My own charge up the rise leading away from the final checkpoint lasted about 100 yards. The hill jutted up, and I shrugged, unclipped and started walking again. I told myself that it was only a mile or so to the road, and after that might be more climbs, so there was little point in burning the little bit of gas I had left on this hill. I switched the display on my cycle computer to show the local time instead of the time elapsed, and pushed on, and up.

The trail wound gently on, teetering on the top of a ridgeline before turning left and going sharply down. A series of rocky switchbacks, covered in loose rock and gravel, led all the way down to the same creek we had crossed a mile earlier. I was so busy negotiating the descent that I couldn’t look up, so I didn’t know until I splashed through the creek at the bottom that what faced me on the other side was the steepest climb yet.

I stopped, got off the bike again and stared, gobsmacked, at the surging, heaving, and ever-ascending gray ribbon in front of me. This was completely unridable, even on a fresh set of legs. I muttered obscenities and lurched forward, pushing the bike out in front of me for balance. The incline became so steep that I started using the bike like a walker, thrusting it in front of me, locking the brakes, and pulling myself up to it. I was only managing four or five steps at a time before having to straighten up and catch my breath. I knew I was working much harder than I needed to, but my legs wouldn’t allow me to straighten up and take longer strides.

I made it to the top, legs searing, shoulders heaving with each breath, and stole a moment’s glance over my shoulder at the ravine I had just traversed. I was immediately glad I hadn’t looked up before going down the other side, or I might’ve quit on the spot. The chasm between where I was and where I had come from was daunting, even from the top.

Before my legs could seize, I awkwardly remounted the bike and pushed off, selecting an easy gear and just trying to keep moving forward. After a few minutes, the trail went from singletrack to a soggy, wide path, and then to a double track before finally, mercifully, dead-ending into a gravel road. Hello, beautiful!

I paused to pull out my map and memorize the next few turns to get me back to the finish. It was growing ever cooler now. A slight breeze picked up, and I smelled in it the threat of rain. That didn’t bother me in the least, because now I felt sure I’d make it back. I was brazenly confident now, like I had just escaped the fire swamp. I folded the map to only show what I needed, stuffed it in my jersey (partly for convenience, partly for a wind block), and turned left down the gravel road, silently rejoicing at the ease with which I could now pick up speed.

The gravel road dead-ended into a paved one, and I paused to check the map again. I was no longer able to remember more than one turn at a time, such was the level of my exhaustion. That, and I knew that if I made a single wrong turn, it might be the difference between making it back on my own and having to call for help. In a fleeting moment of insanity, I contemplated turning due West, in order to hit another optional checkpoint. That thought was banished by another, when I looked at my cycle computer and saw the time.

There was still enough time before the cutoff. I was still in the race! If I really wicked it up, and didn’t hit any more debilitating hills, I might just make it in before the 6 pm!

It didn’t matter, really, whether I made it or not. I was already going to DNF, technically, because I wouldn’t be finishing with my teammate. But finishing within the allotted time on my own spurred just enough pride to get me moving, and quickly. I turned South down the road to a little town, using as much momentum as I could in the rolling terrain to keep my speed up. I coasted into the town, turned West, followed a quick jog in the road, and was greeted with an absolutely glorious sight. DOWN HILL! Not just a little one, but a gradual, gentle, pedaling-optional-for-a-half-mile down hill.

Despite myself — despite my fatigue, my aching muscles, my fading senses, my running nose — I attacked. I hit the big ring and stomped on the pedals, enjoying the instant reward in the rush of easy forward momentum. I had truly reached transcendence, the point where mind overcomes body and spirit overcomes both, and all you know is the rush of the wind past your ears, and the blur of the pavement and gravel speeding underneath you.

My cycle computer blinked furiously, spooling up to speeds I hadn’t seen in hours. When the road leveled out, I found myself running alongside a creek, and I knew that the road I had picked would follow that creek almost all the way back to the finish. That means flat ground, sports fans!

