Inferno Race Report: Part III: T1, Oh Europe

In most Ironman triathlons, you exit the water and find an army of volunteers waiting to strip off your wetsuit, hand over your bag of cycling clothes, and guide you to the changing tent. It's in this tent where you strip off your sometimes icy swimwear, throw on your bike clothes, perhaps grab a snack, and then head out to receive your bike (which is handed to you by another one of those great race volunteers). This is exactly what I'm envisioning will happen at the Inferno, although as I exit the water and begin to feel my chilled legs come to life again, I see that there is no army of volunteers to strip off my wetsuit, hand me a gear bag, or guide me to a changing tent. What I see is my bike, my gear bag laying where I left it the day before (right under my bike), and a handful of naked butts catching the sunlight like prairie dogs popping in and out of their holes. Yep, this is Europe -- no place for good old-fashioned puritanical American modesty. Apparently the changing tent is ... well, open-air.

So, with fans a clappin' and snappin' photos and with my only coverage a partially-filled row of bike racks, I stripped down, laughed out loud at memories of Seinfeld, and greeted my new homeland in my birthday suit.

Now you triathletes out there will get this I'm sure -- for the rest though, you see -- triathletes can be a bit obsessive-compulsive. One of the things we're really good at is visualizing and worrying about every single detail of a race starting months before the starting gun is fired. Now I had envisioned this transition many times and never in my visualizations did I think through the feeling I would have standing in an open field surrounded by a hundred bikes, a dozen athletes, and more onlookers than I care to consider, approaching the whole disrobe, dry off, re-robe transaction. Had I actually visualized this, I'm sure that I would have thought through the impact of recently cut grass, an early morning sun angle, the right towel coverage technique to facilitate a clothing swapperoo, and I don't know ... maybe the best direction to face during the whole episode or whether or not I should go for a full towel-off or just hastily slip on bike shorts while still dripping wet. Since I never, ever, ever, thought about this scenario, I just had to stand there for a minute thinking "Is there really no changing tent here? Am I about to make a fool of myself by stripping down in the open only to find out that in Switzerland there's some rule that you have to walk your bike out of the transition area before you enter the changing tent?"

Well, you only live once and with more than a dozen hours of racing ahead of me on this day, I made the best of it, plopped down on the grass, and did what had to be an even less graceful move than the "whale dance wetsuit re-zip" to get my clothes on and off. In hindsight, I think I should have also done the naked dance and ran a couple laps through the transition area to air-dry off. My modesty got the best of me though and before I knew it I was out of T1 and starting off on the first of two bike segments.

Inferno Race Report: Part II - The Swim

COLD! As my feet hit the water, this is the thought that shocked my state of zen into the state of PerplexiChillituity .. yes, a made-up word describing the seemingly never-ending, rattling, and quite disturbing feeling that one is about to enter really cold water for an hour or more, just for sport!

One of my challenges for this race is that I didn't really train for the swim. You see, things are often a bit crowded in the Netherlands and swimming pools are no exception. In the States, I found it mildly annoying to have to share a swim lane with someone else. In Holland, I was lucky to share a lane with less than six people. I promise you, I'm not exaggerating here! My most enjoyable swim ever was in a large crystal clear lake in Maine during my first season of triathlon. In a lake that was at least 10K long, Becky and I were only joined by a sail boat on the far end of the end. Me, my wife, a sail boat, and fish ... that was it and it was thus a beautiful swim. You're probably with me now on how I didn't enjoy the swim training in Amsterdam and why I entered the water in the Swiss town of Thun thinking three things 1) wow, this is really cold; 2) seriously, really, really cold, and 3) maybe I should have trained for this swim because I can't even see where we're supposed to exit the water because it's so far away.

