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
