The Legend
There’s a scene in The Force Awakens that’s worth noting. A pair of young, would-be heroes have just escaped a handful of dangers and are now on course with a destiny larger than either could have imagined. Fin and Rey are about to face down not only a menacing new threat to the order of the universe. They are also about to face down their own fears. They find themselves tiptoeing up to something massive, something demanding.
There they are – standing in front of the Han Solo himself, when Rey asks with something of awe in her voice, “The Jedi were real?”
“I used to wonder about that myself,” says, Han, “I thought it was a bunch of mumbo jumbo, …” Then he pauses, turns away from them and reminds himself, “the crazy thing is … it’s true … all of it.”
And in that scene, you have the essential allure of why some 2,600 cyclists from all 50 states and 26 different countries descended upon Emporia, Kansas this past weekend. There are those who have experienced firsthand the trials and tribulations … who have faced it down. They lean over to you before the race and offer one little bit of advice, “don’t go too hard too fast.”
And there are those like me and my two friends. The newbies. The rookies. The riders who find themselves tiptoeing up to something massive, something consuming, … something that will alter us.
The Event
The Dirty Kanza is no longer just a bike race. Maybe it never it was. It’s an event, an experience.
As managing director and lover of this area of Kansas, Jim Cummings intentionally wanted to create something that would stretch people and push them to their limits. In fact, that’s the tag line for the 200 mile version. Go find your limit. See what happens to you when you find it. See if you learn something. See if you can find a way to push beyond that limit and find something more to make it all the way back to town.
Jim Cummings is the event’s Han Solo, gruff and tender in equal turns, he had already told me everything I would need to know about this event. He had put it all out there, in interviews over the last few years, in the riders’ mandatory meeting the night before the race, and in everything that went out to us as participants.
This race is an endurance race.
It will test you.
You are responsible for you.
We are not.
This is a self-sustaining ride.
But, what Jim didn’t say in all of his talk is what might as well have been said. It’s what I would figure out about three quarters of the way through my ride.
“No one is going to be out there to give you a ride back, so you better figure out now what the hell you’re going to need to get back home.”
Everyone goes deep in Dirty Kanza. Everyone. The pros. The endurance nuts. The woman six months removed from chemo. The guy doing the 200 mile edition with only one leg.
You add it all up – the hills, the gravel, the miles, the sun, the isolation, the wind, the deprivation – and something is going to start gnawing at you. Something on you or in you or underneath is going to give way.
If you’re lucky, your bike will hold up.
If you’re lucky, you won’t have a mechanical out there, rendering your bike into a rather heavy walker for miles on end.
But, even if your bike holds up, something will happen. A blister. A lack of water. Maybe even a hallucination.
Yeah, it gets that bad.
All you have to do is ask my friend, Mallen, but I’ll get that later.
Three Friends
Mallen is who I blame for all of this. He’s the one who came up with the idea that Brian Bales should register for the Dirty Kanza 2019 lottery, and Bales in turn roped me into the foolishness.
Tip #1 – when an old college friend who flirted with the idea of riding professionally and who has continued to push himself to the extremes physically, suggests you enter an endurance event with him, maybe think twice about it.
Mallen was a beast even when I first met him. He was a freshman at DePauw when I was a senior, and I was amazed at his girth, his strength. He came to play football in the trenches of Division III. But, he discovered a love for cycling and transformed himself from a linemen into a hulking coil of muscle and speed, what is known in cycling terms as a “sprinter.” He went off to Belgium after college to train with the “Euros,” the guys who eat, sleep and you know what this stuff. It was there he learned the art of elbowing for wheels and grinding out 1000 watt pulls to lead out sprint trains.
Mallen’s the kind of guy who when he does something, he doesn’t do it in moderation. He does it thoroughly and well and calculated. In his day job, the place he’s known as Matt Allen, he runs numbers and uses his particular gift of obsession to analyze data trends for a tech company. In his training rides, he prepares himself by putting himself up against the limit and then doing it again the next day.
Hands down, Mallen was the most prepared of the three of us. He was the only one who would try to tackle the full 200 miles. And his goal? Beat the sun. Get back to Emporia in just under 17 hours and earn a badge of honor, both literal and figurative.
