Tour of the Dragon Race Recap: “Do Your Best” While Supported by Royalty and a Bhutanese Road Angel at the Toughest One-Day Mountain Bike Race

I don’t know of another race on the planet where you can meet the Prime Minister at the start line before riding next to a Royal Prince while he offers you words of encouragement and support as you pedal across his beautiful country. The Tour of the Dragon, a 160 mile, one-day mountain bike race through the mountains of Bhutan and which consistently has a drop out rate of about 50%, is the creation of His Royal Highness Prince Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck. After placing third one year, His Royal Highness now spends his time on race day moving around the course to ride with various participants offering assistance and encouragement. Want to ride bikes with a Prince? Come to Bhutan. But you’ll have to earn that experience because even for repeat ultra-endurance athletes this event isn’t for the faint of heart.

Setting the Stage – A One-Off Riding Experience:

We don’t have climbs or descents in the U.S. like they have here in Bhutan. Though I trained by doing some of the toughest rides I could find in California (on my mountain bike) in prep for this event, I knew that these local organized rides would not come close to simulating the conditions I would experience in Bhutan. Even the Death Ride, Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge or a gravel grinder in the Tahoe area are not in the same category as Tour of the Dragon. At home we can climb long, steep and at altitude in many places but usually not for 25-30 miles straight nor on roads that range from marginal pavement to mud bogged, rocky double track and while moving through 3-4 micro-climates with temperatures ranging from 40-90 degrees. Those change ups happen in Bhutan just in one climb. That is prior to descending in the same conditions, often with thousands of feet of sheer drop off right next to one side of the narrow track and while dodging packs of cows and stray dogs.

Mud can be sticky or slick. On uphills sticky causes one to have to put out more effort with each pedal stroke and when slick our efforts can be thwarted by too much movement away from the forward direction. When going downhill mud can be dangerous, partly because it is difficult to judge the changing conditions quickly when moving at fast speeds so there is a lot taken for granted and a lot of hoping things work out while being required to mentally be on your game 100% of the time for hours on end. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. One brief lapse in focus can leave a rider, at minimum, sprawled out in the mud, as many in this race can attest.

We had ridden this course backwards and over several days during Expedition Bhutan, which is when the race went on my bucket-list of must do events—partly to support the Bhutan Olympic Committee’s efforts and partly because I’ve never heard of a one-day ride quite like it. I was deeply intrigued. Though this is a race—which severely limits how many can actually complete it—my goals were to finish the event and truly enjoy myself along the way while encouraging the other riders to do the same. I am not as fast or strong as I once was but my experience doing brutally challenging adventures pays big in a race of this magnitude because I know how to pace and take care of myself when things get extreme. It also allowed me to have a much more enjoyable time out there. So I can say, perhaps oddly to some, for me this race was quite “fun.” I was in the mindset to just take it all in and engage in the adventure. It helped that I had trained well which also allowed me to feel physically solid throughout, including on our last uber-intimidating climb.

The Ramifications of Cleaning Out the Closet:

Our race started at 2:00 AM with both His Royal Highness and the Prime Minister present. The Prime Minister had just done a huge trek up into the northern part of Bhutan to meet with the people in that region. He has also done Tour of the Dragon several times, one time finishing the race with a broken jaw from a during-race crash. The leaders of this country are fit and they love this race, though both acknowledged that this year would be particularly brutal for several reasons.

In our first downpour from the start line we rode into the pitch dark up our first two mountain passes and first big descent—and it was still raining. I’m not a huge fan of riding in the rain but when I’m in an event or already in the middle of a ride in training and it starts raining I have an innate ability to forget about it. So it just was what it was. Rain, caked mud, grit; as long as I stayed relatively warm I didn’t take notice. After many hours of incessant downpour, I just became incredibly grateful and happy when it would stop raining.

I felt stiff on the first climb, likely from having just sat in a car for the past several days (and of course due to age!), so I went out at a moderate pace, settled in and enjoyed chatting with other riders, in particular a female Russian ultra distance rider—all the while knowing we had a lot of riding ahead of us. My initial pace proved accurate as I was able to maintain this steady cadence and even increase it throughout the event.

After topping out at over 11,200 feet on our second climb we descended through mist and pouring rain, into the rain forest enshrouded village of Trongsa. Prior to arriving at Trongsa we hit our first muddy test and road conditions that His Royal Highness said had been keeping him up at night. With the conditions this year, Tour of the Dragon was a dangerous ride and though safety is the Olympic Committee’s first priority, the current conditions were making that initiative difficult as best.

