Baker's Dozen Single Speed Solo

Total Laps: 17

Total Mileage 140

Total Time: 13hr 10min

Strava Link

Baker’s Dozen is a lap based endurance race, where you ride as many laps as you can in the given time period. Whoever rides the most amounts of laps in the shortest time wins. This was my second time heading to this race, last year I rode Solo Open and ended up with 16 laps, I had an option of going out for a 17^th, but it wasn’t going to help to do so or hurt me to stay. This year I put in an extra lap and almost finished in time for a 19^th. A big thanks first to Leesa, my lovely wife! She is so supportive of my racing, and loves coming out to them with me and is an amazing support captain! When the team is at races she steps in and takes care of others and really has learned what racers need at these things!

Preparation: Coming into this race I thought I might have made a mistake of not enough recovery prior. I had raced Sugar Hill XC race the Sunday prior. I rode my normal hard Wednesday night group ride, a little easier than normal sticking in the back. I had intentions on getting my bike all finalized by Thursday with a recovery ride at Rosaryville (a little more matching of Bakers Dozen). My schedule didn’t allow me to travel to Rosaryville, so I went out to Patapsco to test out my 32x18 setup. You can only go so easy on s Single Speed setup, so my test/recovery ride was probably a little harder than needed. Friday I think racing and training caught up to me and my legs were feeling a bit dead. I babied them and hoped for the best on Saturday.

Race Day: Leesa and I woke up a bit before five AM to get out to Leesburg, setup the AFC tent and get ready to race. My legs were feeling good and the morning went by quickly. I had decided to go with eating a super heavy dinner and breakfast and don’t regret it! I had for dinner: Chicken, Potatoes, Salad, and roasted tomato.  For Breakfast I had: Leftover Chicken and Potatoes tossed into a 3-egg omelet,  a bowl of oatmeal, a banana and some carrot beet juice.

I went out for a final test ride of the bike about 20 minutes before the start; a little late but luckily not too late. I was worried that my chain tension might be too loose. Well within a couple minutes I had a dropped chain. I reseated it, got back to the tent and tightened it up real quick and headed to the start. Jelly and I met up exchanged some tactics and rolled out. Jelly went ahead of me and I set off on my very casual pace.

The Race: My strategy was don’t go out hard, I wanted to average 45 minute laps and get in 18 laps. I rolled the easiest most casual lap I could for the first lap and ended up coming in around 41 minutes. I was surprised with this but my effort level said I was doing fine. I rolled the first five laps under 42 minutes. I started to notice my effort to try to keep sub 42 minutes was becoming more difficult to keep. I decided to start backing off a little to keep with my strategy of not blowing up early in the day.  I  slowly dropped down to 45 laps and was still well on par for my 18 laps.

Lap 10 is where it started really getting rough, it started with a dropped chain. I had actually dropped my chain about 2 times before this during the race. Annoying, but a quick reseat, no tools required, fix. This time in my haste I put the chain on the narrow-wide chain ring off by one and rolled the chain on. Now my chain was stuck in the wrong position and the only way to fix it was get out the tools. With some frustration and tiredness this fix took 7 minutes… way too long! I had been planning on taking a short break at the pit after my 10^th lap; now my break was going to be on top of a 7-minute trail fix break. I got on the bike hoping that the chain fix, had also served well enough of a break, but I still felt the need to stop.

The need for this break came mainly from the need for nutrition. In the morning I was doing a stellar job of one bottle a lap of Cera Sport and about 1 pro bar every two laps. As the temps raised my body stopped wanting nutrition, but needed it. I felt that I was going to keep on going further into debt unless I stopped and allowed my body to take in some food and then return to riding. Leesa had brought Bologna sandwiches for her during the day and as weird cravings during races go, this sounded amazing for a couple laps. I rolled into my pit stop and had a sandwich, got some fluids and some pro bar.

This was halfway through the race. I wanted to continue on until the next required stop: headlight installation.  This went as planned, I was actually feeling good and didn’t want to stop for headlight swap, but went on the safe side of choosing the time I did. I stopped and had my planned break of the night. Leesa was awesome and put on my headlights, and got my helmet ready. I ate some really good quinoa and rice mix, some Peanut Butter, Honey, Banana, Chia Seed Sandwich and then went on my way to finish the last 4.5 hours of the race.

A little fun on the drops adds to the excitement each lap, this one came at 27 minutes each lap!