He had a mission, and nothing was going to stop him. Not even that buffalo out there on the prairie. Again. Later.
Bales is about as considerate a person I know, and that’s saying a lot. Bales is the kind of guy who will give you the shirt off his back and then ask if it’s the right size.
He’s a doctor, but don’t let that fool you. By this point in his life, he could easily have set himself on course for a life of ease and comfort, but instead he continues to see his calling as a doctor as his opportunity to give back, to instruct, and do the next good thing.
Here’s what you need to know about Brian. Several months ago he seriously messed up his back riding in the bed of a rickety old truck somewhere off in a less privileged part of the world, giving medical care to a community that otherwise wouldn’t get it. The ruts and bumps of that distant place twisted his paraspinal muscles and enflamed nerves deep near his spine.
It got better.
Then it didn’t.
He had to tone down his training for the Dirty Kanza, and maybe he would have been all right. But, Bales you remember is not the sort of guy who will think only of himself.
So, there he is the night before he’s to spend over twelve hours driving in a car, and he’s in the emergency room giving care to the patients at Vanderbilt’s hospital. There’s a guy needing to be moved from the medical stretcher to a bed. And no one is around at the moment to help. So, there goes Brian – lifting the patient.
And there goes Brian’s back.
Two hours later, he’ll run home just long enough to throw his prepacked bags into his truck and grit his bike over the edge of his truck only to drive five hours up to South Putnam High School where he will meet with a wince and a hug at 5:30 am in the morning.
Tip #2 – if you’re going to do Dirty Kanza, you might as well do it with friends. They’re going to need you, and you’re going to need them.
The Journey
Why do we do these things?
What’s the point?
It’s stupid from one perspective. Three former athletes traveling out to the middle of nowhere in America, driving over 700 miles or more, all for the sake of spending an entire day on a bike to go literally nowhere. Seriously, that’s what you do. If you’re successful you end up in the exact same spot you left. You don’t do anything out there during the ride except turn some bike pedals over in circles. It’s not even environmentally friendly, regardless of what you tell yourself.
But you do it for the deeper journey.
You do it because when you get that email from the race promoters, the one that says, “Congratulations, you’re entered for Dirty Kanza 2019,” something happens. There’s a clarity that emerges for you, a purpose to get you through a winter in Indiana, something to peg yourself to mentally and physically.
You do it for the simple fact that the tediousness of life demands we find new things to surprise us and challenge us.
And you do it for the opportunity to share the journey with those around you.
I am pleased that I crossed that finish line on Saturday.
But, I am grateful that Brian was there awaiting me, already having packed up his bike and his day as a result of that poor back. I am grateful he kept bringing me ice-cold rag after ice-cold rag until my socks were socked through and my body had cooled.
I am grateful for the street vendors who doled out five al pastor tacos complete with barbacoa just past the Episcopalian church. I am grateful for the couple, one from Costa Rica and the other near Reynosa, who offered up chairs next to them in the shade as Brian and I ravenously ate our food.
I am grateful for the trip out to IHOP the night before the race and the chance to sit around and talk about the good old days. I am grateful for trying not to choke on my harvest grain pancakes as Mallen relayed the time he and Bales built a four-foot snowman in Bob Dinn’s room back in the fraternity house at Delta Upsilon – lugging heaps of snow in fifty-gallon trash bins up a flight of stairs.
I am grateful for the guy who rode up next to me just before the first checkpoint and told me he had just been cleared by his doctor to ride outside again. He had broken his pelvis some months ago, and here he was on his second ride out doors in the past week. And all he had to do was go another 50 miles to finish this one.
I am grateful for that vista on top of some hill I had to walk to get to the top of. I am grateful for the immediate friends I had around me as we all took out our phones and snapped pictures of endless green. I’ve never been somewhere so high up where no matter where I looked, I couldn’t see a water tower, a petrol station, or some highway running through the land.
And I am grateful for that guy at mile 82 who pulled up his truck at an intersection so he could give out free water and cans of beer for those truly in dire straits.
On the way home, Brian and I listened to a podcast on Fresh Air about the “stressed years of our life,” the reality of anxiety and mental health issues that seem to be overwhelming our culture and even our colleges these days. Now, to be sure, it is a crisis. And I know firsthand the importance of taking all of that stuff seriously.
