Member report: Furnace Creek 508

Early October saw an impressive number of great events. The Levi’s Gran Fondo seems to have been a big success and many Strava members participated. The Mt Diablo Challenge gathered many climb-lovers to attack one of the most majestic peaks in the Bay area. A third big race taking place last weekend was the Furnace Creek 508. If you have not heard about it, this race is a true test of human endurance: 508 miles with 36,000 feet of elevation gain. This makes the Furnace Creek route roughly comparable to four typical mountain stages of Tour de France ridden back-to-back. Add to that a strong desert wind that can hit you like an 18 wheeler. Below is the account of one of this years participants, Michael Gaiman. Thanks to Michael for his contribution to our blog!

Furnace Creek 508 2009 Team Colossal Squid Ride Report

Furnace Creek is one of the oldest and most respected ultra-marathon cycling events.  It consists of 509 miles in the deserts of Southern California beginning on a Saturday morning and ending, if you finish, Monday morning.  The race can be attempted solo or in teams of two or four riders.  In the team format, legs are of fixed length (82 mi, 70 mi, 99 mi, 73 mi, 56 mi, 34 mi, 33 mi, and 58 mi) and riders rotate through their roster in a fixed, predetermined, order.  The course is hilly with over 30,000 ft of elevation gain, but also features some of the fastest descents around.

Team Colossal Squid competed in the 2x Mixed 20+ category, which means two riders of mixed gender with an average age between 20 and 29.  We were the only entrants in this category in 2009 which meant that our competition wasn’t another team (though we did compete with other teams on the road), but the record for this category, set by Team Labrador in 2007 at 34:38.  Our preparation for the race began months earlier with heavy monthly mileage and regular team meetings to plan logistics and discuss strategy.  We were crewed by Kathryn and Bill, who between them had crewed and ridden numerous 508s and even crewed RAAM. We were in good hands.

On the Friday before FC508 began, Tina and I woke up early, packed our bikes and things into my car and headed down to Santa Clarita.  We arrived in the early afternoon to Kathryn, Bill, and Tina’s parents setting up the van.  The van had been transformed into a mobile command center.  Rear seats had been replaced with cubbies for food, water, lights, medical equipment, everything we could need out on the road. It impressed on me the seriousness of the task Tina and I had gotten ourselves into.  (Tina, by the way, had completed FC508 in 2008 with another partner.  So she knew exactly what to expect.  I was a newbie.)  Tina and I prepared our bikes by adding shiny tape to each side and then we all headed to lunch and the safety check.  In the safety check they make sure your follow vehicle is up to standards, that your bike has enough shiny bits, and that your light is more than just a single blinky LED.  From there we proceeded to the opening ceremonies, our first interaction with the 90+ other teams competing. Our evening consisted of giant plates of pasta followed by an early night.

On Saturday morning I dressed, ate, and then headed over to the start line.  The race began with a neutral police escort out of town and then a climb through canyons before meeting up with your follow car at around mile 20. Tina and the crew had to leave before the race began so they weren’t caught behind the police escort.  I said my goodbyes and took up my position at the start line.

These next 5-10 minutes seemed to take forever as the rest of the racers lined up, the camera people went around conducting interviews, the national anthem was sang, pep-talk was barked at us by the race director, and then, finally, we set off.

I didn’t actually know where I was going in the first 20 miles.  I had a route sheet, but figured I’d just follow other riders and we’d all get there eventually.  This meant that I had to follow others, which meant I couldn’t go my own pace.  I positioned myself near the front.  There were occasional attacks, and I would chase them down and then take their wheel–wanting to stay near the front, but not actually be the front.  I ended up being the third rider to the team cars.  Tina told me later that Bill was worried I was pushing too hard this early in the race, but I felt great.

As we got out on the open road, we encountered strong tail and cross winds. This suited me fine and I settling into a pace in the high twenties, keeping my heart rate in the low 150s.  After a few mistakes I figured out how to do bottle handoffs with my team (this had to be done with them stationary on the first day, but we could switch to doing handoffs from the car that evening and the next day).  By the time my first leg ended I had built up a lead of over ten minutes from the next closest team.  I pulled into California City and handed off the baton to Tina.

I stretched for a couple of minutes and then we headed off to support Tina on her first leg.  In the team car I changed into compression tights, ate, drank, and rested.  I was high from the experience of the first leg, but I knew we had many miles left and that my job now was to rest and prepare for the next leg.  Tina did great in our first leg and we were only passed by a couple of teams.  One of whom was Team Godwit, a 2x Mixed 30+ team consisting of a Men’s Cat 3 and Women’s Cat 1 rider.  Both strong. Later in the race a pattern emerged where I would catch their man, put time into them, and then their girl would catch Tina and put time into her.  It was fun and I think both teams were faster because of it.

