AML 400

On Thursday I stuck a lidocaine patch on my back, fired up the truck and headed for Virginia. I had been working hard for months to prepare for the grand depart of the AML 400 and wasn’t about to let some stupid lower back pain get in my way, or was I?

The twinges had started on Monday. Tuesday was worse, and by Wednesday it was a full-blown crisis. No amount of stretching or massaging would convince the damn thing to free up. It hurt so bad I considered just skipping the ride to stay at home on the heating pad, but I had invested too much to give up that easily. All those long, lonely rides in the cold were not going to be for nothing, dammit.

The 7-hour drive was uneventful. I kept a rolled up towel in the small of my back (always bring your towel - it is, as you may have heard,  just about the most massively useful thing any traveler can carry!) and enjoyed watching spring unfold before my eyes. Back home in northern PA everything was still cold and brown, but as I went south the trees budded and filled out and flowers blossomed at the roadside.

I checked in to the Red Roof Inn in Blacksburg, grabbed a quick dinner, and finished packing my gear. Although it was supposed to rain all night the night before, the forecast for the ride was almost perfect for travelling light and fast; just what I was hoping to do. From what I gathered most folks come at the AML from more of a bikepacking angle, carrying sleeping bags, cooking gear, etc. I intended to do it more randonneur style - minimal gear, minimal stops, little or no sleep.

A remote, self-supported 400-mile ride still requires a fair bit of crap though, and it all just barely fit onto my bike:

• GPS for navigation, phone for backup navigation, and paper cue sheet for a last resort (and also for backup toilet paper - been there, needed that. Pro tip: if you must do this, make sure you only use the parts of the cue sheet you’ve already navigated!)

• Repair kit - 2 tubes, 2 CO2 cartridges, mini pump, patch kit, tubeless tire plugs, multi-tool, tire lever, chain quick link, spare derailleur hanger, rubber bands, zip ties, duct tape

• Headlight, backup headlight (both could function as a power bank to recharge phone and GPS), extra 18650 batteries for headlights, taillight, backup taillight, and extra AAA batteries that could run a tail light, my SPOT tracker or my primary headlight/power bank if need be)

• Warm gloves, light gloves, rain jacket, arm warmers, skull cap, neck gaiter, shoe covers, chemical toe warmers, space blanket

• Sunscreen, chamois butter, Aleve, Gas-X, caffeine pills, toilet paper, lidocaine patch for my back

I checked and re-checked everything until I was sure I could sleep well, did some stretches, and hit the sack.

4:30am came way too quick. My back was still tight, but seemed to be getting better. The roads were still wet, but the rain was moving out.

The start of the ride was weird and tense, as these things often are. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m just weird and tense. There were 10 or 12 of us congregated at the Virginia Tech war memorial. A little nervous chatter, a little checking out each others’ rigs, then the clock hit 6am and we bolted out of there like a herd of cats.

It would have been nice to have more of a parade start and roll out of town in a cohesive group, but folks were eager scatter to the countryside, so that’s mostly what we did. A small group did form for a few miles but the hills broke it up quickly, and that was that - ITT on. My back was griping at me, so I just tried to spin the pedals as lightly as I could.

We dropped down to the New River, crossed some railroad tracks, and headed north. Cruising along between the river and the tracks, I heard a train blowing its horn up around the next bend. Shit! Railroad crossing. I told my back to STFU for a minute while I sprinted to try and make the crossing. No luck. David Landis had gotten stuck there too and we tried to chat over the roaring of the train. It passed in a few minutes and we continued on. David had done the RockStar VA gravel ride a couple of weeks earlier, and it sounded brutal due to the snow and frigid temps they had. Glad I had decided to pass on that one and focus on the AML. We rode together for a bit and then got separated on a climb.

About an hour in, I decided to flip away from the navigation screen on my GPS to see what kind of average speed I was making and if it was time to eat something. I was momentarily baffled when the display was all zeros. How could that be? Doh! In the excitement of the start I had forgotten to begin recording. What a rookie move. Totally messed up my cue sheet mileage, and worse - my Strava! Probably even cost me a few kudos ;) No more of that kind of foolishness, I told myself.

