the race in which we were not in last place. One out of 52 ain’t bad!

Both of those relay teams immediately left transition, whereas we didn’t do that. Greg had my bike ready exactly as we had discussed, but we needed to consume some calories and change shoes. After a few minutes, we took off on the bikes. Thus began the most fateful leg of our journey.

It began on the climb up Longhouse Scenic Drive, when Bart tried to shift into his small front ring, and it wouldn’t go. We had to stop, flip his bike over, and manually put it on there. We then continued to the top of the hill at a slow but steady pace and upon reaching the plateau, Bart attempted to shift his rear gear into a smaller ring, and the entire rear derailleur exploded. We came to a stop. I thought we might be able to bend it back into place and maybe have a fixed gear bike, but it was totally destroyed. One of the guide rings had shattered, the hanging arm had broken in half, and the chain had split. There would be no more pedaling this bike today. Okay, it’s mile three. What are we going to do? We can walk up hills and coast down them. How long will that take to go 17 miles? If we average 5 miles an hour, we might make it in a little over three hours. Keep in mind that we both have SPD clip shoes on though, so walking is not the most comfortable thing to do, especially on gravel. After a few minutes, I propose we string together our spare inner tubes and I can tow him. He agrees to give it a shot. Everyone should try this sometime. It is quite a challenge for both people to steer with the strange forces of the big rubber band pulling both of you in different directions. At one point, going up a steeper hill, the tubes were stretching out pretty far and just as I was gasping for air trying to lug 600 pounds of manflesh and bike-metal up the mountain, Bart couldn’t hang on anymore and the tube slipped out of his fingers, snapping me smartly in the back and immediately spinning his handlebars around, causing him to crash. It was a low speed topple though, so he got back up and we walked to the top of the hill. After maybe 10 miles of that sort of thing, we were coasting down the big treacherous gravel decline on the way to Elijah Run, when I heard behind me another crashing noise. No sounds from the rider at any time. I turned around and saw a mangled bike lying in the road, but no brother. What the heck? That must have been one big pothole! How does a 250 pound man disappear from a road? I rode back to the bike and looked over the embankment and there he was, lying about 15 feet down against a tree. This embankment was nearly vertical, so I couldn’t safely go there, but I saw that he was moving, and asked if he was okay. He would determine that shortly, he said. He then tried to claw his way back up, and I saw that he was bleeding pretty heavily from his thigh, and had lots of scratches, abrasions and grass and dirt stains all over his shirt. We picked up his bike and my assessment was that it was now toast. The handlebars were severely twisted. The front tire was flat. The rim was bent. It would barely coast now, even if we could steer it.

Two race vehicles came upon us within minutes of the crash and asked us if we were okay. We suggested that we could use another bike if they could tell our support team. Bart decided we could try to get to transition and decide what to do then. I rode the crooked bike like a velociped with a lot of rolling friction, challenging body position, and difficult flat-tire steering, while Bart rode my bike so he could try to recover from the fall. After perhaps another hour, maybe 4 miles from the end, our support team arrived with another bike. This was great news. The only catch was that this bike had egg-beater pedals, which my shoes did not fit in very well and wanted to slip out constantly. I eventually found a way to wedge my cleats into the beaters in such a way that I could pedal somewhat efficiently, but not too powerfully. Bart followed on my bike. We made it to T2 with, I think, two minutes to spare before that cut-off. The officials said we were good to go if we wanted to continue. Jane did some medical work on Bart while I stood in the shade eating potato chips and drinking some G2. I told Bart that continuing was completely up to him. I would not be upset, nor would I pressure him. He decided that swimming might feel good. Lying down in the cool water, taking the pressure off his legs might be nice. I put on my wetsuit.