My second leg was a 99 mi ride from Trona to Furnace Creek.  It began fast with the tail and crosswinds giving me a nice boost.  This leg is traditionally the hardest of the race.  Not only is it the longest, but it features a 10 mile, 4000 feet climb called Townes Pass starting around mile 45.  We stopped a mile or two before Townes to put my lights on (race rules dictate lights must be on from 6pm to 7am) and then I began the climb.  Well, first I turned right turning a crosswind into a headwind that would haunt us for most of the rest of the race.  The climb up Townes was unremarkable.  The trick with long climbs is to get into a good rhythm and then just keep going. The follow car was great though–blasting music at me to keep my morale high (and demoralize other racers as they started hearing my music shortly before I passed them).  I ended up passing five to ten solo riders (who had began two hours earlier than the relay teams) while climbing.  I got passed by one 4x team who were traveling up at an impressive pace.  The summit of Townes was lovely and followed by a long, fast descent–very fast–I hit 64 mph!  It was great.  After the descent I settled into another faster flat ride, thinking that with only 30 miles to go, I’d probably be done in a little more than an hour and that we had the record in the bag for sure.

Well, then we hit the head winds again and suddenly went from cruising at 25+ to struggling at 15.  I worked hard through the wind and slowly whittled down the miles.  I’m not going to sugarcoat it, though.  The wind was tough, very tough.  I think part of it was that I wasn’t mentally prepared for them.  Even with Townes Pass, my average speed for the leg was above 20 and I was easily on track to do a sub-5 hour century.  I was celebrating to myself at finishing the hard part of the ride and figured the rest of the race would be easy.  The wind, then, was a large shock.  As I got closer to Furnace Creek the wind only seemed to get stronger.  The only solace I had was that I was steadily gaining on two team cars off in the distance.  With two or three miles to go I realized that I’d probably catch them for the leg ended.  In the prerace meeting, the race director had described the ideal way to complete a pass when follow cars were involved: do it quickly to minimize your time without a follow car and to minimize the time your follow car had to be in oncoming traffic.  And so that’s what I did. I caught them and then sprinted into the wind, passing both teams quickly.  It was a huge release for me after the frustration of the last couple of hours!  As an added bonus, it turned out one of the teams I overtook was the 4x team who had beaten me up Townes Pass.

As we exchanged the baton I told Tina, “just do what you can do, just get through this wind.  It is hard.”  And then I settled into the car back into my routine of eat, drink, relax.  Only I couldn’t relax. Tina was out there struggling in the wind which only seemed to be getting worse.  She worked for two hours and only put a twenty mile dent into her 70 mile leg.  After a blast of wind so strong that she almost fell off her bike, she stopped and came back to the car.  We sat her down and told her it was a remarkable job she was doing.  We told her that maybe she could get through it by going a few miles and then taking a break–just do what she could do each time.  When she prepared to go back out there, I told her privately that I wouldn’t hold it against her if she stopped.  This was crazy.  She looked at me, and practically yelled, “I’m not quitting!” And it was just that simple. We saw team car after team car pass us, going full speed taking their rider(s) home, but Tina pushed on through. Nine hours after her leg began, we got to Shoshone.  I can barely put into words how proud I was of Tina for getting through that section.  She basically did a 70 mile climb and the amount of fatigue that gets into your body doing something like that is intense.  She did it when over 20 other teams couldn’t.  Solo teams quit, 2x teams quit, 4x teams quit–riders who were completely fresh couldn’t make it!  Tina finished that leg and I knew we would finish the race.

We put all thoughts of breaking the record out of our mind, and focused on getting through each leg.  I had a 56 mile leg next.  I had felt crappy in the car, but as soon as I got back on my bike, I felt good and right.  I worked through the winds keeping my heart rate between 140 and 150 which translated to a 12-15 mph pace.  After two and half hours we caught and passed Team Godwit.  They had overtaken us in the night.  It gave me a huge boost and I worked hard through the rest of the leg.  At around mile 45 the winds let up and I found myself resuming my usual 20+ mph pace.  Things were good and I made the most of the stillness while it lasted, assuming the wind would return in a few miles.

