Church Creek Time Trial

This was the longest time trial event I have ever ridden. The distance itself was nothing - less than 25 miles? I'll do that a couple times a week and not even think twice about it. But a 24.8 mile TIME TRIAL? Yikes.

The time trial is a tough event because you basically push your muscles to the limit for the entire duration of the race. There is no drafting, no group riding. There is no rest, no respite, no recovery - it's pure effort the entire way. That being said, my strategy going into the race was to pick a pace that I felt confident I could keep up for the entire duration of the race.

Team BBC Time Trial Coming In

I woke up at 5:00AM and ate three pieces of buttered toast with blackberry jam; they were delicious. I tried to do the math and figure out what 200 calories per hour until race time would dictate, but the early morning time addled my mathematical sensibilities.

Filled up the gas tank and met teammate Jennie at the park and ride for the 2-hour drive down across the bay bridge into the Eastern Shore. I hadn't been here since the Seagull Century last fall, so seeing the sights was enjoyable. We rolled up to the registration area pretty early, which turned out to be a really good thing because I had forgotten my race license and had to look it up on my phone to prove to the organizers that my license was up to date.

Team captain extraordinaire Mojo had arrived even earlier to get ready for his individual team trial, and had graciously set up an awesome team tent replete with cold water and CeraSport sports drink. He took off to go to his Cat 3 individual time trial start while Jennie and I were still getting our act together: checking tire pressure, applying sunscreen, filling water bottles and so forth. Teammates Ted and Tina rolled up while we were working on that, and went and got registered.

Around 10:30 I rolled out to make it to my 10:59 start time. The registration area was at a middle school about 5 miles away from the start, which made logistics an interesting exercise. I am glad that I allowed a half an hour to get there, because I forgot my timing chip and had to go back to get it. By the time I rolled up to the starting tent, the official time was about 10:54. Five minutes to go.

At the starting line, a staffer held my seat while I clipped in. I had shifted into my big chainring up front and a big cog in the back, as internet wisdom told me that this strategy would help reduce the possibility that I would drop my chain when I shifted to the big chainring after I got moving. 3, 2, 1 and I was off. A few seconds in, and I was in a strong gear with my heart rate quickly rising up towards the upper edge of aerobic metabolism.

The first 10KM of the race flew by, with my speed jumping up to 29mph in the beginning and then settling into a more reasonable 25mph as my body realized that it was going to have to keep the same pace for quite a while. The pavement was smooth and the flat Eastern Shore scenery was cruising by, and then the course made a sharp right-hand turn. This was when things got a little ugly. The pavement, which had been a beautifully paved brand new asphalt, turned into a bumpy ride on old gray road surface. At the same time, the wind (which I had been nervously eying on the way down by looking at various flags flapping in the breeze) managed to blow directly into my path of travel. Now, pedaling at anything over 22mph on a flat surface requires quite a bit of effort just to overcome your own self-generated wind; throw an 8-10mph  headwind into the mix and things get tough.

I managed to hang in there; if you look at the data you can see that my heart rate stayed pretty steady even though my speed dropped. I think this was the appropriate response; rather than killing my legs to maintain my speed, I conserved energy to use later when the wind was not in my face.

The course continued to be flat as a pancake. Around 30KM I started to pass people; by 35KM I started passing them in clumps. Some were from my category, some were stragglers from the category that had started before us. Either way, each person I passed was a slight boost to my energy level as my ego reinforced my legs (shameless narcissism plug). The real ego boost is when you pass people on uber-aero carbon-fiber tri bikes with disc wheels and TT helmets and you're riding a 20-year old road bike with an ancient gruppo and bolt-on aerobars that are literally falling off the bike.  (end shameless narcissism plug).

We made a right-hand turn onto a highway with a wide shoulder, great pavement, and a very slight tailwind, and I was able to pick the pace back up from a somewhat bedraggled 22mph to a more robust 25-26mph. I even kicked it down a gear for a few minutes; I was aiming to keep a nice quick ~100RPM pedaling cadence. From what I've read, pushing a lighter gear at a faster RPM is more leg-friendly than mashing a big gear at slow RPM. I'm not sure if this is meant more for road racing than time-trialling though, as I saw many people pushing a big gear slowly.

I screwed up the math in my head as I was riding - I tried to convert 40KM to miles, and came up with 25.2 miles for some reason; when the finish tent came up at the (correctly calculated) 24.8 miles, I was taken a bit by surprised and pushed everything I had into my pedals. I zipped across the finish mat at a brisk 29 miles per hour, and panted my way over to where the water cooler was to recover a bit.

