Well Dave, I have to give it to you. This is my first official DNF in a race. Granted, I’ve had some 24 hour races where I stopped racing sunday morning before noon, but in a distance-based race, this is it.

Then again, the full race was 126 miles, and Chad and I did 122.8 for our DNF, so I guess we’re not that far off.

I’m sure you’re all curious as to how this whole event transpired. Lets start from the beginning.

There were 8 people up and out for the 5am start, and we actually got the group moving with only about a 10 minute delay. We rolled out and down off the Kaibab plateau to the west for the first leg of the course. At this point I was feeling pretty good, and although 5 people had taken off ahead of me, I got into a nice rhythm.

The first 45 miles are all forest roads and take you down, up, and around before hitting the trailhead for the 18-mile romp on the rainbow rim trail. I got a flat mere moments into the trail, but a quick tube-insertion maneuver (don’t try this at home kiddies) and I was up and running again. Again, all was going well at this point.

I rolled off the trail, threw down some food and headed out towards the aid station (which was a general store). Unfortunately, I misjudged my water intake and the distance I needed to travel, and about 5 miles after the end of the rainbow rim trail, I completely ran out of fluids.

Needless to say, the suffering began. I rode the next 16 miles between noon and 1:15 bone dry. The only people I saw on the roads were on 4-wheelers and didn’t even think of slowing down much less stopping. I figured there was no sense in stopping because I was getting more dehydrated by the minute, so the more I rode, the closer I would be to fluids.

I rolled into the general store with a nasty case of cottonmouth and headed straight for the gatorade. A full bottle of gatorade, some water, a small bit of food and about 1/2 hour later and I was at least feeling halfway decent.

At this point I was on the fence about even continuing because I was tired, dehydrated, cramping, and worst of all, cranky. Fortunately (or unfortunately) Chad and Dave were at the store when I arrived, and although Dave was rearin’ to go, Chad admitted to regressing to ‘survival mode’ and invited me to join him. The allure of a partner to spin slowly with for the remaining miles was enough to get me moving and we set out for the remaining 45 miles.

We rolled down the road, made it to the Arizona Trail turnoff in decent time, and pointed the wheels north. Although neither of us were in the best of conditions, the AZT was a good time and had a fun mix of meadows, short steep climbs, and ripping descents. The cue sheet said 18 miles to our turnoff onto forest road 213. That put our turn at mile 105 on my GPS.

We rolled through the AZT singletrack as I kept an eye on the miles. Finally we came to mile 18 and started looking for the turnoff.

Instead we came to a sign instructing us on the finer points of stopping our bikes and turning around due to the fire damage to the trail. The sign also indicated that forest road 213 was exactly 6 miles back the way we came from.

Chad and I sat down and evaluated options.

I was, admittedly, not in the best of moods to start with, and he was having some asthma issues. On top of that, we would be adding 12 miles to an already 126 mile coarse and (without a doubt) getting back after dark.

After a short break we decided to bail to the road and take our DNFs.

In the end the numbers said 122.9 miles, 10887 feet of climbing. That means we missed out on around 3 miles and 2000 feet of climbing.

All in all, it was a good race, and with a little advice from tRoy about water bottle placement I don’t think finishing would be a stretch at all next year.

Here’s a little eyecandy of the route chad and I ended up doing, courtesy of google maps. Our route is in blue with the ‘correct’ route in red after we diverged.

View Larger Map

Enjoy.

(p.s. if you want the full effect by loading it into google earth, just hit the ‘view larger map’ and then ‘view in google earth’)