Tina began her next leg at Baker. It was an up and down 34 mile stage. I slept and don’t know much about this leg, but I think the winds mostly behaved themselves.  A train stopped the riders shortly before the stage ended, bunching up three or four teams.  So I took my place at the second mass start of the race.  My last leg was 33 miles which were up until mile 14, rollers to 16, and down.  It being my last leg, I gave it all that I had.  By the time I got to the top there wasn’t another team in sight.  We got to the hand off (known as “Almost Amboy”) and I handed the baton to Tina for the last time.  My race was over.  All I could do now was watch and cheer Tina on for her last 58 mile leg to the finish in Twenty Nine Palms.

And a funny thing happened.  I got into the team car and our crew, who had been there with us the whole race, through the wind and the sand, were giddy.  Actually giddy.  I figured this was fatigue manifesting itself, but no.  It turned out that as long as Tina maintained a pace above 11 mph that we’d break the record.  I couldn’t believe it! Frankly I had dismissed the record as unobtainable sometime during the night and had put it out of my head. But here it was, within our grasp.  Likely, even!

Tina rode for twenty or thirty miles before Godwit and their Cat 1 racer caught us, but interestingly she lacked the steam she’d had earlier in the race and Tina kept her in sight for most of the rest of the leg.  We stopped briefly a few minutes before 6pm and put lights on our bikes (on Tina’s bike so that she could ride the rest of the leg, on mine so that I could ride the final mile with her and we could cross the finish line together).  And then the Team Colossal Squid got slowly more excited as we got closer to the finish.  Tina kept going strong while everybody in the team car tweeted on our twitter accounts.  When we reached the KFC a mile before the finish line, I got my bike off the rack and rode with her.  We took the final mile slow and easy, chatting.  Happy.  And then we crossed the finish line and were done!  In the end we finished in 33:22.  We broke the record by over an hour and did it in a tough year. The next morning the race director remarked during the closing breakfast that this year, ”definitely [had] the hardest, craziest weather we’ve ever had out here in 20+ years”.

It is definitely an experience I won’t forget.

Links:
Race website: http://www.the508.com/

Splits: http://dbase.adventurecorps.com/results508.php?fc_eid=50&fcr=Go

Colossal Squid: http://dbase.adventurecorps.com/individualTd.php?e=3096

Pictures: http://www.the508.com/2009web/index.html
http://picasaweb.google.com/snapsbybill/FurnaceCreek5082009TeamColossalSquid

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM9zVcdefiU

Michael’s ride tracks: http://www.strava.com/rides/40569,
http://www.strava.com/rides/40591, http://www.strava.com/rides/40567,
http://www.strava.com/rides/40565

Local-To-You Filtering, Searching for Climbs and Rides by Location, Publishing Segments, .tcx File Importing, Competitions Leaderboard, Ride Tagging, and More—Release Notes: Sprint 9

Join in the member discussions on the Strava group: http://groups.google.com/group/strava

If you are the ‘owner’ of unnamed climbs that you want to keep– see the important note at the end of this post.

Lots to cover here and we are trying to keep these short and sweet. If you have any questions about the new functionality we pushed live on Friday 10-9-09, please get in touch: support@strava.com

LOCAL-TO-YOU FILTERING

Based on lots of feedback from members, latest rides list and popular climbs list on the Team page can now be toggled between ‘local’ (shows only results within 100 mile radius of the city/town center associated with your zip code) and ‘global’ (shows results across all of Strava). BTW–this is rev 1 of giving you tools and greater ability to localize information you see by geography and other attributes. More in a future release.

SEARCHING FOR RIDES AND CLIMBS BY ZIP CODE, LOCATION OR CATEGORY

We have added specialized search for rides and climbs (not athletes) based on zip code, city/state, and climb category. Here are examples of how you do it—all in the search field in the left side of the header:

• Zip code example: enter “03755” to search for rides in zip code 03755. Or “03755<X” for rides within X miles of zip code 03755.
• City/State example: enter “SF, CA” or “San Francisco, CA” to search for rides/climbs in SF. Yes, you can also add “<X”, for example, to return matches within X miles of the city.
• Category: here you can use the operators = (equal to), < (easier than), > (harder than), <= (easier or equal to) and >= (harder or equal to). So, for example, enter “cat>3” to find all climbs with category harder than cat-3 (so, cat-2, cat-1 and HC) or “cat<=2” for all climbs with category easier than or equal to cat-2 or “cat=HC” for all HC climbs.
• Combinations of location and climb category: here are some examples “SF, CA<20 cat>=2” finds climbs within 20 miles of San Francisco, CA that are cat2 or harder. “03755<100 cat=HC” finds all HC climbs within 100 miles of the center of zip code 03755 (Hanover, NH).

This is just rev1 of local search. We’ll be adding a better user interface in the near future.

