Of Bikes and Snow

I took to the snowy hills of New York for my fifth SNOWGAINE, run annually by the great folks of CNYO. As always, hilly terrain and the deep snow proved challenging, but this year’s course turned out to be a unique ones in many regards. First of all, I was racing without any my GOALS teammates, but I was fortunate to have linked up with New Jersey racing stud, John Courain. We’ve crossed paths in the woods and swamps many times over the past several years, and I was excited to have the opportunity to race with him. It’s also been too long since I’ve raced with someone who is a foot taller than me, so we teamed up and raced as the “Large TV Heroes” (respect to anyone who can figure out where that name comes from…) and set off for the hills west of Albany, a new location for the event as far as I know.

We also set out from the Mid Atlantic, toting bikes, a first for me. I’ve seen various racers attempt to use bikes at SNOWGAINE in the past (including Jon and Bruce’s disastrous attempt during my first SNOWGAINE), and from my perspective it always seemed to end in catastrophe or at least turned out to be harder than it was worth, for the rules of SNOWGAINE state that whatever you carry with you must stay with you at all times. If you traipse through two feet of snow for an hour, off trail, through the woods (not an unusual experience for SNOWGAINE), then you have to bring your bike with you. Through the snow. Over hills and under them. Through the Misty Mountains. There and back again….I digress…

This year’s race was also unique as the area was enormous, and there were passable roads and snowmobile trails all over the map. That said, there were spacious tracts of private land that complicated route choice, meaning that checkpoints were oddly spaced, often in tight clusters. Add to this the fact that these hills really resembled small mountains, and it was an imposing course for sure, especially considering the two feet or snow that still filled pockets of the deep woods. Armed with our maps, John and I planned our two days of racing, intending to bike on the first day. Our hope was to bike a large portion of the perimeter of the course while bagging a select number of other points inside that perimeter on the west side of the map. We had a good option to cut things short early, and then we’d have a more manageable loop for the second day.

Things started off well enough as we hit four quick and easy points along the north side of the map. From the fourth point, we began our first ascent and from that point on, I think both John and I were privately wondering if we had made a terrible mistake. Not only was progress slow since so much of the riding was uphill, but we found ourselves moving only minutely faster than our Canadian friends from Running Free who were charging up the steep roads and catching us at checkpoints. We did finally pull away from them as the terrain became a bit more friendly after that initial climb, but we soon found ourselves mired in the real challenge of the day.

We hit our first “off-trail” point rather painlessly as we found we could easily ride a crusty snowmobile trail most of the way to the point. Thus far we had been almost entirely on cleared roads, and we were thrilled to find the snowmobile trails so rideable, pumping our fists that we had made the right call. We made quick work of this point, only ten minutes or so behind Joe and Jeff from Rev3. And then we pushed our way into hell.

I’ve done a number of rather miserable things since beginning adventure racing almost a decade ago, and while this probably won’t top my list, it is up there. The next point was a longer off-trail whack, and we elected to take a bit of a risk and ride a mile or so around to attack it from a different angle. A trail entered the woods from the map, and while it was a fainter trail than our clear snowmobile track, we hoped it would be useful. Of course, we found the trail to be non-existent, so we were left with no option but to bushwhack into the woods with our bikes beside us.

We were usually breaking through much deeper than this...

 

Lesson number one: always bring snowshoes when trampling off into the snow with a bike. We might have been alright if the temperatures hadn’t risen above 40 degrees, but the snow had softened considerably, and the bikes picked up pounds of extra weight as snow clogged the treads and wheels of the bikes. Add to that the fact that we were postholing laboriously, and it was about as demoralizing and exhausting as anything I’ve done. And I wasn’t even breaking snow…

It was not this fun...

Lesson number two: there is nothing fun about dragging a bike around in the woods for over an hour. Nothing at all.

Lesson number three: never, ever do that again…

And this essentially was our experience for the next couple of hours as we worked out way through a handful of checkpoints, the temperatures continuing to soften up the snow to the point where I was unable to ride even the snow mobile tracks efficiently. It became quickly apparent that our hopes to sweep around the perimeter were shot, and we began dropping a few of the inner points before continuing with the perimeter to our bail-out point.

