Building Resilience Through Type 2 Fun
TransAm Bike Race: an epic journey of hallucinations, F-bombs, misery, and eating $3,000 of fast food.
Does this sound like fun?
- Wearing the same sweaty unwashed clothes for 3 weeks?
- Sleeping on park benches or the side of a road?
- Exercising 18 hours a day for 3 weeks?
- Eating $1,000 of fast food every week?
Probably not, but if you've ever run a kilometre or five kilometres and thought “what the hell am I doing, I absolutely hate this”, but then later you thought “that wasn’t so bad, I should do it again”? Maybe the next time you even upped the distance and ran longer again?
Well, that’s Type 2 Fun!!
Type 1 Fun: fun to do, fun to remember
Type 2 Fun: not fun to do, but fun in retrospect
Type 3: Fun: not fun to do, not fun in retrospect
This story is all about Type 2 fun and why I think it’s the best way to build mental resilience that will inevitably help in other areas of life.
The resilience part is pushing through when things are tough despite everything telling you to quit.
Each time you do, it gives you the confidence to tackle the next adversity!
There’s something called “learned helplessness”, which is where people are conditioned to give up in certain situations.
A simple example of that would be when you hear somebody say “Why bother, it’ll never change”?
Apparently, about two thirds of people are like this and the other third view them as only temporary and situational.
For me, over a five-year period, I ended up in some Type 2 Fun activities, each of which unexpectedly built into the next, and during each one, I hated almost every moment.
But somehow I forgot about the suffering and signed up for another.
From being depressed in 2012 after spending $1,000 on a bike and not being able to ride up a small hill in my neighborhood to competing in a 3-day ultra triathlon in 2016.
And then, the race this story is all about…
In 2017, I entered the TransAm Bike Race, which was, by far, the worst Type 2 Fun event of them all.
The race is 6800 km across 10 states of America (or 6900km if you take a few wrong turns as I did).
This is where I:
- Wore the same clothes for 3 weeks straight without washing them
- Slept on park benches, sides of the road, and on many small-town post office floors
- Rode for an average of 18 hours a day (300km per day) for three weeks straight
- Rode through all weather conditions — pouring rain, hail, sleet, and 40-degree temperatures
- Feasted on fast food and questionable gas station supplies
- Ignored swollen joints, the skin peeling away from my hands and feet; and
- Experienced hallucinations while trying to make daily distance goals.
Here are the basic rules
- Start on the West Coast in Astoria, OR. Get to the East Coast in Yorktown VA.
- The entire route is a single stage
- No assistance is permitted
- Forward motion by your own pedal power
- Follow the designated route, make a wrong turn, backtrack
- First racer to the end wins
- No prize for anybody
Sounds Dumb?
Well, yeah.
Apparently, it didn’t sound dumb to 150 idiots like myself. But, at some point during the race, 100 of those idiots changed their minds and called it quits. Roughly only 50 racers finished.
Did I win?
No, and I never intended to. I had planned to finish on the 20th day with an average of 350 km p/d and then go on a romantic holiday in NYC with my girlfriend Mandy.
But it wasn’t to be. I made Mandy wait 3 extra days because I only average 300 kilometres per day. I struggled with pains in almost every joint (knees, ankles, elbows, wrists) and fought against my mind telling me to quit every day.
So in the context of TransAm — Building Resilience Through Type 2 Fun means Don’t Quit When It’s Shit
There is obviously an element of physical fitness required for this, but it actually is more dependent on mental strength.
Plenty of riders who were far fitter than me joined at the start line in Astoria but then quit along the way.
A lot of my preparation was largely mental training (or trying to build resilience).