Ten minutes into the swim and I had confirmed to myself that lots of my new Swiss friends were serious swimmers (it felt like all of them!) and that the value of preparation can never be under-estimated. Maybe 3 sessions in the pool wasn't enough for a big race like this ... hmm, time will tell. It seemed like the swim lane was 100 yards across and I often wondered if I was on track as I really felt alone (and slow)! As I continued to plod my way through the water, trying to sight the castle-looking building (which was probably a real ... castle), my wetsuit zipper decided that now that the thin later of water between the suit and my skin had warmed up a bit (thus creating the insulation that keeps you from turning into an ice block in cold swims like this), it was a fantastic time to reintroduce ice cold water to Jeff's back. The zipper somehow snuck its way past the little safety velcro and completely opened all at once. Voila -- ice cold water, meet Jeff's spine. Not so fun! What's even more 'not-so-fun' is the whale dance you have to do to re-zip the back-mounted zipper in the middle of a deep lake!

With that challenge past and the whale dance re-zip completed, I continued to fight boredom, enjoy the occasional peak at the mountains on every right stroke, and fight the sensation that I was getting colder - especially my legs. That's when the cramps started. It started in my calves, but moved on to my quads and hamstrings. I've never had this happen in a swim and I've done cold swims before -- perhaps the wetsuit that I haven't worn in a decade had something to do with it! Yeah, and that whole lack of swim training thing. Nonetheless, the cramps were so bad that I couldn't move my legs at all lest a cramp start. This causes several other problems though -- first, it makes you swim slower (yeah I know, the no-brainer). Second, it takes away the one thing that could generate heat -- which makes you even colder. The last half an hour of the swim was a real challenge as I was forced to keep my legs completely still. I tried to stay positive (which is certainly the key in long multisport races), enjoy the occasional views, and think about the great mountain scenery that awaited me later in the race.

I was thrilled to reach the exit, but the moment I tried to stand I realized how frozen my legs were. I could barely walk to the transition area. Doing a goofy waddle (can a waddle ever not be goofy??) I made it to my bike, pausing only to say hi to Becky and to mutter with a frozen face "cold, legs cramp, cold, hi, swim over".
Stay tuned for part 3 as the real fun begins!

Inferno Race Report: Part 1 - Pre-race

At this point I've yet to sign up for a race that takes as long to complete as my post-race reports do! So, without further ado, I bring you my Inferno race report!

For new readers, the Inferno is an ultra-distance multi-sport race in the Swiss Alps. For more background, please most posts on selecting the event, training for a mountain race in the Netherlands, and the final beckon.

August 17, 2007:

Race Day Eve was full of that typical pre-race air of confusion, stress, and anxiety -- with me sometimes feeling like a bull ready to burst out of the rodeo gate, tearing a destructive path up the Schilthorn and other times falling into a zen-like state of tranquility, quietness, and deep reflection. The night before, Becky and I had a conversation about how senseless it was to sign up for a race like this right in the middle of an international move, with a very heavy workload, and with a less-than-fitting flat terrain as my training ground. We concluded that yes, it was senseless ... it stressed both of us ... and it was far from logical. I concluded that its senselessness somehow made sense to me in that it was so senseless, that it was the exact way I wanted to start my courtship of the Alps, and that I had sacrificed too much of myself to prepare for the race to start having regrets. I'm sure that Becky's final conclusion was that her husband is often nuts.

Realizing that there was no turning back and that senselessness was water under the bridge at this point, we drove our rental car around the lakes near Interlaken and up the Lauterbrunnen valley to set up my gear in the three transition zones. During our drive, I discovered Swiss speed control cameras, so my first race picture isn't Jeff in a wetsuit at the swim start, but Jeff and Becky in a rented Audi speeding between transition areas!


