24 Hours of Cumming Race
The 24 Hours of Cumming is really misnamed. It should be called the 400k Cumming
Killer. However, I do like the given
name because it provides a nearly endless opportunity for tacky jokes and
innuendos. Nevertheless, the format is
simple; ride four unique 62 mile, gravel, self-supported, self-navigated loops
as fast as you can. You must complete
this task within 24 hours to be considered a finisher. Did I mention there are Iowa “B” roads (roads
without gravel, also known as mud roads or Minimum Maintenance Roads -
MMR)?
I had raced this race as a 2 person team in the inaugural
year (2014) and found it challenging. My
Newton besties put together the same two teams, Matt and Jim on one team and
Shawna and myself on another. The plan
was to ride alternating laps. At our
pace this would provide one daylight lap and one lap in darkness for each
racer. We suspected, and confirmed
before the start, we were the only 2 person teams. It was billed by the race director as the
Newton championship. We all had about
the same ability, so it was going to be about who paced their effort the best.
Loop 1: The race rolled out at 11:00 AM, right on
schedule. Matt and Shawna were the first
two racers for their respective teams.
It had rained earlier in the day, but the skies were clear and it was
not too hot. The rain had settled the
dust, but may have made the B roads a mess.
There was a mile section and another ¼ mile section of B road on the
first loop.
Matt and Shawna rolled in together in a very respectable
time (4:36:36). Jim and I had been
expecting them and were ready. They
reported the B roads were 99% rideable, only needing to walk around a large puddle
on each dirt road. I was able to learn
Shawna was not feeling great in the energy and tummy departments. As I was going out she said something to the
effect of: “Be ready, you may need to ride some or all of the next loop for me.” I could see in her face she was not feeling
well. I thought there was a chance she
would not want to start the next loop.
Was I capable of riding three full loops (186 miles)?
Loop 2: Jim and I rolled out together and began
navigating the turns together. I was
having difficulty because I had my GPS bike computer (Joule GPS) set in the map
mode where the turn arrows are too small for my 54+ year old eyes. Once I set it to the correct mode I had
almost no further issue. We were rolling
along nicely and were approaching a turn when Jim indicated he needed to stop
for something. I coasted to a stop to
watch Jim quickly determine his rear tire was going down. We were roughly 40 minutes in and changing a
flat. Jim had only brought one tube
(very common), so we did not have many options if he had another flat.
I could tell Jim was not attacking the hills as he
normally would. I was riding away from
him which was very out of character. As
we talked Jim shared he was not feeling great, not that he was ill, but just
not feeling his strong self. At one
point he indicated his stomach felt worse with each drink from his water
bottle. We came to a couple monster
hills and I actually saw Jim walking. When
I saw this I knew he was in trouble and began working on a plan. Since my teammate was not feeling great, and
Jim was struggling, I wanted to let Matt know where we were so they would know
when to expect us. I was also formulating
alternative plans in case neither Shawna nor Jim was able to ride another
lap. My worst case plan was to jumble
the teams where Matt and I made up one team and Shawna and Jim were another
team. This would reduce the pressure on those
who were not feeling well.
I did not want to leave Jim in case he started feeling
much worse, but I was also thinking we would need some time to formulate our
strategy. I finally suggested to Jim
with approximately 15 miles to go that I could drift up the road and get to the
finish a few minutes early so we three could discuss strategy. I was also thinking he may be pushing harder
than he should trying to keep up (this is normally not an issue for Jim). Jim embraced the suggestion so off I
went. I made one wrong turn, rode ½ mile
off course and was able to get back on course.
This detour took long enough for Jim to get ahead of me again. I passed him within a mile and sailed to the
finish with a time of 4:47:59. On one
downhill I had to yell at a deer to get it to hurry off the road so I did not
hit her. I turned on a headlight for the
last couple miles.
Loop 3: Much to my pleasant surprise, Shawna was
feeling much better and was ready to ride loop 3. Apparently she simply needed to eat a bit to
get her tummy turned around. We fiddled
with lights for way too long and finally switched out Shawna’s main light
because we could not get it to work.
They rolled off with significant lightning on the horizon and
thunderstorms in the forecast.
I was relaxing in my tent (code for: I was trying to sleep)
at 11:45 PM when my phone started ringing.
It was Matt calling to tell me it was lightning and raining hard (think
monsoon) and they had pulled into a farm house out building. They were 29.6 miles into the loop and were wet,
cold and needed a rescue. Luckily I had
encouraged Shawna to load an app on her phone which allowed her to text me a
link to Google maps with their exact location (the app name is My GPS
Coordinates). I had not tried actually
navigating to a GPS coordinate, but I was willing to give it a try. I stopped to check in with the race director
to see if there was any status information I could gain so we could discuss our
options on the drive home. There was
nothing new, the race was not being called, paused or anything else. I was able to confirm, if you stop riding a
loop, you can restart at the same point without penalty.
Google Maps was telling us it would take 33 minutes to
find our friends, but I was thinking they could not possibly be that far
away. We had not driven far when the
skies opened up. It was raining and
hailing so hard I could not go over 35 mph with my wipers on high. At this pace it was going to take longer than
33 minutes. Eventually we drove out of
the rain and Google Maps delivered us to the driveway of the farm house where
Matt and Shawna were taking refuge. They
were a few miles north of Winterset. As
we talked about our plan on the way back we decided we needed to start driving
back to the rescue point at 2:30 AM in order to finish within 24 hours. We also decided we would not start riding if
it was still raining. I crawled in my
tent and laid down around 12:30 in my race kit with my jersey pockets full of
food. I set my alarm for 5:30 AM so we
could touch base.
