I don’t remember if I’ve said it here before (and can’t be bothered to look back to see), but I’ve said it plenty in person to people; I don’t seem to be able to get into a thing without getting stupid about it. Coming back to biking was yet another example of this. I did a few 15-mile rides around Pemberton (out at McDowell Mountain Park) and decided I should sign up to do the 100-mile mountain bike option of the Stagecoach 100 that I ran in 2018.
In my defense, 1) I had no idea what I was getting into, but more significantly, 2) I had been thinking about going back to do that race again anyway, and doing it on a bike seemed like an interesting way to be on course again while still having a very different experience.
So I registered for the race and fired up Garmin’s 100 mile bike training plan. It generated a training schedule for me of several months to get trained for the race, and I got to work following it. I think I did pretty good following the plan (although I consistently struggled with getting my heart rate up into the target zone when it called for zone 4 or 5 – meaning hard exertion for the non-heart rate training literate). I mostly trained on the roads and canal paths near home, but did get out to the trails on the weekends and sometimes during the week. I was riding trails that were generally not very technical or had a lot of climbing or descending, because in my memory that was what the Stagecoach course was like.
So I felt like I was doing okay.
I had a few wake up calls that told me I was wrong about that and not actually doing that good. The first was the bikepacking trip I did that absolutely destroyed me. The second was a “chill” gravel bike ride out at San Tan with a friend who was also planning on doing Stagecoach. In what feels to me like typical fashion for a group outing, he seemed to be flying while I dragged along far behind him, winded and overheating (it was summer, so even though I was definitely struggling, I could blame at least some of it on the heat). We ended up cutting the ride short from what we had originally planned.
The third wake up call is the story here.
When I was planning out the training for Stagecoach, I found a series of bike races called the Arizona Endurance Series, and one of their events is the Tusayan Tussle, with a 60-mile distance option that I went with. It looked like a perfect training check for Stagecoach, because it takes place partially on the Arizona Trail, with both races concluding their final 30 miles riding it into Tusayan. It also was scheduled for three weeks before Stagecoach, which was perfect timing for a skill and fitness check before the race.
So the Friday before the race, Jim (who also signed up for both this race and Stagecoach) and I headed up to the Tusayan area and camped at the Ten-X campground just outside of town. We had a nice campsite and a quiet night and slept well. Got up the next morning, packed up, and headed out to find the starting area.
So here’s the thing about this race, and all of the Arizona Endurance Series races; they’re unofficial events and closer to group rides in function than “real” races with timing chips and number plates and all that stuff. They do have a final listing of everyone’s times on it, but beyond that it’s all very informal.
The reason I mention all that is to explain why it was a little bummer but not a huge deal that we got there late and missed the group start. It was my fault – I took too long packing up. So we got there, knowing that everyone was likely going to be gone but maybe hoping to see someone affiliated still hanging around. No such luck.
So we started on our own and did not see any of the other riders until around 40 miles into the race.
The outbound/south-ish-bound leg was on forest roads and was fun, aside from the hills which I was very slow on. We were generally descending, though, so we had some good downhill cruisey stretches.
I do feel like I should be clear on this point, however: we were not really going very fast in general, relative to the other riders. I did not realize it at the time and kept thinking that at some point we would catch up with some stragglers, but we never did.
The old Moqui Stage Station, a historical stop of the stagecoach line that used to run between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon (which is what Stagecoach is named for and is roughly the route the race follows), was the turnaround point of the Tussle and the transition between forest road riding and the singletrack of the Arizona Trail. It was also one of my favorite aid stations during the race – the workers there had set out little tea lights along the short side branch we had to take off the main trail, and it was a nice bit of warmth during a long, dark night.
But back to the present. We made our way through the transition trail over to the AZT (with a picture stop, because it was a really pretty spot) and started rolling north to head back.
Most (but not all) of this stretch was the low-key mellow trail I was expecting. It was non-technical single and double track, gradually climbing to the Russell Tank water stop, and even though I still wasn’t going that fast, I felt pretty good through here. It was the one place in this race that I felt like my training had prepped me pretty well for.
We made it to Russell Tank, and that was where we finally saw some of the other racers. The race director had set left some water here for the racers to use, so it turned into an informal social spot and we talked to several other riders for a little while as we filled our bottles and rehydrated a bit. Even though it wasn’t the blazing hot temperatures of Phoenix, it was still a fairly warm day and our water had been tapped out for a little while.
From there, we headed to the Coconino Rim section… and that was where my memory of the trail diverged from reality – or at least showed how covering trail on foot can be different from covering it on a bike. The trail generally continued climbing, and even though none of the grades were particularly steep, they were chunkier, and my lack of technical training practice really showed here.
Jim was already struggling and the day really caught up to me here. My legs started cramping, and we pulled off the side of the trail to rest and discuss our options. We were about 40 miles into the race at this point, with a lot of Coconino Rim to go still, and we were feeling pretty worked.
We decided to bail. We were way out and the only way back was on our own power, but we were only a very short cross-country bike push away from getting back on the easier riding of forest roads. I checked our maps and found a route back, and that was it… except for the nearly 20 miles we still had to pedal back.
Our overall distance for the day only ended up coming in a little short of the 60 miles we’d originally signed up for, but we finished the last of it easier than we would have otherwise. We might still be out there if we’d stuck with the singletrack.
We both went home and dropped out of Stagecoach.
