Team Armur - Race Crash Redemption

The crazy idea to attempt an Ultra race started to take shape in my mind when I had no fixed cycling goal in place and was just doing brevet after brevet just for the heck of it. I knew of The Deccan Cliffhanger(TDC), which is a RAAM(Race Across AMerica) qualifier, and that most of the route was along the same route as the Pune-Mahabaleshwar-Nippani-Pune brevet. A tough one and add to it the fact that this was a race, made things super challenging. 

I decided I would attempt it and started reading up on training for such races for I had never seriously trained before. I had several doubts about how these races worked, why one had to have a crew, etc. etc. and thankfully I knew the right person to guide me and answer all my questions – Divya Tate. She’s the race director for TDC and she has vast crewing experience, crewing in several Ultra races across the world including RAAM. With her guidance I embarked on the two aspects involved in attempting such a race – Training and Planning.

For the training part, I owe it all to one person – Kedar Joshi – my regular ride partner during brevets, friend and mentor. With his advice and guidance, I trained religiously and soon started seeing the improvements I was making. One example of how much I had improved was when I was able to stay in the lead group without getting dropped almost throughout the Criterium race, as compared to the first road race organized by the Pune Wolfpack, where I had been dropped at the first attack.

The planning part was something very new to me. First I needed a crew in place and then I had to have a race strategy. I called up my teammate from the Aurangabad fleche – Abhishek Kulkarni about crewing for me and he was super eager and enthusiastic! Then I met the young and bubbling Abhishek Date when piloting the Pune Half Marathon and he readily agreed to join the team! Sudhakar Shinde and Omkar Kesarkar – good friends from Pune Randonneurs made up the rest of the crew and Team Armur came into existence :D 

I always knew who the best person to help me with the race strategy would be – the awesome triathlete Mihir Sambhus. I knew he made detailed plans and strategies for all the brevets he rode and so with his help we put together several plans for the race based on my current speed, capability and so on.

So we were all set and the big day arrived. I was the fifth racer to start and was flagged off by the Iron Man and good friend Hiren Patel. I soon sped down the familiar roads through the city passing the riders who had started ahead of me. Soon, I passed everybody and was comfortably leading the race! Alas it wasn’t to last. As I passed through the bumpy highway portion leading up to Katraj, my handlebars started dropping as the screws holding it weren’t tight enough. I explained the situation to my crew and they went ahead to wait for me with the right tools. I stopped and they swiftly fixed it. That was when the amazing Mikey (Michael Lehning) passed me and the next I saw him was at the Dinner Party in Goa!!! Boy he was FAST!

The next portion of the race with the three big ghats was extremely familiar territory and I was crossing the sections as per the plan we had set up. I felt I was slower than usual on Khambatki ghat and knew that all the pushing I had done in the previous sections was taking its toll on me. So I relaxed myself and went steadily up the Pasarani ghat and onto Mahabaleshwar. Then it was time for that amazing feeling that every cyclist looks forward to! The steep descent down the slopes of Medha ghat :D 

Then it was more or less rolling terrain and I was rolling along faster than I had ever been, crossing Satara, Kolhapur and then Nippani. The amazing speed was partly the result of the training I’d put in and partly due to the amazing Aero bars. Huge thanks to Chai (Chaitanya Velhal) for advising me to go for it. 

After crossing the Nippani ghat I carried the momentum and was superbly speeding towards Belgaum when I started feeling that old enemy creeping up on me again – Sleep!

A little background : Sleep deprivation during long rides is pretty common. At night on the highway, you usually cannot see anything other than what is illuminated by your headlights. This means you are usually looking continuously at the white lines on the road and this acts like a soothing lullaby and your brain automatically goes into sleep mode. I’d faced this in several brevets before and had developed a simple technique to keep myself alert. When that soothing lullaby feeling kicks in I just look at something far away and then at something nearby and then at something far away and so on. What this does is, it makes your pupil dilate and contract repeatedly, driving away the sleepiness for a while. 

Belgaum was fast approaching but at the same time I was feeling increasingly sleepy. I was using the above technique to fight the old foe and the plan was to reach Belgaum and sleep for 15 mins, take a swig of red bull and then continue. It’s like they say, “What you plan and what takes place ain’t ever exactly been similar”. Just about 5 kms before Belgaum, there was some kind of a small descent with I guess a slight right curve at the bottom. I was going at over 40kmph on that descent and as luck would have it, the enemy tasted success. I catnapped for half a second and when I opened my eyes, I was very quickly missing that slight right and heading off the highway. There was a small patch of grass followed by a half foot wall on either side of a gutter that separated the Highway from the service road. I hit the wall at full speed and clearly remember being pleasantly surprised at doing a full somersault with the bike!  Somewhere during that act, my legs had thankfully automatically unclipped. I then landed with a thud on my back on the service road. 