I hit my first stop at Gap Mills (mile 60) right around 11am, about what I had expected. I rearranged some of my clothing layers and the stuff in my pockets, grabbed some food, filled my bottles and was out of there pretty quick. I have a habit (um, compulsion?) of patting myself down after I leave a store to make sure I have my money clip, phone, cue sheet, etc. Well, I was doing that about ½ mile down the road and discovered that the arm warmers I had stowed in my left jersey pocket were no longer there. Those little bits of wool and nylon were going to be needed again later, so I backtracked to the store. They had them at the register. Guess I had dropped them in the store or in the parking lot. Really, dude, knock it off with the dumbassery!

On the next gravel section, Brushy Mtn./Kates Mtn., I could see only one set of tracks in the dirt. I didn’t know whose they were, and last I knew there had been two or three riders ahead of me. I wasn’t sure where the others had gone, but second on the road felt like a good place to be for the time being.

I reached the Greenbrier River Trail in the early afternoon. A few miles later I stopped to filter some water from a side creek. Daniel Jessee rode by just as I was climbing back up onto the trail, inadvertently startling him. He said he thought I was a bear. I caught up to him and assured him I wasn’t. We rode together up to Jack Horner’s Corner, around mile 130. It was nice to have some company for that piece.

Somewhere along in there I realized that I hadn’t thought about my back in quite a while. Maybe it was finally loosening up. Either that or my knees, which had begun to ache pretty badly, were just complaining louder at the moment. When we stopped at the store and I got off the bike my back grabbed center stage again by not letting me stand up straight.

I bought $20 worth of garbage food, crammed it into my bags and pockets, shoved an ice cream sandwich into my face, took an Aleve, and headed out. I was planning to ride through the night and the next place I was sure to be able to get calories was 187 miles away. Pretty sure Daniel thought I was nuts. He was probably right

The section of paved trail going through Marlinton was a nice treat while it lasted, then it was quickly back to the gravel slog. I made it to Cass, mile 165, ahead of schedule and just before the store there closed, so I stopped and topped up my supplies one last time before the entering the long “dead zone”. Daniel leapfrogged me there and I caught back up to him on Back Mountain Rd. I gave him what beta I had about the dogs ahead.

There had been some discussion on the AML Facebook group about them, and I had encountered them firsthand when I had done a recon ride through there a couple of weeks earlier. They weren’t too hard to get away from with fresh legs and an unladen bike. But 170-mile legs and more of a load might be another story. A bad dog bite out there could ruin the whole ride. I thought it would be better if we stuck together - safety in numbers and all - but carrying a heavier load, Daniel was climbing much slower than I wanted to go, and I was impatient. It was getting dark and if I had to do battle I wanted to be able to do it when I could see. I pushed ahead.

As I approached the problem spot I stopped and picked up a hefty 3-foot stick and laid it across my handlebars. If any dog came within reach he was going to get a serious walloping. I put on as much speed as I could and sailed right past before they even saw or heard me. One came off the porch and chased for quite a while but never got close. I hoped I had at least tired it out enough that Daniel could slip by too. I carried that stick for a bit longer before chucking it into the woods. Then about a mile later another dog came out after me. It never got very close either, but I could hear its owner egging it on: “Go git ‘im! Bite ‘em! Go an’ bite ‘em!” It’s a shame. Every single other person I encountered in Virginia and West Virginia was very nice, friendly and helpful, except for that one first-class jackass on Back Mountain Rd. And he’s probably the one I will think about the most. Fuck him.

It was good and dark by the time I reached Durbin and got on the West Fork Trail. The moon was rising, nearly full, and the sky was mostly clear. It was spectacularly gorgeous. Even with my light on its lowest setting, visibility was great. Still just the one set of tracks in the mud ahead of me. Whoever it was, they were moving right along.

I began scheming about what I would do if I caught up. The church pavilion in Glady, at about the halfway point, is a popular place for people to stop and rest. I wanted to stop there and fill up on water, but decided that if the mystery rider was there napping I would try to sneak past and find a place to filter water farther up the road.

I made Glady around 11:15pm, almost 2 hours ahead of my ETA. No complaints about that. And no sign of the mystery rider, so I filled up at the faucet. Moving on, I could see his tracks going up Middle Mountain, so I knew he was out there somewhere. I shut my light off and climbed by moonlight, which was magical. It was just the peepers peeping and me crunching gravel under my tires.

