Flow Master VI Report by Dustin White
It’s now November 2022 which means that we have all just exited the most prestigious, annual sporting season of the year; the FATS Flow Master Championship Tournament & Festival of Greatness Volume VI…aka #FFMCT&FoGV6. Surpassing this milestone seems to be a fitting time to retrace my steps over the past few months regarding this event to share with all of you loyal readers a few fun stories, observations, thanks, and lessons learned.
I want to start this tale with a brief recap of the season of many off-seasons. The spring of 2022 was solid for me in terms of training and general performance. After smashing Big Frog 65 and doing some mountain camping and rides with Victor, I was in awesome shape for longer mountain bike events. Although I did not have many later events planned for the year, I felt that local rides, fun, and shenanigans could hold my fitness together up to #FFMCT&FoGV6. What actually happened was a bit the opposite. You see, starting in April I changed up some work responsibilities which meant ready or not, the travel gauntlet was about to restart post-COVID. Mid-June brought off-season #1 due to a week-long trip to northern Mexico. This trip was a great experience to meet so many team members in person, a most unique culinary experience of Tacos de Chapulin (look it up), and not too much of a fitness interruption.
Coming back from Mexico I rebounded pretty easily back into shape only to move to off-season #2. The first part of this stint included my first visit to India and even the continent of Asia as a whole. In 12 days, I spent over 40 hours on planes, visited the Taj Mahal, ate a meal at the Golden Temple, wore a turban, and became an Indian social media sensation. I could tell many days worth of stories from this trip but I will save that for in-person chats. Coming back from India I was home for 4 days only to turn around and road trip to Nashville for a week to support a business event. On the return home I ended off-season #2 with two memorable rides. On Friday, August 5th I ascended Lookout Mountain 3 times on paved roads. This was actually a pleasant ride, but I completely underestimated how much fluid I lost in the early morning stickiness of the Chattanooga mountains. The following day I wanted to check my fitness so rolled out for a solo 75 miles. Everything was peachy for the first 2.5 hours until I ran out of fluids. I thought a store stop could get me back on terms but oh buddy was I wrong. The last 2 hours of that ride were a death march into crackacolypse including a meltdown visit to Zaxbys to replenish enough fuel to make it the final 20 minutes to my house. Fitness levels at this point…not great!
After a few more weeks at home, I built back some fitness only to start off-season #3, a trip to Des Moines for a week and a weekend in Gainesville to conduct a shenanigan-filled celebration for my friend’s birthday. Returning to Augusta on Labor Day the only thing on my mind was how terribly uphill of a battle it was going to be to prepare for #FFMCT&FoGV6. People claim “fresh is fast,” but I believe my sporadic off-season reality debunked some of that philosophy.
Planning for a successful race day included several variables that needed to be worked on. To make this a fun writing challenge, I want to recap these variables in the format of 5 W questions…
Let us begin with…“Who would I be racing?” Now first and foremost I must recognize that this list includes 120+ fine women, men, and youngsters from this and many other areas. I greatly appreciate and feel for any effort a participant makes to get prepared for this or any event, so do not think I am discrediting anyone else’s involvement. That said, I want to highlight the events of this year’s rendition of the race which evolved to a 2-man duel with my now most familiar training partner, David Gunnerson. I cannot say definitively if it is rare or common for your most frequent training partner to be your closest competitor, but I certainly anticipated that to be the case going into #FFMCT&FoGV6. Simply put, David is an incredibly gifted athlete and graciously kicks my teeth in on any training ride that is somewhere besides a mountain bike trail. His athleticism is highlighted by 2 characteristics that I knew would be a challenge for the race:
1. He has so much power for short, intense efforts that it may make you sick to witness or know about…unfortunately, I constantly witness this firsthand
2. He has no ability to ride easily…even on our recovery rides together I must constantly ask/remind him to ride easier. The man is a one-trick pony and his skill of choice is inflicting pain.
Knowing so much about David’s fitness levels made me pick apart the fact that to win I would have to go nuts on all downhills and not blow up going uphill.