I hunched over the bars a little to get out of the wind and spun the cranks with glee. I kept my head just high enough to see and avoid the occasional string of pot holes, and picked lines where the gravel was most compact. Everything I could do in the name of efficiency, I did, and it was working. I was routinely near twenty miles per hour, and my tires hummed happily along. The clock was ticking, but I was at last making enough forward progress to think that maybe, just maybe I’d make it before it struck six.

A couple quick stops to check the map, and I found myself making my final turn, onto the road that would take me on my final leg, back to the finish. I was pedaling easily now, the pain in my legs either forgotten or entirely ignored, my head filled with the building joy of reaching the finish, and probably just in time. A couple farm dogs gave chase, and I giddily stood and charged to escape them, pouring on the speed for two little sprints.

My confidence flickered momentarily when, a few hundred yards later, I noticed a sign that read “ROAD CLOSED,” and underneath, “BRIDGE OUT.” Didn’t matter. I wasn’t going back the way I came, so the dogs could chase me again. And at any rate, the creek wasn’t that big. I’d wade across, if I had to.

As it turned out, the bridge wasn’t out, just closed, and that mattered to me even less. If it caves in under me, so be it. I got to it, heaved my bike over the guardrails fastened on either side, and struck out for the last time, the venue for the start/finish appearing in the distance. I had one obstacle left to negotiate, the same creek that had worried me so much before the start, in the morning that seemed, now, to be a decade ago. My exhaustion and elation had mixed to become reckless abandon, and I dove down the creekside, plowed through the water and charged up the opposite bank, grinning at the hoops and hollers greeting my arrival.

“He’s gonna make it!” “Thirty seconds!” “PEDAALLLL!!” “TEN SECONDS!”

I stood up and sprinted the last few meters, crushing the pedals with every ounce of force I had left, leaning forward and screaming defiance, quite outside myself in the moment.

And I made it. Against everything I thought I was capable of, I made it. I finished, and with minutes to spare, the somewhat-inebriated calls of thirty and ten seconds notwithstanding.

I finished the Sub 9 Death March.

The weather seemed to follow my fortunes. What had started out as the brightest of early spring days had sunk into an overcast gloom in the afternoon. While I finished my snack at the optional checkpoint, the rest of my crew set off ahead. I knew they had good intentions of meeting me at the next checkpoint, but I also knew that my pace wasn’t going to be fast enough for it to be worth their wait.

When I was finally ready, I set out up the road, completely alone again, but determined to simply do what I could and make it to the finish. It wasn’t a race any more, at least for me, it was just a contest of survival. And somehow, I found the shift in mindset, and the solitude, oddly soothing.

I had just started to enjoy this new-found freedom when I rounded a corner and saw the road before me sweep upward. A lot. Until it disappeared into the trees. The little cheery warmth I had felt just moments earlier was immediately extinguished. I pedaled until the grade became too much, and then took to trudging up the gravel. Up and up I went, the hill getting steeper, my legs getting tighter. I was now limping, favoring my left leg, which had decided it had the worse end of the deal. The effort was actually leaving me short of breath, and I found myself having to stop and breathe with increasing frequency.

The climb became so steep that the road switched back on itself. Twice. Every time I thought I could see the top, it seemed to turn and rise a bit more. I slowed further still. I felt like I was doing a thousand reps of one-legged squats. I started breaking the hill into 30 second sections; walk for 30, rest for 30, repeat. I heard voices. Real ones. That must be the top! I rounded another corner and looked up, and sure enough, there was a small cluster of riders, and the SAG wagon! I pushed and grunted the rest of the way to the top, laid down my bike and slumped to the ground.

I was beat. Or very nearly so. The guys in the SAG wagon asked me if I was okay, and I told them I was fighting cramps. He offered me electrolytes, but I pointed to the half-empty bottle in the cage on my bike and said I was good. In a strange way, that reset my mind. I was still going, still well-provisioned, and I still had my bike. What was more, the guy told me that this was the biggest hill in the area, and I’d just come up it. I was exhausted enough that I had to hear him explain that I got to go down the other side before it fully registered with me. I had been trudging up for nearly a mile, and that meant that at least the next mile would be down.