I won second place in the men's Cat 5 division!

While I was sitting in the shade letting the blood flow from my legs back into my brain, I tried to calculate how long it would take my teammates to finish their team time trial (they had started when I was about halfway through my ITT). I reasoned out that I had enough time to go back to the registration area and get my car and some water to bring back for the team.

I came back and took a photo of the team as they crossed the finish line in second place! We hung out for a bit and then cruised back to the registration area to collect our medals and break down the team tent. A quick stop for lunch on the way out capped off a fantastically fun day of racing.

Great day with great people at a really fun event!

Strava Data

The Bailey Hundo

The Bailey Hundo

I signed up for the Bailey Hundo mountain bike race not quite sure what to expect. I knew it was in Colorado, and I knew it was in the mountains, but beyond that, I had no experience riding a mountain bike in Colorado. It turned out to be one of the best times I've ever had on a bike.

I flew into Denver from a tradeshow I was attending in Las Vegas. Picked up a rental car and drove about an hour south to where I would be staying with family for my visit. Upon arrival, I was greeted by a giant white teddy bear of a dog carrying a stuff animal in its mouth - nice! The next morning I hung out and visited for a while, then headed over to Bailey for the pre-race meeting. 

At the pre-race meeting, I was presented with a smorgasbord of swag - a jersey, T-shirt, poster/map, water bottles, and a bunch of product samples. I signed in and was shown how to attach my timing chip to the fork of my bike. A race staffer gave a thorough and informative briefing, and introduced the RD of La Ruta De Los Conquistadores, which is a 20-year old stage race held in Costa Rica. Wow! My initial impression of the Bailey Hundo as a podunk fundraiser race had been blown out of the water by this pre-race briefing. Even though it's a small and new race, the organizers seemed pro
and all the trimmings of  a venerable event were present. 

The Bike, packed for travel

Putting together my bike was interesting - it took an hour and a half, and we got it working pretty much perfectly except for some weirdness with the rear derailleur - the cable tension was off so when I had the chain on the big chainring, I was unable to shift into the smallest two or three cogs on the rear cassette. Otherwise, I was very pleased with how my Trico Ironcase delivered the bicycle unharmed.


I woke up at 3:00AM the next morning to get to the start on time, which was at the ungodly hour of 6:00AM. Really? I thought only trail runners were dumb enough to get up that early. After completing the race and gaining some comprehension of just how remote the backcountry was that we'd be racing through, I can appreciate why the start was so early.  Indeed, the last racer to finish came in at 12 hours and 30 minutes, which is getting close to when the sun would start to dim. The hour long drive was easy, although after heading down a few miles of dirt road at the end I questioned that my GPS was guiding me in the right direction. Eventually I made the left-hand turn onto the small wooden bridge over the swiftly flowing Platte River, and parked my car in a dusty cloud in the field at the finish area.

I put together my kit and made a couple last-minute tweaks to the bike, then made the easy 3-mile spin next to the river from the finish area into town for the start in the pre-dawn chill. Arriving about 2 minutes before the starting gun was cutting it a little close, but I made it, and formed up on the outside of the 250-odd person crowd about halfway up. The starting gun was more like a starting cannon, and made everyone around me jump.

The Start

The race course starts out with a prelude of about 8 miles to stretch the pack out before entering the singletrack. I felt pretty good on the uphills, although a little more winded than I usually would have been seeing that the 7,500' altitude was a wee bit higher than the 350' I am used to riding at. On the downhills, I missed my two small cogs and got spun out fairly frequently, but managed to keep up for the most part.

After the prelude we turned left onto the Colorado Trail, and began an epic trek on about 50 miles of singletrack. It was fast, flowy, and fun; the only major oddity being the trail surface, which was very loose. Coming from the Mid-Atlantic, I am used to riding on mud, not riding on loose gravel / sand. After a few slips of the wheel, I more or less got the hang of it and proceeded to have an absolute blast for the next 4 hours. We passed through some areas that had been burned by forest fires back in '96, and were treated to some amazing scenery and views (which I hardly was able to notice, since I was concentrating on riding).  I passed through the first aid station without stopping, but stopped at the next few for some gels, camelbak refills, and so on.