I think that my American friends will especially appreciate my confusion at T1 (the Swim-to-road bike transition area). As a walked down to this area, I kept looking for the changing tent. In all the long distance triathlons I've done in the States, there is a big tent (one for women, one for men) where you run into, strip off your swim clothes, and suit up in your bike clothes. At the Inferno T1 I could only see rows of bike racks. Concluding that they must be waiting until the morning to setup the changing tent, I dropped my bag of bike clothes beside my now-racked bike and set off for T2 in the picturesque village of Grindelvald. We'll revisit this one later.Setting up T2 and T3 proved uneventful, except for the stunning scenery that continued to pierce my psyche and fill me with wave after wave of chill bumps. Yes, mountains touch my soul.
With a collection of gear and my two favorite bikes distributed around the Bernese Oberland region, we set off on the gondola ride up to the car-free village of Mürren, a town that hangs on a cliff edge with an in-your-face view of three of the most beautiful mountains in the Alps: Jungfrau, Mönch, and the famous mountaineering peak, the Eiger. (In English, virgin, monk, and ogre/monster.) The one and only time that I had visited Mürren was on a training run a month before the race. I remember running though town the first time thinking that this is the story-book Alp I had seen in photos but didn't believe could possibly exist: a small village of traditional chalets, covered with flower boxes and overlooking snow-capped peaks.
We made our way to the pre-race meeting, which we learned was to be given entirely in German. I was the only American doing the full race and one of only a handful of native English speakers. So, as the race director presented I laughed along when the crowd laughed, looked serious when others looked serious, and tried to appear analytical during times like the weather presentation -- which appeared to be the most detailed and technical meteorological pre-race briefing ever. Having lived in Switzerland for one week by that point and having never studied German, I had more than a few gaps in my understanding of this pre-race meeting. In short, my rough translation was that at some point I would encounter a large bus, which was being pushed up a hill by a motorcycle that was exactly 10 meters behind it. When that happened I was supposed to raise a French Horn and blow it, while listening to an ipod. Then the protocol was apparently to jump off the hillside and laugh while covering my ears. I know that the Swiss have lots of rules, but this one seemed a little excessive and I thought that I may need to record it on an index card, lest I forget an important step and find myself disqualified from the race because I blew the horn when the motorcycle was only 8 meters behind the bus and with my ipod on shuffle mode instead of playing a podcast on weather forecasting.

Following the meeting, I went to the English Q&A session because I really needed to understand how that motorcycle was supposed to push the bus and what I needed to do to get a French horn. At this enlightening Q&A, I learned that my translation skills were somehow far off of target and I also met a fellow English speaker from the UK. Becky and I joined David and his wife for dinner, where we enjoyed and admired his stories of racing with nearly 30 years of additional wisdom than me!

Retiring to our room, I was happy that I had learned of a bag-drop for cold weather clothes in Mürren. We heard that the temps on the Schilthorn were predicted to be around 0C/32F, so I had stashed an extra shirt, cap, and gloves at this stop along the run course. Thinking that the last exposed part of the run course in freezing temps and wind could be, well ... interesting to say the least, I drifted off to sleep before 10.

3AM arrived and soon we were groggily joined by other Inferno people at the hotel restaurant for a special breakfast. Following my now daily muesli and yogurt, we took the gondola back to Stechelberg and joined our fellow athletes and partners on a sleepy bus ride to the start town of Thun. It was at this point that I entered my pre-race zen mode. Nervousness left my body and I became very quiet and very centered. I suited up in my long-sleeved wet suit, which I hadn't worn since the 1997 Ironman Canada race and hoped that it wouldn't fall apart during the race. It had several cuts that were starting to spread open, nearly exposing skin. Just last for one more race, that's all I ask!
Minutes before the race started I escaped to a quiet place on the shore for a final bit of yoga and meditation -- facing the Schilthorn, thinking of the people who are the closest to me, and asking the mountains and valleys for safe and happy passage. I exited warrior pose, offered my namaste and a slight bow to the mountains and the lake, and entered the water.

To be continued ...

A stellar day with a memorable Inferno finish!

I entered chilly water in Thun alone, just after a beautiful sunrise, and crossed the finish line in the clouds as darkness fell, just over 14 hours later arm-in-arm with new Swiss friends. It was a beautiful thing and the camaraderie was the unexpected highlight! The weather was perfect, the Alps were glorious, and this proved to be the hardest, yet most emotionally gratifying event I've ever tackled. I'll post a full race report in a week with lots of photos. For now, I just wanted to let you know that I'm safe and had the joy of crossing the finish line on top of the Schilthorn!



Warm greetings from Zürich,
Jeff

Can Infernos beckon?

Race time is here and an Inferno beckons! In less than 24 hours, I'll plunge into a cold lake (photo on the right) in the heart of the Swiss Alps and enjoy a refreshing hour of flatness before climbing nearly 85 horizontal and 3 vertical miles by road bike, mountain bike, and foot. The fun begins in the lakeside town of Thun with a 3K splash in some chilly, but crystal clear water.



