Everest Report and Reflections!
- Jason Potsander
- Jun 29, 2020
- 15 min read
“FIENDISHLY SIMPLE, YET BRUTALLY HARD. EVERESTING IS THE MOST DIFFICULT CLIMBING CHALLENGE IN THE WORLD.”-https://everesting.cc/
A bit of backstory preamble :)
When Brent Lockhart, a guy I barely know, first announced dedicating his Everest attempt to me, along with three other riders, I was immediately overtaken with humility for myself and honor for Brent and his crew. I immediately asked Brent if I could "crash their party," and was enthusiastically encouraged to join them if I could. I had roughly one week to decide if/ how I would make this happen along with my wife and three kids in tow (13yo girl, and 10 yo boy/girl twins!). So in the midst of so many things I decided to plan as if I'm going. In the midst of:
putting my 13th pancreatic cancer chemo cycle on hold
chemo included hand, finger, and feet neuropathy
monitoring my 83 yo father-in-law's COVID hospitalization
receiving TWO of my own negative COVID test results just for safe measure!
researching and securing what extra battery packs and lights I would need to accomplish this feat successfully
researching and securing what food and hydration options would keep me energized for what I predicted would be up to 18 hours (actually ended up to be 21 hours total!)
researching and securing a place of lodging on late notice for a Friday and Saturday night!
To say I had some demons in my head going into this would be an understatement. I had completed 6 and 9 hour races before and managed those events OK enough, but was severely wrecked in pain gastrointestinally for up to one week afterward. I did not want to go through that again and just how my body would respond after an event like this was my greatest fear and greatest unknown factor. Part of me thought it was foolish to even try to attempt this event, but the Spirit and Heart of Brent and his support crew and comrades kept drawing me back to the idea. "What better way to Everest could I ever find?" I thought to myself. I knew Brent well enough to know he had done his homework when it came to the 1.3 mile, 5% grade, segment selection we'd try to ride 86 times! I also could sense the roadside SAG support we'd need was either there or would fall into place serendipitously as needs arose on the day, and boy did it ever! Megan Martin and Aimee Lockhart deserve a hero's reward for being the ultimate servants and cheerleaders to help keep us all fueled mentally and physically! As with most ultra endurance events, there are no words to describe what we did. Sure, I can describe all the metrics as stated here:
My ride file documenting "it happened" :)
The Segment we went up and down 86 times:
Race Report:
The ride was about so much more than metrics can describe, as we four riders began to painfully find out as the ride progressed! This ride was about seeing the miracles around us all the heart and soul it takes to keep yourself and your partners on the journey going!
As agreed upon, I met my three Everest comrades (Brent Lockhart, Rob Martin, Rob Richardson), by the roadside at 5AM. It was 65F with 95% humidity that formed a dense fog over the entire course from base to summit, making the pre-dawn experience even more eerie. With a bit more last minute checks and banter, we embarked upon our first summit at 5:15 A.M. with lights ablaze looking out into the foggy abyss! My glasses were ineffectual and actually quite dangerous with the humid water droplets forming on everything, so I quickly learned to take them off. It felt more like we were swimming with our bikes through the air and needed swim goggles! This was my first time actually riding up and down the segment and again I took solace that Brent had done his homework on this. The tarmac was relatively smooth and the grade was a nice "Goldilocks" 5% average! Not too steep as to totally slog your cadence each ascent, but steep enough to get you 340 ft. of elevation gain per lap for a "manageable" (by midwest standards) 86 laps!
We began riding in a paceline with much vim and vigor for the first 2 hours. We hit those first two hours VERY hard, and in retrospect, our nativity was almost laughable and a bit surprising! My heart rate was well at my 173 bpm threshold (for a 1-2 hour event!) on those initial eight minute ascents and I knew I could not keep this up for what I thought would be 18 hours! The laughable part of our pacing was obvious given I was riding foolishing thinking three minute resting coasting descent heart rate of 120 would allow me to recover enough to maintain a work heart rate of 170+ all day! The surprising part of our initial pacing is that we were all "seasoned" athletes and racers! On one hand we knew in our minds that this effort would be monumental, but we all severely underestimated just how monumental! We should have known that an effort like this is more than a simple math problem of speed x length = elevation! We should have known that an effort like this at some point shifts to heart and the support of those around you! However, at the 2 hour mark we were still quite full of ourselves and imagining our glory at the end of the day with repeated 2 hour efforts just like it!