You can’t really ride 300km per day for 23 days just to check that you are physically capable of doing the race, but you can prepare yourself mentally by:
- Riding 300–400km days for 3 or 4 days straight and rough sleep (on the floor of a toilet block, or seat of a bus shelter)
- Ride on little to no sleep. Go to bed at your normal time, wake up at 2 am and start riding for some sleep deprivation training. String a few of these for bonus sleep deprivation
- Ride when it’s dark and cold or intentionally go for a ride in the pouring rain
- On all long rides, take shorter rest breaks than your body needs/wants
- Force yourself to eat when you don’t want to eat (because you’re eating for tomorrow, not today)
Planning is a critical tool for resilience
Proper planning, builds confidence and will make the challenge more achievable (so you’re aware of what to expect). I read blogs of racers from previous years (do I really have to worry about the bears eating me in the national parks?). I had to understand what equipment I might need on my bike to cross a whole country.
Race organisers give you the full-length GPS route, but no other information like where to eat/sleep, etc. So, I technically traveled the whole route twice, because I did the whole thing on Google Maps & Google Street View over about a four days period. I noted towns, services, fast food locations (with their opening hours) and possible water stops in the middle of nowhere.
I broke this up into 350 km sections, (because that was the plan). I created and attached the daily elevation map to the back of each card and laminated them together to create 20 cards.
For the tech geeks, my bike had the gadgets
- I had a Garmin eTrex 30 up the front for route navigation (follow purple line only, no turn prompts) — (Lithium batteries, replaced only once)
- A Garmin Edge 1000 for ride metrics — I could recharge this on the go — (Temperature, Heart Rate, Time of Day, Etc)
- A GPS “Spot tracker” that runs 24/7 and is used to track riders along the route and also includes an SOS emergency button — (lithium batteries, also only replaced once)
- A dynamo wheel hub that generates power for lights and USB devices as I ride
- Powerful and bright Supernova Dynamo powered lights
- And the geekiest… a USB charging port on the head stem
I also had a portable USB rechargeable light that I could attach to my helmet for times when I wasn’t moving.
The flat lay
Apart from the bike (and bags on the bike), this is everything I took.
- 1 set of cycling clothes
- Some lightweight cold-weather gear (Although the race was in summer — a lot of the places were very cold due to the elevation — and being from Brisbane, this was pretty foreign to me being)
- Thermals for sleeping
- Basic tools
- A small number of spares like spokes, gear cables and brake pads
- Personal hygiene items
- A lightweight air mattress and pillow
I packed all of these items and my bike into the same big bike box that got checked in on the plane. I took roughly three sets of raggy clothes that I could use before the race and carried them on the plane in a plastic bag.
I didn’t have any suitcases, so when I arrived at the airport in Portland, Oregon I unpacked my bike from the box and rode away.
On the morning of the race, I left my raggy clothes in the motel room. I also left that big bulky deodorant can too.
Although this is a “race” and everybody else is “competing” against you, you will see the same faces over the route.
Sometimes they go past you, other times you go past them. You’re just not allowed to ride in their “draft”, but the camaraderie is common.
I met Ryan, at a McDonald's in Lolo, Montana just before midnight after riding 580 km over 35 hours with a 2-hour nap somewhere in the middle.
Looking back, that was my darkest day and the one I hated the most.
Ryan had found a motel room up the road and I asked if I could chip in and stay there too. He was cool with that, which is great because finding a place to stay at midnight is not fun.
The next morning, Ryan was trying to sneak out of the room for a getaway but he made a little bit too much noise and woke me up.
I quickly got up, smashed the free motel breakfast, and chased him down. It wasn’t for about 100 km until I caught him at a food stop.
From here we basically rode “together” because we seemed to be covering the same daily distances. We’d end up eating at the same places and sleeping in the same spots.
Food (or lack of) Will Ruin Your Mood
TransAm is like the anti-diet.
If you get hungry at all, you’ve stuffed up. You’re always eating for later and protecting yourself from hunger. Thinking about tomorrow. The same goes for drinking — if you get thirsty, you’ve left it too late.
The saying is, “TransAm is just a cross-country eating and sleeping competition (Eat Lots, Sleep Little).”
Most times I would walk into a shop, walk the aisle and just grab anything/everything. The goal was to select only items that had a carb/sugar content greater than 50%.
