Why don’t you tell me, lovin’ mama, how you want your rollin’ done?
Why don’t you tell me, lovin’ mama, how you want your rollin’ done?
Lord, I give you satisfaction, now, if it’s all night long
Lord, I got up this morning just about the break of day
Lord, I got up this morning just about the break of day
Lord, I’m thinkin’ ’bout my baby, Lord, the one that went away
– Big Bill Broonzy
So… just how do you want your rollin’ done?
You might recall that last time we touched briefly on our goal, and in that we mentioned some projected times. Quite a range. 12hrs to 18hrs. To make the former, a goodly portion of the trek is going to have to be running. The lads I’m going with are accomplished runners. A very long time ago, I used to be a runner… sort of…
A guy I know did the R3 in 16hrs by pretty much mostly fast walking. Doing the maths that works out to about 4.5 km / hr. Or in runners parlance… 13.3 min / km. Conversely… if we are looking at 12hrs… then we need to average 6.0 km / hr., or 10 min / km. I start to hurt if I think about those numbers too much. Surprisingly, we hadn’t really discussed this very much as a team. Caleb and Matt as I mentioned are both runners. They are also much younger and fitter than me. There is no way in hell, or anywhere else for that matter where I could keep the pace that they could over the duration of the crossings. Caleb’s reasoning is that in running marathons at least, that he is about twice as slow as the elite finisher. So if Eliud Kipchoge finishes in just over 2 hours then Caleb can (and does) finish in 4. Extending that logic… if Walmsley can do the R3 in 6 hours (actually 5hrs, 55min, 20sec) then we should have a shot at 12. Sort of ties into the record by Browning for the 2 X R3 at about 18 hours. Yeah okay….
You can motor pretty good on the downhill sections, but your legs also take a real beating doing that. You might make some time early on, but you might also pay a hefty price later on in the day. Time and energy management are crucial to success. Part of the time management equation is adhering to the mindset of just keep moving. We half joked about not bringing any cameras along. You can’t stop to take photos if you don’t have a camera can you? I can see us being separated for good portions, and that’s okay (more on that later), but it’s just another thing requiring paying careful attention to. Energy management on the other hand, whilst being pretty heavily influenced by pace is also greatly impacted by nutrition and hydration. I’ll go over our strategies on this in a later installment.
The attentive reader might have noticed something in the last post. Hint… go back and look at the timeline. You will see that we plan on doing the bulk of this adventure at night. Yeah, at night. Due to schedules, mid-May was the earliest we could attempt the crossing. Any later and we would be bumping into excessive heat, and also bumping up against a Rainier trip that I have planned. Even the date we have selected comes with the chance oppressive heat during the day, especially in the box. So, to minimize the heat exposure we are going to spend the night in the box…
Carr: Them clothes got laundry numbers on ’em. You remember your number and always wear the ones that has your number. Any man forgets his number spends the night in the box.
These here spoons, you keep with ya. Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box.
There’s no playin’ grab-ass or fightin’ in the buildin’. You got a grudge against another man, you fight him Saturday afternoon. Any man playin’ grab-ass or fightin’ in the buildin’ spends a night in the box.
First bell is at 5 minutes of 8:00, when you will get in your bunk. Last bell is at 8:00. Any man not in his bunk at 8:00 spends a night in the box.
There’s no smokin’ in the prone position in bed. To smoke, you must have both legs over the side of your bunk. Any man caught smokin’ in the prone position in bed spends a night in the box.
You’ll get two sheets every Saturday. You put the clean sheet on the top, the top sheet on the bottom, and the bottom sheet you turn into the laundry boy. Any man turns in the wrong sheet spends a night in the box.
‘Tramp’ Potter: Which? —
Carr: No one will sit in the bunks with dirty pants on. Any man with dirty pants on sittin’ on a bunk spends a night in the box.
Any man don’t bring back his empty pop bottle spends a night in the box.
Any man loud-talkin’ spends a night in the box.
You got questions? You come to me. I’m Carr, the floor-walker. I’m responsible for order in here. Any man don’t keep order spends a night in —
Luke: — the box.
Carr: [to Luke] I hope you ain’t gonna be a hard case.
This madness will involve about 8hrs of darkness. With the careful planning that I detailed last time we were able to arrange to have a full moon for this adventure. That will help a lot, but nonetheless there will definitely be an impact of being at nighttime. The first few hours down to the river and to Phantom Ranch should be in good light. The running section past phantom for 5km or so shouldn’t be too slow with good lights. The climb up from Manzanita won’t have many running sections anyway so we should be good there as well. It will however be critical to get on the right trail at that point, or we could be in for a world of hurt. The descent from the north rim will likely be slower than it would be in daylight, but we should have usable light again by the time we reach the 5km before the ranch. After that… it’ll be daylight for the remaining 16km.
All told, by the numbers…there is roughly 3,700m of elevation gain and loss to contend with, and close to 71km of distance to cover. That’s a big day out in anybody’s book.
Never run up a hill that you can’t see the top of… – Overheard from a USAF para-rescue operator
ANTON
(panic starting to show)
Vincent, where’s the shore? We’re too far out.
We have to go back!
JEROME
(calling back)
Too late for that. We’re closer to the other side.
Anton looks towards the empty horizon.
ANTON
What other side? How far do you want to go?!
Do you want to drown us both?
(becoming hysterical)
How are we going to get back?!
Jerome merely smiles back at his younger brother, a disturbingly
serene smile.
JEROME
(eerily calm)
You wanted to know how I did it. That’s
how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything
for the swim back.
We talked at length about this in our latest team call. We all are in basic agreement. The S. Kaibab trail we will run the easy downhill sections and fast shuffle the steeper bits. From the river and past Phantom Ranch, through the box up to Cottonwood or Manzanita we will run what we can both on the uphill and downhill sections. Manzanita to the North Rim we will walk. Likewise we will walk (or crawl by this point) from Pipe Creek to the South Rim. All those words are really just a long winded way of saying… we will run the sections we can, and not run the sections we cannot.
We do plan to stick together as much as possible. I remember years ago I was on a remote backcountry adventure into Whatcom pass with two other guys. Somehow I got separated from the other two as nightfall was rapidly approaching. The weather was piss poor; raining and cold. Not at all uncommon for that neck of the woods. Luckily we had two tents, and that I had one of them. I was mildly hypothermic by the time I had mine set up and was able to crawl into my bag. It was a long night but the morning brought fair weather, and soon we ended up reunited, with no real harm done, other than a lot of worry in both groups. Best practice… don’t get separated.
Caleb suggested a good idea for this trip, that being the ‘last’ guy should be the one carrying the personal locator beacon. I’ll have to make sure I have enough room for that…
Stay tuned….