After working a full day on Friday, Pete and I drove down to Memphis to meet Taylor, then on to Arkabutla Lake and the start of the Delta Epic for 300 miles of delta dirt. We got there a little early but not early enough for a nap like I had hoped. It was going to be a long night.
The race started at midnight, and it started fast. This was a bad time to find out my head light doesn't turn on with a charger cable plugged in. The plan was to leave my lights plugged in through the night. I figured, at best, it would last 5 hours on its own. It was 7 hours till sunrise... After fiddling with that for just a moment I had to chase back up to the group, putting out way more effort than I wanted to this early. The group was cruising at 22-26 mph for the first stretch; the relay teams weren't afraid of putting the hammer down. Drafting in the pack was relatively easy. It was well worth the effort to stay with the group as it allowed me ride much faster than I could've on my own.
Riding out of Tunica, we hit the levee around 1:30am for ~30 miles of soft gravel. Still, the group was riding at 20+mph; it was much harder to stay with them on the gravel. I contemplated dropping back, but everyone else was still hanging on. Eventually, we hit some firmer gravel and the pace slowed to ~17. No one attacked. The group was a bit smaller now, mission accomplished I guess.
We rode through Friar's Point and headed on to Clarskdale at mile 72. I had planned to stop there to fill up on water, but with temps in the 40s I hadn't drank a whole bottle in 3.5 hours. No one else was stopping either. The next town would be Rosedale at mile 122.
Shortly after Clarksdale, around mile 90, we hit a rutted double track road. A few people crashed into a particularly deep rut. The group split. I fiddled some more with my headlight trying to get it to stay on while charging. No luck. The indicator light was now red; no way was it going to make it till sunrise. I caught up with a couple other guys and we worked together to try to catch up to the main group. It was quite cold at this point, the roads were rough, and my fingers were too numb to dig around in my frame bag for that pack of Pop-Tarts I really wanted. If I slowed up, I risked being stranded with no light. I decided I could eat after sunrise.
Eventually we caught a group of 6-8 people, but it wasn't the group I was looking for. We maintained our pace in pursuit of the front group. Riding on another stretch of the levee, one guy dropped back; a short while later the other took off to get to his relay transition. I wasn't going to chase. I was cold, hungry, and had to pee, but Rosedale was a just a couple miles further. There was a hint of light in the sky, and somehow, my headlight was still going.
Seeing how I was on my own now, I thought I might as well have a cup of gas station coffee with my Pop-Tarts. Big mistake. The sun was rising, but it was still 40 degrees out. I got really cold, really quick. Shivering uncontrollably, I got back on the bike to warm up, favoring the aero bars as they offered both a warmer and more efficient position. I'd ridden through so much dust during the night that my vision was now blurry - not just out of focus but cloudy and dream-like.
Riding flat, flat gravel roads cutting through cotton fields, I made my way towards Indianola at mile 180. This was the longest I'd ever been awake - 27 hours. I started singing to myself a bit around 8 o'clock, 'I.. have.. found.. some kind of temporary sanity in this..[explicit]' - Tool. I rode the next couple of hours without seeing anyone. Well, I thought I saw another rider ahead of me a couple times, but I'm not sure that it wasn't an hallucination.
After a quick stop in Indianola for some apple juice and a bag of chips, I was feeling pretty good. 10:30am, only 113 miles to go. I saw Taylor there; Pete wasn't far behind but I rode on. Memory gets a bit blurry at this point: flat roads, some gravel some paved, a slight headwind most of the time. Another rider caught up to me at some point and we rode together for a while until he slowed up on a rough gravel section. A bit after that Taylor caught me. I hung onto his wheel as he time trialled at 22 mph. It took a lot of effort to stay with him, but it was better than riding alone at 17 mph. We caught Brian a few miles before the Delta National Forest where Taylor would swap out with Pete.
At the entrance to the forest, I stopped and ate while Pete finished getting ready. A few miles up the road, we ventured off route in search of a water spigot only to discover the handle was broken. I had a little over half a bottle left. It was a stretch but I could manage another 26 miles to the next water source. Except my math was off, it was 36 miles.
I rode with Pete until we caught Brian and Peter. Pete took off in pursuit of another relay rider while the three of us, dehydrated and exhausted after 250+ miles, struggled to crawl along at I don't know what speed because my GPS had died. Peter dropped back. Brian and I eventually reached Satartia where there is a self-serve snack shack. I hadn't planned on stopping here with only 17 miles to go, but I desperately needed water and calories. A Coke and a Reese's took care of the later. We took off into the 'hilly' section of the route; being able to stand and coast was a welcome change. We rolled along with another relay rider to an uneventful finish just before sunset in Bentonia, 18 hours and 20 minutes since the start. Brain and I basically tied for 4th.
This wasn't the longest I had ridden, but it is the most I've pedalled in a day. And my legs were trashed. We ate dinner in Bentonia and stayed the night with Pete's friend in Jackson. I ended up staying awake for over 40 hours, something I didn't think was possible. That was the deepest I've slept in a long time.
