Is competing in endurance sports a terrible idea? That’s the (somewhat rhetorical) question posed in a new collection of stories examining the painful journeys of endurance athletes trying to achieve goals unimaginable to the casual observer.
The book offers many fascinating tales, like a 70-year-old competing in an ultramarathon, a sailing trip from Washington State to Alaska, or attempting six 100-mile runs in one summer. Or how about racing a bike in the Alaskan wilderness in February? Or running the Boston Marathon in reverse — and then turning around to race the same distance all over again?
All these stories are part of The Unforgiving Hours: The Grit, Resilience, and Perseverance at the Heart of Endurance Sports. The newly published anthology comes from endurance runner and journalist Shannon Hogan. She aims to tell inspiring stories of athletes who have pushed themselves through the “unforgiving hours” to achieve greatness — and maybe just redefine outdoor adventure along the way.
Stories include:
- Lynne Cox breaking the record for swimming across the English Channel at age 15
- Gunhild Swanson running the Western States 100 Endurance Run 5 days shy of her 71st birthday
- Gordon Wadsworth completing the hardest mountain bike race in the world — with a single-gear bike
- Melissa Kegler training for 2 years to break the American Ice Mile Distance record in 39.2-degree F water
- Tina Ament’s brilliance and determination in completing a 16-hour, 18-minute, and 5-second finish on the biggest triathlon stage
Book Excerpt: Biking Through an Alaskan Winter
Publisher VeloPress sent GearJunkie an excerpt from the chapter dedicated to John Stamstad to give readers a taste of what to expect from Unforgiving Hours.
Arguably one of the greatest mountain bikers to have ever adventured on two wheels, Stamstad’s first Iditasport race in Alaska in February 1992 represented a watermark for endurance sports. The following excerpt tells the tale of “The Night of the Five Flats,” when Stamstad’s biking quest meant dealing with temperatures below -30 degrees F in the Alaskan bush.
‘Un-Dog Racing in the Season of Hard Water’
The locals who created Alaska’s most epic bike race — Iditabike — knew how to speak plainly: “Cowards won’t show and the weak will die,” goes the event tagline.
There was no sense in sugarcoating the mid-winter madness of mountain bike tires on a loosely marked course in The Last Frontier. Event slogans can aim to reduce bear bait; that’s how they do it in Alaska. The inaugural race in 1987 was held in February, so, in good news, sleeping bears would not be included in the long list of potential race hazards. But to take a bicycle into such conditions benumbed all logic and reason.
The event of 130 miles (210 kilometers), or some distance approximating this, began near Anchorage, across — what else? — a frozen expanse called Big Lake. The first half of the out-and-back route was a portion of the famous dog-sled race held on the Iditarod Trail. “Iditarod,” an Ingalik and Holikachuk word that means “distant place,” was first the name of a 325-mile river, a tributary of the Innoko River.
News of this epic bike event reached Cincinnati, Ohio, via VeloNews, the go-to newsprint bike magazine of the 1970s and 1980s (and still today online). Iditabike sounded like madness to one Midwest kid who knew enough about snow — from growing up in Wisconsin — to know better. Riding bikes on snow? No one does that.
While in college, the strawberry-blonde kid, John Stamstad, had once pedaled from the Badger State to Colorado with a friend, covering more than nine hundred miles in eight days one summer. During his first winter trips to Colorado in the late 1980s, he was an early adopter of the first snowboards seen on the slopes around Frisco.
But nowhere in Colorado had he seen anyone ride bikes in winter. The term “bikepacking” was not part of the common parlance, even among cyclists. Whatever this survival test of a sport, John’s curiosity outweighed what some would call common sense.
A Shatteringly Cold Bike Race
The morning of the race, the world outside the insulated glass revealed a cold dazzle of stars, as the sun would not rise until later, at 8:43 a.m. The clear sky was a sign. Alaska was a tough teacher to the willing. The race-day temperatures were forecast to be benign.
The organizers were not in the business of putting people in danger, per se, but they were not there to apologize for Iditasport, either. Race Director Dan Bull didn’t even want to offer anything other than product awards for the winners: “It seems that in an Arctic event with its inherent danger, promoting purses for which people will extend themselves is a liability we can’t put up with,” he said before the February 15 event.
Thus, no cash, no race expo, no speakers blaring jock jam music to hype the event, and no merch tent. Hell, there weren’t even reliable trail markers ahead. If you needed laminated arrows with distance updates and neon pink plastic tape tied to trees, this was not the race for you.
John stayed with the lead pack of riders from the start-finish line headed toward the shore of Knik, another lake about eight miles away, and the first checkpoint. He had lead-pack leg power and a conditioned engine to match. The next February morning, John was big ringing it (pushing the hardest, fastest gear) on a frozen lake only 144 feet above sea level. The local thermometers registered -18°F.
Big Lake was completely frozen over.
‘Stinging, Throbbing, Numbing’
John felt the shattering temperatures in every bone in his two hands. He was facing an innominate foe: sweat vapor. In the early 1990s, cold-weather gear serviced alpine athletes and outdoors people, but forward-motion athlete gear for extreme climates had not yet been perfected.
In below-zero temps, trapped water vapor — like the frozen swamp in John’s gloves — freezes like the freshwater of Big Lake. Frozen sweat vapor can cause the water inside the cells of human skin to freeze in a matter of minutes at -18°F. The cold creep next moves — stinging, throbbing, numbing — into the underlying tissue, where the fluid freezes, without mercy, into ice crystals.
Frostnip would have turned to extreme frostbite quickly on the Knik Arm of Cook Inlet that February, but John knew to keep windmilling his arms, driving blood into his hands using centrifugal force. He kept every finger moving as he pedaled. And he never squeezed his grips too tightly, when most racers would have been clutching that handlebar for dear life.
The inimical cold would next harm more than John’s body. It started with that familiar sound — zip, zop, zip, zop — drowned out by a tragic pssssssss!-sound. The “dreaded hiss” — to use John’s words — of a punctured tire is universally unwelcome, in any weather. But in temperatures around -20°F, a flat tire is another thing altogether.
“When racing and you flat, the response is, ‘That’s unfortunate.’ And in the case of a second flat, you think, ‘Oh, that’s a case of bad luck, but these things happen.’”
But four flats since 5:45 p.m. when the sun went down? John’s mind went to work. All four compromised innertubes had the spot of inflation — the valve stem — shorn off. And the tires seemed loosy-goosy, as if they were suddenly a half size too big for the rims.
John later confirmed his hypothesis: The cold of the night on snow and ice had caused the metal of the wheel rims to constrict … He shook his arms, he joggled his legs. He didn’t make the rules, but he came to play the game. Challenge accepted, he said to the night.
‘Unforgiving Hours’: Pricing & Availability
So, how did Stamstad deal with the flat tires? How long did it take him to complete this dreaded bike race? You’ll have to get the book and read it yourself to find out.
The hardcover book is currently available to order through either Amazon or Simon & Schuster for $29. It’s also available on Kindle for $15.
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