We pre-determined to stop at the 2-hour mark and refill bottles and as luck would have it we suffered our only flat for the day! We were bombing down the descent nearing the van and turnaround at 35mph in paceline. I was rider #2 and rider #1s' (Rob Martin) rear wheel started thumping as we hit our brakes and slowed to a stop. HIs tire was as flat as the embedded bolt in the highway we passed by 86 times that day at the .33 mile mark ascending!
While Brent changed Rob's tire, we all got refueled and set for what we cognitively knew would be a long day ahead of us. It was at this point where I took physical stock of myself and decided while I was feeling pretty good, the pace I had been going to hang with the guys was unsustainable. I told the guys I was going to "just" try to maintain 200 watts on the climbs and I let them motor on ahead at their faster pace. As Brent and the boys pedaled on ahead, I can still hear Brent's word's echoing in my head, "This is about finishing!" I heard his words in my head many more times that day. At first I was a bit dejected to be "alone" riding up this god-forsaken-mountain that no-body probably gives a "F" about! But I just kept the mindset that I would keep, "plugging away" as I often said that day. So I plugged on... eventually colaacing back together with Brent, Rob, and Rob although they were now 1-2 laps ahead of me :) Evidently they had their own, "come to Jesus moment" and severely slowed their pace as well to something far more sustainable for an all day effort. And so throughout the remainder of the day we mostly rode together with some of us ebbing and flowing off the front and waiting at the summit. And I plugged on... It is here I also want to give a shout out to a band that has long since given me inspiration and I'm happy to call friends: Shiny, Shiny, Black! I pulled out my playlist on my phone and intermittently jammed to their songs:
"Another Way up the Mountain"
and
"Lights On!"
The fog finally burned off between10-11AM and then the real heat began! My Garmin temp gauge recorded at average for the day of 71F and real tarmac inflated high of 102F! As Rob Martin reported, "It was hotter than shit!" This is about the time that I saw one of three deer sightings for the day, which I was extremely surprised at given the heat. We also saw the same fox cross the road about three times over the course of the day as well.
From noon until about almost 8PM we really began to "cook" on the road with the hot tarmac, all the while battling the peak car traffic flow and a few irate and honking drivers! It was at this point that Megan Martin saved me with fresh ice cold rags to put on the back of my neck to cool my core down and minimize sun exposure on my neck! The ice rags sent a much needed chill down my spine and just the thought of getting a fresh one mid pedal stroke without stopping kept me going on for the next summit. Megan Martin ran a pro sag stop and anticipated our every need, all the while being our ultimate cheerleader and armchair psychologist to keep us safely in the game (or pull us out if need be I"m sure!)
It was also at this point that I learned that you never know what foods your body might be craving at this point in the ride. Enter the Snickers bar thanks to Megan Martin! I never eat Snickers bars in real life, but on the bike I was craving and it was still all I could do to choke one down each lap! Essentially I got through the ride on about 1 bottle of Maurten or SIS Beta Fuel per hour (300 calories), a few Ensures (250 calories, but a mix of fat and protein) , and lots of Snickers near the end! The plethora of pita sandwiches and turkey jerky that I had packed were just not palatable to me. It is hard to predict what your body will want if you've never gone to this extreme before!
It was at this point that I realized my body was breaking down, but I still had a margin of sustainable pace that I could re-adjust to. In the beginning laps my climbing power was ridiculous (for my body weight) 250 watts and my heart rate was threshold at 173! ...totally unsustainable and foolish for something over 2 hours! :) I soon set my wattage to 200, then 150, then by the final laps my working heart rate uphill was barely breaking 120 and my resting heart rate going down was barely 110! The delta between my working and resting heart rate was narrowing severely! I knew my body was "shutting down," but if I could just keep "plugging away" I thought just maybe I could do it!
At one point I remember reminiscing with Brent as we climbed together about a heart rate memory I had. My heart rate up the hill was 130, which usually for me is a super easy pace. I remembered that when I was recovering my pancreatic cancer surgery 3 years ago in the hospital I went for a walk down the hallway. The nurses quickly came and got me and were concerned, saying, "Your heart is 130, just walking down the hall! You need to go back to your room and rest!" At that point in my hospital stay, going on 1 week, I was supremely ansty to get out and I snarkily replied, "Oh is that all? I can hold a 130 heart rate all day for a recovery run, so I think I'm good thanks!" (So I begrudgingly capitulated to the nurses that day if you really want to know.) So with that thought I kept plugging up the mountain..."I can do 130 bpm all day long if I need to, I thought." Which was a lie, and I knew it, but that is what much of endurance sport is about: tricking yourself into achieving greater heights than you thought possible...Making a goal, meeting it, readjusting when needed and setting another... the cycle never ends and that a big part what makes endurance sport so captivating for me. I used to call it the "search of the perfect race," but as I've gotten older I see it's really a search for excellence on the day whatever that entails. Some days that means puking your brains out and on others it means entering "the zone" in complete euphoria, hooked on dopamine and adrenaline!