As a place that has been tagged as having some of the worst roads in the world, Bhutan is trying to improve the main paved stretch that runs through the center of the country. Given the terrain is all steep mountains and deep valleys and with extreme weather including a very wet monsoon season, this is a daunting if not futile task. In order to do this they have to try and widen the slightly wider than one-lane road which means grating hill sides and creating havoc on the current roads prior to repair. But there is no preventing incessant mud slides as it would cost billions to put in effective retaining walls. Bhutan doesn’t have that kind of money.

Imagine you are cleaning out a closet which is packed full of crap and in particular disarray. The ‘first step’ is to take everything out of the closet, making piles of stuff around the floor near the closet prior to organizing each pile then putting items  back in the closet. As you walk around organizing and resorting, you tend to make much more of a mess than you started with. Much of roads of Bhutan are in that ‘first step’ of mess-making. Huge portions of gutted hill sides are being spilled out on to the road and when it rains (daily) it is all turned into a slippery, rocky bog. And for some reason they are choosing to work on a massive portion of the only road that runs the length of the country, all at the same time. Which means we rode through ‘first step’ conditions for about 50% of our ride. This and the incessant rain caused even the first place rider to finish almost one hour slower than his usual time. If the winner at the Hawaii Ironman finished one hour off his usual time, you could start to imagine how slow the rest of the field would be and the unusual conditions that must have caused such a slow result.

Do Your Best!: 

I’ve raced in a lot of different countries over the years and each has its own phrase that spectators yell at competitors as they whirl past. Shouts of encouragement range from “go fast!” to “fight on!” to “win!” and many more. Bhutanese shout a phrase that is so perfectly indicative of the kind of people they are that when I first heard it while pedaling along I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. They chant “Do Your Best!”

Do your best. Not ‘win’, ‘kick ass’, ‘you’re awesome’ or ‘fight hard’, but just…do your best. If a phrase sheds light on these kind, hearty, jovial people, that may be it.

So the brutal, remote terrain was lined with singing, giggling children looking dapper in their national dress chanting “Do Your Best” and when I’d reach out my hand to them and connect on a side-ways high-five I could hear their excitement behind me in peels of laughter. For a race of this length and magnitude it was impressive that there were cheering kids, volunteers and safety officials at all strategic spots, particularly when we would come into a more dangerous section.

At a triathlon there may be a volunteer at the apex of a steep descent enthusiastically shouting to riders to shave off speed and be careful as you negotiate perfectly smooth pavement on your road bike. Here the volunteers just stood like cheerful red flags on the side of particularly sketchy mug bogs and who silently exude the message—’watch your speed or you may slide out in the mud and pitch you and your bike off a 2000 foot drop off.’

Being the Conditions:

After our descent into Trongsa I was starting to warm up and on our third climb I felt strong. I chatted with a Nepalese woman, joking about who was muddier, encouraged other riders, and slowly picked my way up our second 25 mile ascent. I was feeling solid but my bike wasn’t faring as well as the drive train crunched and grinded sand and grit with each pedal stroke. Part of finishing an event of this nature is taking care of your gear, so I took a few moments at a few aid stations to rinse off my drive train. I have done races such as this that wreak havoc on gear so I had brought along a small vial of chain lube to keep things moving and prevent derailleur pulley wheels from freezing up and falling off.

Climbing out of Trongsa we hit miles of muddy road. I looked as though someone had backed me and my bike up against a wall and hurled large buckets of mud at us. Yet I’d just casually scrape the dirt blotches off my sunglasses with a gritty gloved finger so I could see and kept pedaling. I was riding and chatting with the woman from Russia just before I got a flat. Many riders got flats, some multiple times as this was just part of riding in rough conditions but when the bike is plastered in mud, the flat tire change can be a bit more challenging.

Bhutanese are enthusiastically helpful in every instance. They almost force aid onto a guest in their country whether they need it or not—its their nature. So when a police vehicle stopped to come to my aid I took them up on their offer to hold my dirt shrouded bike while I did the swapping out of tube. Prior to inflating the tire I primed the now small crowd that had gathered, “Check this out guys, its pretty cool!”

