As always, it was an epic ride. I apologize in advance for all the foul language herewith. I would have published this on http://trifuel.com/, except I didn’t want to censor the way I actually thought and talked on the day, and I think it’s a better read this way.
Photos can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8737154@N04/sets/72157600380989626/
I made the trip with my friend, Lori, who also raced Triple T 3 weeks ago (and handily won the coed team division with her SO, Marc). Lori graciously volunteered to drive her van, but we would be leaving directly after the ride on Saturday rather than staying overnight.
Back up to Thursday. I had an outstanding 2:30 run, covering 16.5 miles. I have never felt so good on such a long training run. The workout protocol had me warming up easy for :30, then moving into Z2 and upper Z3 (half marathon pace) work. I ran in my favorite place, Waterfall Glen, which happens to be adjacent to Argonne National Laboratory, so I am getting in my extra protons and neutrons while there! That day, the way I controlled my pace was by paying acute attention to my breathing. I still had some soreness in my left serratus and upper intercostals from the run crash the week before, and labored breathing, coughing and laughing still made my ribcage hurt. So for the easy pace stuff, my mantra was “barely breathing,” which translated to about a 10:00/mile pace. Z2 I pegged as “breathing a little bit,” and that came out to about a 9:30/mile pace, and the half marathon breathing pattern was “definitely breathing,” for a pace of about 8:50/mile. For reference sake, tempo pace would be “breathing a lot.” It was the first time I was so in touch with my breathing, and it was amazing how it translated to the correct paces for me. The actual paces I ran varied due to the terrain, which is rolling hills. During the run, I had 3 deer jump across the path in front of me, I assisted one painted turtle across the path (to avoid being run over by cyclists), I saw a bluebird up close and personal, and I ran into a guy I know from the Y. Chris was on his hybrid, and I took a few minutes to stop and chat with him when I was about 9 miles into the run. He asked how much I was running, and when I told him, he said (like he says to me regularly), “When do you take easy days?” I told him that usually Mondays and Fridays were “easy” for me (Monday is usually a swim and a form run and Friday is a swim and perhaps a short run). I told him I thought I actually had a couple of easy rides on my schedule, and we could try and do one of those together. He’s a much faster runner than me, but nowhere near as fast a cyclist. I’d date him, except that I think he prefers less active bimbos. Once he said to me point blank that I would be a hard woman to date because of my drive. Nice, huh? Oh well, it is what it is.
I took Friday off from work. Rich hadn’t scheduled any workouts for me, but I was certain I’d do a swim, and contemplated a short, easy run, just to see what’s what after Thursday’s run, plus I wanted to get in 4 runs for the week. I swam 3200 yards at 7:00AM, and wore a 2-piece swimsuit, so I could just take off the bottom and put on running shorts and head out right from the Y. It made me smile because for a few years, I did my swim/run workouts back to back during the summer, and would always be running out with a wet, cool top! I decided to only run :30, and to try and run real easy, so again, I focused on “barely breathing.” I ended up running about 9:30/mile, which I rarely do outside of long runs. Within 2 minutes, I ran into Larry, who is an awesome runner that I know from the Y, who is doing his first century ride this fall and wants to borrow my bike box. He had put on a little weight (but he has never by any stretch been fat) about a year ago, but he’s totally leaned out, and he was on his bike as we chatted. I told him I got a new bike, and he guessed its cost at $3,000, and I laughed at him. Anyway, it was nice to see him, because usually he runs on the treadmill (go figure), so I don’t see much of him in the spring through fall. Since he was heading TO the Y and I would need to circle back to retrieve my crap, I decided I’d write my contact information down for him and pass it to him, which I did, as he was on the treadmill. I thoroughly enjoyed my short run, and my legs didn’t feel bad at all. As always, I got all sorts of stares, as I was sporting my low-cut Desoto shorts. I have just gotten used to running in those, as they are extremely comfortable for me. Yeah, I have washboard abs and it makes people (men AND women) look, and that’s cool. I’m a bit of an exhibitionist (stop laughing right now!). Side note: during my Wednesday run, while dressed in a similar fashion, a woman driving a truck looked at me and flipped me off! How sad and angry she must be to do that. I was clear on the opposite side of the road up on the sidewalk climbing a hill. Usually I get a few whistles from men, so this was unexpected.
I finished swimming and running by about 9:00AM, which gave me time to do some house cleaning (the incessant bottle manipulation continues) and pack. In the process, I knew I had better start loading up on the carbs, so I drank some Endurox R4, a can of guava juice, and ate 1.5 bananas. I couldn’t choke down the whole second banana, as I could feel my insulin spiking as it was, and I already had about 700 calories worth of carbs in my tummy. I hadn’t worked out enough to need that much, and my eating automatically adjusts to my workout load; however, when I have a big day following, my brain puts me into calorie acquisition mode. I figure I had blasted through all my glycogen stores on Thursday and was probably a bit in the hole from a short swim and run, so the stocking began.
I arrived at Lori’s Friday afternoon around 2:45PM. She was all packed and ready to go, so we transferred my bike, 2 bags and 2 coolers to her van and we took off, after making a quick stop to get gasoline.
Let me tell you, I consider myself pretty high energy, but Miss Lori seems to be in the stratosphere to me sometimes! She is younger than me with 5 boys (ages 10-21), she’s a really fast triathlete (my idol) who trains even more than I do, and she’s going to school for her nursing degree. Needless to say, she and I have some extremely animated discussions. Lori’s Italian, to boot, so you have blond Italian chic and blond Croatian chic both talking with not only their hands, but their entire arms!
We made good time to Verona, Wisconsin (where our hotel was), and decided to continue on to Mt. Horeb to pick up our ride packets. Mt. Horeb is only another 11 miles west of Verona. On the way there, we were both looking at the beautiful countryside, since we’ve both done Ironman Wisconsin, and go up there to train quite often.
Packets in tow, we headed back to Verona to check into the hotel. I will be staying there twice more this summer with different people, so I am sure the front desk woman will start to recognize me! We dropped our bags (bikes were left in the van), and headed to dinner.
Lori had forgot to pack bottles and gels for her nutrition. She was concerned about getting this stuff, and I told her not to worry we’d get it under control. We went to the store, "World of Variety," first (note to self: need to go shop there--they have a lot of campy looking stuff!), but they were closing, and told us they didn’t carry empty bottles, so we went to Walgreen’s. Walgreens had some cheap bottles that would do the trick, even though Lori was worried they would be too big for her Profile cages in the XLAB. I told her they would fit (she doesn’t know another nickname of mine is “Volume Queen”), and that we’d snag gels en route on Saturday. While she was shopping for necessities, I browsed the toy aisle (I tell you the Verona Walgreen’s ROCKS!) and picked up two bouncy things that light up and are rainbow colors (yes, I am such a little kid in many ways).
Next, we headed to dinner at the one sit-down restaurant in Verona, Avanti’s. I had been there before on a training expedition, and I knew they had decent food. As we walked into the dining area, it was obvious there were a lot of other cyclists eating there, some of which one or the other or both of us knew. I initially met Lori through a guy named Dan who I met once when I captained a team for Hustle up the Hancock, when another guy I knew, Jim, recruited Dan (who’s an awesome fast climber) for the team, and as Lori told me yesterday, Dan told her she needed to meet me because we were very similar.
