Duos and Solos - Hans Brown and George Puttner

Steve Davidson

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Q: Having finished third last year with Craig, what did you learn from that experience that you carried forward into your preparations for this year?

A: Unlike in 2008, I had a lot of understanding of how the race worked, the food requirements, the functioning of the pit crew, the ability to work with others on the track and so on. As a result, I was a lot calmer before this year’s race. Last year’s race also helped us to manage 2009 expectations. We could not control how strong the competition would be but we could set ourselves targets for the number of laps (bearing in mind that the weather conditions in 2008 had been near perfect for us - there had been no rain, a lot of cloud and thus ‘relatively’ cool temperatures). It turned out that several of the duo teams had actually seen our 3rd place with the 140 laps and set themselves 140 as the target. The strategy of longer shifts (from 1 hour into 2.5 hours) had worked well in 2008 so we had planned to repeat this. I tried to pass as much of this experience onto Cyrille since he was doing the duo for the first time.

Q: With the addition of the glass on the pitwall and the crackdown on the numbers of people in the changeover area this year, how did that effect the running of your team?

A: This was an un-anticipated problem for us. Unlike the majority of duo teams who tend to operate on 3 lap shifts for the majority of the 24 hour period, we had been planning to skate in long shifts. We had assumed that our pit crew could pass us things in a particular spot in the pits area (i.e. food and/or supplement drink refills) as this had worked well in 2008. As a consequence of these changes, we had to take more things with us on the track and decided to shorten our shifts a little. We ended up going for 7-10 laps shifts or approximately one to one and a half hours. Hence these two changes were a problem for us and required a tactical change. We agreed that it was a good idea to restrict the people movement in the pits, however we thought it would have been appropriate to make an exception for solo and duo teams to allow at least one member of the pit crew into the changeover area

Q: Talking of the team, whilst there are only two of you actually on the circuit, you do have a support crew. Tell me about them and the roles they fulfill.

A: This year we had 3 pit crew members – our two girl-friends – and one specialist who flew in from Austria to be the pit crew boss. Reinfrid massaged our legs after every shift and told us what to do, eat, when to sleep etc. We had given him instructions before the race as to what we wanted our schedule to look like. He really did an amazing job including telling our girl-friends to give us some space! The girls took turns in manning the cell-phone to communicate with the skater on the track. They also kept a careful eye for shift changeovers and also prepared fresh fruit for us, got pasta, checked the results, lap times etc. All three of them supported us tremendously! It was great having such a great support. The pit crew also helps just before and after the race when all the equipment has to be shuffled around (unlike 10-man teams we had to drag ALL our staff into the pits, rather than leaving stuff at the camping area). The pit crew also kept our skates in order – oiling, changing wheels etc. I’d recommend that a minimum of two supporters is required for this kind of adventure! I am still amazed how we managed so well with just 1 full-time pit crew in the previous year!

Q: I know you started training for this event towards the end of last year. Could you give me an idea of what that training involved.

A: Like the year before, I had signed up Ghizlane Samir to be my coach and she again did a brilliant job, writing all my training programs and guiding me through the whole process. I would not have been able to complete all this training without her professional and experienced guidance. She really is amazing! In short, the training is tough. Part of it is the intensity and duration of some of the training sessions. The other part is the solitude of it all. Most of the training is done on your own. It really becomes a significant part of your life. After a while the physical challenge is manageable, your body simply becomes capable of skating or cycling at a given heart rate for hours on end. You then have to overcome your mental challenges, training when you don’t feel like it, occupying your mind whilst cycling around Putney at two in the morning and looking at clock-towers for the time because you lost your wrist-watch at the start of your session all the while thinking you’d much rather be sleeping. In the end I am not sure what is more important, the actual race day or the grueling journey to get ready for race day. You really do become something else in the process. From early December until the race, I averaged 4 training sessions per week. Not just skating but also cycling, running and gym workouts (with specialist exercises that nobody else in the gym does!). Additionally, there is core training to build up abdominals and back support. This year’s training was tougher than in 2008. My coach naturally gave me more to do because I was building on the 2008 training. The training sessions are a mix of endurance, intervals and power training. A lot of training focuses on training at specific heart rate levels. Over time the sessions build up in length with typically one endurance session per week. For example, in April and May we did several 100km skates as pure training exercises. Some of the training is set for the middle of the night or very early morning. Make no mistake - a decent preparation for the duo race is quite a significant task.