During all this, I heard the shocked shouts of my crew, as they came rushing out to help me. They made me sit up and check for broken bones while also checking on my dear bike. I couldn’t lift up my left hand which was a cause for concern. There were huge road rashes all over my left leg and hands and back! I was really relieved to see that my bike was in perfect condition, barring a few scratches despite the high speed crash into a wall! I wanted to get back on the bike and continue racing but thankfully my crew wouldn’t let me J They made me rest a bit and after my head cleared up a bit, we decided to go to the nearest hospital to get me treated. I was happily sleeping by the time we reached the hospital and don’t remember much of it. There were injections and drips but more importantly, I was getting a nice relaxing sleep. I also remember the doctor telling me that the shoulder was just an internal bruise but by that time I was psychologically on a super low.

Morning came and I woke up feeling much better. I changed out of all the bloodstained clothes and felt I had it in me to try and get back on the bike. My crew was super excited when I woke them up with the plan and soon, they took me back to the exact spot where I had crashed. They had actually marked the place with some stones and in no time I was back riding. The first 40 kms from Belgaum to Kittoor was the most difficult. The cuts in my leg were sending agonizing stings with each stroke of the pedal and my left hand was just okay enough to hold onto the handle bar. I wasn’t able to go into any sort of aero position and this made me painfully grind out the kilometers at a very slow pace, while facing a stiff crosswind. 

At the turn around control point, the officials from Backpack Outdoors gave me a huge roaring welcome and egged me to keep riding strong! This gave me a superb boost and I managed to speed up on the 40kms back to Belgaum. My crew and Neel (Neel Kolhatkar) from Backpack Outdoors had arranged for a nice surprise for me at Belgaum – my favourite Chappati and aloo bhaji! All morning I’d been eating only Chikkis and stuff like that so this was another welcome change and gave me strength to push as far as possible for we knew that all hopes of a finish within the race time limit of 38hours was long gone due to my painfully slow speed after the crash.

The mighty Chorlas was next. By the time I reached the first of the endless climbs, the swollen left thigh was causing my muscles to tighten up which in turn resulted in a searing knee pain. The climbs were terribly slow. Looking at the speedometer only made things worse. I usually run up slopes at a much quicker pace L Just when I was thinking that Abhi D decided to run or rather “race” me, up what looked to be a 10+ % slope. He was clearly winning and there was just nothing I could do about it! The cuts in my leg made sure I couldn’t stand and push through the slopes. All I could do was sit and complete one pedal stroke after another – thinking of words that my good friend Pranaya Mohanty always keeps repeating during the long brevets – “Pain is temporary”!

The climbs finally gave way to the superb 17km descent down along the steep edges of the Deccan Plateau down into the Western Coastal Plains – that’s one thing I really enjoy – EXPERIENCING Geography. It was also getting dark around this time and I had to make do with a couple of temporary lights as I had lost my main headlight in the crash. Things were getting difficult in the darkness and my knee pain wasn’t easing up at all. I managed to dig up one final push out of myself and reached the final control point around 45kms before the finish line. With that the 38 hour time limit passed and we decided as a team to stop and head to the beach and join the Dinner party. 

A DNF on the race card, but a lifetime’s worth of experience and mental strength gained over the course of the 38 hours! Easily one of the most testing rides of my life and I could never have gotten through it without my dear crew who were my source of strength. 

I also have to thank my roomies Arun (Arunachalam Mutiah) and Ji (Nishandh Dileepan), friends and colleagues, particularly Nanda (Nanda Gopal), Monisha (Monisha Bhaskar) and Shruti (Shruti Roy) for putting up with my training antics every single day and still giving me that much needed encouragement and confidence boost whenever I was feeling down and out. 

A race to remember! Zoom Crash Redemption :D

Life as a Pune Randonneur

After about five months of some serious frustration working at a remote location called Ranjangaon about 70 kms away from the city, the shift in November to a brand new facility much closer to where I stay in Pune was exactly what I had been looking for. From wasting around 5-6 hours on travel every day, I was suddenly spending less than an hour on travel! This gave me enough time and energy to pick up a whole bunch of hobbies that had been packed and stored away in the cupboard – Quizzing, cycling, learning Spanish, reading and so on. 