Anyway, Lori ordered a glass of wine and I got a Bell’s Oberon, which was tasty. They had Blue Moon, but I had that at home, and the waitress said to go with the Bell’s, which is brewed in Michigan. We decided to order a pizza, and what we asked for was pepperoni, garlic and tomatoes. What we got, and ate anyway, was pepperoni, sausage, garlic and pepperoncini! We both like the pepperoncini, but they were a bit much on the pizza. Still, we ate a good deal of a large, and I took the 2 remaining slices for later. It seems that I eat the most of anyone I train with lately!
We went back to the hotel, where we got ice for our coolers, laid out our outfits for the next day, and then tried to relax. Lori had brought along some paperwork, and I was amazed at how she kept at things, while I was basically just laying around, so I did get on the floor to stretch for about :20. All the while, we are talking, and of course, watching the Weather Channel. The forecast called for high 80’s with afternoon thunderstorms, and the little local map had the thunder clouds everywhere in the area. Oh well, what are you going to do.
I had brought temporary tattoos with me, and showed Lori the selection. She opted for the hibiscus flower ring (that I bought in Kona the last time I was there—sigh—I need to get back somehow), and I opted for the thorn ring for an arm and a death skull for one of my calves. Note to self: need to find some more good temporary tattoos for the next few weeks and also for Ironman Lake Placid—I am not sure what I would like to sport there.
We decided we’d get up at 4:45AM and shoot for a 6:45AM start. Technically, the ride starts at 7:00AM, but there was no chip timing this time, so as long as you have a map, why would you wait around until 7, especially when it was hot and humid and just going to get hotter and more humid?
Well, with all the pizza in my tummy (I managed to eat the toppings off the last 2 slices) and the excitement of knowing what we were going to do the next day, and the fact that I generally haven’t been sleeping much past 4AM lately, I awoke at my usual 3:30AM because my body had processed the food (draw your own conclusions here). I got back into bed, and just lay there, knowing it wasn’t long until it was wake up time. At 4AM, I heard Lori stir, so I just asked her if she was awake and could we get moving. She was cool with it, laughing at me for being so excited, and I clicked the coffee pot (which I had set the night before) to on, let Lori languish while it brewed, turned on the TV (it was brilliant that it automatically tuned to the Weather Channel), and took a look outside.
I saw some clouds, which was probably a good thing, and then Lori got up, we had coffee and our breakfast, and then I pulled out my pre-mixed Ultrafuel and drank it. At that moment, I realized I had a “normal” bottle that Lori could use for her bike, which made her very happy. I had another bottle from the ride bag, so Lori ended up not using the Franken bottles from Walgreen’s. I had pre-mixed 2 bottles of Infinit. Each bottle contained about 900 calories (and I wrote “CALORIES” on the generic bottles!), and I would also carry 2 smaller bottles in my jersey for plain water to chase it with. All the while we are setting up, we are taking turns sighing and making various noises, and we laughed at one another whenever we caught each other in a sigh. We also both talk to ourselves out loud while we are getting ready, saying stuff like, "OK," "All right," and "Huh." Cracks me up!
We suited up and left at 5:30 for Blue Mounds, which is where the ride begins. On the way there, we could see the big ball of a sun rising, and we knew it would be a warm day. We smiled watching the terrain get progressively hillier.
We got a primo parking spot right across from the little store at the base on Mounds Park Road, right next to porta-potties. We got our stuff ready, I had a guy who had never done the ride before snap a few photos, and we were off and rolling at 6:19AM.
Lori is a brutally strong rider, and I didn’t want to hold her back (I’m a big girl), but we both agreed we’d stay together for the first 2 stages, in case either of us decided to bag the 200K and just do 100K. This was good for both of us because we both kept ourselves in check.
The ride is organized in “stages,” or perhaps we should call them degrees of difficulty, as the climbing progresses from hardly any on Stage 1 to what the fucking hell idiocy in Stages 4 and 5. Each stage is 20+ miles long, and each one changes your concept of mileage!
During the first stage, you do the 2.9-mile Mounds Park Road climb, after they take you away from the mound for some easy flat to rolling riding. The first time you make the ascent, it doesn’t feel so bad, but then you know you are going to do it again like 115 miles later and that it won’t feel so good then. Anyway, we climbed it easily and then made the big descent back to where we started and it was close to 7:00AM and there were lots of riders congregating to begin their days.
Some girls I know spotted me and said hello, but Lori and I were all about getting on with the day (and those girls were probably just doing the 100K), but there weren’t good markings for where we were supposed to go. I spotted a guy with “VOLUNTEER” on the back of his shirt sporting a Viking hat, and yelled at him, “HEY VOLUNTEER!” He was up on stairs to a bar and ignored us, but a woman on the ground pointed us in the right direction and we were off.
The first stage isn’t bad at all, aside from the Mounds Park Road climb. You can see the map here. Basically, you circle around Route 78, managing to go up every stinking climb on either side of it, passing through the Town of Vermont all day long. Moen Vally and Scherbel have some climbing, but it’s not bad at all. The stage ends at Festge Park, though, which is up a fairly steep climb that sucks donkey balls, because you go a bit downhill before crossing the busy Route 14, where you hope you don’t have to full stop before ascending. We got lucky, as the nice policeman was holding traffic for us!
Rest stop 1 was basically fill up water bottles, grab some gels and go. I also grabbed a banana, but could only choke down ½ of it. Since we had started early, they were pretty much just setting up the rest station, and while I looked around at a lot of the food, I didn’t really want any. The Infinit was doing its job.
You leave Festge Park the same way you came in after Stage 1, meaning you get to scream downhill while watching others climb slowly. The first bad climb in Stage 2 is Barlow Road, and I remember it fondly from the last 3 times I’ve done this ride. As soon as I saw the road sign, I shouted to everyone within earshot, “I remember Barlow—this one really sucks!” Lori is yelling at me to shut up already, and I keep telling her, “I’m just saying.” But, it was during this first suck-ass climb that both Lori and I are happy for having done Triple T just 3 weeks prior, which featured tons of nasty-ass climbing, so our legs were primed for this shit.
Barlow Road is bad enough, but then they top you off (or should I say pop you off?) with part of Mineral Point Road. Now, do the math people—names of roads that have any of the following words in them cannot be good: Point, View, Ridge, Hollow, Valley, Mound, High and Pinnacle. Horribly Hilly features all those and more! You wouldn’t think something called Barlow Road or Zwettler Road would be bad, but they are as well!
Anyway, Stage 2 ends up at Festge Park again, so you get to climb into the rest stop again. On the way up this time, I heard a rider calling out her watts at 260, and a guy behind her called out 250, and I started laughing and shouted out my watts, which were only 209, yet I was climbing at about the same speed as them! I fucking love being small! I had been trying to cap my climbing watts around 210, and if I could climb on less, I would do it whenever I could. There were a few short and really steep climbs where I ignored the Ergomo, but glanced once or twice and saw between 250 and 300. Whatever—nothing you can do about those short and steep ones (OK, shut up Rich if you read this). A girl has got to have some fun, right?
I had just opened an Espresso Love Gu (for some reason I thought I should add 100 calories for the fun of it) and stuck it in my mouth, and this guy I’ve known a few years comes up and picks me up in his arms, and I’m trying to scream, “JOHN!” but I have this gel in my mouth, so we had a huge hug, he put me down, I sucked down the Gu, and we caught up quickly. John is a hottie (sadly, he’s engaged to be married, but I’m happy for him) that I’ve ridden with in the past and we just seem to run into one another a lot during the summer. Wait—that’s most of the people I know. My world keeps getting smaller, but that’s a good thing. I think it was 2 years ago I was riding by myself on a group ride wearing a swimsuit bottom (it was very hot), and from behind I hear a guy screaming, “I’d recognize that ass anywhere!” It was John, and we laughed and rode together for awhile until I got stung in the forehead by a rogue bee, at which point I started cursing, but it was OK, since we were near an aid station where I demanded ice while the bee venom coursed through me (like I need another reason to be even more wired).