With only two hours left, we found ourselves at the farthest checkpoint from the finish. Once again we set off into the woods, slogging through a brushy swamp around a small lake to nab the point. The Canadians were the only other team to reach this point, as Joe and Jeff had diverged a bit earlier to start heading back. As we struggled along the shoreline, we remarked that time was running away from us, and after studying a few sets of lonely tracks on the ice, we elected to cross the frozen lake rather than bushwhacking pack through the deep forest snow. Once across the lake, we quickly reached a road. We had 90 minutes to get back, with three big value points along the way and a fair bit of steady, if not imposing, climbing to knock out before several kilometers of steady descent back to the finish. We knew we might be a bit late, and I did my fair share of muttering, reflecting on the fact that not riding my mountain bike since October definitely had been a bad idea.

Our frozen lake crossing

 

Indeed, we made it back overtime, though not horribly so. We would bank an extra 37 minutes of sleep for the second morning as our penalty, and while we didn’t know it until the end of the second day, we had finished second on the first day behind Joe and Jeff. It had been a hell of a day with little to enjoy since it felt like we were either climbing, fighting with our bikes in the snow or freezing on the final downhills to the finish. We constantly had to revise our plan and drop points, which I actually enjoyed as it felt like strategy was becoming far more important than in most races, and we were thankful to retire the bikes for our snowshoes on Sunday.

And Sunday was what SNOWGAINE is all about. We elected to drop some bigger value points that required 10k or so of road running and instead headed right back up into the hills into a tight cluster of low-value points. We had a blast in this section, picking off many of the twenty or so flags before hitting the roads and snowmobile trails for a long run for three more high value points. We again crossed paths with Joe and Jeff before losing them for the day. Road run complete, we reentered the woods, spending a couple of hours off trail and nailing a handful of other points before heading back up into the tight cluster of low-value points. We picked off most of the remaining ones before emerging back onto the road that led down to the finish. We had 25 minutes, the minimum estimate we had given ourselves for a safe return, and as we situated our snowshoes for a steady journey home, my legs had little spring left to them.  

The Larger TV Hero

 

John was a great sport, but it was clear he was a bit worried about time. I knew that my legs had nothing left for up-hills and little left to dramatically increase my pace on flats. That said, I also knew that I’m much better at downhill running, even if my legs are shot, so I fartlek-ed myself along the first two kilometers, a rolling stretch of road, running the downs, alternating between a shuffle and walk on the flats and forcing myself up the inclines at what felt like a glacial pace. Still, I felt confident that once we hit the downs we’d coast right down to the finish line “well under” the cutoff.

Considering the number of races I’ve finished with little more than a minute to spare, the 3-4 minutes we had left on the clock felt like an eternity. It had been a redemptive day as we had a great plan that we ultimately stuck to, despite considering various other options once we were out there. As it turned out, it was perfect for us (especially remembering our nearly 40 minutes of penalty time), and we moved at a steady pace, hitting all of our points cleanly. After the misery of the first day, our eight hours of snowshoeing were all beautiful and fun, and while tiring, they were certainly not nearly as punishing as the first half of our race.

Serenity

Ultimately, we covered a bit more than 40 miles on the first day, and while only a few of those miles were genuinely spent dragging bikes through deep, off-trail snow, it felt like we spent all day doing so. Our second day saw us covering another 21 miles or so on foot. Combined, this was certainly more mileage than I’ve ever done in the deep snows of New York. Still, we only managed to clear approximately 1250 of the 1990 points or so available. That said, we knew we had done relatively well, and indeed we found ourselves in second place overall behind Joe and Jeff, my highest finish at SNOWGAINE to date. While the field was a bit smaller than usual, it was a terrific way to start the year.

As always, a big congratulations to everyone who took on this brutal course. The terrain certainly felt much grander than any past SNOWGAINE I have competed in, and the distances were also more considerable for everyone. Congratulations as well to our friends Joe and Jeff for their win, and thank you to the folks at CNYO who keep putting on these great events year after year. Finally, it was a pleasure racing with John. I always love racing with new folks and it’s always rewarding when things click and go well from the get go. Here’s hoping that this won’t be the first and last time the Large TV Heroes roam about in the woods together.