But, part of me can’t help but wonder if a significant factor in our lack of mental health these days is our overwhelming fixation on what is right in front of us (which is often the screens on our phones) and on working towards some result.
Kanza, as Jim Cummings says over and over again, is about the process, the journey. Kanza is about doing something so out there that it forces you out of your mental space, out of the four inches between your ears and into something that will assault you but also empower you … and excite you … and awe you … and curse you … and challenge you.
The psychotherapist on that podcast said that the hardest thing is when we lose hope. When we are unable to see anything before us that is hopeful, that is inviting, that is beautiful, we can’t help but become worn down and fatigued by the weight we are carrying.
Tip #3 – Go find hope somewhere, however you need to find it. It doesn’t have to be some stupid bike ride out in the middle of nowhere, but do something you love. Keep finding some vehicle and road that will take you into a future where you can see promise and where you can feel the connection of community.
The Race
Oh yeah, this is a bike race.
It’s kind of hard to forget that when you’re sitting on your bike surrounded by about 750 others and Jim Cummings is counting down the final ten seconds before you roll out. If you do lose track, just look down and take a glance at your heartrate. It will likely be elevated.
One of the legit contenders for this year’s 200 mile version said his goal was to stay “as bored as long as possible.” I should have plastered that immediately in front of my eyes for the first hour of the ride.
I, however, made the quintessential mistake in bike racing. Go out too hard too fast. Be a hero early and a zero later.
Shoot, though, it’s hard not to get swept up in those first forty miles. It’s hard not to hang onto wheels as others drift off the back. You’ll tell yourself you’re playing the game right. You’ll tell yourself this group will pull you along and make it so much easier going into the headwind.
But, unless you’re insanely fit, you’re not going to be able to hold wheels, especially when the gravel gets worse (and it will) and the hills start coming (and they will).
The first forty-five minutes I essentially did a crit race to start Kanza
Tip #4 – Don’t do that.
I eased off finally and settled into a more realistic pace, latching onto wheels as they came up from behind. We were still cruising, and we were crushing the miles, even the disastrous sections of road that were torn up by recreational vehicles and whose patches of gravel were seemingly dropped randomly from a helicopter. True story, some guys told me about a dude who literally cartwheeled over his bike off into a ditch. Said he tried to bunny hop a rut in the road, missed his mark, and jackknifed his handlebars – turning him into a real-life rag-doll, spinning over the gravel into the grass.
Brian passed a guy with a broken clavicle.
I did the same later on.
Meanwhile, this whole time, I just prayed I didn’t flat. A flat spells bad luck. Many flats makes for an incredibly hard day. And so I went back and forth with myself in my head as the miles ticked by over this rough stuff.
“It’s okay. It’s just a sandier road. You’re good.”
“Shit! You’re screwed. Good luck catching up with these guys again.”
Somehow, my Donnelly EMP tires held up, and they should. The EMP is the airport code for Emporia, KS – the tires were built specifically to ward off the sharp edges of the “flint” stones.
Tip #5 – Get yourself a good set of tires. But, even more importantly, just pray that you don’t flat. Seems like all the pros flatted. Kanza is like anything else. You better prepare, but nothing can prepare you for what is really going to happen.
Halfway through the race, I was making good time. I rolled into the first and only checkpoint in about three and a half hours – having gone 54 miles. I was averaging 15.7 mph and crushing Dirty Kanza.
I had no idea what sort of suffering awaited me in the second half.
By 11 am, the sun was near zenith, and it was getting hot. I drank a full 32 oz. Gatorade at the checkpoint, downed another half bottle, ate a payday and swallowed four Endurolyte pill plus two shots of pickle juice to ward off any cramps down the road.
I would have been wise to drop three more such caches down the road at 20 mile intervals.
Tip #6 – It is practically impossible to overhydrate for Dirty Kanza. Drink until you feel like a tick on a bloodhound. Then drink some more.
Honestly, miles 54 through 64 weren’t that bad. We started to climb some steeper gradiants, but around mile 65 were turned westward for a long, lonely stretch of hills and headwind. That’s probably where I first started to feel the small stabs in my quads and calves, the early indications of dehydration.
