Eszter Horanyi Arrowhead 135 Blog: When Preparation Pays Off

10 days out from the start of the Arrowhead 135, I started obsessively checking the weather for International Falls, MN.  It would look promising one day and then dire the next.  I flew into a gray Minneapolis and as soon as the pilot announced that it was safe to turn on cell phones, I checked the weather again: 70% chance of freezing rain.  My jaw dropped.  I planned for frigid temperatures, I planned for frigid temperatures and snow, I planned for warm temperatures, but warm temperatures and freezing rain?  I panicked and sent out a couple of inquires: If you were to race 135 miles in 27-degree temperatures and freezing drizzle, what would you wear?

I wandered around REI after buying a lighter and Esbit fuel tablets looking at rain pants.  Should I buy a pair?  Would I get wetter from sweating inside a pair of rain pants than I would from ‘freezing rain’?  Eventually, the bank account won out and I left the store hoping that the weather forecast would change yet again.

Race morning brought with it a new inch of snow and flurries in the 10-degree air in International Falls.  I looked at my two potential outfits, one made of Capilene and one made of wool and opted for the wool.  I looked at my combination of socks and opted for my liner pair, my vapor barriers, my sorrel liners, and my winter shoes.  I shoved my medium weight pair of gloves in my frame bag and put my thin wool gloves on my hands.  I put my neoprene facemask and my warm Buff in a secure spot and put my light Buff around my neck.  Hat, headlamp and clear glasses on, I pedaled the Fatback, the Purple Monster, to the start.  Ice immediately crusted my glasses.

By the time the gun went off, the precipitation had stopped and we set off on the first 9-mile straightaway at a lively pace.  Immediately, a large group of boys formed a paceline and started distancing themselves from the rest of the field.  They also provided a barometer for the trail conditions, for when the trail was good, there was a single track to follow and when the trail deteriorated, I could count the nearly dozen individual tracks as people veered off the leader’s track in the uneven snow. 

And so began 135 miles of racing during which snow gnomes would jump out and attack me half a dozen times sending me sprawling in the snow, I would freeze one water bottle nearly solid, and I would spend several hours singing to the wolves that had trampled over the bike track that was in front of me. 

Sometime, after the morning darkness had left and then sun had traversed the sky leaving me in darkness again, the half moon showed through the clouds.  The light illuminated the corridor of trees through which the trail passed with an array of snowmobile, tire, bunny, and wolf tracks dotting the ground.

I arrived at the final checkpoint, the Ski Pulk around 9:45 at night.  The volunteers had lit the Teepee of Despair up a bright blue and I could see signs of light through the trees long before I could hear the clanging of the cowbells as they welcomed me to the checkpoint.  ‘What do you need?’ they asked? 

‘Water.  Lots of water. I’ve been out for two hours.’

‘Hot or cold?’

‘Lukewarm would be great.’

‘Hot chocolate?’

‘Yes, please!’

I asked what was ahead, knowing that the infamous Mt. Wakemup (Pronounced Wake ‘em Up) was still between me and finish 25 miles away. 

‘Mt. Wakemup is 2 miles away,’ they told me. ‘Then it’s twenty flat miles to the finish.  You’ll be done by midnight.’

‘Two miles to the base or to the top of Wakemup?’

‘The base, but the entire thing is a 100 yards long.  It’s steep, but short.’

‘A 100 yards?  That’s it?’ I asked bewildered.

‘Everyone from the flatlands fears Mt. Wakemup, and here’s Eszter from Colorado who says, ‘A 100 yards?  That’s it?!’’ They all laughed at me as I chugged my second cup of hot cocoa. 

For future racers: Mt. Wakemup is no harder than any other hill out there.  The difference is that you can see the lights of Tower in the distance from the top, a long 20 miles away.  And with slow trail conditions, it was a very long 20 miles.

Then it started to rain on me, the freezing rain coating my pogies with a layer of ice.  Nearing delirium, I almost laughed and kept pedaling.

I finished at 1:18 in the morning for a time of 18:18, a new women’s record by nearly two hours.  Kind volunteers met me at the finish line, a veritable Christmas in February scene, and led me up to the hospitality room that the race rents out in the Fortune Bay Casino.  There, eight other racers sat around tables in various states of exhaustion.  The men’s race had come down to a sprint between two Alaskans with Kevin Breitenbach edging out Tim Berntson after 15 hours and 51 minutes of racing.  I thanked them for setting a track to follow as I sat down with a cup of soup before hauling my -20 degree sleeping bag upstairs and collapsing in a corner. 

Too sore to sleep, I listened as the first skier came in after breaking the previous record by 14 hours and other bikers trickled in with stories from the trail.  Satisfied, I thought back to all my preparation for the event, from all the frozen fingers and toes, the gear that I tested, the training rides that I did.  In the end, it all paid off and while every joint and muscle in my body ached, I found myself thinking about the Iditabike in 2013.   

I wonder if I could get in.