John asked me if I was riding 100K or 200K, and of course I looked at him like what a silly question, of course I’m riding 200K today! I told him about Triple T and told him he could read my race reports or go to my blog, and I guess this was the first time I told him my nickname is Crackhead, and he just looked at me and said, “It figures.”
So I’m catching up with John, and Lori comes over, and I introduce everyone and then Lori and I took off to begin Stage 3. Stage 3 features my favorite part of the ride—an area known as Enchanted Valley. I don’t believe it’s the actual name of a town. It sure is beautiful in there, and while in it (knowing full well that since you are in a valley that you will need to CLIMB THE FUCK OUT) you can see the surrounding hills in relief against one another. It really is enchanting!
There are a few “bad” climbs in Stage 3, but to me and Lori, it is still feeling quite manageable. I hadn’t stood up on any climbs, and didn’t want to, because if I didn’t stabilize myself exactly right (I did try it once), my left ribcage would hurt like a sonofabitch. We got to some fork where you could decide to bag the 200K and just do 100K, and Lori turned to me to ask me if I wanted to cut it short, and I said nope. After that, some guys rode up on us, and one guy says, “Sheila?” And I say yes, and he says it’s Mike of 3Iron. We had never met in person, but he said he recognized my bike from the photos on my blog. That was cool meeting him, and we all rode together for a bit, before I could sense Lori wanting to go hang with the fast boys, so I shooed her on.
I rolled into the Black Earth (home of the awesome restaurant, Heiney’s) rest station not too long after Lori and the boys, and here I saw John again. You get a little crazed doing these rides with all this climbing, especially when it’s stinking hot and humid. We all looked like wet rats or something. So as I’m taking a cold, wet towel to my face, I ask John why am I not getting any love from all these men? And he says it’s because I ride too fast. I told him there are plenty of guys who ride faster than me, but then again there are plenty who ride slower than me, and I shared how on one ride a guy asked me whether men I date need to be faster than me. I thought it was an odd question, but John laughed at me and said, “Well, they at least need to be able to hang with you.” John accused me of being a shameless flirt, but truthfully I don’t think I am—I really don’t know how. I just do what I do and be who I am, and if that comes off as flirtatious, oh well!
Lori took off from Black Earth ahead of me, which was fine by me, since I wanted to let her ride her own ride, even though I felt like I was riding within myself and doing pretty well on the day. Stage 4 is where you begin to notice whether you’ve been pacing yourself properly, as it’s loaded up with fucking hard climbs. The first one is Midland Road, which while on, kept reminding me of the infamous Midtown Road that’s on the Ironman Wisconsin course. But I couldn’t remember the name of the Ironman course road name for awhile, so I began scrolling Mid this and that in my head. I find it entertaining the things my brain does while I’m doing this shit. At any rate, I’m noticing that my legs don’t feel bad at all—I guess doing 80-mile and 104-mile rides back to back last weekend was a good thing.
I think it was on Midland Road that John and his crew rode up on me from behind, and John yells at me really loudly, “YOU SEXY BITCH!!!” As he rode up on me, I shouted, “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” That kept me going for miles, for some reason.
Midland Road sucked (but I kept smiling because, hey, I’m a sexy bitch!), and then we got to Fesenfeld Road, which also sucked, and THEN Sutcliffe Road which was pretty bad, but next up was Zwettler Road. So you see, during this stage, they are just piling it on you, one after the other, with hardly any rest in between. Although I will say, I appreciated the descents a lot this year, and would do them in mad bomber mode, topping out at 45MPH on many of them. I can only imagine how fast some bigger guys went!
Anyway, Zwettler Road is a stinking, fucking whore. It has, I think, a series of 4 climbs. The first one is bad, the second one is fucking bad and the last two are really bad. On the second one, the steepest of the bunch, I was just pissed, and decided, what the fuck, I’m standing on this one. So I stood up, and my ribcage hurt, and I didn’t care, and I was yelling, “You stupid, stinking, fucking whore” while doing it. Some guy climbed about the same rate as me, and when we got to the brief reprieve before the next step and started up again, he laughed at me and said he was hearing other expletives all day, after I apologized for my little outburst.
There’s more shit on Stage 4 after Zwettler Road, and by this time you are starting to want this to be over, but I knew from years past, that Stage 5 is where the rubber meets the road. When you roll into the last rest station, which is just on the side of a road—no park, nothing fancy—you begin to see how the day is wearing on people. Some are laying on the ground moaning, many have this crazed look in their eyes thinking that they had just finished 100 miles of crap that felt like 200 miles and aren’t sure whether they can go on. I was just hoping they had hard-boiled eggs! In years past they did, but this time they cheesed out at the rest stations, and didn’t have them. But they did have make-your-own sandwiches, so I took a piece of good, old white bread, slapped on a big slice of turkey breast (they were HUGE slices), and stuffed my face. I just felt like I needed a bit of protein, but then I knew I’d have to chill for a few minutes, since once you roll out of this rest station, they fuck you in the ass by sending you up Pinnacle Road, and the last thing you need is to have a belly full of food and Gatorade or Infinit or whatever crap you are using.
So I see John with his buds here, and just because I was getting a bit giddy, I go up to him and say, “What did you say to me back there?” even though I knew what it was--I just wanted to hear him say it again. And he says, matter-of-factly, “I called you a Sexy Bitch.” And one of his buddies smiles broadly at me and says, “And that’s a compliment!” I already knew it was, and we all started laughing and making our decisions about moving on. I think I took off before those boys.
Secretly, I was hoping they had taken Pinnacle Road out of the ride, and for some reason, I was thinking there was no fucking way I was doing it and that I would walk my bike up. I have no clue why my brain was giving me this grief. Literally, you go .2 miles out of the last rest station, and then it’s a right turn, kiss your ass goodbye, here’s Pinnacle Road! Pinnacle Road is 2.5 miles of blissful, stinking, fucking crap, capped off with the worst crap you can imagine (unless you’ve done the infamous Shop Hill Road in the Dairyland Dare). At least it starts out not so bad, progressing to bad, really bad, and finally really, fucking, stinking bad you think you are going to fall over on your bike and that you can’t turn the pedals anymore because you are going nearly vertical.
But I did it, shouting, “FUCK YOU I’M NOT WALKING” to myself as I passed people on the way up, and when I did, we would quietly say to one another, “Good Job!” I mean, anyone climbing this shit is doing a great job, don’t you think?
Well, you wish that Pinnacle Road was the end of the crap, but if you’ve done the ride before, you know it isn’t, and you have this pit in your stomach that is just waiting for the bottom to fall out before you start climbing again. I started thinking about Barneveld, remembering there is a bad climb into that town, and then of course, the grand finale, climbing 2.9 miles up fucking Mounds Park Road for the second time just to let you know your legs are fucking toasted.
But there’s some not so bad stuff after Pinnacle Road, but now I’m thinking, wait, this ride is supposed to be 200K and we are not yet to Barneveld and then it’s a ways to Mounds Park Road, so how many fucking miles are they making us do today? On any other day, extra mileage is welcome. Not today!