By the time we turned south to head back towards Emporia, I knew I was going to have “issues.”
There is a lonely stretch of road some thirty miles west of Emporia. There are old rock fences where farmers have pulled sharp flint out of the fields, and grass along the side of gravel roads. But, there ain’t much else. Every five or six miles, you might happen upon a dip in the road where the water sustains a few shade trees.
Out there in one of those shady spots is where I laid down. Yes. I’m not ashamed to say it. I pulled off my helmet and sunglasses, my gloves, my jersey, and I just laid in the cool, soft grass for five … ten … maybe fifteen minutes. I listened as other riders went by, their voices barely audible over the gravel and their high pitched hubs. I knew whatever prize I was chasing, nothing was worth heat stroke.
I got myself cooled down, climbed on my bike and started slogging up the endless gravel that climbed before me.
People rode by in ones and twos.
We turned eastward, and I pulled out my Red Bull, downing it in four large gulps.
I crushed the gravel too at this point, hammering my way past some of the same people who had just passed me. On the flatter sections, the stuff that reminds me of Putnam County’s gravel, I churned out 17 to 18 mph easy. I hammered past three guys standing under another shade tree, and thought, “I know what they’re feeling.”
Around mile 75, the road turned north again. This is when my body started giving out. There was a long climb in front of me, and if I managed to hold my body just right and keep my cadence right around 85 rpm, I was good. But, I had to go deep. I churned my 32 rear cog, but had to do so at 60 to 70 rpm. My left quad seized. It went pancake flat, and I could see quaking underneath my skin.
But, I made it to the top, damn it.
And then I saw the next hill to the east. And the next. And the next. Stretching off into the unforeseeable future.
I tried to find anything out there that spoke of civilization.
Nothin’.
Mallen would tell us later on this is where he cried.
He got to the top of one of those long, gnarly hills where all you could do was pedal and bake under the sun. He was certain he would climb to the top only to see it descending before him, carrying him back to town.
But, oh no.
All he saw before him was another hill he’d have to climb.
And another.
And somewhere out there too is where Mallen hallucinated.
He said he was riding along when all of a sudden a bison jumped out of the ditch and started coming after him.
Yeah, a bison.
So, what do you do when you’re thirty miles from civilization and a bison is chasing you?
Naturally, you stand out of your seat and sprint as fast as you can.
It was only after he threw his body into this vicious effort that his sanity reminded him that there was no bison behind him. He returned to his normal effort, strangely wondering if that wasn’t in fact a bunch of twigs in the ditch.
I would pay so much money to see video footage of my friend, Mallen, sprinting away from an imaginary buffalo thirty miles west of Emporia, Kansas.
Tip #7 – If you see bison chasing you out on the course at Dirty Kanza, you might want to take a break.
When I would finally cross the finish line some four hours later from that vista, I would tell Jim Cummings, the founder and masochist behind Dirty Kanza, that there wasn’t anything out there “but pain and beauty.”
And I would cross the finish line.
I would cross after walking several of those hills that Mallen kept pushing himself up one after another.
I would cross after riding the last ten miles through Kansas farm fields that had been flooded and were baking in the sun – the smell of that pond near my house in Colony Woods filling my nostrils, rank and summery.
I would cross after counting up to 60 in my head, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, and doing that for the last five miles that seemed to never end.
I would cross not really sure if I was proud of my time … or if I would ever do it again.
When it comes to a race, it wasn’t really my best.
When it comes to a journey. It was worth every moment.
Epilogue
The night before the race, we slept in the Wyatt Earp Hotel & Inn just off I-35 near Lebo Junction. There’s not much out there, and our sleeping was meant to be functional and short before the race. My sleep was not heavy.
Two doors down from me, Brian slept a good sleep even though his back would soon re-awaken him to what lay before him out there.
But, deep in his psyche, way down there where the good stuff happens, he was dreaming that he was running. He was running like he remembers many years ago. He was smiling as he was running. A
And he was free.
Sometimes we must put ourselves through much in order to reclaim what is core.
That’s what I learned.
Tip #8 – Go find your limit.
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