I dropped down into Bartow, mile 235, around 3am. I passed right on through - no stores open at that time of night - and started up Old Pike Rd. More climbing by moonlight. Somewhere up there I stopped to pee around 4am. I was sitting on my top tube, pissing in the middle of the road. It was so peaceful and quiet. I closed my eyes for a second and nearly fell asleep right there. No, that would not do. I dug into my bag and took a caffeine pill. That would get me through to dawn and once it was light out again I’d perk back up.

I came across a spring that was pouring from a pipe sticking out from a rock cut. It smelled OK, and tasted good, so I filled up without filtering. The next descent, on US 250 and SR 600, was a challenge. It would have been glorious in the daylight, but it was dark, I was still kind of sleepy, and just a touch underdressed. I kept getting the shiver shimmies. I had a little more clothing I could have put on and some chemical warmers I could have used, but I didn’t want to stop and rummage through my bag. I just wanted to get it over with. I was sure glad I had those arm warmers though.

It was a relief to reach Mill Gap and start climbing again. The sun was rising, the birds were at full song, and all was right with the world. The next section, along the ridgeline that defines the VA/WV border was nice, and uneventful. Just miles of remote gravel road.

Approaching Lake Sherwood, though, I ran into trouble. It was getting warm and I was out of water. At one point I passed a creek I could have filtered from, but I was only a few miles from the state park and it was mostly downhill, so I decided to just hold off. Medium-sized mistake. The trail into Lake Sherwood was rough and littered with wheel-stopping, derailleur-breaker sticks. That short 10 miles to the lake took almost 2 hours. It didn’t help that I missed a turn and got off course. It was one of those tricky, gradual splits where the GPS doesn’t tell you right away that you’re off track, and by the time it does you’re flying downhill and can’t hear it, or see it because you’re so focused on not crashing. I lost about 30 minutes and a lot of sweat to that screw-up. And the worst part of it is, as I was going down the wrong, muddy, rutted trail I noticed there weren’t any tracks of the ghost rider whose steady progress I had been following for over 24 hours. I thought to myself “Huh, he must have gone off course.” Doh! Getting tired.

I finally made it down to Lake Sherwood. It took a few tries to find a water spigot that was working. I sat down in the grass for about 15 minutes and ate, drank and applied sunscreen.

The stretch to Callaghan was unremarkable except for the headwinds, and my dry chain squeaking at me. The creek crossings on the singletrack into Lake Sherwood had done the damage. At the Marathon I got some food, some kind of sweet cold coffee drink, and some 2-cycle engine oil. I lubed my chain, applied more sunscreen, and gulped my drink. I would have been out of there reasonably quick but was held up by the re-paving job on US 60. It was shut down to one lane so it took a while to get through the work zone.

Finally, onto the climb up SR 600 to Peters Mountain. It was there that I first gave thought to the Bud Light cans. They had surely been there all along much of the route, but it was on this tedious, slow grind 300-some miles into the ride that I finally started noticing them. On the roadside at regular, almost predictable intervals were bright blue Bud Light cans. Sure, there was other junk as well, but the Bud Light cans vastly outnumbered everything else. They were so common I began to think of them as the state flower of the Virginias. I imagined creating a huge photo collage of all of the blue cans I came across, but I was already going so slow. I didn’t want to spend the time to stop and take pics. I alternately cursed and laughed at the assholes whole shit in their own bed by defiling such a beautiful place.

Then I had a sudden flash of awake-for-30-plus-hours, pedaling-my-bike-for-300-plus-miles fabulous brilliance. What if those cans weren’t all cast off by douchebag rednecks in diesel duallies, but by the single mystery rider up ahead of me? What if he was fueling his entire ride with a huge backpack full of Bud Light and just lightening his load and numbing his pain as he went? With that in mind those empty cans went instantly from a point of irritation to one of infinite amusement. From then on as I passed each empty I thought, “Respect, sir!”.

At last, I made the top of the climb. I had envisioned a sweet descent down the other side, only to find F350. That is one nasty piece of road. It took seemingly forever to pick my way down that rocky,  miserable sonofabitch. I was hot and tired and nothing in my brain or body was working right. I had to stop and poop. I had to stop and filter water. I wanted to stop and cry. It seemed like it took as long to descend that damn mountain as it took to climb it.

Down in the valley I enjoyed smooth paved roads and more headwinds. I stopped at the Paint Bank General Store, mile 350-ish, for one last re-supply. I asked the woman at the register if any other cyclists had come through there. She said yeah, another rider had gone by maybe an hour-and-a-half ago, but didn’t stop. Well, I told her, whoever he is, he wins.

