Sunday: the day of the Horrible Hundred bike ride.
I leave the house at 6am and meet up with my Flyinfree. We drive the 1.5 hours to Clermont, where the place is packed! Cars and bikes everywhere. There are lines everywhere for registration and to use the porta potties. We get out t-shirts, check in, drop our stuff off in my truck and we're ready to go. I had only slept about 4 hours the night before and 4 hours the night before that.
The timer finally winds down to 0:00 and we're off - all 2000 of us. I try to hook up with some riders that are going our speed but we are either passed by faster riders or are passing slower riders. At the 17mile mark, we skip the first sag stop as we weren't ready to stop. We motor on to the 34 mile stop and break, fill our water bodies, grab a bite to eat (bananas, fig newtons and plain cookies). We pass the entrance to "Sugarloaf Mountain" but don't go up it. I am surprised. Flyinfree flats and we spend 15 minutes or so getting him going. We continue on to the 45 mile sag stop where I lose track of FF. I think he is ahead of me, but he ends up taking a wrong turn and ends up about 40 minutes behind me.
By the 50 mile mark, 1/2 way, I am fatigued but humming along, averaging 17 mph for the time on the bike. With the relentlous hills, but fast downhill descents, that does not seem bad.
At the 72 mile mark sag station, I look at a map and am shocked by the level of sadism displayed by the course designers; they postponed all the named hills and Sugarloaf Mountain for the 82 - 85 mile markers! I have tackled all these before, but after 30 miles, not 82! Unbelievable.
I had passed a guy, Kevin, on a $7000 Italian bike who grabbed my wheel and followed me for the last 10 miles. When I remarked at the sag station that I was totally fatigued, he said "then I'd hate to see you when you are fresh". He was about half my age and in good shape so I was quite flattered by this remark.
We climb all 6 of the named hills. I am in my lowest gear, which is a not-very-low 39/21, partly because I like the "corncob" look and partly because of my stupid ego, which won't allow me to have a lower gear on a road bike. Go figure... To conquer the hills, I have to get out of the saddle on all of them and basically stand on the pedals for 30 seconds to up to 2 minutes. Very tiring! We get pas the 6 named hills but still have to face Sugarloaf Mountain. I stop, rest, stretch my quads and wait until my heart rate is down to less than 110 and then I go. I get a running start and get about 1/2 way up before my legs just won't allow me to make it all the way up, standing on the pedals for 1/2 mile! I knew that if you try to start up from a standstill, you cannot get going, but if you pull into a driveway you can get going. I wait until my heart rate is 95 and re-start. This time, I climb the remainder, passing about 10 cyclists pushing their bikes. I make it to the top, hook up with Kevin who had stopped and re-started on the road and how we are home free, or so we think....
We stop at the last sag station 20 minutes before they close. We refill and refuel and are looking at the last 17 miles anxiously. We go 14 miles when, upon a quick and unexpected ascent, my rear derailleur, which, now, I suspect was slightly bent, jams into the rear wheel, breaking a spoke and the rear hub before the derailleur is then jammed into the spokes, causing me to come to a quick, but safe, stop. I try to shorten the chain and ride it as a single speed, but the rear wheel is bent from the broken spoke and I am done for the day - at 99 miles with 3 miles to go! The rear derailleur (Campagnolo Chorus) is sheared off and I will have to make some tough decisions soon. While I am waiting for the sag van to show up, FF shows up 30 minutes after me. We agree to call our "race challenge" a draw and he leaves me after I assure him I am okay. The sag van shows up 20 minutes later, I load up and he takes me back to my vehicle where I load up FF's bike and we go home.
Totals: 99 miles, avg. speed 16.8 mph, 6:30 hours riding. I had a target of 6 hours total riding time.
I have no regrets.
Flyinfree will be posting pics on his journal.