Q: Coming to the race itself, you seemed to start off very well, in fact out of all the UK teams you were running in second for a long time despite them having 10 team members. Here’s a photo showing you guys in 59th overall after about 5.5 hours. Were you aware of how well you were going?  In the duo competition you started off around tenth but gradually started climbing your way up. Was that your intended plan?

A: Yes, we started off strong. We had expected that our initial shifts would be the fastest. We averaged 9:05 for the first six shifts which was good given that we did 21 laps each in that time. We were surprised that this placed us so highly on the scratch ranking. That said, we were obviously much more interested in the duo rankings. We couldn’t have skated much faster (my average heart rate for each of the first two 1-hour shifts was 184!) so our attitude was if that placed us 10th then so be it. However, I did expect other teams to slow down and possibly stop based on what I had observed last year. (Unfortunately we ended being one of the stopping teams ourselves.) Via Reinfrid, we agreed that we would start to take things a little easier around the track from 10pm. The cooler night temperatures made the skating a lot easier and it become very enjoyable for me. Around midnight we started to work together with two other duo teams and thus we basically drafted together for five or six hours. Consequently each of the duo teams moved up in ranking and it got us to 6th position (out of 48 teams) at around six in the morning. Needless to say we were feeling pretty darn good. Although a podium position was not looking likely given the way the top three teams were going, we nevertheless looked very strong (I think we were coming around 70th or 75th overall at that point).

Q: There were a lot more duo teams this year, did you notice that around the track?

A: To be honest, the increased number of duo teams (from 30 to 50) wasn’t really any more noticeable than in the previous year. Towards the end of the race I noticed a lot of the Duo and Solos were working together in pacelines etc.

Q: Is there a lot of camaraderie amongst these teams generally or does it only become apparent once the results are basically determined?

A: Yes, there is a lot of working together between the solo and duo teams. It’s generally difficult to draft at Le Mans since most skaters are only out on the track for one lap. Thus the solo and duo skaters inevitably end up skating with themselves, rather than trying to get a new draft partner on each lap, and thus it is possible that fairly decent size pacelines form – we were up to 12-15 skaters at points and our rolling speed was above 30k’s per hour in many places! The advantage to be gained from this is tremendous. It seems that people are very happy to work together and to help each other because they know that it would be a lot tougher on their own. Skating around the track for one lap is fun. Skating around the track for an hour or more, especially once you already have 200 kilometres under your belt, is mentally and physically very tough. The feeling is sickening really. Solos and duos want to avoid that feeling as much as possible. Generally it is irrelevant where teams are ranked. If you happen to be skating at the same pace then you stay together. The team we skated with for several hours was actually three laps behind us, but at that point in the race we were going at the same speed. And both teams appreciated the ability to work together and consequently we were consistently gaining on everyone else. Really the only reason to break from a paceline is if you consider that you really are either too slow or too fast for it. Considering which teams are actually on the paceline is secondary. Another mentally depressing aspect is whereas, early on in the race, you are drafting with a 9min-lap skater, ten hours later you find yourself drafting with a 10:30 or 11min-lap skater. However, if you are going around with a whole lot of solos and duos, that depressing factor doesn’t seem to be there.

Q: In the early morning your partner Cyrille (right, centre)had to withdraw with a knee injury. How did that come about? How is he now?

A: Cyrille has had some trouble with his knee in the past. However, it hadn’t been a problem during the training in the preceding months. He said that it was a bit painful early on in the race but it didn’t sound like it was going to be serious. The doctors were actually very direct with him and advised him that he should not be skating at all in the future unless he completed surgery to strengthen his tendons. It was awful news for him to be told this, especially in the middle of the race.

By the time we got back to Paris on Sunday night his knee was pretty much okay. However now he is not in good shape. He is not able to do any physical activity. Even if he goes for a long walk, then he will feel pain in his knee the following day. He is now starting to talk to doctors as to surgery options and implications. Apparently this was going to happen sooner or later so it wasn’t triggered by the Le Mans race – it just happened to occur at this time. But for him this is tough, since he gets tremendous enjoyment out of doing sport.