Around Mile 55, we reached a fairly major descent (looking at the elevation profile, anyway). This was not as steep as I had expected from seeing the 1,000' drop spread out over a mile or two on the profile, but it was pretty steep and the trail turned into a slush-pit of loose gravel. At one point my front wheel just straight-up locked up and I ungraciously fell over sideways, pitching hands and face first into a nice mix of rock, cactus, and scrub brush. I came away with a few minor scrapes and a pretty big splinter in my left index finger. This little incident caused me to be cautious for the remainder of the downhill, but despite my caution I did the same thing a few minutes later. A few minutes later I finally popped out at the bottom of the hill onto a dirt road, with Aid Station 6 offering relief.

Cruising Down By The River

The next 15 miles were spent cruising on a gentle downhill grade alongside the South Platte River. The lack of my two most powerful gears was felt again here, but it wasn't too bad. One rider passed me and suggested that I grab his wheel, which I did until the grade changed and I spun out and got dropped. Still, managing to average 18 miles per hour for a few miles was a nice change of pace. At one point, I saw Sue and Mark standing by the side of the road, and waved to them as I went by. They played leap-frog with me for a few miles, which was a great motivator.

After awhile of enjoying the smooth riding surface and the downhill grade, the race course makes a right hand turn and climbs up a hill. A big one. At the top of the (paved) hill, there is another descent. I knew there was another big climb coming up, and was awaiting it with a mixture of curiosity and (gulp) dread. At mile 73, the course turned left on to a dirt road and the suffering began. We would climb 2,000' vertical feet over the next eleven miles or so. I put it in an easy gear and just ground away at it. I got passed by a few folks. The upshot was that we were still in a burn zone, so the scenery was stunning  - you could see all the surrounding mountain tops.

I hit aid station 8 (Mile 78) at around 7 hours. At this point I was definitely tired, and enthusiasm was waning from "stoked" to "Ok, let's get this over with". Some peanut butter pretzels and a few slammed paper cups of Coke bolstered me for the next few miles, which had more climbing on dirt roads. Shortly after leaving Aid 8, it started to hail. Does it get any better than this?

The hail degenerated into a steady light rain after a few minutes. It wasn't a soaking rain, so it actually wasn't unpleasant - my arms got a little chilly, but nothing I couldn't handle. The rain had let up by the time I approached Aid 9, where a couple of friendly volunteers gave me a gel and informed me that I was approaching some downhill. Finally!

The Finish!

After a few miles of descending from the pass that the epic climb had taken me over, I reached aid station 10. However, with only 5 miles to go, I elected to ride through. The last few miles of the race were incredible - one long fast downhill on dirt roads. It was great, and the sun came out. By the time I reached the finish eight and a half hours after starting, the weather was beautiful, there was a band playing, and the beer tent beckoned. What a great race! The best I've ridden yet, and I can't wait to go back again next year.

Strava Data

The Gettysburg Campaign

I cut my stay short at Ohio's Mohican Adventures Campground and made the sleepy drive back to Maryland for one reason: Bob Wagner's Gettysburg Campaign group ride. It did not disappoint.

I've been on a couple of Bob's other "Rambles", long-distance all-paces-welcome rides before, and they are always a blast. The group is very friendly, and the lunch breaks are awesome. The great thing about the Rambles is that they have a theme - the first one I did was called "The Three Glens Ride", and we rode through three towns named after glens. The second was Monument to Monument, which went from the Baltimore Washington monument to the DC Washington monument and back.

The Gettysburg Campaign was a longer ride than the others that I've been on - a double metric century (200KM) from start to finish, which lead from Baltimore to Gettysburg PA and back. Including the ride to and from my house, I ended up riding 144 miles and climbing about 7,000 feet.

The start, in Druid Hill Park

We started out in front of a really nice glass building (I'm not sure what it's for) in Druid Hill Park in Baltimore. I was a bit sore getting on the bike the day after the Mohican 100, but the day looked beautiful and I knew that the pace would be only as fast as I wanted to be.

We started with about 7 people, some of whom I had met before. This was a bit different than the Monument to Monument ride, which started with around 45 people. We rolled out through the city, heading northwest. Within a half an hour, we were in the suburbs, and in an hour we were deep into the farms and countryside. That is one of the great things about Baltimore - it's easy to get out of fast.

One guy, Mike, an ex-racer, joined up with us a few hours in. Another, Tom, popped up just before we made our first stop at a Burger King. I got an oatmeal and a cup of coffee, and filled up my water bottles at the fountain.