We all headed down to the boat launch, Greg and Jane got in the canoe while Bart and I readied our flippers and goggles. We both plunged into the water, and started swimming out into the lake. The first thing we noticed was the multitude of boats speeding around in the water. Mike Shine, the water safety guy, had apparently left the race. We were on our own, with our little canoe our only protection. As it turned out, Bart was not feeling as well as he thought, which we discovered after we were well out into the water. He was finding it hard to catch his breath, and couldn’t get into any kind of groove while swimming. Too many different parts were hurting and he was physically exhausted. I tried pushing him at one point, but we couldn’t get the steering thing to work without more practice. If we had brought the innertubes, I might have been better able to pull him, but we hadn’t brought those. On the good side of the coin, Greg and Jane were remarkably unruffled by the constant and significant waves, and tried to usher us along as well as they could. They seemed completely at ease out there, never once looking like they might tip. At one point, they gave us some Gatorade, (being careful not to let anyone touch the canoe!) which seemed to revive my brother a bit, and we struggled along, once again pushing the cut-off time.

Amazingly, we arrived at transition again with only minutes to spare before this cut-off. So far, a nearly perfect score! Every cut-off was moments away! The ladies here indicated there were still two teams that had not yet returned from orienteering. Woohoo! We might be able to catch someone!

The orienteering went off without incident. We took our time, walking the whole thing, and got a few helpful hints since we were last and all the race officials wanted us to finish so they could go home, but no one did anything too helpful. We found all the points in the loneliest orienteering I have ever done, and ambled back to the transition zone. Finally, we were an hour ahead of the cut-off time.

The second run became a 4.5 mile walk. Bart wasn’t up for running. My shoes had gotten wet during orienteering, and that didn’t make them all that comfortable, so I was okay with walking. Plus there is no point in me running if my partner isn’t. After a little while, Bart did start walking at a fast pace that I was not comfortable keeping, so I alternated between walking and running to stay even with him. We discussed how we really needed to knock out a good canoe split because we had nothing else to show for the day except his scars and some stories. I was up for it and still feeling pretty strong.

We hit the transition, took off our shoes, and ran down the hill. We threw the canoe in the water and just started paddling. This was it. The sun was setting as we took off. I was not excited about hitting the rapids in total darkness, so I was hammering as hard as I could. I did not remove my life vest for the entire leg. It was borrowed from some smaller people (not surprising) and chafed my armpits the whole way, but I was not interested in drowning this night. Swimming in a churning river with somewhat higher water flow than usual, and in the dark, is not a good idea, so I wasn’t taking any chances. Remember, I swamped our canoe in the rapids last year. We encountered cheering crowds at several places along the river (I think they were the same crowds. Thanks Crowds!), and then saw Greg and Amy at the Glade Bridge remarking that they barely made it in time to see our glow sticks floating by. They said we were going pretty fast to which we replied “This is the only leg of this race we can actually DO.” By the time we hit Flare Island, it was dang dark. For once I was happy for all the light pollution created by the refinery, and we made it through the rapids unscathed. Shortly after that, we hit a wall of water moving perpendicular to the flow of the river. I saw it about one second before we hit it and yelled “the water is moving sideways!” then the canoe lurched to the right as if a giant hand had yanked the front end toward the shore. I thought we nearly capsized, but we didn’t take on any water, so it mustn’t have been as bad as it felt. We pulled through that, and kept on paddling. Whew. Soon, we saw the hulking shape of the railroad trestle against the deep, dark blue night sky and gunned it for the Point. A light shone under a tree, and we slid into the (rather unofficial-looking at this point) finish. We didn’t know it then, but we had scraped out a first-place canoe split against all the complete Tango teams, and done a respectable job against most of the relays too.

It was nice to end on a satisfying note like that. All of our friends were there at the finish, the guys’ team, KB2, the doggies, Amy, Fiona, Greg, Jane, my Dad, even Kathy the safety biker was there! Thanks for all the support everyone!

It was a great race and a fun day. I was surprised to discover that I was in remarkably good condition after 14 and a half hours. Heck, I was surprised I made it through the half marathon running nearly the entire thing. The rest was icing. Time to start thinking about next year!