Maybe alarm clocks aren't overrated - North Pole Bike Extreme

Just under 24 hours removed from my Podcast interview with Neal at YourRunning.com where I swear up and down that I’m not going to fall asleep and risk having to rush from my bed to the bike, I find myself running around my sleeping tent like a crazed madman trying to find the clothes I thought I had layed out all nice and orderly just a few hours before.

It was exactly like the feeling when you oversleep and need to be at the airport 5 minutes ago. My mind was racing and I couldn’t think straight. Meanwhile, Richard is standing in the doorway saying ”just put on anything! The race is about to start!” - he wasn’t helping things..

I simply could not find my cycling clothes! I packed them in a separate stuff sack – after the marathon, I had taken them out and layed them out on my bed.. They were nowhere to be found! ”we need to go NOW!” said Richard.. I could tell from his tone that the other cyclists were most likely already lined up on the starting line, so I needed to simply get dressed in anything.

My running clothes were still wet so they were no good. With my cycling clothes MIA, the only thing I had left was my North Face summit suit (my only warm weather wear), a fleece jacket and the Mountain Hardware jacket I wore in the marathon (which I managed to get dry). I rushed to get it all on, along with some wool socks and my still wet Montrails and my full fingered ski gloves. On my face, I had nothing but the face mask the folks at Crescent had given me – and my helmet.

I stumbled out of the tent and made it to the starting line just in time to realize my shoes weren’t tied – and then [honk] the starting gun went off..

Wearing what appeared to be double what any of my fellow competitors were wearing, I made it through the starting line in dead last place after stopping briefly to tie my shoes.

The inaugural North Pole Bike Extreme was a 26 mile race consisting of 26 laps of a 1 mile course carved out of the arctic ice sheet with no less than 10 hazards every lap (for a total of at least 260 things that could make you fall at very low speed). The route paralleled the runway and was about 8 feet wide. We rode out the full distance of the route, turned around, and returned the same way (there was two way traffic so you had to pay close attention). Much like with the marathon, Richard stood at one end with a piece of paper with 26 columns to put dots on every time we finished a lap. After the first lap, I felt like I was going to be out there forever.

Starting in last place gave me a big burst of energy that pulled me in to 4th place by the turnaround of the first lap. By the time I made it around Richard for my first dot, I could tell that I was incredibly over-dressed. The danger of overdressing is that you’ll be really REALLY warm.. So warm, in fact, that you’ll sweat your rump off and freeze into a solid block of ice. As I made my way around the turnaround of the second lap I realized that continuing as I was, two things would certainly happen - 1) I'd ruin my only set of cold weather clothes and 2) I'd sweat my @$$ off. By the end of lap 2, I decided to make a small detour back to my tent and change.. My ideal bike outfit was still nowhere to be seen, so I dumped out my backpack and basically put on a little of everything I had left.. Tights, a thermal top, the jacket from the marathon and some other odds and ends. Even with the little pitstop, I had only dropped one place and missed two of my fellow racers abandoning the event after only a few laps. The danger of taking a pit stop to correct being OVERdressed is the risk of over-reacting and heading out terribly UNDERdressed… It was that mistake that I quickly realized the first half of lap 3.. By the end of lap 4, I was heading back to my tent to solve my clothing issue once and for all.

My clothes HAD to be there someplace! Clothes just don’t disappear.. Do they??

Back in the tent for the second time in 4 miles, I sat there for a minute to re-think what had happened to all of my clothes. They weren’t on the bed, they weren’t in my backpack, they weren’t on the floor… Where were they?? – I’ll tell you.. they were IN the sleeping bag.. I had stuffed them in the foot of the sleeping bag when I crawled in so they’d be nice and warm when I woke up..

I can’t remember if they were warm when I finally put them on or not, but they were on and much like Goldielocks, the third time was ”just right” - within minutes I was back on the bike ready for lap 5 of 26.