We cruised on after the first stop, riding through rolling hills and into a moderate headwind. The wind was an impediment, but wasn't a soul-crushing pace-robbing headwind, so it was OK. Plus it was really sunny. I pulled ahead with Tom and Brian, and we took turns pulling through the headwind.

After a few hours of riding through scenic farmland, we approached Gettysburg Battlefield National Park. A few guys had been joking earlier that it would be the "Monument to Monument to Monument" ride, and after a few minutes it was obvious what they meant. The place was lousy with monuments, placards, and memorials - they were literally strewn every few feet. We spotted what looked like an overlook, and I wanted to stop and tourist for a bit. Tom and Brian obliged me, and we walked up to see what we could see. What we could see was a monument, overlooking a field full of monuments.

Overlooking the Battlefield

I got my photo taken with the statue, and then we decided to slow-roll it into town to enjoy looking at all the monuments.

One of the larger monuments we rode by

Touristing it up

Upon getting into town, we found that Bob and a few other folks had passed us while we were dawdling, and had encamped in an Irish Pub to order lunch. We gladly sat down and perused the menu; I got a Guiness, a Salad, and a Waffle with Chicken and Gravy. It was delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch!

After lunch we rolled out to a somewhat logy start. The ride back to Baltimore seemed to be a bit easier than the ride out - less headwind, more trending downhill, and smoother pavement. It was a great ride. Just before the mid-way rest stop at a 7-11, there was a 4-mile stretch of perfectly flat, smooth road with a wide shoulder. It was almost like a time trial course, and I practiced riding with my elbows on my handlebars (faux aerobars) both to alleviate the monotony and to try and keep the pace going. At the rest stop, I bought some caffeine and sugar. It turned out that Ken, one of the other riders, lived in the same general vicinity as I did, and we decided to break off from the group and head back to our area rather than ride all the way back into Baltimore.

At the split point, we bid farewell to Bob and the others, and rode through downtown Reisterstown. Ken knew a pretty good way back that wasn't too hilly: Butler Road to Tufton to Shawan, which would take us into Hunt Valley. Man, that was a great stretch of riding - it was a subtle downhill grade, the light was great, and we were cruising at 22-23 mph. A few miles from my house I parted ways with Ken and had a gentle spin back home to a nice hot shower.

All in all, a great day of riding!

Strava Data

My First 100-Mile Mountain Bike Race: Mohican 100 MTB

It was a very long drive...

Did I mention that I like to pack up my gear the day before traveling to a race? This lets me do things like hop right in the car at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon and drive 7+ hours to Ohio, listening to the National Weather Service issuing their tornado warnings as the rain blots out my windshield and slows me down to a crawl along I-70. Eventually I made it to the Mohican Adventures campground just outside Loudinville, OH, and pitched my tent in the dark, without a headlamp. Whoops! Oh well, of all the things to forget to bring, I guess a headlamp was a good choice.

Waking up bright and early the next morning, I got my act together and rode down to pick up my race packet at the main building, which was right next to the finish line. Returning to camp, I filled up my three drop bags with a bunch of high-octane fuel for later - caffeinated energy gels, stroopwafels (the best!) and bags of powdered sports drink. I also put a few gels, waffles, and a pack of Clif Bloks in my jersey to tide me over until I got to my drop bags, which I dropped at aid stations 3, 4, and 5. I figured that the food in my jersey would keep me going until I got to the later aid stations.

Racers roll out - Photo by Cycling News

I rode back down to the finish area and hopped on the paved bike path that lead to the start in downtown Loudonville, joining a small armada of mountain bikers headed in the same direction. With almost 600 people starting at once (about half for the 100 mile race, and half for the simultaneous 100k race), there was quite a crowd at the starting line.

I started out pretty fast but not smoking. I knew that I needed to pass as many people as possible before we got into the singletrack; getting stuck behind someone who is going slower than you want to is no fun in a race. By the time we had covered the mile or two to the edge of the woods, I felt like I had passed a good number of people and was probably in the front 1/3 of the whole group.

The trails started out as some grassy horse trails, with some tricky off-camber steep descents and a few roots that were slick in the morning dew. I burnt a couple matches through this section which bumped me past several more people, but I was still moving a bit slower than a pace that I felt I could maintain for the remainder of the race. Of course, since this was my first real endurance mountain bike race, I had no true knowledge of what kind of pace I can maintain for 8 hours on a mountain bike.