Next is a scenic ride through the Interlaken region with a remote (and likely stunning) climb to Grindelwald. Then the road bikes get to rest and take in the sights at the base of the famous mountain, the Eiger (center left), while we shift gears and mindsets to our off-road machines. We'll mountain bike under the shadows of the Eiger (across a pass on her lower shoulder -- just to the right of center) and drop into one of the most scenic valleys in the world.


This valley almost brought me to tears during my first visit -- it's loaded with waterfalls and the sounds of church bells echo off the mountain peaks.





After enjoying a brief jaunt through the valley, the insanity begins, as the run course reaches straight up into the sky to finish at the Schilthorn. This is where the real beauty of the course lights up though, because the effort affords stunning view after stunning view (like the view of Jungfrau above).

I have no idea how long the race will take (perhaps 14-16 hours) and no particular time goals, other than to finish and to push myself as close to the limit as I can and still get away with! I'm not racing with a heart rate monitor, bike computer, or even a watch. It's me against the mountains and perhaps frequently, against my own mind!

It's been an adventure just to get to the starting line. Intense work schedule, an international move only a week before the race, lots of training in Holland in the rain and with no hills! Becky has been a fantastic help, as have my friends, family, and co-workers. My experience working with Coach Lisa has also been stellar. Becky and I area heading from Zürich into the deep Alpine country now for race check-in. If you'd like to practice your German, feel free to check out the race website, where you can also register for updates (via text/SMS). My race number is 145 (and is already in the form for the link above -- which is in English!).

As always, thanks for reading!

Adieu from Zürich,
Jeff

Creative Climbing

Training for one of the hilliest 1-day multi-sport races in the world while living in the flattest country in the world is .... well, paradoxical to say the least. Perhaps it's the isolation from hill country that makes this hillseeker yearn for the impractical. To make up for not having the Eiger (or the North Georgia Gaps or Denver's Deer Creek Canyon) in my backyard, I've been forced to enter the realm of creative hill training. Here's what I've invented thus far:

Col du Stairs

• I'm fortunate to work in a building with 17 floors. I made the mistake of mentioning this to Coach Lisa when we started to design my training program. My first 20-minute stair run was TOUGH in a "why on earth would I intentionally subject myself to this insanity" kind of way. My heart-rate went from 70 to 170 in the first five steps -- 1 flight in and I was almost at max heart rate. Six flights up and I was cursing my training directions that said "keep your head up and spring off each step". Yeah, how about I keep my head in my gut and use the rail to hold my weight while I slowly drag each foot up a step. With time though, things improved and now it takes at least a flight and a half to get to max heart rate!
  
• Stair machine ... oh , how I can't stand the stair machine. First, it's got the word "stair" in it. That's just not a value-add word and doesn't conjure up the goose bumps on my skin like the words "peak", "summit", and "drinking wine while looking out over a glacier in a desolate Alaska national park". Second, it's a machine that has no bling value -- no titanium, no carbon fiber, no aerodynamic properties -- just a blocky, dull-looking machine. Third (and perhaps the biggest issue I have with it), it's tied to the indoors. If I could take the stair machine for a run through the forest, I'd have found a winning formula. Anyway, once a week, I have to will myself to stand in place in the gym (usually when the weather is stellar and everybody is outside except for me) stepping up and down, up and down, boring, yawn.
  

Wind-climbing

• What the Netherlands lacks in hills, she makes up for in wind. It's that in-your-face kind of wind that never seems to pause to catch it's breath --- "blow, blow, blow (ha-ha!) blow .. I'm still blowing while I'm talking to you ... blow ... I'm mocking you Mr. cyclist on your aero bars trying to escape me ... blow ... oh, you think you can tuck in and hide from me .... blow ... how about this ... blow ... from the side and the front ... blow". The downside is that it simulates a mind-numbing (and annoying) 2% incline. Enough to notice and to create a pace that doesn't seem slow enough to count as climbing, but doesn't seem fast enough to deserve credit for an athletic cycling experience. And there's just something about mountain views that makes real climbing so spectacular. Wind-climbing is mental, oh yes, very mental.
  