Q: Obviously that was a major blow to your hopes, but you continued alone for a while. How did you deal with that physically and mentally?

I dealt with it terribly. I had just set off on a new shift around 6am, and we were coming 6th. We were still drafting with the other duo team (this team eventually finished in 7th position). I got a call on the cell – this was the first time that Cyrille actually talked since the start of the race. He told me had bad news, that the doctors had examined his knee and told him to stop skating. I said ‘ok, thanks for letting me know, I will have a think about what to do’. At this point I had slept for about 3 hours since Saturday morning and had done a total of six or seven hours on the track. I could not think clearly. The news more or less came as a complete surprise. I became very depressed, couldn’t think logical or clearly, could not think of anything positive – such as setting myself little goals –beating the number of laps i did last year, going for a top10 finish etc etc. Physically I was in great shape at this point. I had no pain whatsoever – my lower back was strong because of all the core training and the way i had been tackling the hill on each lap. I was stronger than ever – my coach told me to keep going that i was strong enough to skate the rest of the race solo. But something went wrong, I didn’t believe that I could do it. A lot of other things come to my mind when I think about this moment now and I can’t really write them all down. All I can say that it was a very low point for me, and i don’t have low points very often. I am generally an optimistic and ambitious person, but in this situation, I consider that I failed big time. With the benefit of hindsight I would say that I should have visualized these potential situations in advance and pre-determined what I would do in each case. The other thing is that I should not have stayed off the track for too long – from 8am-9am and again from 10-11am. At 11.15am I decided that I would just stop. This with only 4 ¾ hours to go. Truly unbelievable. So my mental failure basically killed my physical state. I had given up.

Q: You finally decided to call it a day just after 11am. What factors influenced your decision?

A: Not thinking clearly. I focused only on the negative. Why bother to go out on the track again? It’s so damn hot. This event is meant to be fun. I could injure myself. How much would my body have to pay in months to come now in exchange for continuing to skate? Why did I not think of all the training sessions I had completed? The good physical state that I was in. The thought of crossing the line at 4pm. The thought of doing it for all of the team! The thought of doing it all those that had supported over the previous months. My decision was not a rational one. It was very stupid. I guess it’s easy to say that now.

Q: Despite only being on the track for just over 18 hours as opposed the other teams 24, you still finished 25th in class with 103 laps. What satisfaction can you take from that?

A: It was depressing how easily we could have been much further up the ladder if I had just kept going instead of stopping, even with regular breaks. So overall this gave us very little satisfaction. We felt like we sold ourselves short.

Q: And finally, what are your plans for next year? Is the duo unfinished business or will you maybe try a solo attempt? or will you call it quits?

A: Plans for next year – I feel that I totally owe it to myself to do the race again. I can’t believe that I ‘threw away’ all the training preparation that I had done. The 2008 and 2009 races helped me tremendously in learning to be persistent and disciplined. And it’s helped me realise that it’s possible to achieve things that might seem ambitious if you just start working towards it. Although this might sound very cheesy - I really have applied much of the gained experience in other parts of my life – and the passion associated with the training and the race has produced many happy moments!! Hence most likely I will be there again in 2010 - for a 3rd consecutive year! If Cyrille gets the surgery done and is up for it then I would love to have another attempt with him. Failing that I would need to look for a new partner yet again. I haven’t ruled out a Solo attempt but this is less likely.

When I started writing this article, I described the Duo and Solo competitors as crazy but I can now see that as inaccurate. Instead of having a kind of insanity, these people are, in fact, incredibly tough mentally as well as physically. It’s not an event to be taken lightly in terms of preparation and subjects the participants to a massive draining of their mental and physical resources and yet, like marathon running, it seems to have some sort of addictive quality with many competitors returning to test themselves on an annual basis. Crazy? Maybe, but undeniably dedicated and hard working too and those are the qualities that outshine the madness.

I’d like to thank Hans Brown and George Puttner for their time and invaluable insight in preparing this article.

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