The horse trails turned into singletrack; 25 miles of smooth, flowy, not-too-technical-but-still-interesting singletrack. There were few opportunities to pass, but by this point I had caught up with riders that were moving at about the same pace that I felt comfortable with. I caught sight of a guy in a Twenty20 jersey, and gradually moved by people to catch up with him. I said hello, and then passed him on a steep technical uphill where he tapped out. I would see two more people from the MD / VA area, but by the time they passed me, everyone was concentrating on the task at hand without energy to spare for greetings.

I blew through Aid Station 1 without stopping, as I had plenty of water left in my Camelback as well as most of my food. After 14 more miles of singletrack, I stopped at Aid Station 2 to refill my Camelback and to grab a quick energy gel. I think a lesson I learned from this race is that water bottles are faster than camelbacks at the aid stations - it takes a while to get the pack off (especially when you are tired), and then unscrewing the cap, filling up the bladder... well, it all takes time, and every second spent stopped is a second you are not moving forward. Efficiency in the aid stations is key.

The terrain was interesting - you could be chugging along some mellow single track for an hour, and then all of a sudden, there's a sharp left and the trail goes to a unrideable-by-mere-mortals grade for 300' straight up. Ohio doesn't have any big climbs, but take enough little rollers and 350' climbs and put them together, you get the 10,400' of climbing that my GPS recorded. For the most part, the course was not too technical (in fact, a pretty big chunk of it was on dirt roads and rail-to-trail). There were a few rock gardens and log rollers early on, but other than that the only section that sticks out in my head was one tricky descent right after the 100 mile course parted ways with the 100k course. 2 miles of fairly steep trail with these 4x4 concrete waterbars that were oil-slick with mud and were laid at an angle across the trail. If you hit it wrong, your wheels were going out from under you. Needless to say, I took this section a bit slower than necessary just to be safe. 

Around mile 55 I was starting to drag - I'd been riding for five and a half hours, and still had 45 miles left to go. Mentally, I wasn't sure how I was going to handle riding the same terrain for another five hours. However, luckily, at that point the course broke open into a long dirt road downhill section, and then we hopped on a rail-to-trail. I happily cruised along at 18mph, munching down carbs and watching the miles creep by and my average speed slowly tick up from 9.8 mph all the way up to 11 mph. The rail-to-trail eventually gave way to more roads, and before you could say "endurance mountain biking", I was at Aid Station 5.

The GPS track on the Mohican web site said that the actual course length was not, in fact, 100 miles; rather, it was only 95.7 miles. When I got to Aid 5, my GPS said I was at mile 86, and I had been hoarding my dwindling strength to hit what I was guessing to be another 14 miles of leg-sapping rolling hills. When I stopped at the station, I started to as for my drop bag but the volunteers kept saying "Just five more miles, what do you need? Water?". I had a little bit of water left in my camelback and made a split-second choice to keep moving. The barn was close enough to smell. I chased another biker into the woods and held his wheel through about 3 of the 5 miles of singletrack, both of us passing several people who looked like they were hurting. I felt great - like a third wind. Eventually the racer I was chasing dropped me, but I still kept passing people, feeling strong. 

The singletrack opened up into some jeep trails going through the campground. I blew past my car and didn't even see it, I later realized. I was going so fast, in fact, that I missed a turn and had to churn my way back up a steep hill (this lost me a place by about 10 seconds).

I rolled through the finish line with the clock at 8 hours and 17 minutes. Immediately after coming to a stop, a race staffer pushed a brown growler into my hands, and pointed behind me to a Great Lakes Brewing Company tap truck. "Go fill it up!" she said. I hobbled over to the truck and put down my bike, took off my helmet, pack, and gloves. I was done, and there was as much free beer as you wanted. I filled up a glass and then went to go look for food. I was not disappointed - the post-race meal was a pile of delicious barbecued chicken, ribs, baked beans, cole slaw, and potato salad. I ate until my mouth stopped wanting to chew, and then started the slow spin back to my campsite to pack up for the drive home.

The whole time I was riding, I kept thinking about how Jeff Schalk must have torn through these sections last year to finish in well under 7 hours. "Relax," I said to myself, "You're not Jeff freaking Schalk". The finishing times on this year's race were ridiculous - 6:38 was the winning time. Coming in an hour and a half later landed me 31st place, a result which I am happy with but think could be improved on.  Next time, I will sleep better in the days before the race. Next time I will not do a hammer ride at home two days before the race. Next time I will try a water-bottle based aid station strategy.

All in all it was a fantastic event and I can't wait to go back next year.

Garmin Data