The SAG wagon guys took off, to go play superhero for the next beaten and discouraged rider. I stayed another couple minutes, pounding my fists on my quads to get them to relax, and sipping electrolytes. Then without even really thinking about it, I pulled my pack back on, threw a leg over my bike, and started off down the hill.

To be continued…

The first checkpoint wasn’t far, and only took us a few minutes of easy riding up a couple nice roads to get to, with a little gravel thrown in. Then there were a few gentle hills, long enough to get my legs warm and restore my confidence. We got into a loose little peloton, just cruising, enjoying the morning sunshine and the company. We turned off the main highway onto our first long, gravel road of the day, and everybody grinned. It was damp, a little muddy but hard packed, and the pace didn’t slack at all. We hit an optional checkpoint, climbed a lookout tower, sucked our energy gels and munched our Clif bars. Everybody’s spirits were high, buoyed by the crisp air, the cheery sunshine, and the thrill of the race.

A few hills after the fire tower brought the first signs of trouble. Our little group strung out, and the other teams that had been tagging along either surged ahead or lagged behind. I reached the top of a little climb and glanced back, only to be surprised by the distance to my teammate. I throttled back at the summit and waited for him, to make sure he was okay. He said he was fine, but far more tired than he should’ve been this early in the race, from such a moderate amount of effort. We shrugged, sipped some water and electrolytes, and pressed on.

A brief interlude of asphalt led us to our next turn, onto the road that would take us to the Northernmost checkpoint. It started as a paved county road, turned to hard packed gravel, then to loose gravel. The first climb triggered muscle spasms and cramps for my teammate, and we pulled off to the side for a few minutes to relax and hydrate. In another mile or two, after going around a gate, the road became not much of a road at all. For stretches lasting hundreds of yards, running streams had formed in both tracks, leaving the unenviable options of splashing through water or slogging through the mud on either side.

And then it got worse.

The mud and fallen trees created eddies and logjams of riders pedaling, now trudging alongside their bikes, now heaving them over an obstacle. A gentle but slick descent led to a climb that I deemed impossible at a glance, only to have two girls come past me after I dismounted. On the other side of the climb was an equally steep, but twice as soggy descent. I tiptoed down, playing the brake levers like piano keys, butt well behind the back of the seat. From there it was bog after puddle after mud pit after fallen tree for fully another mile before we reached a hard-packed gravel road again. We all agreed that it was fun, but of the hard, character-building type.

My ailing teammate had survived thus far, but was clearly in trouble. The cramps were becoming stronger and more frequent. And apparently, they were contagious. Half way through the bog on the north side of the big climb on the road that wasn’t, I had dismounted to get over yet another downed tree. When I swung my leg over to dismount, I nearly fell down when I suddenly felt what seemed like a dozen small grenades going off in my lower quads. I was able to catch them soon enough to stop the cramps from fully setting in, but it was a near thing, and sobering.

We soldiered on up the gradual ascent to the checkpoint (number three of five mandatory points), and got our required picture by the sign. But for my teammate’s legs, that was going to be all. We talked it over, and given the miles we had to go, and the condition he was in even after a lengthy recovery break, there just wasn’t any way he could continue. It wasn’t an easy decision for anybody. Him dropping out would me we both technically DNF’d, and he really didn’t want that. But the fact was that we were less than half way through (which we knew), and the big climbs hadn’t yet started (which we didn’t know), and to push on any further would’ve been to invite more serious problems. We called for the SAG wagon, and he urged me to ride on and enjoy it.

So I crammed down more food, re-oiled my chain, and struck out with the rest of our group for the next checkpoint. We’d received some timely intel from other riders that the path we had anticipated taking to the next point had been rendered nigh impassible by the recent precipitation and the steepness of the climbs. We instead selected a longer way around, but one that used passable roads and avoided some of the more major elevation changes. The downside was, our new route added significant mileage, and it was a long, long stretch to our next scheduled stop.

To be continued…