In the brief respite stretch we get after Pinnacle Road, what jumps into my brain but Steve Martin? I have his first recorded record, “Let’s Get Small,” and there’s a routine on there where he says: “Sometimes people come up to me and say, Steve—how did you get so fuckin’ funny?” And I just keep rolling this over and over in my head, laughing out loud, smiling, and it amazes me that through all this crap that I am still laughing and having a great time. I alternate that with thoughts of “what the hell is wrong with me?” I wonder if other people go through similar thought processes when doing this shit. I think the dilemma of whether this is fun or stupid is the classic endurance ethos. I truly believe there ought to be a race that includes “fun AND stupid!” in its advertising. You’d get everybody and their brother signing up for that shit.
Well, we get to Lake View Road, which ostensibly, starts out as quite pretty. But, you know, it has the word “view” in it, so it can’t be good. It was here that I started to experience almost feeling like I couldn’t put out the 200-210 climbing watts that I thought I now needed. But I figured what the hell, I am still making it up, so I changed my perspective to thinking that I was saving it for the grand finale, and in fact I was! I hadn’t walked, I hadn’t stood up except on that stinking whore of a climb on Zwettler Road, I was 100% on my nutrition (calories are wonderful!), but now I was ready to get this show off the road. So while on Lake View (which is still a whore in my book), I’m wondering where is fucking Barneveld, and hoping maybe it was wiped off the map by a tornado. One year that actually almost happened in Barneveld, so it was no coincidence that my brain picked that scenario.
Well, I begin to scan the horizon for the Barneveld water tower, and pretty soon I am seeing it and figure I’m fucked. Sorry, Barneveld still exists, and you still need to climb the hell into it. It hurt like a mofo, and then I began thinking how much longer until Mounds Park Road? It was here that I heard someone say that the ride would end up being 130 miles today because of some construction bypass. What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK???
So I look at my odometer, and sure enough, I’m in fucking Barneveld and I’m already at 118 miles and I know there’s more than 6 normally to the end, and I have to steel myself to the fact that I’ve now still got another 12 miles to go. It was when I saw the roadblock sign and we turned back onto County HH that I knew my fate.
And then it’s just a matter of time, my friends. You can see the stinking Mound wherever you are. At least 5 times while looking at it, I flipped it off, sometimes punctuated with a big “FUCK YOU!” Because the thing is just standing there, looming, laughing at you because you are such a dumbass and will ride up the whore even though you could circle the bottom and end up at your nice, cushy car.
Well, I had hoped to break 9 hours on the day, but with the extra miles, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I was secretly pretty damn pleased with myself because I had done the ACTUALLY ONLY 200K ride 2 years ago in 10:03. It was looking like I was going to make my second goal of 9:15, which was reasonable, considering the extra miles.
As I approached Mounds Park Road, I decided I would dump out my bottles so I was as light as possible climbing. This is the first year where I have never once had a thought that I would like to be any lighter in weight myself. Even last year, there were many times while climbing where I thought that 5 lbs. lighter would be nice. Not anymore!
So I start dumping bottles, and I flipped the top off one of my water bottles which is a Headhunters bottle that I got from a guy named Dino that I met in Brazil last year who lives in Madison. I was so pissed, but it was merrily swimming its way down a little brook, and I had a job to finish.
I was wondering if I’d be able to make the entire climb without walking. At this point, the sun had come burning out, and right as I started the ascent, I said to a pair of riders, “Thank GOD it’s hot and sunny out now!” They got my sarcasm, and we had a good laugh. It was about now that I was thinking that Lori was probably finished. I guessed she’d finish in about 8:30, and hoped she wasn’t too angry waiting for my sorry ass.
So I am climbing Mounds Park, and now I just ignore the Ergomo, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is not stopping and not falling over, because there are few places where you could actually stop your bike without falling over backwards. So I start to have visions in my head of just rolling backwards down the hill, but those visions are quashed by the sensations in my legs, which are now pretty much feelin’ it. I am proud that I haven’t bailed so far, but man, this is getting fucking HARD. The climb is 2.9 miles, and they even have races up the stinking whore, which someday I should do. I wonder how it would feel to not have already gone 127 miles?
As I’m going up, believe it or not, I am passing people who had whizzed by me a few miles back, which at the time, I thought, “Good for you!” I mean either they are just faster than me or else they will suffer more than me on the grand finale, because I’m tiny and climb pretty well for a girl. There’s a guy in front of me who is looking good, and I’m thinking he can stay ahead of me, but when he shouts out (because he knows I’m behind him), “that’s the end of the gears,” I realize I’m not in the 27 yet, and I kerchunk it in and feel like I’m going to be OK. And then I pass him, and he says, “Awesome job!” And I say back to him, “You, too!”
Because we are all awesome and we are all sweaty pigs and the sweat is just streaming off of us at this point and the bugs don’t even want to land on you anymore and we know how stupid we are and we know how much fun we’ve been having and that it’s all going to be over soon enough so just hang in there and turn the fucking pedals and keep cranking and don’t look too far ahead because it’s getting steeper and your quads are burning up and feel like exhausted pistons and you think you might not be able to make it and you see some people who are walking their bikes and you think THAT IS NOT GOING TO BE ME I CAN SEE THE TOP OF THE NEXT RISE AND MAKE IT THERE and you keep cranking and I’m maybe ½ mile from the top and here comes Lori to fetch me and she asks if I want a ride, and I say NO FUCKING WAY that I’m going all the way and I’ll see her at the bottom of the hill. But man it was so cool that she turned around and drove next to me for a bit and kept telling me how great I was doing and I really felt like I had done a great job and I was all smiles, and then I finally hit top, turned left (I bagged the final 900-feet of HELL and we wanted to get the hell out of Dodge) and began screaming down the hill. 2 guys in a car pulled up next to me and said, “The finish line is the other way,” and I said, “Been there, done that!” and I let go the brakes completely and flew down, full well knowing I was holding up traffic behind me. Or not. I was probably going 35 to 45mph.
And I got to the van, and Lori grabbed my bike for me and put it away and handed me a cold, wet towel to towel off, and I asked her what her time was, and it was 8:35. She’s such a stud! And then I told her I went 9:19, which was a serious chunk of time off my previous best, and I felt like a stud, too (Lori’s 44 and I’m 50), and Lori drove off and we hit the road, and we talked nonstop the entire way back. I did request a stop for McDonald’s at the Belvedere Oasis, and I got 2 cheeseburgers and fries. Lori didn’t want to eat real food since she was going out for dinner with Marc, and because she’s trying to lose weight! Now, you look at photos of her and you think she doesn’t need to lose an ounce, but I’ve been there myself, so I know.
For those of you interested in the power stuff, here's my data:
Duration: 9:19:34
Work: 4682 kJ (that's CALORIES for those of you without power meters)
TSS: 748 (intensity factor 0.896) (for reference sake, an Ironman ride should be about TSS 300)
Norm Power: 167
VI: 1.19
Distance: 131.933 mi
Elevation Gain: 10853 ft
We got back to Lori’s house, moved my crap to my car and I drove home with this shit-faced grin. I thought it was just 3 weeks ago I pounded out Triple T and now this, and I think I’m going to be in some great shape for Lake Placid, or at least it looks good on paper!
I want to thank Lori so much for driving and also for being my inspiration to stay on top of my personal goals for the day and for listening to me babble about some stuff I can’t write about here—it’s our secret—and just getting to know her better. She’s an incredible woman, and I think a Kona slot is in her future.
