When the Best Training Means Taking Amtrak
Words & Photos By: Kurt Refsnider
Balancing life and training and a never-ending longing for adventure (small or large) is a constant challenge for me,
something to which anyone from weekend warrior to professional athlete can likely relate. We only have so much time and energy with which to work, and compromise is always going to be key to making it all fit together as best as possible.
This spring, I've been trying to find balance in preparing for the 370-mile Grand Loop Race,
a fat bike expedition in Iceland, a birding trip with my folks, and spending some time with my girlfriend Claire who lives in Wyoming. On top of all that, my paramount goal for any ultra is to show up to the start line absolutely stoked to ride and with zero sensations of being burnt out from the prior months of preparation. In order to help with that, I had blocked off mid-April to late May on my calendar to spend training at home in Arizona, my longest stint at home in the past year.
And then Claire threw a wrench in what felt like my perfect plan when we were on the phone one evening.
A wrench in the plan
“I’ll be flying out of Denver. What if we met up there for a few days when I get back the first week of May?” she asked with some hesitation. “I know you wanted to actually be at home for a whole month, though . . .” Her voice trailed off. That’s when the part of my brain that loves creative adventures entered the conversation.
But making the riding as much of an adventure as possible has proven time and time again to be the best way for me to deeply enjoy training. And sometimes, bikepacking trips are the perfect way to do that, especially when I’m seeking big volume. That proved to be the solution to how to best combine spending some time with Claire in May right in between a couple big-volume training blocks.
I replied after pondering scenarios for a moment.
“I could get a direct flight from Prescott to Denver and then ride mostly dirt home after a few days together. That would be fun, and it’d fit in right when I need a bigger-volume week.”
“Really?” She sounded relieved.
“Really! How about a long weekend in Salida, and then I’ll pedal south from there when you head north toward home.”
I mapped out a few ride options, quickly realized it’d take well over a week given the distance. But what about making a bit of a compromise and making use of Amtrak? Ultratraining! Rickey Gates, friend and professional-runner-turned-conceptual-runner, combined his love for Amtrak and long runs in a fun little film last year called Ultratraining. I loved it and did just what he’d do in this situation — made use of the train line to make the ride fit my training timeline a bit better, 500 miles of pedaling rather than 900 would be far more reasonable.
So the plan:
Fly to Denver. Spend a long weekend in Salida riding some gravel and relaxing with Claire. Then I’d strap camping gear to my Vault and pedal south to Albuquerque over five days and hop on the Amtrak there. Five hours later, I’d be in Flagstaff, just one more day’s pedal from home.
That's exactly how it played out.
Claire and I had a delightful few days in the Arkansas Valley, car camping, relaxing, and riding scenic gravel roads in strangely summery weather. But when it was time for me to head south, my visions of comfortably warm spring pedaling met a reality check in the form of steady cold rain the entire first day of riding, along with blizzard conditions atop Poncha Pass. Then the second day consisted of mud gambling across the Taos Plateau, just barely skirting through with my tires only occasionally completely caking with clay mud and jamming in the frame. And then the third day was spent dodging more thunderstorms and cold rain on the beautiful High Road to Santa Fe. Conditions may not have been ideal, but the scenery was stunning, I loved connecting together familiar places on new-to-me routes, and I was able to work in interval sessions along the way to give my legs all they needed from a training perspective.
In Albuquerque,
I rode into the city via the beautiful Bosque trails beneath the sinuous strip of cottonwoods growing along the Rio Grande. Those trails run within less than a mile of the Amtrak station where I pulled off my bags, rolled the bike into the baggage car of the unsurprisingly 2-hour-late train, and then I stared out the window and watched the Colorado Plateau scenery sail past until the sun set somewhere east of Flagstaff. I camped just outside of town, and then spent the sixth and final day of my trip on familiar and chunky jeep roads through the Verde Valley, did more intervals up into and past Jerome, and then followed the old railroad grade back toward Prescott to where my old truck still sat patiently waiting at the city’s little airport.
I collapsed in a chair on my deck
beneath the ponderosa pines when I got home, contentedly exhausted from the ride, happy to be home, glad to have been able to spend some time with Claire, and proud of the legitimate training that I was able to work in amongst all that. The only compromise felt like that I had left home for 10 days when I had planned to stay put, but it didn’t really even feel like a compromise in retrospect. For me, that meant it was about the best approach to training I could have conceived.