One last adjustment to my attire I made was switching from my full fingered gloves to the mittens I had worn in the marathon. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that braking and manipulating gears was next to impossible and it was more important for me to keep my fingers warm. I also ditched the helmet because it was too small for my big head and kept tipping from side to side. One last thing I ditched were my goggles. They fogged up after only a couple of miles and nobody else was wearing them anyway so I figured worst case I’d be no worse off than the rest of the field (which by this time had shrunk by one more).

There was this one hairy obstacle about midway down the course… I can’t remember what lap it was (because there were so darn many) but somewhere between lap 4 and lap 7 my front wheel got stuck in a hole and I few face first on to the ice with the bike landing on top of me. I popped up and hoped that a photographer wasn’t around to see it (I lucked out) and continued on. After making it to the turnaround safely and returning to Richard for another “dot”, I headed back for the next lap and fell AGAIN at the EXACT SAME spot.. this time, the person behind me crashed in to me as well. I couldn’t wait to see what would happen on the NEXT lap.

After about the halfway mark, the “safe” way through all of the obstacles was pretty much clear in everyones head and all you had to do was remember which section of packed snow meant face plant and which meant that you could carry on upright for (yet) another lap.

The leader of the race was one of the guys from Spain. From what I could tell the person heading up the rear was Karen (the only woman in the field). When you have 10 or so riders going back and forth along the same 1 mile stretch, things get a little confusing.. Those were my best guesses based on how fast people appeared to be going when I passed them or when they passed me.

I can say that aside from several century+ rides I’ve done over the years, the 26 laps on that Crescent mountain bike were probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done on two wheels (except for maybe a wheelie I once held for 20 feet on a skateboard) By the time I hit lap 13, I honestly had visions of the ice opening up and swallowing me whole (and being OK with it).

What happened next was a nice surprise. It didn’t actually happen as suddenly as “next”, but the “next” 10 laps went by like THAT [insert me snapping my fingers]. It might have been my mind going off to that happy place or me blacking out for an hour or so, but before I knew it I was three laps/miles from being done.

Before I knew it, laps 24 and 25 were done and I was heading out for my 26th and final lap. Wanting it to be done as quickly as humanly possible, I somehow changed gears (for the first time in 25 ½ miles) to something a little harder to push and managed to cross the finish line in what felt like a sprint… (I’m fairly certain it didn’t look like one).

Let me tell you what - Riding a bike at the North Pole isn’t easy! It was a fantastic feeling to be one of the first to do it, but when I was done, all I wanted to do was get as far away from that bike as possible. I was so spent that I didn’t even get my time, though I did later learn that 4 of my fellow riders opted out at some point during the race.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED !!!!!!!

And just like that, I was on vacation! My first stop was my sleeping tent to strip naked and change in to the warmest clothes I had. The funny thing about the sleeping tents was that even with the heat pumping in almost non-stop, at the very hottest, it was only slightly warmer than freezing. When I got back to the tent and stripped down to my birthday suit, I took note of the little thermometer that I purchased in Longyearbyen – 35 degrees Fahrenheit – a full 60 degrees warmer than outside.

I have no idea what time it was when I finally got dressed and wandered over to the canteen. The sun was up just as it had been at midnight when we arrived, at 3am when the marathon started, at “X” o’clock when the bike race started. I honestly had no idea what time it was anymore. Considering all the physical activity, I really wasn’t all that tired. The sun really does a number on your internal clock, so you never really feel the urge to lay down for a good “nights” sleep. In the timeless wasteland that is the North Pole, I made due with a series of short naps and probably collectively got around 6 hours of sleep in total over the 48 hours we spent there.

The party had already started when I got to the canteen. Vodka was flowing (along with a bottle of mezcal) as well as Russian beer and whatever freeze dried food people had left over. As this is a fitness blog, I’ll spare you all the details of the workout I put my liver through, but suffice it to say – cheap vodka really does taste better when it’s marked up 1,000%.