Back home, I was so wired from all the caffeine and just from, well, YOU KNOW! I had a couple 2 or 3 beers, a little food (I really wasn’t that hungry), set my A/C down to 70 because I knew my body would be having temperature control issues, and then slept fitfully as I had to pee like 10 times and drink water, but hey, it’s all good. I am about to go for a little ½ hour swim just to move around a bit, and then I’m taking my Dad out to lunch for Father’s Day. I’m happy I didn’t stay overnight in Verona so I could do all this today. I also need to go grocery shopping and, big surprise, clean and mix fucking bottles!
So I guess that in addition to calling me Crackhead, you can now also call me Sexy Bitch!
Photos can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8737154@N04/sets/72157600380989626/
I made the trip with my friend, Lori, who also raced Triple T 3 weeks ago (and handily won the coed team division with her SO, Marc). Lori graciously volunteered to drive her van, but we would be leaving directly after the ride on Saturday rather than staying overnight.
Back up to Thursday. I had an outstanding 2:30 run, covering 16.5 miles. I have never felt so good on such a long training run. The workout protocol had me warming up easy for :30, then moving into Z2 and upper Z3 (half marathon pace) work. I ran in my favorite place, Waterfall Glen, which happens to be adjacent to Argonne National Laboratory, so I am getting in my extra protons and neutrons while there! That day, the way I controlled my pace was by paying acute attention to my breathing. I still had some soreness in my left serratus and upper intercostals from the run crash the week before, and labored breathing, coughing and laughing still made my ribcage hurt. So for the easy pace stuff, my mantra was “barely breathing,” which translated to about a 10:00/mile pace. Z2 I pegged as “breathing a little bit,” and that came out to about a 9:30/mile pace, and the half marathon breathing pattern was “definitely breathing,” for a pace of about 8:50/mile. For reference sake, tempo pace would be “breathing a lot.” It was the first time I was so in touch with my breathing, and it was amazing how it translated to the correct paces for me. The actual paces I ran varied due to the terrain, which is rolling hills. During the run, I had 3 deer jump across the path in front of me, I assisted one painted turtle across the path (to avoid being run over by cyclists), I saw a bluebird up close and personal, and I ran into a guy I know from the Y. Chris was on his hybrid, and I took a few minutes to stop and chat with him when I was about 9 miles into the run. He asked how much I was running, and when I told him, he said (like he says to me regularly), “When do you take easy days?” I told him that usually Mondays and Fridays were “easy” for me (Monday is usually a swim and a form run and Friday is a swim and perhaps a short run). I told him I thought I actually had a couple of easy rides on my schedule, and we could try and do one of those together. He’s a much faster runner than me, but nowhere near as fast a cyclist. I’d date him, except that I think he prefers less active bimbos. Once he said to me point blank that I would be a hard woman to date because of my drive. Nice, huh? Oh well, it is what it is.
I took Friday off from work. Rich hadn’t scheduled any workouts for me, but I was certain I’d do a swim, and contemplated a short, easy run, just to see what’s what after Thursday’s run, plus I wanted to get in 4 runs for the week. I swam 3200 yards at 7:00AM, and wore a 2-piece swimsuit, so I could just take off the bottom and put on running shorts and head out right from the Y. It made me smile because for a few years, I did my swim/run workouts back to back during the summer, and would always be running out with a wet, cool top! I decided to only run :30, and to try and run real easy, so again, I focused on “barely breathing.” I ended up running about 9:30/mile, which I rarely do outside of long runs. Within 2 minutes, I ran into Larry, who is an awesome runner that I know from the Y, who is doing his first century ride this fall and wants to borrow my bike box. He had put on a little weight (but he has never by any stretch been fat) about a year ago, but he’s totally leaned out, and he was on his bike as we chatted. I told him I got a new bike, and he guessed its cost at $3,000, and I laughed at him. Anyway, it was nice to see him, because usually he runs on the treadmill (go figure), so I don’t see much of him in the spring through fall. Since he was heading TO the Y and I would need to circle back to retrieve my crap, I decided I’d write my contact information down for him and pass it to him, which I did, as he was on the treadmill. I thoroughly enjoyed my short run, and my legs didn’t feel bad at all. As always, I got all sorts of stares, as I was sporting my low-cut Desoto shorts. I have just gotten used to running in those, as they are extremely comfortable for me. Yeah, I have washboard abs and it makes people (men AND women) look, and that’s cool. I’m a bit of an exhibitionist (stop laughing right now!). Side note: during my Wednesday run, while dressed in a similar fashion, a woman driving a truck looked at me and flipped me off! How sad and angry she must be to do that. I was clear on the opposite side of the road up on the sidewalk climbing a hill. Usually I get a few whistles from men, so this was unexpected.
I finished swimming and running by about 9:00AM, which gave me time to do some house cleaning (the incessant bottle manipulation continues) and pack. In the process, I knew I had better start loading up on the carbs, so I drank some Endurox R4, a can of guava juice, and ate 1.5 bananas. I couldn’t choke down the whole second banana, as I could feel my insulin spiking as it was, and I already had about 700 calories worth of carbs in my tummy. I hadn’t worked out enough to need that much, and my eating automatically adjusts to my workout load; however, when I have a big day following, my brain puts me into calorie acquisition mode. I figure I had blasted through all my glycogen stores on Thursday and was probably a bit in the hole from a short swim and run, so the stocking began.
I arrived at Lori’s Friday afternoon around 2:45PM. She was all packed and ready to go, so we transferred my bike, 2 bags and 2 coolers to her van and we took off, after making a quick stop to get gasoline.
Let me tell you, I consider myself pretty high energy, but Miss Lori seems to be in the stratosphere to me sometimes! She is younger than me with 5 boys (ages 10-21), she’s a really fast triathlete (my idol) who trains even more than I do, and she’s going to school for her nursing degree. Needless to say, she and I have some extremely animated discussions. Lori’s Italian, to boot, so you have blond Italian chic and blond Croatian chic both talking with not only their hands, but their entire arms!
We made good time to Verona, Wisconsin (where our hotel was), and decided to continue on to Mt. Horeb to pick up our ride packets. Mt. Horeb is only another 11 miles west of Verona. On the way there, we were both looking at the beautiful countryside, since we’ve both done Ironman Wisconsin, and go up there to train quite often.
Packets in tow, we headed back to Verona to check into the hotel. I will be staying there twice more this summer with different people, so I am sure the front desk woman will start to recognize me! We dropped our bags (bikes were left in the van), and headed to dinner.
Lori had forgot to pack bottles and gels for her nutrition. She was concerned about getting this stuff, and I told her not to worry we’d get it under control. We went to the store, "World of Variety," first (note to self: need to go shop there--they have a lot of campy looking stuff!), but they were closing, and told us they didn’t carry empty bottles, so we went to Walgreen’s. Walgreens had some cheap bottles that would do the trick, even though Lori was worried they would be too big for her Profile cages in the XLAB. I told her they would fit (she doesn’t know another nickname of mine is “Volume Queen”), and that we’d snag gels en route on Saturday. While she was shopping for necessities, I browsed the toy aisle (I tell you the Verona Walgreen’s ROCKS!) and picked up two bouncy things that light up and are rainbow colors (yes, I am such a little kid in many ways).