I would get a flat again in a race in Bhutan if only to experience the expression on their faces when I inflated the tire with a CO2 cartridge. They insisted I needed to pump as they didn’t totally get what had happened until I let them feel my rock hard tire. Even after I showed them the cartridge they couldn’t comprehend how I had inflated the tire so quickly. The flat tire caused me to lose a bit of momentum physically so I was looking forward to getting to the top of that climb, which in Bhutan doesn’t happen quickly and which was still about 6 miles away. Once again on this climb we went from strong heat to topping out at 11,100 feet in another downpour.

The good news about all the climbing here is that what goes up must come down so we had equal amounts of descending. The challenging news about our second descent is that it was so rough, rocky and muddy I would laugh out loud in disbelief at how epically heinous the road was as my arms and neck felt as though I had been working a jackhammer for hours. Once again this descent started in cold rain before moving through comfortable rain forest then dropping into tropical sun and high heat—for 30 miles—to the base of Dochula pass.

The Dragon’s Fire—Dochula Pass:

On the initial part of our last climb I ran into His Royal Highness again as we had been intermittently interacting all day. In the now-sweltering heat he grinned, welcoming me to the crux of the Dragon—Dochula Pass. So in jest, I offered him a potato chip as I pedaled by. I had visualized this climb many times in training prior to this event, determined to arrive at its base with enough left to climb strongly to the top. I’d now find out if I had played my pace properly.

With a Hors Categorie rating, the highest rating for a road bike climb, Dochula Pass is as intimidating a climb on a bike as I’ve encountered. Partly because I knew I would do this consistent 30 mile ascent after we had already ridden through 112 miles of brutal terrain and weather. The base of the climb is at just over 4000 feet and you top out at 10,200 but the climb steepens as you ascend. This year the bottom exposed half saw temperatures over 90 degrees, after we had just descended from cold rain. To add to the difficulty, the initial climb runs through busy villages so riders are required to negotiate traffic on narrow, dusty rutted roads with cows, dogs and cars that have undergone no emissions controls and creating copious quantities of choking exhaust fumes.

The climb winds through the mountain in tropical heat, then through rain forest infused with monkeys, into the misty mountain apex and all on pockmarked pavement, mud holes, rivers of water and rocks. I started the climb in my shorts and unzipped jersey and about 10 miles before the top we got another torrential downpour and I topped out at 10,200 feet wearing all the clothes I had carried during the race. My mantras for this climb: ‘patience’ and ‘pay attention’. After 112 miles of tough riding when this Dragon is throwing out all his fire, one needs patience and the focus to keep feeding and watering the machine.

I was pleased that with the exception of a couple of brief moments, I felt strong on this climb and passed five riders while moving into second place for the women. I saw His Royal Highness again and assured him I could get to the finish, no matter what. With this effort I hit the top maxed out as this was the last up and I wanted to leave all I had at the top. I paused long enough at the summit aid station to catch my breath, grab some water and shove shredded plastic bags that had had trash in them under my wind breaker to create a wind block in an effort to ward off hypothermia on the descent (the kids at the aid station found this quite amusing). Looking like a plastic Strawman from the Wizard of Oz, with strips of plastic coming out the openings in my wind breaker, I paused briefly to thank the volunteers and mentally prep myself for one of the sketchiest road experiences I’ve had on a bike.

My Bhutanese Road Angel:

I had a tiny bit of battery life left in my bike light, just enough to create a small glow right in front of my front tire which on a fast decent on a bike is basically useless. As I dove into this last 12 mile descent in the rain it was starting to get dark. As twilight turned to pitch darkness I tried to cover as much ground as possible while mentally rifling through all options I had to safely get down the narrow treacherous, heavily used road; walk, jog, ride excruciatingly slowly. I never questioned I would make it—the questions were, how long it would take me and could I make it in one piece.

For those of you questioning my reasoning in continuing, note that this is a very functional mindset left over from doing lots of really tough adventures. What I’ve learned over many years is that there tends to be a way to get stuff done as long as your body doesn’t give out (that is key) and even if on the front end it doesn’t look doable. This may mean walking down the last climb, but I had food and water so that was a viable option. This isn’t a remarkable way of thinking, its just a matter-of-fact mindset learned over time and feels quite logical when executing it. One can get anywhere if they are willing to put in the time to arrive. There usually is a way if you are interested in sorting it out. My way came in the form of a Bhutanese Road Angel.

There are no street lights in Bhutan and this mountain road, like all the roads we had encountered thus far was narrow and a mix of deeply potholed pavement and muddy, rocky road construction areas. The difference was this section of road had a lot of traffic. The road is so narrow and trafficked that it is common for one driver to have to pull off the road to make way while a car coming the other way passes through. The advantage I had was that I have been on this particular road a fair amount and had observed how their version of road etiquette works in Bhutan (for the most part).