• Wind-climbing is taken to a whole new level when I'm on my SUV bike. That mega basket on the front (the milk crate that weighs more than my road frame) is the ultimate wind catcher. On rides home from work I've literally been stopped in my tracks by gusts of wind that seem to grab that basket in a dozen spots and hold on for dear life trying to throw me over the handlebars. At times like that, I try to bend over to become more aero, but that's like hiding behind a 4x8 sheet of plywood that you're pushing into the wind. It's just no use. Fortunately, when it's windy like this, it's also usually raining. I actually love it when the weather reaches a point that it's so bad that it's just laughable. I've had more than a few nights riding home in the dark, in a nice suit, in a rain and wind storm -- just laughing a mad scientist's laugh!
  

e-climbing

• Tacx trainer. Here's where we get to the Cool factor (bring on the gadgets!). I learned about the Dutch company Tacx a couple years before I had any idea I'd be living in Europe for a while. I looked them up once I got settled here and jumped on the chance to bring the French Alps into my living room. Tacx has created a very cool PC program that is integrated with what looks like a typical wind trainer. It's far from typical though. I'll save the description of this fine gadgetry for their own website, but what I will mention is that it allows you to bike inside with your performance synchronized with real life video of some of the most famous cycling routes in the world. While you're taking in great scenery (and hurting on 10%+ inclines), you get all kinds of data on the screen -- which tech-heads like me really enjoy (like heart rate, wattage, % incline, cadence, etc.). Having now suffered through ... I mean enjoyed ... multi-hour indoor climbing sessions on the bike, I can say that it's possible to bike the big mountains (e-mountains) while confined to the flats of Amsterdam.
  

Travel-climbing

• Perhaps this is cheating, but the final way I've found to get in hill-training is to go to the hills. I've already mentioned our train time in visiting the southern part of the Netherlands and Belgium. With most of Europe within two hours of flying, we were able to escape to Girona for early season hills and recently we snuck away to France for our first riding in the Alps (future posting) and to Switzerland for mountain running (and more gawking at stunning peaks). While we're getting bored with the flats of Amsterdam, we're very happy to be really close by air to some of the best cycling in the world!
  

A final note ... a few weeks ago, I had my first (and hopefully last) injury in preparing for this race. It led to a few days off from training and a week of frustrating deviations from my planning routine. Want to know how it happened? Remember that huge bike lock that I described in My New SUV. Well, I did a big 5 minute ride on my city bike to the train station, hefted that mega lock out of my panniers, bent down to lock the bike, and bam -- out went my back. Reminds me of my "stupid injuries" post from a few years ago -- well, that's another one to add to the list!

Thanks for reading,
Jeff

Dutch Mountains

When we first moved here, I actually wondered if there were any organized bike rides in Holland -- like the "pay $15 and get a t-shirt" century rides in the U.S. I should have known better -- I really should have, but I didn't, so I continued to wonder and searched the web for months. By late winter, we stumbled across the amateur version of the Amstel Gold Race. It's based on a famous pro race that's known for its brutality -- as Discovery team's Demol said "it's a [bleep] course with a thousand turns". So, during our short winter days, we learned of this amateur performance event' (as the website called it) and I practiced my skill of quickly signing up for events without thinking through the ramifications.

Before we get too far into discussing the Amstel Gold and other organized rides, I would like to formally declare that yes, the Netherlands does have hills. It's just that they're all in the tiny southern tip, practically in the fanny pack of Belgium. (By the way, I struggled over how to make this literary connection to Belgium. You see, I am the holder of a Dutch residence card, so I really owe it to my host country to poke fun at the Belgians at every opportunity. The problem is ... Belgium rocks. Great cycling, great beer, great chocolate, and every single time I've been in Belgium, the sun has been shining. So, that's why I picked fanny pack. It's such an odd metaphor that I'm hoping that it straddles the fence nicely). So, yes, declaration made ... the Dutch can indeed claim hills and the part of the Netherlands that we've now fallen in love with is referred to as Limburg.

