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| The bar end mirror I picked up to be legal for next weekend’s race. It’s not all that effective, but at least it’s unobtrusive. |
Hindsight has a funny way of exposing ambition. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes, MacArthur’s push to carry the Korean War into China (complete with nukes)…
Likewise (but on somewhat a lesser scale), my target for an 80 mile road ride today may have been more ambition than good sense, in hindsight. I wanted to get an 80 mile average pace, so I could use it to figure out what race to register for next weekend. I’ve been debating between doing the 100 mile time trial, or the 6 hour endurance race. The idea was to get in a 100 mile road race on relatively flat terrain before the Tour de Cure, which covers some more challenging elevation changes. The downside of the time trial is that you’re released one at a time from the start, which means little, if any, drafting. The 6 hour is a mass start, which means plenty of drafting and pace lines, but it also means I would have to be fast enough to finish 100 miles in six hours.
So today I went out with an 80 mile target, 50 of which would be the big loop of the course for next weekend’s event. My starting conditions were less than ideal, again, in hindsight. Dinner last night consisted of a footlong brat, some pretzel-nacho-cheese-jalapeno thingies, and a couple beers at the ballpark. Today marked the seventh straight day of training, and my legs were still a little sore from deadlift on Thursday, with my chest just getting sore from my bench workout yesterday. In short, I was undernourished, under-hydrated, and under-fresh from the time I got up in the morning.
Still, I thought I could go out, with today’s near-perfect weather, and just set a conservative pace. It wouldn’t be easy, but surely I could just muscle through five hours or so on the bike…
Even saying that now sounds absolutely dumb.
What I had anticipated being a relatively pleasant, if bland, training ride soon became a harsh reality check. Although the wind was nowhere near as intense as my last long road outing, I also had nowhere to hide from it. As the first half of my route wound more or less into the breeze, I found myself vehemently cursing whoever decided to strip thousands of acres of farmland completely bare in order to grow feed corn. As if irresponsible, nonsensical farming of a plant you can’t eat isn’t bad enough, it also removes any and all wind breaks, which means you’re getting beat up by even the most casual breeze. While I started out bopping along at 17-18 mph, soon I was slugging through on the small ring, barely making 14.
And so went the next four hours. I slaved away into the wind along bumpy backcountry roads, trying to conserve water and maintain nutrition as best I could, but suffering with legs that just weren’t rested enough to push harder. At one point, after turning downwind onto a smooth stretch of pavement on State Route 41, I was so relieved by the ease of forward progress that I just put my head down and pedaled for awhile. Unfortunately, my respite also made me miss a turn marker, and I ended up in South Charleston, 4 miles out of my way, and with an additional upwind leg to get back on course.
By the time I finished the loop, I was just about exhausted. I had run out of water, only had 1 gel pack left (strawberry… ew), and had neither the juice nor the motivation to tack on the 15 more miles I needed to make it to my goal for the day.
So now I’m left with no answers to my original questions. I still don’t know if I’m fast enough to do 100 miles in under six hours, but neither do I know if I’m fit enough yet to ride for more than six hours in a time trial, if that’s what it’d take to make it to 100 miles. That said, the solution is obvious, if a little humbling. I need to just go ride the 6 hour, because that will still be the longest I’ve ever been in the saddle continuously, and it’s a logical step forward from the progress I’ve already made. If I get 100 miles out of it, great. If I don’t, well, it’ll just be another data point.