SEGMENTS—YOU CAN NOW IDENTIFY AND EVEN PUBLISH YOUR OWN

NOTE! This description of some new functionality for Strava Segments will be kept very brief. Look for a blog post expounding on using Strava Segments in the next few days. For the background on Strava Segments, see the Sprint 6 release notes.

A Strava Segment is any part of a ride or even an entire ride that you want to define. (Climbs are segments that Strava identifies automatically for you and you have always been able to see climb results on the climb detail page.) If you have any Strava Segments in a ride, you can show them on the ride detail page in the ‘RIDESEGMENTS’ area.

Clicking on a ride segment takes you to the segment detail page. With Sprint 9, you can now identify any stretch of a ride as a Strava Segment. This is handy for climbs that are not long enough or steep enough to be categorized or for any stretch of road/trail you travel frequently. To mark a segment, just hit your lap button on your GPS device at the start and stop of the segment when you are riding. It will then show in the ‘RIDELAPS’ section of the ride detail page. Clicking on any lap of a ride shows the Strava Segment you covered in that lap.

If you keep your segment private, you will see your own results over that segment. If you name and ‘publish’ a Strava Segment, then you will see results across all riders who have ridden it and all their efforts on that segment, much like you do for categorized climbs. (Note, publishing a segment kicks of a process on our database that takes a few minutes to complete to find all previous efforts over the segment you just published.) Public segments are displayed on the ride detail page in the ‘RIDESEGMENTS’ section. The laps and best efforts sections of the ride detail page shows links to the ride segment detail page.

Please only publish segments that you think are unique and first look to see if your ride is already showing a public segment close to the one you are thinking of publishing. We’ll introduce sophisticated tools in the future to check if a segment you’re about to publish is similar to an existing segment. We’ll also introduce additional ways to publish, e.g. just for yourself vs. the world. Currently everything you publish is matched against all past and future rides.

.TCX FILE IMPORTING

Many of you have large quantities of GPS ride data stored on other sites (e.g. MB/Garmin Connect, Training Peaks) or on your computer hard drive. On the Upload screen you will now see a link “Add your Garmin Files” which takes you to a Strava utility to import .tcx files straight from your computer, bypassing Garmin Communicator. Your .tcx files have to have been captured by a device compatible with Strava (currently Garmin Edge 305/705 but very soon, Garmin Forerunner 405 as well) and still need to be well formatted.

The uploader utility works great for ride files of small-to-medium size, even with several rides. Large files (greater than 25MB) and files that have more than ‘a few’ rides in them (from Training Peaks or Ascent, for example) cannot be uploaded using this self-serve utility. If you attempt to upload a file with incorrect formatting and/or that is too big and you receive an error message, email the file to support@strava.com and we will take care of uploading to your Strava account.

COMPETITIONS LEADERBOARD

We like competitions that are fun and motivate us to get out on our bikes. We have done monthly competitions at Strava since the earliest days of our beta launch. Now you will find a new leaderboard for the current Strava competition on our Leaderboard page. This month’s competition is focused on using your bike for commuting. Checkout the new competitions leaderboard at http://strava.com/leaderboard/ and learn more about Strava’s October competition from our recent blog post.

TAGGING RIDES

On the ride detail page you can now add free-text tags for a ride. For example, you can add the tag “recovery ride” to a ride that was intentionally done at an easy pace or “Wednesday ride” to rides you do with your Wednesday ride buddies. In the near future, we will update our search functionality to allow you to search based on ride tags.

MORE…

In no particular order we have also added the following functionality:

• Watts captured by a power meter are reported with “PM” to differentiate them from watts calculated by Strava.
• the KOM Ranking (climb detail and segment detail pages) now displays the ‘rider ranking’: a rider’s name only appears at most once on the list with the rider’s best effort on the climb or segment
• ‘Vanity’ url is now sticky. If you use a vanity url (go to your profile settings to create one) it now stays as the url for your athlete page instead of simply linking to the standard url composed of your athlete id number.

UNNAMED CLIMBS WILL DISAPPEAR IN ABOUT 2 WEEKS

Climbs go unnamed when the member who first rode the climb does not give the climb a name–often because the unnamed climb is a near duplicate of a named climb (an artifact of how we found climbs in rides several months ago). We are going to implement changes to the permissions around naming climbs in an upcoming release. But we have many unnamed climbs in the Strava system now that need to be either named by the ‘climb owner’ or they will be eliminated in about 2 weeks.