Back to the story: We had a fantastic time on that inaugural ride -- getting in a huge day of cycling with great weather. We also enjoyed watching the pros take on the course the following day. It was one of those "don't pinch me, because if I'm dreaming, I want to keep on dreaming" weekends! Since discovering Limburg during the Amstel Gold, we've gone back several times to participate in organized rides, such as the Steven Rooks Classic and Limburg's Mooiste (mooiste means beautiful in Dutch), and also to train on our own or with groups of friends (including the great group that invited us to ride the M&M (Melick, Maastricht, Melick Ride)).

Here are some of our top experiences of cycling in Dutch hill country

Insane climbs: One minute you're cycling past cows on easy terrain, the next you're on a 20% incline. The road has suddenly narrowed. There is no shoulder. On both sides of the road, there is either barbed-wire fence (there's no space to waste here!) or a row of trees. Despite the starting field of riders spread out several hours, it's shoulder-to-shoulder cycling (3-Wide in Nascar speak, although I'm not sure why I know this term and why I would mention Nascar on my blog). It's so steep that people are falling over -- stopping dead in their tracks. There is no room to maneuver. You can barely turn the pedals over -- it really hurts, but it's a beautiful pain. It's raw cycling. It's what you always envisioned when you heard about the European Spring Classics (Paris-Roubaix, Tour de Flanders, etc.). Your heart rate is at it's max, you see signs painted on the road for the pro-race. You give it every ounce of energy, like your faux-career as a pro racer depends on your ability to attack on this climb. Oh no, a cyclist stops right in front of you -- lean to the left, scrape against a tree, balance, balance, shift to an easier gear that's not there (the dud-shift), push it, now you're making contact with the guy to your right, step on the pedals, this is your moment. You're foaming at the mouth, you've got that fixed, but cloudy gaze in your eyes and you drain all of your reserves with no thoughts of the consequences. You top out in only a few minutes, have 5 minutes to recover and then you do it all over again.

My problem is that I'm always so happy to see hills that I attack every single one of them -- they're rarely longer than a mile and usually around 1/4-1/2 mile, but there are so many of them that these relentless attacks take their toll and you end each cycling day completely exhausted. Hill after hill after hill. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Paint-by ... I mean Ride-by-numbers:

They've got this great bike route system in the Netherlands -- all over the country. It really shines in Limburg though. You see, they've planned a web of routes, placed numbers at nearly every major intersection, and placed permanents map boards all over the place. These map boards show you your current location (with a reference number "We're at number 54") and arrows pointing to the next number(s). This allows you to make up major routes on the fly without fear of ever being lost. At any given moment, you just arrive at sign, check your locale, and head off in the direction of the next sign. Sometimes we'll plan a series of checkpoints -- ok, 54-55-58-36. Once we're at 36, we'll decide if we want to add a loop (that would be 35-25-19-18-36) or just follow the series of numbers to the closest train station for the ride back to Amsterdam. This is such a phenomenal system as seen by our American eyes. I would love to see something like this on our riding grounds back home. The sad thing is that in the best rural riding areas in the U.S., you have the kind of people who would quickly vandalize anything like this. That's really sad. I sure hope that changes some day, because such great cycling facilities encourage a happier and healthier lifestyle for an entire society. I have to be fair here though -- if you check out the picture to the left, you'll see that the numbers on the sign with arrows have been whited-out. It's not quite the bullet-holes vandalism you'd see in the American south, but it's still vandalism. People are people, I suppose, regardless of the flag that flies over their capital.

When a country gets their cycling infrastructure right, as the Netherlands has, you go out for a ride and you see so many different types of people in the outdoors, pursuing the same joy and health benefits. Even in hill country, it's not just the racers who are out. You see families out for a spin, the elderly (we've seen a fair share of 70- and 80-somethings gliding through the country-side), people in their Sunday best, people on mountain bikes, people riding to the local pub, people riding alongside someone on a horse, people on a city bike in street clothes riding up the finishing stretch of the Amstel Gold route moments before the pro riders come through ... all types and all situations.

In addition to the ride by numbers, keep in mind that whenever you're anywhere near a village or even a slight amount of traffic, you'll be on a dedicated bike path (a "fietspad" in Dutch) or in a dedicated bike lane. In the remote areas, you often lose the bike lane, but the cars just have such incredible respect for cyclists. It seems unreal. In the hundreds of miles I've logged in the Netherlands, I've never been honked at, had anything thrown at me ... never been yelled at, never been the object of obscene gestures, never been told to "buy a car" (my favorite redneck comment heard in the States). I've also never been offered cash or been handed a plate of warm brownies, so I suppose that there's still room for improvement!