Next, we headed to dinner at the one sit-down restaurant in Verona, Avanti’s. I had been there before on a training expedition, and I knew they had decent food. As we walked into the dining area, it was obvious there were a lot of other cyclists eating there, some of which one or the other or both of us knew. I initially met Lori through a guy named Dan who I met once when I captained a team for Hustle up the Hancock, when another guy I knew, Jim, recruited Dan (who’s an awesome fast climber) for the team, and as Lori told me yesterday, Dan told her she needed to meet me because we were very similar.
Anyway, Lori ordered a glass of wine and I got a Bell’s Oberon, which was tasty. They had Blue Moon, but I had that at home, and the waitress said to go with the Bell’s, which is brewed in Michigan. We decided to order a pizza, and what we asked for was pepperoni, garlic and tomatoes. What we got, and ate anyway, was pepperoni, sausage, garlic and pepperoncini! We both like the pepperoncini, but they were a bit much on the pizza. Still, we ate a good deal of a large, and I took the 2 remaining slices for later. It seems that I eat the most of anyone I train with lately!
We went back to the hotel, where we got ice for our coolers, laid out our outfits for the next day, and then tried to relax. Lori had brought along some paperwork, and I was amazed at how she kept at things, while I was basically just laying around, so I did get on the floor to stretch for about :20. All the while, we are talking, and of course, watching the Weather Channel. The forecast called for high 80’s with afternoon thunderstorms, and the little local map had the thunder clouds everywhere in the area. Oh well, what are you going to do.
I had brought temporary tattoos with me, and showed Lori the selection. She opted for the hibiscus flower ring (that I bought in Kona the last time I was there—sigh—I need to get back somehow), and I opted for the thorn ring for an arm and a death skull for one of my calves. Note to self: need to find some more good temporary tattoos for the next few weeks and also for Ironman Lake Placid—I am not sure what I would like to sport there.
We decided we’d get up at 4:45AM and shoot for a 6:45AM start. Technically, the ride starts at 7:00AM, but there was no chip timing this time, so as long as you have a map, why would you wait around until 7, especially when it was hot and humid and just going to get hotter and more humid?
Well, with all the pizza in my tummy (I managed to eat the toppings off the last 2 slices) and the excitement of knowing what we were going to do the next day, and the fact that I generally haven’t been sleeping much past 4AM lately, I awoke at my usual 3:30AM because my body had processed the food (draw your own conclusions here). I got back into bed, and just lay there, knowing it wasn’t long until it was wake up time. At 4AM, I heard Lori stir, so I just asked her if she was awake and could we get moving. She was cool with it, laughing at me for being so excited, and I clicked the coffee pot (which I had set the night before) to on, let Lori languish while it brewed, turned on the TV (it was brilliant that it automatically tuned to the Weather Channel), and took a look outside.
I saw some clouds, which was probably a good thing, and then Lori got up, we had coffee and our breakfast, and then I pulled out my pre-mixed Ultrafuel and drank it. At that moment, I realized I had a “normal” bottle that Lori could use for her bike, which made her very happy. I had another bottle from the ride bag, so Lori ended up not using the Franken bottles from Walgreen’s. I had pre-mixed 2 bottles of Infinit. Each bottle contained about 900 calories (and I wrote “CALORIES” on the generic bottles!), and I would also carry 2 smaller bottles in my jersey for plain water to chase it with. All the while we are setting up, we are taking turns sighing and making various noises, and we laughed at one another whenever we caught each other in a sigh. We also both talk to ourselves out loud while we are getting ready, saying stuff like, "OK," "All right," and "Huh." Cracks me up!
We suited up and left at 5:30 for Blue Mounds, which is where the ride begins. On the way there, we could see the big ball of a sun rising, and we knew it would be a warm day. We smiled watching the terrain get progressively hillier.
We got a primo parking spot right across from the little store at the base on Mounds Park Road, right next to porta-potties. We got our stuff ready, I had a guy who had never done the ride before snap a few photos, and we were off and rolling at 6:19AM.
Lori is a brutally strong rider, and I didn’t want to hold her back (I’m a big girl), but we both agreed we’d stay together for the first 2 stages, in case either of us decided to bag the 200K and just do 100K. This was good for both of us because we both kept ourselves in check.
The ride is organized in “stages,” or perhaps we should call them degrees of difficulty, as the climbing progresses from hardly any on Stage 1 to what the fucking hell idiocy in Stages 4 and 5. Each stage is 20+ miles long, and each one changes your concept of mileage!
During the first stage, you do the 2.9-mile Mounds Park Road climb, after they take you away from the mound for some easy flat to rolling riding. The first time you make the ascent, it doesn’t feel so bad, but then you know you are going to do it again like 115 miles later and that it won’t feel so good then. Anyway, we climbed it easily and then made the big descent back to where we started and it was close to 7:00AM and there were lots of riders congregating to begin their days.
Some girls I know spotted me and said hello, but Lori and I were all about getting on with the day (and those girls were probably just doing the 100K), but there weren’t good markings for where we were supposed to go. I spotted a guy with “VOLUNTEER” on the back of his shirt sporting a Viking hat, and yelled at him, “HEY VOLUNTEER!” He was up on stairs to a bar and ignored us, but a woman on the ground pointed us in the right direction and we were off.
The first stage isn’t bad at all, aside from the Mounds Park Road climb. You can see the map here. Basically, you circle around Route 78, managing to go up every stinking climb on either side of it, passing through the Town of Vermont all day long. Moen Vally and Scherbel have some climbing, but it’s not bad at all. The stage ends at Festge Park, though, which is up a fairly steep climb that sucks donkey balls, because you go a bit downhill before crossing the busy Route 14, where you hope you don’t have to full stop before ascending. We got lucky, as the nice policeman was holding traffic for us!
Rest stop 1 was basically fill up water bottles, grab some gels and go. I also grabbed a banana, but could only choke down ½ of it. Since we had started early, they were pretty much just setting up the rest station, and while I looked around at a lot of the food, I didn’t really want any. The Infinit was doing its job.
You leave Festge Park the same way you came in after Stage 1, meaning you get to scream downhill while watching others climb slowly. The first bad climb in Stage 2 is Barlow Road, and I remember it fondly from the last 3 times I’ve done this ride. As soon as I saw the road sign, I shouted to everyone within earshot, “I remember Barlow—this one really sucks!” Lori is yelling at me to shut up already, and I keep telling her, “I’m just saying.” But, it was during this first suck-ass climb that both Lori and I are happy for having done Triple T just 3 weeks prior, which featured tons of nasty-ass climbing, so our legs were primed for this shit.
Barlow Road is bad enough, but then they top you off (or should I say pop you off?) with part of Mineral Point Road. Now, do the math people—names of roads that have any of the following words in them cannot be good: Point, View, Ridge, Hollow, Valley, Mound, High and Pinnacle. Horribly Hilly features all those and more! You wouldn’t think something called Barlow Road or Zwettler Road would be bad, but they are as well!
Anyway, Stage 2 ends up at Festge Park again, so you get to climb into the rest stop again. On the way up this time, I heard a rider calling out her watts at 260, and a guy behind her called out 250, and I started laughing and shouted out my watts, which were only 209, yet I was climbing at about the same speed as them! I fucking love being small! I had been trying to cap my climbing watts around 210, and if I could climb on less, I would do it whenever I could. There were a few short and really steep climbs where I ignored the Ergomo, but glanced once or twice and saw between 250 and 300. Whatever—nothing you can do about those short and steep ones (OK, shut up Rich if you read this). A girl has got to have some fun, right?