I saddled back up and pressed on. It was around 5pm and I had 60-ish miles to go. The headwinds on Waiteville Rd. sucked the life out of me. But I still managed to smile at the Bud Light empties along the way. Damn, ghost rider, you’re killing it!

The climb up to Mountain Lake was brutally slow, but that was all I could muster. It was quite cold at the top and I had to stop and put on my jacket and warm gloves for the descent. And that descent was fantastic. The moon was rising over the ridge to my left, the sun was setting across the valley to my right, and the smooth pavement snaking down the mountainside was perfection. It was a scene I will not soon forget.

After that, though, the memories get blurry very quickly. As darkness came for the second time my mind was starving for sleep. It was hard to focus on anything. Approaching headlights had weird, dazzling streamers. I had to constantly snap myself back to the task at hand, which was now not getting hopelessly lost in the dark, and not crashing in a ditch or getting hit by a car just miles short of my goal.

My GPS had begun acting goofy. The breadcrumb trail seemed to be displaying OK, but the turn-by-turn directions, which in my unravelling state I was increasingly relying on, were all jumbled up. I had split the route into four different files to avoid overwhelming the device, but after 400 miles of continuous function I guess its brain was turning to mush just like mine.

Adding to the surrealty was a wild wind whipping up from the New River. Leaves and debris were swirling all around, but for the most part it was at my back. At times it felt like it was blowing me home.

On one of the climbs up from the river valley there were puddles in the road. And on the far side of one of those puddles were wet bike tire tracks on the pavement. A rider had gone through there just a short time before. Was it possibly the ghost I had been chasing for almost 40 hours now? Sure, the woman in Paint Bank told me he was way ahead, but what if she was mistaken? Or maybe he had to stop to sleep or had a mechanical. As foolish as it felt, I couldn't help quickening my pace.

I was suddenly way too warm. I unzipped all the vents on my jacket. Still too warm, I took my puffy gloves off. I didn’t want to stop to put them in my seat bag so I just stuffed them down the front of my jacket. Sure would suck to ride 400 miles and get beaten to the line by just minutes, I told myself.

On the outskirts of Blacksburg I caught a brief glimpse of a blinky taillight up ahead. It quickly disappeared over a rise. Had I actually just seen that or was my mind just playing tricks on me? Was this thing really coming down to a sprint to the line? In even the best of conditions I still have the worst of sprints. But if was drawing up on this rider this fast they must really be crumbling.

On the next hill, there it is for certain. Holy shit. A bike with a blinky light. With bags on the bike, for sure. This has got to be the guy I’ve been chasing. And I am going to Mow. Him. Down! I time the catch to perfection, just as the gradient eases at the top of the hill. I swing wide to the left as I power past. I silently motor by, trying not to appear as gassed as I really am, looking over to see who it is I’m dealing with and what kind of state they’re in. It’s a woman on a commuting bike, looking back at me like “WTF are you looking at, freak?”.

Oh man, I just totally Cat 6-ed that poor woman. The wind went out of my sails instantly, but I had to continue on in a lame attempt to avoid looking like the jerk I really was.

I pedaled into town. The lights were all dazzling and confusing. I know for sure that I had mapped out my route right to the foot of the war memorial, but when I reached the edge of the VT campus my GPS beeped and said “Navigation Complete!” or some such nonsense. No, navigation NOT complete, you fucker!  I was exhausted and disoriented and just minutes from my goal, but I didn’t know how to get there. I started wandering randomly, figuring the drill field was a pretty big part of the campus and I would eventually come across it. Wrong.

I stopped and got my phone out. I opened a map, but I barely knew which way was up, let alone which way was north. I rode a little more to vector in on exactly where I was and which way I needed to go. That got me reoriented and I finally made it to the finish line. I texted Sheila, stopped my SPOT tracker, and limped back to the parking garage. It was 10:40pm.

I had been awake for 42 hours, riding for over 40. I crawled into my sleeping bag in the back of the truck and pulled the tailgate up behind me. I was so desperate for sleep, but first I had to know. I pulled up Trackleaders on my phone. The rider whose wake I had been riding in was Toren Carter, and he had finished a good 2 hours earlier. Beast! I had fun chasing you, Toren. If we ever meet in person I’m going to buy you a Bud Light whether you want it or not.

I was out almost instantly. Every bit of me was sore and spent. Except my back. My back felt fine.