Finish Line Beer: This experience brought tears to me eyes -- it really did. After 10 hard hours of riding at Limburg's Mooiste (the last 2 hours of which I was redlining the whole time), we arrived at a finish line, where I saw two scantily-clad young ladies holding trays of beer. You can hear the music now can't you -- I know you can! Right under the Finish Line banner, I was handed a cold beer. I've trekked to the beer tent after rides before, but to be handed a beer the moment you finish, oh, that's just very special.

So, yes, there are Dutch Mountains. It takes some effort to get to them if you're living in Amsterdam, but they're there for the discovery and along with them comes all the joys (and pain) of big mountain riding!

Cheers,
Jeff

The Inferno: Re-beginnings

After a seven year break from ultra-endurance racing, I made the decision this year to re-enter the sport -- and hopefully in grand style! Following the realization of a dream at the Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Hawaii in 2000, I was a bit burnt out from six years of training for Ironmans and lots of solo training miles. I turned my attention to mountain biking, Scuba, snowboarding and continued to ride my road bike, but not with the same training intensity and focus as during the racing years. For several reasons though, 2007 suddenly lit up as the right year to re-enter the sport. I'm not one for easing into pursuits, so I picked a race in Europe that included the description:

"The INFERNO Triathlon is with its 5'500 metres height difference one of the hardest in the world and is already considered one of the classics."



Yes, perfect. Even better, it's really a quadathlon -- following a swim in a mountain lake, we will road bike, then mountain bike, and then ... well, climb a mountain.

When describing what draws me to this race, I've told my work colleagues and friends "it's a quest for work-life balance." I think that the best counter-reply was "Jeff, some people find work life balance by leaving the office at 5 or grabbing a beer with friends." Well-said -- and I agree -- I want that and a crazy race to train for! Seriously though, it's an ultra distance event in a stunning, stunning mountain setting. Those who know me can see the instant attraction -- once I discovered the race and saw the alpine scenery and photos of competitors on a steep mountain trail, I just couldn't resist.

A major change I made in this pursuit though is to hire an top-notch coach, Lisa Smith-Batchen. Lisa is a champion endurance athlete with a stunning list of achievements that includes being the first and only American female to win the Marathon des Sables in its 18 year history, two first place finishes at the Badwater Ultramarathon, and a finish at the Badwater Double Ultramarathon (nearly 300 miles of running!). She also has a great reputation as an online coach, so following an intro phone call to kick things off, I was quite happy that she took me on as a client. It has been an eye-opening experience working with Lisa and I'm now wondering what potential I left untapped in years of prior training and events! I started my coaching with Lisa just over a month ago and can't say enough about how helpful she has been in structuring my training, providing guided motivation, and ensuring that I'm getting the most out of my training approach.

My training for this race unofficially started when Becky and I spent a week cycling in the region near Girona, Spain right at the tail end of winter. Girona was an awesome experience -- now we know why many professional cyclists spend much of their time with Girona as their training base. Following a week trying to regain our climbing legs and enjoy the stunning Mediterranean scenery, we returned to Holland. Next up was discovery of excellent cycling roads (with hills, yes hills!) in the southern part of the Netherlands and Belgium. Becky and I, along with our friend Scott Spaulding, had a great ride on the amateur's go at the Amstel Gold race course in April and followed it up with biweekly treks (via train) to Maastricht, where we continue to discover endless narrow and steep 1/2 mile climbs.

Our next big event is a ride called La Marmotte in France (early July). It's a classic, complete with climbs on several of the Tour de France's most famous mountains (Col du Glandon, Col du Galibier, and l'Alp d'huez). It'll be a long and tough ride, but when the French Alps are only an 80 minute flight away, I won't be complaining about a thing and can't pass up a chance to have a go at this hallowed cycling ground.

That's all for now! Oh yeah, there's another race on my calendar for next spring, but I think I'll make its unveiling a surprise, else you'll surely think I've lost my mind!

Cheers,
Jeff