I had just opened an Espresso Love Gu (for some reason I thought I should add 100 calories for the fun of it) and stuck it in my mouth, and this guy I’ve known a few years comes up and picks me up in his arms, and I’m trying to scream, “JOHN!” but I have this gel in my mouth, so we had a huge hug, he put me down, I sucked down the Gu, and we caught up quickly. John is a hottie (sadly, he’s engaged to be married, but I’m happy for him) that I’ve ridden with in the past and we just seem to run into one another a lot during the summer. Wait—that’s most of the people I know. My world keeps getting smaller, but that’s a good thing. I think it was 2 years ago I was riding by myself on a group ride wearing a swimsuit bottom (it was very hot), and from behind I hear a guy screaming, “I’d recognize that ass anywhere!” It was John, and we laughed and rode together for awhile until I got stung in the forehead by a rogue bee, at which point I started cursing, but it was OK, since we were near an aid station where I demanded ice while the bee venom coursed through me (like I need another reason to be even more wired).
John asked me if I was riding 100K or 200K, and of course I looked at him like what a silly question, of course I’m riding 200K today! I told him about Triple T and told him he could read my race reports or go to my blog, and I guess this was the first time I told him my nickname is Crackhead, and he just looked at me and said, “It figures.”
So I’m catching up with John, and Lori comes over, and I introduce everyone and then Lori and I took off to begin Stage 3. Stage 3 features my favorite part of the ride—an area known as Enchanted Valley. I don’t believe it’s the actual name of a town. It sure is beautiful in there, and while in it (knowing full well that since you are in a valley that you will need to CLIMB THE FUCK OUT) you can see the surrounding hills in relief against one another. It really is enchanting!
There are a few “bad” climbs in Stage 3, but to me and Lori, it is still feeling quite manageable. I hadn’t stood up on any climbs, and didn’t want to, because if I didn’t stabilize myself exactly right (I did try it once), my left ribcage would hurt like a sonofabitch. We got to some fork where you could decide to bag the 200K and just do 100K, and Lori turned to me to ask me if I wanted to cut it short, and I said nope. After that, some guys rode up on us, and one guy says, “Sheila?” And I say yes, and he says it’s Mike of 3Iron. We had never met in person, but he said he recognized my bike from the photos on my blog. That was cool meeting him, and we all rode together for a bit, before I could sense Lori wanting to go hang with the fast boys, so I shooed her on.
I rolled into the Black Earth (home of the awesome restaurant, Heiney’s) rest station not too long after Lori and the boys, and here I saw John again. You get a little crazed doing these rides with all this climbing, especially when it’s stinking hot and humid. We all looked like wet rats or something. So as I’m taking a cold, wet towel to my face, I ask John why am I not getting any love from all these men? And he says it’s because I ride too fast. I told him there are plenty of guys who ride faster than me, but then again there are plenty who ride slower than me, and I shared how on one ride a guy asked me whether men I date need to be faster than me. I thought it was an odd question, but John laughed at me and said, “Well, they at least need to be able to hang with you.” John accused me of being a shameless flirt, but truthfully I don’t think I am—I really don’t know how. I just do what I do and be who I am, and if that comes off as flirtatious, oh well!
Lori took off from Black Earth ahead of me, which was fine by me, since I wanted to let her ride her own ride, even though I felt like I was riding within myself and doing pretty well on the day. Stage 4 is where you begin to notice whether you’ve been pacing yourself properly, as it’s loaded up with fucking hard climbs. The first one is Midland Road, which while on, kept reminding me of the infamous Midtown Road that’s on the Ironman Wisconsin course. But I couldn’t remember the name of the Ironman course road name for awhile, so I began scrolling Mid this and that in my head. I find it entertaining the things my brain does while I’m doing this shit. At any rate, I’m noticing that my legs don’t feel bad at all—I guess doing 80-mile and 104-mile rides back to back last weekend was a good thing.
I think it was on Midland Road that John and his crew rode up on me from behind, and John yells at me really loudly, “YOU SEXY BITCH!!!” As he rode up on me, I shouted, “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!” That kept me going for miles, for some reason.
Midland Road sucked (but I kept smiling because, hey, I’m a sexy bitch!), and then we got to Fesenfeld Road, which also sucked, and THEN Sutcliffe Road which was pretty bad, but next up was Zwettler Road. So you see, during this stage, they are just piling it on you, one after the other, with hardly any rest in between. Although I will say, I appreciated the descents a lot this year, and would do them in mad bomber mode, topping out at 45MPH on many of them. I can only imagine how fast some bigger guys went!
Anyway, Zwettler Road is a stinking, fucking whore. It has, I think, a series of 4 climbs. The first one is bad, the second one is fucking bad and the last two are really bad. On the second one, the steepest of the bunch, I was just pissed, and decided, what the fuck, I’m standing on this one. So I stood up, and my ribcage hurt, and I didn’t care, and I was yelling, “You stupid, stinking, fucking whore” while doing it. Some guy climbed about the same rate as me, and when we got to the brief reprieve before the next step and started up again, he laughed at me and said he was hearing other expletives all day, after I apologized for my little outburst.
There’s more shit on Stage 4 after Zwettler Road, and by this time you are starting to want this to be over, but I knew from years past, that Stage 5 is where the rubber meets the road. When you roll into the last rest station, which is just on the side of a road—no park, nothing fancy—you begin to see how the day is wearing on people. Some are laying on the ground moaning, many have this crazed look in their eyes thinking that they had just finished 100 miles of crap that felt like 200 miles and aren’t sure whether they can go on. I was just hoping they had hard-boiled eggs! In years past they did, but this time they cheesed out at the rest stations, and didn’t have them. But they did have make-your-own sandwiches, so I took a piece of good, old white bread, slapped on a big slice of turkey breast (they were HUGE slices), and stuffed my face. I just felt like I needed a bit of protein, but then I knew I’d have to chill for a few minutes, since once you roll out of this rest station, they fuck you in the ass by sending you up Pinnacle Road, and the last thing you need is to have a belly full of food and Gatorade or Infinit or whatever crap you are using.
So I see John with his buds here, and just because I was getting a bit giddy, I go up to him and say, “What did you say to me back there?” even though I knew what it was--I just wanted to hear him say it again. And he says, matter-of-factly, “I called you a Sexy Bitch.” And one of his buddies smiles broadly at me and says, “And that’s a compliment!” I already knew it was, and we all started laughing and making our decisions about moving on. I think I took off before those boys.
Secretly, I was hoping they had taken Pinnacle Road out of the ride, and for some reason, I was thinking there was no fucking way I was doing it and that I would walk my bike up. I have no clue why my brain was giving me this grief. Literally, you go .2 miles out of the last rest station, and then it’s a right turn, kiss your ass goodbye, here’s Pinnacle Road! Pinnacle Road is 2.5 miles of blissful, stinking, fucking crap, capped off with the worst crap you can imagine (unless you’ve done the infamous Shop Hill Road in the Dairyland Dare). At least it starts out not so bad, progressing to bad, really bad, and finally really, fucking, stinking bad you think you are going to fall over on your bike and that you can’t turn the pedals anymore because you are going nearly vertical.
But I did it, shouting, “FUCK YOU I’M NOT WALKING” to myself as I passed people on the way up, and when I did, we would quietly say to one another, “Good Job!” I mean, anyone climbing this shit is doing a great job, don’t you think?
Well, you wish that Pinnacle Road was the end of the crap, but if you’ve done the ride before, you know it isn’t, and you have this pit in your stomach that is just waiting for the bottom to fall out before you start climbing again. I started thinking about Barneveld, remembering there is a bad climb into that town, and then of course, the grand finale, climbing 2.9 miles up fucking Mounds Park Road for the second time just to let you know your legs are fucking toasted.