A couple miles into the descent now in pitch dark, I tucked in behind a huge construction truck that had one of its rear red light covers broken off. The exposed white light gave me enough visibility to sort out the terrain as long as I stayed right behind the truck and was in complete focus. I’d glance up to note cars coming toward us then quickly turn my eyes back to the road right behind the truck. After noticing me the driver pulled over and waved at me to pass him. He was kindly acknowledging that I could move a lot faster on my bike in the broken-road-maze and was letting me by. When I waved at him to continue ahead of me, gesturing to my useless light, without words spoken he decided to become my advocate for making it down the mountain alive and in doing so created a blinking light code so he could communicate to me as we hurled down the mountain.

When he put his left blinker on I knew he was letting a car behind him pass. Right blinker meant he was moving over to pass a car in front or an oncoming large boulder, pile of rubble or other obstacle. Both flashers blinking at the same time meant we were coming into a particularly narrow and treacherous section and I needed to prep myself for; deep mud, piles of rocks, big holes or a particularly large quantity of pot holes. His system was excellent and though my clothes were soaked through my plastic bags were keeping me warm enough, so as we picked our way down the pitch dark 12 miles into town I felt perfectly relaxed and focused. Glance up, focus down, negotiate heinous patch of road, repeat. Warning – too much info here: My bladder had filled by about half way down but despite the discomfort I couldn’t risk losing my Road Angel by pulling over to go to pee so I decided to just go in my shorts (yes, I have done this many times in races). When I let my bladder release I was in instant searing pain as all the grit and sand that had infiltrated my clothing had been grinding away at my skin for hours and I was now acutely aware of the effect. My multiple re-applications of chamois butter didn’t have a chance in these conditions and I’m fairly certain that my clothes are not recoverable from the grime.

What I knew about this final descent was that though what I was doing higher on the mountain seemed slightly insane, arriving down into town and negotiating heavier  traffic with only a small red rear blinky light for visibility would be much more dangerous. When we hit the base of the mountain we both pulled over and I gleefully thanked my angel-driver who was so pleased to have helped, then hopped on the main road into town to the finish staged in the main town square. As I had told His Royal Highness I would finish no-matter-what, he had delayed the awards a bit while a few of us stragglers meandered in in the dark. I don’t know what my time was, but I’m certain it was dramatically longer than I anticipated. But the numbers still don’t matter because I had hit all my goals: finish, fully enjoy the experience and encourage other riders along the route.

I loved the challenge of the particularly tough conditions and the unparalleled beauty of this overall experience but what I loved even more is that His Royal Highness, the volunteers, spectators and especially my guiding-light angel truck driver enbodied the essence that is Bhutan. Bhutanese people help each other and their goal is to make your experience in their country as positive as possible. You need food, assistance or just moral support, they step in and help and not just with guests in their country but with each other. And they do it with no expectation of getting anything in return. Its just who they are. They may yell “Do Your Best” to outsiders who roll by on expensive bicycles, but as humans they do a pretty darn impressive job of representing that positive human condition daily.

So you could come to Bhutan to ride your bike with a Prince or to be greeted at the awards ceremony by the country’s Prime Minister, but what you’ll ultimately get is a cultural dance with some pretty happy and helpful people in some of the toughest terrain on the planet while riding along with many other hearty souls. This type of event attracts a unique type of athlete, open to taking on unusual challenges in remote places while the race format prohibits most cyclists from being able to finish. So there is a lot of mutual respect among riders. Many of us from various countries had an opportunity to gather and share experiences at a BBQ the next day—which was the icing on such a rich experience.

Out of 43 competitors there were four women from four different countries who started this event and only two of us were able to complete—the others had technical or physical issues. But each one of my female compatriots embodied that hearty love of adventure and fabulous attitude so needed for a test of this type and I am the better for having interacted with each of them here—a particularly big shout out to the strong and vibrant women’s winner Sabrina Filzmoser who has her eye on the next Olympics…

Thanks to His Royal Highness for his enduring support of this event and each of the riders, to the Prime Minister for his endless enthusiasm and intelligence, and to the BOC for putting on a fabulous event. They are all indeed offering the world a unique physical and cultural experience while the Dragon itself spews fire on all who dare to take it on. You want to ride with a Prince? That is possible in Bhutan, but at Tour of the Dragon you will have to deeply earn that experience.