From XL to XTERRA…to Tagaman

Second of three parts

All that was standing between me and the second trail section of the bike course was the coral road along wireless ridge. I was making good time, and was energized every time I saw a new set of faces cheering us on. After passing Janet McCullough and her family of well wishers, I passed through a crowd that directed me to the off-road downhill portion of the course that led down to the Kingfisher Road.

I was pretty confident going into this part of the course, as I had already done it a couple of times, and after making it past the first technical portion of it unscathed, I was home free for a while. The steep section which I almost kissed during the bike race a little over a month ago was behind me, and now it was just a speedy trail to the pavement, and although it was a little bumpy, I was able to unleash the hounds and fly through it.

It was then when I realized that despite the swim that I was having a great race, and was in the middle of my first XTERRA. Like a kid on a rollercoaster, I let out a series of “Woo-hoos” and a couple of “Yeahs” en route to the smooth stuff, and when I hit the asphalt I just enjoyed the descent free from the fear of a rock or stick jumping out to de-bike me.

I passed a guy on the way down, but he passed me back when we got to the next climb, and everything was going just as I planned. The swim was far behind me now, and I felt good on the bike. When we got to the next off-road section, I saw my friends Steve and Miwa directing the racers onto the coral section. They offered some encouragement, and I kept on going with a solid pace. Along the back stretch of road I passed a couple of other bikers, and I remember thinking that they were probably feeling the ill effects of going too hard too early in the race. Not so with me, as I was on my pace and drinking water like a champ. There would be no dehydrating for me, and I emptied my Camelback for the first time before the trip to Mount Tapochau.

As I neared a group of riders to make my way to the pavement again, my chain popped off during a gear change on a climb. From what I hear from the seasoned vets it is usually due to user error, but I’m more inclined to believe that it was sabotage—yeah, damn terrorists.

When I got off the bike to fix the chain my legs started cramping just above my knees. I knew that couldn’t be a good sign, so I was drinking water like it was going out of style. The last thing I needed was to DNF because I ran out of fluids and overheated—that would not be cool.

So water was the theme of the day. Whenever I came to an aid station I was a drinking machine. When I popped the chain back into place, I continued up to the road, but I could feel a difference in my body when I was up and running again. I could feel my energy start to fade a bit the more I started to think that I was possibly dehydrating. When I got to the water stop at the base of the hill, I drank a water bottle, took a couple more to fill up my Camelback, and poured another one over my head to cool off. While I was looking to finish with a good time, I didn’t care about spending an extra minute to help me throughout the race.

From then on, there was nowhere else to go but up. The year before, I was in a van taking pictures of the bikers who struggled up the coral road in the direct path of the sun’s rays. This time around, I was the one getting cooked like an egg on my way to Mount Tapochau. Though the van was more comfortable, I’ll take the bike route during the race any day.

The journey to the top was equipped with a couple of tough climbs and a couple of down slopes that offered sweet relief. I made it up the first of the tough climbs like clockwork, as the gear changes and high cadence worked perfectly through to the next down hill run.

With one of the baddies down, I came upon the turn around point for the XTERRA Sport racers where I was cheered on by a trio of hula girls wearing coconut bras.

After passing the “hotties”, I was poised for my assault upon the climb which has earned the moniker of an off-color term used for a female dog.

About half-way to the top I was feeling the pain, and when I looked up to see how much longer I would have to endure the punishment, I saw a bunch of racers walking up the hill. Since I hadn’t dismounted during the climb on the training rides, I felt supremely confident that I could finish it, but with all of those triathletes walking up the hill, I though that they may have known something that I didn’t, and were saving their energy for later on the course.

That was all of the reasoning I needed to get off the bike and walk up the hill, but when I got off of my seat my legs froze up like a freshly opened beer from the freezer. My knees and ankles were uselessly locked in place, and I was forced to peg-leg it up the hill while pushing my bike. I felt like a crippled pirate and hated the fact that I stopped pedaling. When the ground leveled off, I hopped back in the saddle and pedaled on to the top. It turned out to be great timing, as local motocross veteran Steve Sablan was chauffeuring a cameraman around. It was even better timing as they followed me on a down hill, and I was cruisin’ by with racing legs. Suddenly I felt great, but as soon as my moment of fame was complete I started to get that cramping feeling in the gams again—but it was okay because I was on top of the mountain.

When the backside of Mount Tapochau came calling, my legs were still tight, but since there wasn’t a whole lot of pedaling involved, everything was okay. What I had forgotten was that there were still about three more climbs left until the end of the course, and I found out where they were soon enough. After passing a biker on a single track portion, I popped a chain again, and just like the last derailing incident, my legs were not liking the idea of bending too much. Luckily that biker I passed was Donna Baker from Guam, and when she passed by when I was performing minor maintenance, she asked how I was doing. I told her all was well, but I couldn’t shake the stiff legs. She gave me great news that it was only going to get worse, and offered me a salt tab to get me through for a while. It helped, and when we carried the bikes to the top of a dirt road, we were off.

From there I gritted out a couple of uphill ascents, but since I had broken my plan of not walking, I forced myself up the hill using my patented peg-leg method, and made it back to the hula girls.

The next challenge before the race to the transition was the steep slope where I crashed during training. Since Sue Knecht forced me to get back on my bike and ride it again, I was confident, so I took the plunge with some speed and sailed through without incident. With an exception, it was all downhill from there, and it was just a matter of whether or not I would be able to make it through the transition point before the cutoff time of three and a half hours. I knew I would be cutting it close when Jean Sakovich yelled out that I only had a half an hour left, so I went faster than normal down the trail, flew down the coral section of Navy Hill Road, and pedaled my butt off until I got to American Memorial Park—with eight minutes to spare.

The only other thing I was worried about was whether or not the marshals would let me do the run if they saw me cramping like I was every other time I got off the bike. Well, they did, and when I dismounted to enter the transition area, I let out a muffled expletive and went toward my running gear.