Some common items:
- Chocolate bars
- Oreos
- Some strange savoury cheese & peanut butter biscuits
- Powdered donuts
- Cliff bars
- Pop-Tarts
- Cereal
- Packets and packets of gummy lollies (like at least two or three full packets per day)
At some point on the trip, I started craving Oats and they quickly became a daily must. Like, finding them was priority 1 as soon as I woke up. But, it couldn’t just be oats — throw in some burritos, omelettes, toast and hashbrowns. I was eating so much food.
Here’s my bank card statement from the trip. I had my card, but also $700 USD in cash in case Hicksville Food Co. hadn’t heard of an Eftpos machine or my bank thought this kind of spending was unusual or fraudulent.
On average, I spent $145 per day (almost all on food). As you can see, it’s basically a cross-country fast food tour.
Mental Milestones
Food is great, but mental milestones were also critical!
Breaking a work project down into milestones or deliverables is fairly common and it’s the same with Type 2 Fun.
You need to mentally get yourself through it.
So, a 10 km run is only a 5 km warm-up and a 5 km cool down or a half-marathon is two 10 km runs with a final 1 km of struggle at the end.
During my planning, I mapped 7 milestones in my mind and I used these as mental measurements to chunk the race up — riding to the next milestone, not the end. The biggest distance between milestones was only about 1,500 km between the first and the second.
On a daily basis I broke this down even further:
- I operated in 4 hr blocks that would ideally get me ~100 km
- If I stopped for any reason, I couldn’t stop again for 4 hours
Some racers were even more strict than that.
- They would finish riding by a certain time and start at exactly the same time each morning.
- Mine was far more flexible (no time schedule)
- If I was to do it again, I would probably be more regimented with my starting and finishing — purely from a mental consistency point of view.
The difference between myself and the winner was the daily distance
- We were riding at roughly the same pace, but he was just riding an extra 100 km per day (so 400k)
- Winners of these things typically never stop for a sit-down meal
- They will grab food at a gas station, put it in their pockets/bags, and eat on the bike
- Most will also avoid motels because of the time suck in checking in/checking out and the risk of a comfy bed
But the plan didn’t always play out as intended.
I had this image of Hoosier Pass on the left as my desktop wallpaper for about 4 months leading into the race. The photo has a clear blue sky and the mid-morning sun and it represented the halfway mark, the highest point of the route and people kept saying “it’s all downhill from here”.
As you can see, that was not my reality. It was midnight, pitch black and very cold. It was the coldest night on the route and I was about to descend 1,000 metres of elevation at speed.
Freewheel descending a mountain in sub-1-degree temperature is shivering and teeth chattering to say the least. Here is where I dropped the most F and C Bombs! — It was the absolute pinnacle of Type 2 Fun right here.
How do you deal with a mental milestone not going as planned? Find a post office, eat pop tarts for dinner and get into your emergency Bivvy bag.
Dangers
TransAm has a few dangers, but the ones that concerned me the most were:
- Being attacked by a bear while riding through the national parks
- Being attacked by the very aggressive dogs of Kentucky that I had read so much about
But most of all, it was being hit by a car. For cyclists, it’s a very real danger and even more so in an event like this.
It plays on your mind every time you hear a car coming from behind. You think am I going to be hit by this one?
And unfortunately, a rider named Eric Fishbein who was a few hundred kilometres behind me in Kansas was indeed hit and killed.
The next day, there was a discussion in the Facebook group that the organisers would cancel the race. But, they didn’t. And thinking about it, it’s the style of racing that is more about the personal challenge than about the competition.
In previous similar races where cyclists have been killed and the race has been officially canceled, many riders still continued
So, apart from not riding at all, to protect myself from being hit, the best I can do is be as visible as possible
- Solid and flashing rear lights
- Reflective frame tape
- High visibility vest
- Reflective stripes on my jersey
- Reflective ankle straps
There are also the dangers (or certainty) of injury.
On day 3 I developed severe pain in my left knee that was so bad, I could no longer clip my shoe into the pedal or use my left leg to pedal. With almost 6,000 km to go, I was depressed at the thought of having to quit.
I had never had this type of pain in my preparation rides.