The cycling, especially Randonneuring scene in Pune is one of the best in the country with naturally hilly terrain and passionate folks.   Randonneuring is the sport of long-distance cycling where a person competes not against fellow competitors but against a fixed time limit. There will be checkpoints all along the pre-specified routes where one has to get their rider cards stamped and signed within the stipulated time when that control point remains open. The start and end points are also control points and failure to reach any of the check points within the time limits will lead to a DNF(Did not Finish) result for the ride. The sport is governed by the Audax Club Parisien (ACP) of France, whose representative clubs conduct the rides (often called brevets or BRMs) across several cities in the world. All completed brevet cards will be sent to Paris for homologation following which the medal of completion will be sent to the club that organized the brevet. The set timings to finish the rides are as follows:

Distance (km)	Max. Allowed Time (hr)
200	13.5
300	20
400	27
600	40
1000	75
1200	90

In addition, there is a special recognition award called ‘Super Randonneur’(SR) given to anybody who finishes 200, 300, 400 and 600 km brevets in the same season (Nov-Oct). The sport tests any individual’s fitness and resolve to the limits, the latter more often is put under a serious test when ride times cross 24+ hours and severe sleep deprivation kicks in. The elements also prove to be a big challenge sometimes with the sun blazing away in all its glory or bone chilling cold during the nights or even heavy rains or severe headwinds during none of which the ride clock stops and hence the rider also usually doesn’t.

The initial apprehension before my first brevet ride –‘The Mandhardevi 200km Climber’ was huge. Not having done serious cycling for over 6 months, I was hardly confident I would cross even a 100 kms. To top it, the ride was touted to be the toughest 200km BRM in India with over 3000m of climbs. I kept looking back at my Wall climbs in the Nilgiris with my hometown cycling club ‘Coimbatore Cycling’ (I still ride under their banner in all brevets :) ) for inspiration. The ride was a tough one as expected but I managed to drag myself across the finish with only 20 minutes to spare. You can read about that ride here in this previous post:

http://arjunmurali.blogspot.in/2014/12/mandhardevi-climber-200k-brm-experience.html

It was clear that the frustration and inactivity had done me no good. All the stamina and strength that had allowed me to scale the 30km Kotagiri climb in under 3 hours were now gone. I was struggling to keep going at 6-7 kmph up the Mandhardevi slopes. However, the mere fact that I managed to finish the brevet gave me a huge confidence boost. I started riding more and more and could feel the improvement.

Two weeks after the BRM200 was the 300 km brevet on the Pune-Bangalore highway to a place called Umbraj and back. It was more of a straight out and back kind of route without any seriously challenging ghat sections. I don’t remember much from the ride apart from facing sleep management issues for the first time, which had slowed me down dramatically. I still managed to amble along and finish that ride with only 20 minutes to spare. I remember Divya Tate, the India ACP representative, urging and encouraging us to keep going and getting us some delicious cake upon finishing at around 1:30 in the night. Here’s the photo from the finish line of that particular brevet:

(From left: Raj Khedekar, Me(in front), Gagan, Aniket, Kiran and Vaibhav)

What followed were a couple of brevet attempts that taught me a lot of lessons in terms of nutrition, sleep management and pacing myself during the 24+ hour rides. First was the Sahyadri Special – the 600 km brevet through the strawberry fields of Panchgani and Mahabaleshwar. This brevet involved 3 hard climbs in the first 150 kms following which it would only be rolling terrain. In a change from the previous two brevets, I was with a group of strong riders like Kedar Joshi, Mihir Sambhus, Rakesh Kale and Arun Thipsey. Despite a puncture on the Pasarni Ghat section, I finished all the climbs in pretty good time, accelerated during the descent towards Satara and caught up with the group. From then on, it was slow progress with the group. We reached the turn-around point with only about 40 mins left which meant we could sleep for only 40 mins. The ride after was very painful for me when acidity and other stomach problems combined with severe sleep deprivation, caused me to get dropped from the group and once I was alone I quickly lost hope and decided to quit and get my first DNF :(

 

The others rode through the day with only the 40 min sleep behind them and finished at 7:30 pm! Some amazing resolve! It was a very special day for both Mihir and Rakesh as they had completed the SR series. Here’s Mihir’s post on that memorable achievement:

http://mihirsam.blogspot.in/2015/01/the-ultimate-quest-super-randonneur.html

Next was the 400km brevet in Nashik the very following week. I had attributed all the problems from the previous brevet to eating bad highway food and this time decided to keep going only on bananas and water. GRAVE MISTAKE! After only about 250kms (which I had completed in record time), I was completely dehydrated and alone and my resolve was easily broken this time around. Another DNF in a span of 2 weeks :(

Having learnt a lot of lessons from the previous rides and also from the more experienced riders with whom I could get in touch through the Whatsapp group created for Pune Randonneurs, I decided to attempt the 400km brevet in what was part of a group of rides called ‘Last chance Brevets’ – essentially the last chance to complete the Super Randonneur series before the hot summer started. Kedar Joshi was also doing the 400, completing which would earn him the SR title. We knew we would be riding at more or less the same pace and decided to stick together right from the start. It was the simple out and back along the Pune-Bangalore highway – a familiar route by now. We paced ourselves beautifully, stopping for some sumptuous meals at good restaurants we had previously identified along the route. Apart from a front light failure during the night (thankfully I had a spare headlight), the ride was essentially problem-free and we finished in just 21.5 hours with a whopping 5.5 hours still left on the clock – a huge confidence boost!