So, if you know your unnamed climb is already represented by an existing named climb, then don’t bother naming it. Otherwise, if you have unnamed climbs (see your athlete page—there is a section for unnamed climbs there if you have any that you own) that you want to keep on Strava, do them a favor and give them a name.  Furthermore, if you know one of your named climbs is bogus (a duplicate or simply an uninteresting feature), append “DELETE” at the front of its name and we’ll scrub it from the system when we purge unnamed climbs. We’ll send out another warning on this a few days before we purge unnamed and unwanted climbs from Strava.

Member report: VT 50 by Billy Schaefer

The VT 50 is an epic annual MTB race in the vicinity of beautiful Mt. Ascutney. This year’s race was ‘blessed’ with some heavy rain making those 50 miles feel like 100 and turning single-track trails into no-track trails. These conditions were hard and you needed lots of good training and a little luck in order to succeed. Looking at the race results, Strava riders showed everyone that they had what it took to master this race: Will Letendre came second overall and won his age group and Brent Mellen came in forth overall. In total Strava had 6 riders in the race and they all did a great job (here are the race results). Below is the account of one of our members, Billy Schaefer. Please enjoy his story of this year’s brutal race.

2009 Vermont 50

It started in the dark and many finish in the dark. At 2 AM on Sunday morning I woke to the first volleys of rain. On Saturday, the day before, I had been hoping that the weather man would get it wrong, and the storm bearing down on us would either be a dud or miss us all together. But laying there in bed that night listening to the rain come down I knew we were in for it. By 4 AM Sunday morning, it was still raining, and I was seriously wondering if I really wanted to leave my wife for the day who is 8 months and 1 week pregnant with our second child. But with a full season of preparation behind me and the fact that the VT 50 is only one of two events I have time to enter in each year, I had to go.

By 5:15AM I was at Mt. Ascutney in Central Vermont. I sat in the Jeep for a long time, looking at a radar map on my Blackberry – - the rain was not going to let up. In fact, all day it never really quit, liquifying the climbs, and turning the single track into peanut butter. Even the dirt roads which had been so beautifully hard packed by mid August turned into giant sponges. Really, this year’s race was a wash out. The course deteriorated tremendously as the day went on, and just finishing became a remarkable accomplishment. Will Letendre torched the course, finishing second overall, and another Strava member Brent Mellen finished in fourth – - really incredible riding by both. Unfortunately, my Garmin Edge failed to record the entire race, and my bike like many others that day lost the ability to shift, both victims of the weather and the mud. I am happy to say that I bested my time from last year, finishing 23rd up from 88th….Probably in large part due to the extra training accumulated during the Strava category climb competition held in August.

I would highly recommend the race to my Western friends. The race is truly one of the epic North American Mountain Bike races, and in many ways is New England’s answer to Leadville. While Leadville has its altitude and length, the Vermont 50 has its mud and trees! In my book, Will and the other folks that finish this race in under 5 hours deserve similar accolades to those bestowed on David Wiens, 2nd place finisher in the 2009 Leadville 100 behind Lance Armstrong. Great job to all those who finished both races this year!

Billy Schaefer

P.S. – The Strava kit held up well to the mud.

Strava's October Competition

October is upon us and, after a hiatus in September, it is time for another Strava Competititon! For the month of October, the focus will be on logging commute miles on Strava. The prizes include t-shirts (get the other color!) and gift certificates as explained below.

First, the rules. Strava will count and track your “commute” rides and mileage. To count towards the competition…

1. Rides must be designated a “commute”. This can be done at the time of upload or by checking the “commute” box on the ride detail page (click ‘edit’ next to the ride name).

2. Rides must be a route that is “point A – to – point B”. Longer rides that start and end too close to the same location will count as the shorter linear distance between the start and end locations, or not at all.

3. Commutes do NOT need to be rides to work. If you ride your bike as an alternative to another form of transportation (presumably carbon-emitting), the ride counts towards the competition if it satisfies #1 and #2 above. We are operating on the honor system here.

4. Rides must occur between 12:00am October 1, 2009 and 11:59pm October 31, 2009. They can be uploaded within a few days of the end of the competition and we will make sure to announce our upload cut-off a few days prior.

For added motivation, soon you will be able to see live standings for this and future competition on strava.com. More on that in a future post.

At the end of this competition, Strava will gladly reward you based on:

* PARTICIPATION: Any member who logs 15+ commutes during the month gets a Strava t-shirt.

* FREQUENCY: The member logging the most commutes during the month gets a $50 gift certificate at a local bike shop.

* DISTANCE: The member logging the greatest total distance of commutes for the month gets a $50 gift certificate at a local bike shop.

That’s it. So get your city tires on and start commuting on your bike! Any questions, please get in touch: support@strava.com.

follow: http://twitter.com/stravaHQ

discuss: http://groups.google.com/group/strava

join: http://strava.com