At 5:30, Matt sent me a text telling me they were not
sleeping and were planning to pack up and drive home. I realized it was not raining and the radar
showed the rain was moving away. Since I
had only ridden 62 miles (loop 2), I wanted more miles (to complete another 100
mile ride for the Cup-O-Dirt Challenge). Since we were going to be disqualified for
not finishing loop 3, I decided my challenge would be to ride loop 4 by the
11:00 AM cutoff. While I was preparing
for the ride by filling bottles, stuffing some calories in my mouth, taking off
my lights and lubing my chain I felt the call of nature in my lower regions
(some will call this the launch window).
I decided I should take care of this need before I set out on my bike
for a 4+ hour ride. I went into the bar
to use the Men’s room and found it occupied.
Thinking quickly, I discovered the Women’s restroom was dark. Time was wasting so I took the chance and
took care of business. While in the
opposite gender room I was preparing for what I would do if I was interrupted
by a female. Luckily, I never needed to
enact my plan.
Loop 4: Before I started I told the race director my
plan to finish by 11:00. He wished me
luck but reminded me of the mile of B road and how much longer it would take
after so much rain. He also shared a
fellow Wrecked’em, Chuck, had started with Lee at 6:00 AM. I rolled out at 6:26 and thought I would not
see Chuck for a long time, if ever, since he was 26 minutes ahead of me. The early dawn was beautiful on the breast of the new fallen snow – wait wrong
story, bazinga. The
morning was beautiful, there was no
dust on the roads, the sun was behind clouds and it was cool. I was giving myself a strong lecture about
not going out too fast so I could finish strong. I needed to eat and drink the proper amount
and pace myself through the 62 miles (62 miles @ 14 mph = 4:26). Much to my surprise, I caught Chuck and Lee
about 5 miles in. I wanted to ride with
them for comradery, but they were going slower than the realistic pace I had
set. I was about to pull away when Chuck
shared a story from earlier in the race about passing gas and thinking he had “shat
himself.” Apparently he slid to a stop
and yanked down his shorts along the course to discover – false alarm. As I was processing this disturbing story I
politely explained my goal and excused myself to ride at my pace.
I pushed my tired legs in solitude on the wet roads. At some point I recognized I was crossing the
4 lane road between Des Moines and Indianola and still getting further away
from Cumming. I observed at about the 30
mile point my pace had fallen below 14 mph and realized the roads were soft,
causing me to work harder than on hard packed gravel roads. I knew the rest of my ride and the B road
would need to be fast if I was going to make it in by the cutoff. My spirits always start to improve once I
ride past the halfway point, which I was approaching. There was very little breeze, but I was
riding into a slight head wind going east.
Once I started going west I was expecting faster and easier
sailing. However, I did not detect any
tail wind once I was traveling west.
From my foggy early morning memory from 2014 I knew I was
close, when I finally made the turn onto the dreaded mile of B road. My spirits were OK at this point, but I was a
little down thinking I was behind pace to make it in by the cut off (average
speed now 13.8). I knew better than to
ride even one foot of the muddy B road because my tires would pick up mud to
where my bike would be 20 pounds heavier.
I quickly dismounted and began carrying my bike. My feet were sinking into the Iowa mud
causing each to resemble a snowshoe. In
about ¼ mile I was too exhausted to carry my bike any further. I stopped for a brief rest and realized my
heart rate was high and I was out of breath.
I decided a better option was to push my bike in the weeds at the side
of the road. This allowed me to get my
breathing under control and keep moving a bit faster while expending less
energy. In the last ¼ mile I noticed I
could push my bike through the mowed ditch allowing my mud-laden feet to slowly
clean themselves. At the end of the mud
section of the road I spotted a person skimming his pool (which was
conveniently located in the front yard).
As I passed him he commented “I guess you took a wrong turn.” I tried not to be insulting, but muttered
something about “No, actually I am sure this was the route mapped out by the
sadistic race director.”
Once on the only slightly wet roads I took stock of my
situation. I was still 14 miles from the
finish and was averaging less than 14 mph.
Even in my depleted state, I knew I was more than an hour out. I had a full bottle and plenty of food, but
my legs were shot. It was also starting
to get fairly hot. Significantly
increasing my pace was not likely. Since
it was after 10:00, I knew I was not going to make the cut off. I slowed down and called Jenni (my wife and
support crew) to give her an update. I hung
up and put my head down and pushed as hard as I could to the finish. Officially I crossed the line at 11:33. We were credited with a finishing time, but
we did not ride the entire distance.
Epilog: With a
little time to reflect I have come to terms with the race. There were only 4 individuals and one team to
ride the entire distance under 24 hours out of 17 400k starters. We were the fastest of the
“non-finishers.” Would I do things
differently if I had the chance? Yes, I
should have taken my bike and started riding at the point where I picked up my
teammate. Would this have guaranteed we
finished the race before the cut off?
There are no guarantees with the weather or in bike racing. I may have been struck by lightning. There is one thing I am sure of, no one knows
what the human body can do when faced with a challenge, but you can learn a lot
when you challenge yourself with a daunting goal.
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| Race Director Steve Cannon giving last minute instructions. |
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| Shawna, Matt and Chuck (L-R) at the start line. |
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| Brad, Shawna and Matt at the conclusion of loop 1. |
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| Chuck after riding 400k. |
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