As hot as the 12-8PM shift was, I was still thanking my lucky stars that Brent had done his homework on this segment and picked a good one. The hill had great shade for a majority of the segment for much of the day. The reduction in temperature on the shaded sections was noticed by every pore in my body at that point! It was also during this "shift" that I had to recalibrate my mind. I was still delusionally thinking that I could somehow complete the Everest 29,029 ft. of elevation by "maybe 10:30 PM and be cozy with my wife in bed by midnight :)" It was at that point the brains and braun of Brent, Rob Martin and Megan Martin busted my bubble and informed me that at my declining pace it was going to be more like after midnight for sure. So with that information I adjusted my brain to endure a truly "dark night of the soul."
I realized a few things at this point with no disrespect to anyone :) :
8 hours on the bike is mere "child's play"... it is what would usually constitute as a "long" summer training ride and is still quite an accomplishment!
8-16 hours on the bike is where the real work begins and everything starts to hurt!... neck, fingers, palms, feet,... you name it! At that point it hurt my fingers to grab my water bottle for a drink! You've got to be VERY committed and have GOOD support! You also have to be slightly crazy!
16-20?? hours on the bikes is just pure craziness. Brain fog sets and that point you're not even thinking straight. This is when you need a strong support crew to pull you through and force you eat, to follow you with car headlights and even pace your last laps! Although at that point, I think my body was so well formed and "crimped" around my bike frame that it hurt more to move off the bike that it did to pedal on it! I literally could barely walk by the end, but I could crank out 130 watts at 110 bpm all night long!
As the sun set hit around 9:30 PM I was glad for the multiple options I had for bike lights and extra battery packs! I was also glad that Brent I rode pretty much together from sunset until the bitter end at 2-3 AM! Brent would often stand on the climbs outpacing me by a good 200-300 yards, but I could not even muster standing and just plugged away spinning my low gear! We would reunite at the top and do all over again, again, and again...The cool night air finally arrived and I could stop getting my fresh ice rags on the neck every lap, in fact I began to get a bit chilled on the 3 minute/35 mph descents! Now you might think that after climbing so hard every lap for 8-20 minutes that the down hills would be "easy." The downhills gave no true rest for weary (for me anyway) because my body was so tense trying to control my bike at 35 mph coasting between the centerline rumble strips and the shoulder rumble strips. In the early laps I did even hit 40 mph with a few pedal strokes for a max speed for the day! The pavement was mostly smooth on the decedent if you stayed between "the rumbles" but like any pavement there were a few spots to watch out for and every little bump or roughness was felt with pain in my palms at some point. Later in the night I was really wishing for double bar tape and double gloves to help pad the intense and jarring descent and provide relief on my palms! :)
The miles between 210 and the final 238 between 11-2 AM were the most soul searching, heartfelt, and SLOWEST miles I'd ever pedaled! You really have to wonder why you are still out there at that point you can be reduced to your worst self. I've heard Iditarod musher Martin Buser say that such "dark places" in races are like a mirror to your soul and if you don't like what you see in that moment that it's time to change something in your life. I was in pain, but I still liked who I saw in my mind's mirror and Brent Lockhart was still has shockingly happy as ever even if he was a bit "dilusallional for the past 24 hours" as his wife stated at the top of one of our lap summits as she followed behind with car headlights! For sure we were all getting a bit "delusional," but Megan Martin kept us all humming as support crew chief.
Around the 200 mile point I developed what's known as "brain fog" in the endurance world, after so much effort and so little sleep. As I was coming down the hill in the dark with a 1000 lumens on my bike light (bright as car light!) with Brent behind me I knew I was coming to the turn around point, but somehow missed the sign I had turned at about 60 times prior that day! I quickly knew "something was amiss" when I no longer saw Brent's light behind me anymore! I quickly turned around and began to recognize I went probably 1/8 of a mile past the turn around point! I quickly caught up to Brent and he said, "Run Forrest Run!," when I told him my error (Famous Forrest Gump movie reference)! No harm, no foul, but from then on I made sure I was always behind Brent on the descent so I did not have to rely solely on my brain for knowing when to turn around!
