Big Fix 500, April 19-20, 2008: Dogged Determination

The morning of April 19 dawned clear and bright over Houston as two DBC members--Mojo Cosgrove and I--arrived at the Alkek Velodrome to help our friend, Walter Dawes, attempt to ride 500 miles in 24 hours on the steeply banked track.

We had landed in Houston the night before.  After driving from the airport to the house of a friend (Ken McClain, like Walter a fellow alumnus of the Big Fix trans-USA ride in 2006) and losing two hours from the shift to Central Time, we had time for four hours of sleep before heading to the velodrome.  Traffic woes--on top of Houston's notoriously bad traffic, a major freeway was entirely closed for construction--slowed us down, and we arrived just 20 minutes before Walter's scheduled 9 a.m. start.  As it turned out, Walter was also running late, and we helped him put the wheels on his bike and carry it down and up the stairs into the velodrome.

Alkek Veldrome, a one-third kilometer track with steep, 33-degree banking, was almost deserted when we got there.  The velodrome's representative, Lee, was there, as were three volunteers from the Histiocytosis Association of America, the group benefitting from donations rounded up by Walter.  His "Big Fix 500" was not only an attempt by Walter to push his physical limits, but a means to help find a cure for a rare and fatal disease.  Walter would be riding for the kids.

After a few preliminaries, 9 o'clock arrived, and Walter rolled down the track.  "Someone keep track of my laps!" he shouted as he pulled away.  We quickly rounded up some containers of colored chalk and began making hash marks as he made lap after lap, each one coming in about 36 seconds.  A few calculations yielded the total laps he would need to travel to go 100, 200, 300 miles and so on to his 500-mile goal (more than 2,400 circuits of the track).  We laid out spaces for each 100 laps on the concrete apron next to the track--at about three feet for each segment, his goal was some 50 feet from where we started the tallying.  It was a daunting sight, but Walter kept ticking away laps like clockwork.

As we would remark many times during his ride, Walter is a rider, not a planner.  We quickly learned that, other than a very few basics, he had not engaged in the detailed planning that some riders might do when attempting would would be a near-record-breaking ride.  Walter was riding on heart, and for the kids.  A few boxes of Ensure, enough packets of Vespa energy drink to last him for 24 hours at one every two hours, and a hastily rigged water container perched on the back of his seat were the extent of his pre-planning.  Aside from that, he just intended to ride as hard as he could.  For the kids.

The first few hours of Walter's ride mostly involved him riding solo around the empty track.  The caterers who would serve lunch to us and the spectators who came later arrived and set up their tents and tables, laying out a spread of Texas-style barbeque.  A bounce house for the children was set up on the grassy infield, and a PA system played what seemed like the entire Beatles catalog.  

The first glitch happened after 100 or so laps, when the rear tire on Walter's bike--a tubular mounted to a disc wheel--began going soft.  With no time for unmounting and remounting a tubular to the rim, we readied some tools and got ready to move the cog from his wheel to another disc (Walter, by the way, was pushing a mammoth 93-inch gear).  Walter rolled off the track and we struggled with cog and its adapter, then got it into the frame.  He lost more than five minutes while we fussed with chain tension and got him rolling again.

As the sun climbed in the sky and the air began getting warmer, Walter started perspiring heavily as he rounded the track, still maintaining 36- to 38-second lap times.  His dark grey jersey began showing streaks of white that would later merge into huge patches of white.  We kept telling him to "drink! Drink!" as he rolled past us.

About this time, Mojo mounted a borrowed bike and began pacing Walter, leading him around the track and occasionally inserting a new bottle of water into the seat-mounted container from which Walter sipped through a tube snaking along his top tube.  After an hour or so, I took over, riding until my left-hand pedal (I had brought my own, to match the cleats on my shoes) worked its way out and I rolled to a stop.  

We got the bike back on the track with its original pedals (mine would not thread into the crankarm for some reason), and Mojo took off again.  

Around midday, Walter's friends from the Houston messenger scene began arriving.  Led by a rider who introduced himself only as Cisco Kid, they set up an impressive array of sound equipment and trainer-mounted bikes. (More on that later.)

Also around this time, Walter's seat-mounted water carried decided to come loose.  Held on by a clamp that used two tiny screws, it decided to give way as he rolled along the far straightaway.  He stopped as the plastic container banged against his frame, now held on by just the plastic tube.  After waiting patiently while we struggled with the tiny mounting hardware and refilled the container, Walter rolled off again.  Other than time for his mechanicals, he would only stop a few times to make potty stops (which involved a long walk outside the track to where some shipping containers provided a sheltered place).

The track's infield by this time was buzzing with a small crowd, an interesting mix of pierced and tattooed messengers and families of Histio children.  While the kids played in the bounce house and drew inspirational messages on the sidewalk with colored chalk, the messengers took over the entertainment, blasting out a mix of jazz, punk, and rock and using the PA to send messages to Walter (example "If you had driven, you'd be done by now!").

After eating a hearty lunch of Texas barbeque, I decided to take another stab at pacing Walter. Pulling on my friend's shoes, which were about two sizes too small, I pulled back onto the track, carrying spare water for Walter.

