Interview with 2015 Race Across America finisher, Shu Pillinger

The biggest highlight was actually finishing the race as it’s something I’ve been trying to do for a couple of years now, with you guys from the HPL involved both years. Since I heard that no British woman had ever completed the race solo, it’d been a bit of an ambition of mine to be that woman.

Another highlight was getting past the point where I fell and broke my collar bone last year, so up until that point everything had been about getting there and making it further than I’d ever ridden before. Getting past that point helped ease the nervousness I’d had with things like crossing railway lines – the crew said they saw a noticeable difference in me and how I rode after that.

Another massive highlight was going through Monument Valley – the scenery is amazing, it’s just an incredible place. 

Something else that amazed me was just how well all the crew got on again this year. In fact, their antics helped them become a really popular team with quite a big social media following. By the time we got to the finish we had something like 120 people who’d stayed up to watch us crossing the line.

One of the low points would be the constant battle of trying not to fall asleep on the bike. So you find yourself constantly craving interaction with people. I was constantly on the radio to the crew saying “please talk to me... play some music... read out some messages from Facebook” and when you’re told there’s no internet connection or there’s not much of a response due to the guys being busy, that’s ten minutes of quiet when you’re really likely to fall asleep. So you end up with this horrible feeling that you have to beg for attention, which makes you feel immensely guilty because you know they have tons of other things to do in the car behind you.

The crew were great at coming up with little treats and surprises. We would do things like have ice cream stops and one time, crew chief, Chris got me this massive tub of raspberry sorbet which I’d asked for -- little things like that would just seem so awesome when you’re on the road and struggling. It’s so motivating. 

Then there was the humorous stuff. We’d all chosen a fancy dress costume at the start for someone else. I knew they had those with them so I was waiting to see who would put theirs on and where. One of the funniest moments was James running around the desert dressed as a penguin and there was another time Tobina dressed up as an angry bird. Then when we were in the Appalachians, I was going along with my head down, just trying to get up this steep hill and suddenly I hear “Well this is a pointless game then if you’re not even looking for me” and I look up to see Erica dressed as Where’s Wally suspended in a rock, which was just so funny when you’re finding the going tough!

I was being monitored with a core temperature thermometer pill (taken orally) so the team was always aware how well I was coping. There was a stage very early on in the race where I felt I was getting really hot and was getting really worried about it, so the guys had to cool me down pretty quickly. Then there was another point in the desert where it was so much hotter than last year, getting up to temperatures like 45 degrees, and you can feel yourself burning up and getting nauseous, so the guys kept cooling me down with lots of ice. I never actually got heat stroke but did once get pulled into the car when my body temperature went up to 39 degrees, which, without proper management, could have been pretty dangerous.

I think in 2014 our nutrition and hydration plan was pretty spot on. The guys were monitoring my urine osmolality very closely to make sure I was always well hydrated. As long as I was within my safe range I was allowed to carry on riding. So my worry for 2015 was that we would actually be a little blasé about nutrition and hydration as we were so good with it last year. There was this thought that because we’d done it so well we’d almost neglect it this year, meaning something quite basic could go wrong. Fortunately the nutrition strategy was absolutely spot on again. We were always hearing of incidences where other riders had made pretty big mistakes with their hydration. There were two separate riders that my crew helped out, who they discovered on their own, severely dehydrated and struggling in over 40 degree heat. Fortunately the guys had a can of Coke handy to help them out.

Ana: Shu had two bottles attached to the bike, one was water and the other would be one of five other different drinks, which we varied to help prevent palate fatigue. Each drink had varying amounts of sodium, carbohydrates, caffeine etc, that we would give to Shu based on factors like the temperature, time of day, how dehydrated she was, if she needs to recover, how tired she was etc. 

Shu: There were instances when I would have other drinks like Starbucks and Coca Cola – there are times when Coke really does rescue you from pretty much anything, particularly when it’s really hot and you’re really tired. 