It was around this point in my brain induced fog state that I also learned a lesson from a lowly spider. In mid climb I shouted excitedly to Brent, "Hey, I've got cobwebs on my handle bars!" to which he replied, "Yeah, me too...they hang from the trees and grab on!" These lowly, unseen I might add, spiders drop down and form these intricate strands on my bike that stay intact during the whole grinding assent and screaming 35 mph descents! It sounded like an analogy of tenacity the humble little spider was trying to remind me of!
It was also about this point that Brent asked if I would mind talking about my prognosis. I've been pretty freely sharing about this all along my journey, so I welcomed the invitation. I told him how in Nov. I started feeling two grape-sized lumps on my body. I told him and later Megan that I had just finished one of the largest 12 hour/week training blocks of my life and I looked at the Dr. with tears and said, "How can someone so "healthy" be so "sick?" The Dr. had no answer. I told him the Dr.'s words that he could assure me a 50% life expectancy at 12 months if I begin his aggressive chemo. I told him how I think God has assured me far more than 1 year and that my wife is my biggest believer. The 5 year statistical life expectancy is 5-8% and my wife looks at our twins and states, "That is above the 3% chance of having natural born twins! We can do 5-8%!" I may sound strong here in my writing, but my wife is the true believer and it's infectious!
And as Brent stated after hearing that, "How many people out there with stage IV pancreatic cancer are Everesting?!" It was a fun moment...seriously who is doing this shit like this I thought! I am!
Conclusion Preamble:
In the last soul searching miles around 12-1AM, it finally dawned on me that I might actually accomplish 29,029 feet of total elevation for the day! I began to recount in my mind all the miracles that had happened today. Seeing and noticing miracles over the course of the last 8 months with my current Stage IV pancreatic cancer diagnosis and ensuing 12 and counting chemo cycles has become a big theme with me. Throughout the chemo I began asking God for a miracle with every two week cycle. Sure I had low points, I had hospitalizations, I had lots of "bad stuff," but overall the miracles were there...consistently. My wife said, "Maybe you're just being more perceptive and noticing "miracles" more often?" That may be the case for some of my examples, but for others they are so obvious to me that I know God is intervening in an undeniable way in my life... physically, mentially, circumstantially, in every way I can I can think of! I will never claim to have "God figured out" or be able to answer the questions of why there is suffering or injustice in the world, but I will say I have an undeniable assurance that He loves me and is proud of me, just for who I am, regardless of any "silly" biking feat or any other measure of achievement I can muster! Just like I love my kids, unconditionally, God loves me. Knowing that and trying to be a part of that love and spread it to others is all I really need to know in life.
Final Conclusion:
This ride was a miracle on multiple levels. Sure there is the fact that I completed the ride. But I'm even more impressed with how my body is recovering afterward... no gastrointestinal distress, eating like a horse, sleeping like a rock, and no headaches! I'm doing stuff on chemo that 95% of the population can't do. I want to shout that from the rooftops and get those socks that say, "Do Epic Shit!" And yet, I'm a bit afraid to actually tell my doctor I did it! He might issue a restraining order between me and my bike! :) The miracle of safety careening down a hill at 35 mph for 86 also comes to mind especially in the midst of cars, rumble strips, heat, cracks, deer, brain fog, sore and hurting hands which are your life line for control on the bike!
But the biggest miracles in my mind are:
Brent, Rob, and Rob's heart for me to dedicate this ride to me in the first place...guys I did not even know except for one fateful (and bloody) time before that I met Brent! (that is a whole other story!)
The support crew and camaraderie that emerged throughout the day, helmed by Megan Martin!
The fact that all of our wives and families supported us and pitched in this effort!,... even if we were certifiably crazy before it even started!
The fact that Megan Martin rode that last 2-3 laps with me and was committed to the end!
Miracles are all around us folks and you don't need to "Everest" or do any other "silly" event to prove it, just pay attention and notice what goodness is already around you and focus on that! Just "Ride On! and set goals and try... sometimes you'll make the goal and sometimes you won't, but the miracles are still there. Sometimes they'll be obvious, but more often they won't be. Just whatever you do keep "Riding On!"
Comments