I rested for about 14 hours (and ate lots of food) while working out what I should do next. I came to the conclusion that on a 6,800 km bike ride, my body was going to hurt at some stage, and most likely for the entire stage. To think anything different, was a little naive.
So for the next day, I carried on riding using mostly my right leg and walking up hills — until I had two absolutely cooked knees!
From there I was popping between 6 and 9 Nurofen every day and easing into the pain each morning.
Again, this is just Type 2 Fun.
Another danger is sleep (or lack thereof)
On average, I estimate I slept about 4 hours per night, some nights maybe 6 if I was in a motel. A lot of times, I intended only to have a quick 1 hour or 2-hour nap, so I ended up opting for the floor of a post office.
As an Australian riding in America, it was strange that every town, no matter how small, seemed to have a post office with unlocked doors to their front areas. These made for excellent rest stops after hours. During the heat, they would be cool and during the cold, they would be warm.
At one point in Colorado I was so tired I was hallucinating.
I was riding on a road made of hardcover books laying next to each other. The bumps of the book spines joining each other were actually the road expansion joints and I had some a magical big blue tarp over my head sheltering me from the sun.
It was pretty clear I was sleep-deprived, so I started taking 4 to 5 NoDoz tablets each day.
When I took the above photo, we were close to the Virginia border, with only about 3 days to go. We woke up from some middle-of-nowhere post office and I was keen for some oats in the next small town.
Ryan wanted to push on to a bigger town.
But I was adament on getting oats, so I stopped and let Ryan continue on.
I rode the final 1,000 kilometres by myself trying to catch Ryan but never did.
But… I made it to the finish line — The Yorktown Monument.
And as you can see. Nobody cares!!
You’re lucky if you end up finishing during daylight because there’ll be a chance somebody will be there to take a photo.
Lucky for me, I arrived mid-afternoon to a few riders who had finished within the prior 12 hours. Ryan ended up finishing about two hours before I did.
Regrettably, I didn’t stick around to swap too many stories — I was now three days late for a romantic holiday.
Within 45 minutes of finishing, Mandy had loaded my bike into our rental car, raided my bags and found powdered donuts that I had forgotten about and carried across the country… and hurried me up.
So I got in the car, we drove a few meters down the road, until she kicked me out at the beach to go have a shower. My 23 days without deodorant wasn’t doing it for her! Luckily I couldn’t smell myself.
Here are some of the stats for distance, elapsed hours and elevation gain
- My shortest day was 177 km and my longest was 457 km
- Towards the end though, the time of the day no longer mattered and the days just became one
- Although the shortest was 177km, I was still at it for 22 hours
- As you can imagine, the distance was highly dependent on terrain and weather
- That particular 177 km day had a headwind so bad I couldn’t ride any faster than about 8 km/h
How was the romantic holiday in New York?
Well, for some reason Mandy thought my favourite mode of transport around NYC would be by bike?
But my body was in recovery mode. All I wanted to do was eat and sleep. Wherever we went, I would fall asleep.
While we were there, she took me to meet some of her family in New York for the first time.
To this day, she reminds me of how embarrassing it was when on the first morning there, I demolished 4 bowls of their breakfast cereal.
I was eating outrageous amounts for about a month while my body recovered and repaired.
I had also ended the race with a swollen left Achilles that took about three months to fully subside, but it never seemed like a major issue once I stopped riding. And, my skin grew back on my hands and feet over the next few weeks.
So, what were the learnings?
There’s the old 7 P’s (Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance)
Proper planning and preparation is an absolute must for any Type 2 Fun activity! It gives you the confidence to push through when it’s difficult because you know what to expect next
Understand that (in the scheme of things) difficult situations are only temporary
Work is not always going to be Type 1 Fun, there will be a large aspect of Type 2 Fun. Situations will have good hours, bad hours, good days, bad days, etc.
I find growth happens when it’s uncomfortable and you’re feeling stretched or pressured.
If you want something enough, make sure it’s prioritised
Things are not just going to happen for you. To achieve a chunky goal, it will need to be prioritised among the many possibilities competing for your time and effort.