I’m vegetarian, trying to be vegan, so the food was as vegan as it could be. I was having lots of snacks, salty things, crackers and pretzels, tortillas and these amazing pita chips we found with a great texture. I actually had a “feed bag” which was a bit like a horse’s nose bag, attached to my handle bars. The guys would put loads of different snacks in there so as I was going along I’d have these little surprises like Skittles, Percy Pigs, or bits of cut up donut!

Something we discovered I could eat well last year were wraps with black olive paste which was lovely and salty and I digested them really easily. I was also getting lots of homemade food and vegetable smoothies this year too which Shilpa on my crew invented and put together.

No, I knew right from the start that I was going to finish this year. There was no way I wasn’t going to get across that finish line, because if I had doubts I wouldn’t have started. I know I wasn’t going as fast as I perhaps could have been and being really careful around things like railway lines and conscious of knowing I could fall asleep so easily, I knew I could do it as long as I’m aware of those things and the crew can help me stay awake. I have no problem with the cycling, it was the staying awake part that was going to be my biggest challenge. There wasn’t any part of the course I knew I couldn’t do, I just had to get through them and to the finish in one piece.

The after effects are not what people would expect. People assume you’re going to be really stiff and have all sorts of muscle problems, but I didn’t have anything like that. The problems I have are more nerve related, which is typical of ultra-cycling. People tend to get ulna nerve problems where the nerve can get trapped and cause considerable pain and a tingling in your fingers. I don’t actually have any in my fingers but I do have some from pressure on the handle bars in my palms. Fortunately for me I know it’s temporary, but a lot of ultra cyclists will say it causes them permanent damage.

It's slightly different with my feet - where they meet the cleats of my cycle shoes, I have quite a lot of tingling - I can wiggle my toes and it’s not numb, but it’s painful. Going on previous races, it could be up to three months before things start to improve with the nerve problems.

The other side effect is how frazzled your brain gets. From what I understand the only other people who get it are new mothers! It’s like your brain has decided that certain things are less important and has other things it needs to try and work out. I haven’t slept for longer than two hours at a time for 12 days, which means I was never really writing the memories from each day into my brain properly as you’re just not able to form your thoughts into memories. As a result, some of the details from the past few weeks are a little disjointed, so I might seem quite lucid now, but at some point I have real difficulty remembering words and with my decision-making – even deciding if I want a coffee is proving quite hard! Multi-tasking will definitely be off the agenda for a while.

I could never consider trying to beat Seana’s time. There are lots of determined riders coming along who could possibly beat her time, but I’m not one of them. I believe I’ve met my aim, which was to be the first British female solo rider to complete RAAM and nobody can ever take that away from me.

Yes, there are a few things. Already this year I’m lined up to do Paris-Brest-Paris, which is a 1,200km cycle from Paris to Brest and back again. Then in October I’ve got the Barcelona Iron Man. It’s my last year before I go up in age group so I thought I’d have a go at seeing how fast a qualification time I could get for Hawaii. I haven’t really been swimming since I broke my collar bone, so I’ll probably bumble along for the swim in Barcelona and do what I normally do and pass loads of people on the bike and hope for the best with the run! 

In terms of other challenges, I’ve got this idea about doing a triple or quinta ironman distance. Only a few women have done a deca ironman distance before. There are two different ways of doing a deca, one way is to do 10 iron mans in 10 days and then there’s the continuous deca which starts off with the 38km swim, then a 1,800km bike ride, finishing with a 422km run. If I do try the deca I haven’t thought about when I might want to do it yet though!

I also quite fancy doing something that doesn’t involve biking. Maybe something like the Mongol Derby which is 1,000km through the Mongol Steppe – I learnt to ride a horse before a bike so that could be quite interesting. There’s also the Iditarod Trail which is a 1,000 mile race across Alaska with dogs and a sled, which could be fun. Other than that, I want to get my 5k parkrun PB down as well!