These last couple hours were the hardest, when I got back on the bike my body didn’t want to go anymore. I had been feeling beat, before but not like I was now. Coop and I rode about a lap and a half together which was some good riding. He finally had to take off because I was riding pretty slowly and death was setting in on me. Laps 13-15 my times dropped close to 50 minutes. I was getting pretty miserable and sick. I tried to eat, but all that I could do was ride with pro bar in my mouth and ended up spitting it out because it made me sick. Clear fluids weren’t working for me, this meant I needed to pit. I stopped ate some food and took a long break of 8 minutes. I got back on the bike to just push myself slowly but steadily.

At this point Jelly was no longer in 3^rd, someone had started coming up and was now 10 minutes off of me. On my sixteenth lap some single speed guy passed me and I asked him if he was racing solo, he told me he was. I asked him what lap he was on, he said, “honestly I have no clue man, I’ve just been riding my bike all day.” I figured his definition of honestly differed from mine or this was a very true statement, I leaned towards the first. He was riding strong so I thought maybe he was just putting in some strong laps and had done less laps than me and this wasn’t the 3^rd place guy. My gut said otherwise and so I stuck on him as much as I could. Well as much as I could wasn’t good enough, my legs started to threaten me with cramps so I eased off and watched him go, figuring 3^rd was going to be my finish. Near the end of the lap this guy comes passing me again, which was odd, I hadn’t passed him. He had pitted and was now passing me; remember I was at deaths pace this lap. Well now I had a chance, we were within a mile of the finish line, possibly this being the last lap, but I had to stick through it and see what would happen.  I was riding his wheel and I could tell he didn’t want me to.  I think I gave up to much information to a guy who was obviously not willing to show his cards, I asked him about his laps again and he said that his buddies had told him he was in 4^th, this confirmed it for me, we were fighting for 2^nd. The last report showed him in 4^th, but Jelly had been passed.

I think he felt he couldn’t shake me and didn’t want to race this way so he took the next option, the fake finish. About a half mile from the finish he says, I’m done, gets off his bike and walks off into the woods. I’m confused, I ask him, aren’t you going to finish this lap, he says no, my camps right over there, I’m done. I ask him if he’s all right, he says yeah, thanks. He had me a bit confused, but I didn’t trust this guy at all.  This guy had got me pumped, I had my finishing lap second wind power, and maybe some of the food had finally got delivered too. I flew through the pits across the line, checked to see if I needed to go back out, sure enough I had 40 more minutes. I took off FAST.

Very quickly into the lap, whom do I see ahead of me, mister sneaky sneaky himself? I’m all about tactics but this dude just rubbed me the wrong way. I started questioning  to myself if he had been cutting the course, mainly because he continued to get in front of me, but I never saw him pass me. Only one thing mattered at this point, crush this dude and sort it out all later! That is what I did, I ran that last lap so hard. Anytime I saw lights coming up, I treated them like they were his and I made people work to pass me, there were duo and trio teams burning their last lap and I was making them put in efforts to pass me. I knew this guy had been riding strong earlier and I felt he had what it took to beat me. If he had played his cards correctly he probably could have.  When he passed me the first time I was crushed, tried to hold on and couldn’t, I had settled for him to have 2^nd. If he had held steady I don’t’ think I would have seen him again and he could have had it. He wanted to play games; his games were his downfall; His games fueled me to ensure he did not finish ahead of me.

Post race I found that he had passed through the timing area while I was checking on the time stuff. I don't think he cut corners, he just had his own tactics, which is perfectly cool, I don't think they worked as planned though.

I don’t know what my final lap time was, and the official time will be a bit slower because it will include me talking to the lap time people to figure out if I needed to go out. I think my last lap quite possibly could have been my fastest lap of the day. Throughout the day, I had sections on the course that I would easy pedal or sit up and stretch out to keep rested while riding, none of this went on during this lap; I finished hard, sprinting all the way through the camp ground, all the way across the finish, like 3rd was on my back wheel, flew threw the finish and was super stoked.

After finishing, my body decided it was time to pay me back, and it did. I spent the next hour or so, trying to warm up and trying to eat. I was sick and I was cold. I could barely hold down food. It was a rough hour. Finally sitting by the fire and slowly munching on some awesome food from Outdoor Dave, and Jelly, Warm fluids from Mike, and Soda from Pozner crew I slowly started to come Back. Leesa and AFC took good care of me, because I really was in a rough place. We finished up the awards, piled in the car and made our way home.

Little back massage and and stretches in the open field really help! Thanks for doing some good lap time with me Coop!!