Ninety One Point Eight Percent

LOTOJA kicked my ass on Saturday. I rode hard for just over 12 hours and made it 189 miles but just couldn't make it the rest of the way to the finish line. I am severely disappointed :(

I think that the biggest factor contributing to non-completion was letting up on my training regimen in the month leading up to LOTOJA. I had been riding about 200 miles a week for most of the summer but then dropped down to less than a hundred miles a week after riding ULCER in early August. Of course, it didn't help to train at a lower weight for most of the summer and then put on a few extra pounds towards the end of the summer.

It's kind of creepy that I finished exactly as much of LOTOJA as I did of RANATAD. I rode 147 of 160 miles of RANATAD and I rode 189 of 206 miles of LOTOJA. Those both work out to almost exactly 91.8% of the total. It's almost like a switch goes off inside of me and says, "You've done 91.8% of the ride... it's time to quit now".

After failing to complete RANATAD, I told myself that I just needed to have more mental toughness. I needed to push myself to get through no matter what. And, I was prepared to push myself to finish LOTOJA no matter what. The problem is that my body was ready to give up 120 miles into the ride. By the time that I had ridden over the three mountain passes (Strawberry, Geneva and Salt River) and descended into Afton my body was in agonizing pain.

It was sheer mental toughness that drove me through the next 70 miles to get me through Star Valley, Snake River Canyon and just outside of Jackson. From that standpoint I was actually proud of myself that I was able to push that far. It was particularly difficult becuase for much of the ride through Star Valley I was riding into a soul crushing cross/head wind. Several of the guys who rode last year said that the wind this year made the ride much more difficult.

The other factor that I think contributed to my failure was that I rode solo for much of the ride. The guys that I trained with from work all summer were actually riding in a different age category than me so I wasn't able to start at the same time as them. I stuck with my starting pack to Preston, got split up going into the mountains and then for the rest of the day just had a difficult time latching on to anyone. Riding 206 miles in a group is difficult but riding that distance solo is really just sheer stupidity. In retrospect, I think that I would have been better off even finding a slower group of riders and just sticking with them all day so that I didn't have to do as much work riding into the wind.

Again, I am hugely disappointed. I don't know if I dare to wear the LOTOJA jersey that I bought before the ride considering that I didn't finish. But all I can do is come back next year with a little more wisdom and preparation.

Rosey got some pictures from the ride, but I don't have the cable to get them from the camera while we are on the road, so I'll have to post them when we get back home in a couple of weeks.