Next was a team BRM – the Aurangabad Fleche (pronounced fle-sh), to the scenic Ellora Caves. It was a great team ride with me learning aplenty from the to-be Maestro Randonneurs (5000km of homologated brevets completed in a single season) Sathish and Yuva. The ride was covered by the ‘Crank with ProCycle magazine’ and had a superb write-up by Divya Tate. You can find the article here

   

Team TNP (Tamil Nadu-Pune-Punjab) CycloExpress at Ellora caves :)

(From Left: Sathish, Me, Abhishek and Yuva)

 

Then there was the ‘Knight Riders 200BRM’, a night brevet that started on a Saturday evening and ended with a nice breakfast on Sunday morning. It was a refreshing ride that kept me in good touch for the upcoming 600BRM in Mumbai. Just a week before the 600, I went on a ride with a group called ‘Ride On Pune’ till Lion’s point in Lonavala and then on a trek up Fort Tung with another group called ‘Pune Trekking Partners’ . It was kind of my personal tour of the Sahyadris. You can read about it here in this previous post:

http://arjunmurali.blogspot.in/2015/04/my-personal-tour-of-sahyadris.html 

Geography in Action: 

Mumbai-Dhule-Mumbai : I had sorted out my nutrition issues and had also become quite good at sleep management and was hence very confident going into the Mumbai 600BRM completing which I would earn the coveted SR title. After about 60 kms, I joined up with the super strong Pranaya Mohanthy, pedaling away on his solid mountain bike. 

We’ve all learnt about the low lying coastal plains and the plateaus with steep sides and flat tops in High school geography. It seemed such a simple concept, but you don’t actually realize the magnitude of that steep side and altitude difference between the coastal plain and the plateau until you climb onto one in a bicycle. That was exactly what we were doing from Mumbai to Nashik. Climb after climb in the blazing hot sun with temperatures hitting 43 degrees centigrade – causing the organizer to christen the ride as the ‘Blaze Brevet 600’.

At Nashik, we caught up with Rakesh Patel – one of the 4 finishers of the 1200km brevet on the same route in last November. From then on, the three of us stuck together and kept riding a steady pace, with short breaks to chomp on some snacks and get the energy levels up to keep us going. At Dhule, we had a great meal in the middle of the night and decided to turn back without much sleep there. The logic was to cover as much distance as possible in the cold of the night. We lumbered on, chipping away at the remaining miles in a slow pace. Sleep finally got the better of us and we stopped for a quick 45 minute nap outside a shop some 60kms after Dhule towards Nashik. It was a super-refreshing sleep and the three of us were back to our usual fast paced ride. There was just the small hurdle of the Chandwad Ghat section following which we would be experiencing Geography to our benefit :)

At a tea shop in Nashik on the way back from Dhule
(From Left: Nilesh, Anil, Pranay, Rakesh, Kiran and me)

The rest of the ride till we were around 50 kms outside of Mumbai was more about taking care of our burning bodies with regular water intake, cooling foods like Watermelon, etc. Then, anticipating that we might get delayed a lot in the Mumbai traffic that was to come, Pranay took the initiative to push like crazy at speeds of over 30 kmph. It was a superb effort on his part to keep us going at that pace after 550kms of cycling. We carried that burst of pace right into Mumbai, through all the traffic and onto the finish line. It was a whole different ball game cutting across and riding through the peak Mumbai traffic and we thankfully finished safely with around 50 minutes to spare. The awesome Anil Uchil and the others from Mumbai Randonneurs were there to greet us at the finish. Anil got us some delicious cheesey sandwich and ice cream that we devoured without any guilt :)

There wasn’t a lot of time to relish in the moment of having become a Super Randonneur though, as I had to catch a flight to Bangalore for a training session there the next morning. Pranay continued on for another 100kms and managed to get the top spot in Strava for the most distance covered in a single ride by anyone in the world. Amazing achievement!!

 
The organisers even took a video of me during the brevet and I got to see myself riding for the first time :D

Arjun --> Randonneur  -->  Super Randonneur 

Loved every moment of it! It wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the awesome folks at Pune Randonneurs and the encouragement of my friends and family and of course my mentors from Coimbatore Cycling. 

At some point in any ride I decide never to do such a ride again, but we’re all big liars and back we are on the saddle for the next ride. Let’s just say, I decided never to ride anything more than 600kms in the coming months ;)