Built of concrete in 1986 as part of a push to bring the Olympics to Houston, the Alkek velodrome's surface is somewhat bumpy.  Cracks on the surface have been carefully patched over the years, but it is by no means a smooth ride.  The track also slopes all the way to the bottom.  Even taking the minimum line to keep each lap as close as possible to 333 meters, we were riding on the banking.  Between the surface and the slope, almost every foot of the way required concentration.  I also needed to keep Walter in view in my helmet-mounted mirror to make sure I wasn't pulling away from him, trying to keep a smooth and even pace.  About every 20 minutes, I grabbed a fresh bottle of water from Mojo, pulling alongside Walter on the far side of the track to insert it into his water carrier.  It wasn't easy.

I rode with Walter for about two hours, putting in more than 200 laps.  He had ridden 900 laps when I pulled off, and I was in awe--I was tired after riding less than a fourth of the distance.  Walter rode on.

The chalk tally on the track continued to grow, streching first three, then six, then ten feet, each lap carefully marked off.  Whenever he reached a milestone--100 miles, 700 laps, 800, 900, 1000--we would cheer louder.  Starting at 100 laps, we also began a tradition of "flashing" Walter at the lap line--all of us guys would lift our shirts and scream like teenagers, always eliciting a smile from him as he went past.

And so the day continued, Walter doggedly ticking off laps about every 38 seconds (a little behind a 500-mile pace, but amazingly consistent).  Meanwhile, in the infield, the messengers started kicking into high gear, doing what messengers do when they're not riding their bikes for a living: riding their bikes.  Freestyle trick-riding contests were held, as were competitions that involved a dozen bikes riding in a tight circle, with each cyclist trying to nudge the others so they would have to touch a foot down (a kind of cycling "musical chairs" that ended when the last rider was still upright).  Another contest involved track standing, first with both hands on the bars, then one, then no hands, and finally just one foot.  The winning rider stayed upright in one spot with just one foot in a pedal for almost a minute before he fell (gracefully).

But the most grueling competition was the "Texas Gold Sprint."  For the Sprint, two riders mounted matching fixed-gear bikes clamped to stationary rollers.  Cyclometers tied to each bike recorded distance as the riders tried to out-spin each other and get to a predetermined distance first.  I took part in one of the sprints, an all-out, 200rpm effort that lasted about 15 seconds but felt like 15 minutes.  Legs whirring, the crowd cheering (they were watching the computers on a TV mounted in front of us), we pedaled as fast as we could while the emcee shouted out the play-by-play, accompanied by advice: "Breathe! Breathe! Don't forget to breathe!"  We rode for .25 miles.  The finalists (I lost, barely, in the first round) went for a half mile, which is about ten times harder than it sounds.

As the sun went down and the messengers rode around the infield doing tricks and track stands, a more sedate crowd of local track racers began showing up and riding with Walter.  The lights at the velodrome came on, temperatures started dropping, and the headwind that had kicked up on the back stretch started subsiding.  On Walter rode, into the night, occasionally stopping briefly to stretch his back or rest his legs. "Get back on the bike," we would advise him after a few minutes, and he always did.

Mojo and I left the track around midnight to go a friend's house nearby to shower and get a few hours' sleep.  We left Walter in good hands, with a former Olympic track racer in charge of making sure he would be reminded to keep fueled and hydrated.  We planned to come back and help him through the last few hours until his planned 9 a.m. finishing time.

When we returned at about 5:30 a.m., we saw an ominous sign--the lights at the velodrome were out.  Driving up to the parking lot, we saw that all the cars that had been parked there were gone, and the gates were locked.  "This is not good," we said to each other.

A call to Walter's cel phone got us in touch with a friend's fiancee.  She gave us the bad news that Walter was in a local hospital with a broken collarbone.  Saddened and disappointed, we got back into our car and drove to the hospital.  We found him in the emergency ward, still wearing his cycling shorts, shivering under a blanket, a container of warm saline solution flowing into him.  The hospital had given him some rather strong pain medication, and when we arrived the room had started to spin around him.

Between bouts of room spins and dozing, here is the story Walter told us:

Around 3:15 a.m., with over 300 miles already done, Walter was riding on the track with the velodrome's representative, the former Olympic cyclist.  The two were riding side by side, talking, when the other rider, above Walter, suddenly lost traction and slid down the steep banking into Walter's bike.  Walter lost control and hit the pavement ... hard.  

Despite the crash, Walter got up, moved his arms and legs, and tried to get back on the bike.  It wasn't until he tried to remount that it became obvious that his right collarbone was broken.  The excruciating pain meant that Walter's ride was over.  

While he hadn't been on pace to hit 500 miles, Walter could have easily surpassed 400, and could have gotten close to 450.  By any measure, and even stopped prematurely, it was a gallant and inspiring effort.

EPILOGUE

I spoke with Walter the day after he left the hospital, and found him in good spirits.  As it turned out, he had also fractured two ribs on the same side as his collarbone, unfortunately making his recovery more difficult.  Still, he was already looking forward to another 500-mile attempt.  When the crash happened, he said, he had already found his third or fourth wind, and was riding well.  In fact, he was ready to keep riding past 24 hours for as long as it took to reach his 500-mile goal.  I told him we'd be there when he did.

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