Knowing a bit of the Who, let’s transition to “Where in the world was my fitness?” The weeks of September and October I felt like the children from Stranger Things running around yelling “Will?!” My fitness was 10-15% lower than it could have been and I had no ringer of a plan for how to get it back. Looking back, I did not try and special intervals or difference of approach from other seasons or race prep, but I did track my ride metrics in a notebook. If any ride had some sort of structure, intervals, or timing associated with it, I would log that down to benchmark against in a few weeks time. Fortunately, this kept me motivated to compete against myself on similar types of rides and slowly but surely I did rebound enough on the fitness train. The only other wild card I had in mind was to compete in the 100 mile Saluda Gravel race. At that time, I had very little top end but did feel strong in terms of endurance. Unfortunately for that race I flatted and pedaled myself back to the start. Fortunately for #FFMCT&FoGV6, that gravel race left a sour taste in my mouth which kept me really motivated through October. I paired this sour taste with that of vomit and blood from trying to do intervals with David and all in all that helped me find some fitness that had been fleeting since the string of off-seasons.
Next “What happened during the race from my viewpoint?” Fortunately, I knew that David’s single speed would force him to ride up the gravel climb super hard. At least those 3 minutes of the race I knew what to expect! After cresting that climb, I moved into the lead. Quickly after dragging us along to the singletrack, it was all systems go. Over the weeks before the race, I became very familiar with the first Great Wall descent and I was stoked to go as full send as possible down it. On some training rides, I even picked up on a neat sound when riding downhill a bit quick…tires hooking up sometimes sound like unzipping a zipper. You then must ask what the zipper unveils on the other side? I am here to tell you it is just white-knuckled hold on for dear life and don’t hit the brakes gnar! Going into Ewok village I saw David behind on some of the switchbacks and was hoping to have a wider gap at that point but truthfully, I couldn’t tell what our separation was. For the fun, intermittent descents of Great Wall I was having a blast and feeling good. On the uphills, the only thing that came to my mind was to keep my cadence high. If I was spinning, maybe I was winning. If I got too grindy early on, I feared an inevitable onset of cramps may come. Making it to the long climb out of Great Wall I felt good still but had no gauge of my gap to David. Unfortunately, at the top and beginning Skinny I could see David was not too far behind so there was certainly not going to be a “settle into things” sort of pace. On the freshly buffed-out Skinny, I just tried to keep the throttle pegged and knew it was mostly downhill rollers until the final climb out. One descent I remember laughing to myself as I got a bit kicked sideways and thankfully the zipper sound came back and I got traction again. Leaving Skinny and starting Brown Wave I again saw David for a final time but felt confident with my memory of Brown Wave that I could hold on. That trail is always a blast until the darn climb starts at the bench. If there were ever any dark times for me in the race it was in that stretch…I just wanted to hit the gravel and be done. The only drama for my race was leaving Brown Wave and heading onto the powerline climb. Somehow my rear tire slipped out on that RH turn and the nose of my saddle jabbed into my left hamstring. It immediately started to knot up in a cramp which made the climb to the parking lot a bit more unpleasant than imagined. Thankfully as I turned to look back onto the single track after the RH towards the parking lot, I didn’t see David so I could keep the last 90 seconds of the race a bit more casual. I got to blow some kisses to the wonderful race promoters and slide into the finish a mere 20 seconds up.
Moving away from prep or race recap, I want to address a surrounding question of “When do our awesome volunteers even sleep?” Although I try to lend a hand a few times in the year, my efforts pale in comparison to the trail volunteers from SORBA and the volunteers who helped during race day. I have lived here nearly a decade now yet still know how special of a volunteer community this area has compared to places I have lived before. All of you make our trail systems a beacon that attracts many out-of-town visitors but also keeps us locals spoiled. You are incredible for what you do, thank you! Also a special thank you to Kim and Drew Jordan for volunteering their spirit and energy to host this race! I consider you both family and it’s an honor to work, ride, celebrate, and navigate this rollercoaster of a world with you. Never change cool kids and know that so many of us deeply appreciate everything you do!
To conclude, I want to share some observations about “Why I love this race so much?” Put briefly, this race is truly one of a kind. This year, two points stuck out to me supporting this claim. First, the format of a mass start, non-lap, XC-length race is something I have never seen elsewhere. The course we have completely supports this style of race and it is just an awesome experience during the event. What this format allows however is even more unique. Having a mass start “point to point” style of race gives the vibe of a truly significant finish line. It isn’t like a lap-based race where you see people many times over. Instead, you see people at the end of their adventure. As such, everyone seems completely committed to sticking around, enjoying storytelling about their journey, and cheering on anyone else who is concluding theirs. Many people I have spoken with who come to this event from out of town support this same opinion. The FATS Flow Master crowd and following are what brings them back. You, all of you make this race something to adore. Never forget that point, and let’s keep people talking for years to come!
-Dustin White