But there’s some not so bad stuff after Pinnacle Road, but now I’m thinking, wait, this ride is supposed to be 200K and we are not yet to Barneveld and then it’s a ways to Mounds Park Road, so how many fucking miles are they making us do today? On any other day, extra mileage is welcome. Not today!
In the brief respite stretch we get after Pinnacle Road, what jumps into my brain but Steve Martin? I have his first recorded record, “Let’s Get Small,” and there’s a routine on there where he says: “Sometimes people come up to me and say, Steve—how did you get so fuckin’ funny?” And I just keep rolling this over and over in my head, laughing out loud, smiling, and it amazes me that through all this crap that I am still laughing and having a great time. I alternate that with thoughts of “what the hell is wrong with me?” I wonder if other people go through similar thought processes when doing this shit. I think the dilemma of whether this is fun or stupid is the classic endurance ethos. I truly believe there ought to be a race that includes “fun AND stupid!” in its advertising. You’d get everybody and their brother signing up for that shit.
Well, we get to Lake View Road, which ostensibly, starts out as quite pretty. But, you know, it has the word “view” in it, so it can’t be good. It was here that I started to experience almost feeling like I couldn’t put out the 200-210 climbing watts that I thought I now needed. But I figured what the hell, I am still making it up, so I changed my perspective to thinking that I was saving it for the grand finale, and in fact I was! I hadn’t walked, I hadn’t stood up except on that stinking whore of a climb on Zwettler Road, I was 100% on my nutrition (calories are wonderful!), but now I was ready to get this show off the road. So while on Lake View (which is still a whore in my book), I’m wondering where is fucking Barneveld, and hoping maybe it was wiped off the map by a tornado. One year that actually almost happened in Barneveld, so it was no coincidence that my brain picked that scenario.
Well, I begin to scan the horizon for the Barneveld water tower, and pretty soon I am seeing it and figure I’m fucked. Sorry, Barneveld still exists, and you still need to climb the hell into it. It hurt like a mofo, and then I began thinking how much longer until Mounds Park Road? It was here that I heard someone say that the ride would end up being 130 miles today because of some construction bypass. What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK???
So I look at my odometer, and sure enough, I’m in fucking Barneveld and I’m already at 118 miles and I know there’s more than 6 normally to the end, and I have to steel myself to the fact that I’ve now still got another 12 miles to go. It was when I saw the roadblock sign and we turned back onto County HH that I knew my fate.
And then it’s just a matter of time, my friends. You can see the stinking Mound wherever you are. At least 5 times while looking at it, I flipped it off, sometimes punctuated with a big “FUCK YOU!” Because the thing is just standing there, looming, laughing at you because you are such a dumbass and will ride up the whore even though you could circle the bottom and end up at your nice, cushy car.
Well, I had hoped to break 9 hours on the day, but with the extra miles, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I was secretly pretty damn pleased with myself because I had done the ACTUALLY ONLY 200K ride 2 years ago in 10:03. It was looking like I was going to make my second goal of 9:15, which was reasonable, considering the extra miles.
As I approached Mounds Park Road, I decided I would dump out my bottles so I was as light as possible climbing. This is the first year where I have never once had a thought that I would like to be any lighter in weight myself. Even last year, there were many times while climbing where I thought that 5 lbs. lighter would be nice. Not anymore!
So I start dumping bottles, and I flipped the top off one of my water bottles which is a Headhunters bottle that I got from a guy named Dino that I met in Brazil last year who lives in Madison. I was so pissed, but it was merrily swimming its way down a little brook, and I had a job to finish.
I was wondering if I’d be able to make the entire climb without walking. At this point, the sun had come burning out, and right as I started the ascent, I said to a pair of riders, “Thank GOD it’s hot and sunny out now!” They got my sarcasm, and we had a good laugh. It was about now that I was thinking that Lori was probably finished. I guessed she’d finish in about 8:30, and hoped she wasn’t too angry waiting for my sorry ass.
So I am climbing Mounds Park, and now I just ignore the Ergomo, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is not stopping and not falling over, because there are few places where you could actually stop your bike without falling over backwards. So I start to have visions in my head of just rolling backwards down the hill, but those visions are quashed by the sensations in my legs, which are now pretty much feelin’ it. I am proud that I haven’t bailed so far, but man, this is getting fucking HARD. The climb is 2.9 miles, and they even have races up the stinking whore, which someday I should do. I wonder how it would feel to not have already gone 127 miles?
As I’m going up, believe it or not, I am passing people who had whizzed by me a few miles back, which at the time, I thought, “Good for you!” I mean either they are just faster than me or else they will suffer more than me on the grand finale, because I’m tiny and climb pretty well for a girl. There’s a guy in front of me who is looking good, and I’m thinking he can stay ahead of me, but when he shouts out (because he knows I’m behind him), “that’s the end of the gears,” I realize I’m not in the 27 yet, and I kerchunk it in and feel like I’m going to be OK. And then I pass him, and he says, “Awesome job!” And I say back to him, “You, too!”
Because we are all awesome and we are all sweaty pigs and the sweat is just streaming off of us at this point and the bugs don’t even want to land on you anymore and we know how stupid we are and we know how much fun we’ve been having and that it’s all going to be over soon enough so just hang in there and turn the fucking pedals and keep cranking and don’t look too far ahead because it’s getting steeper and your quads are burning up and feel like exhausted pistons and you think you might not be able to make it and you see some people who are walking their bikes and you think THAT IS NOT GOING TO BE ME I CAN SEE THE TOP OF THE NEXT RISE AND MAKE IT THERE and you keep cranking and I’m maybe ½ mile from the top and here comes Lori to fetch me and she asks if I want a ride, and I say NO FUCKING WAY that I’m going all the way and I’ll see her at the bottom of the hill. But man it was so cool that she turned around and drove next to me for a bit and kept telling me how great I was doing and I really felt like I had done a great job and I was all smiles, and then I finally hit top, turned left (I bagged the final 900-feet of HELL and we wanted to get the hell out of Dodge) and began screaming down the hill. 2 guys in a car pulled up next to me and said, “The finish line is the other way,” and I said, “Been there, done that!” and I let go the brakes completely and flew down, full well knowing I was holding up traffic behind me. Or not. I was probably going 35 to 45mph.
And I got to the van, and Lori grabbed my bike for me and put it away and handed me a cold, wet towel to towel off, and I asked her what her time was, and it was 8:35. She’s such a stud! And then I told her I went 9:19, which was a serious chunk of time off my previous best, and I felt like a stud, too (Lori’s 44 and I’m 50), and Lori drove off and we hit the road, and we talked nonstop the entire way back. I did request a stop for McDonald’s at the Belvedere Oasis, and I got 2 cheeseburgers and fries. Lori didn’t want to eat real food since she was going out for dinner with Marc, and because she’s trying to lose weight! Now, you look at photos of her and you think she doesn’t need to lose an ounce, but I’ve been there myself, so I know.
For those of you interested in the power stuff, here's my data:
Duration: 9:19:34
Work: 4682 kJ (that's CALORIES for those of you without power meters)
TSS: 748 (intensity factor 0.896) (for reference sake, an Ironman ride should be about TSS 300)
Norm Power: 167
VI: 1.19
Distance: 131.933 mi
Elevation Gain: 10853 ft
We got back to Lori’s house, moved my crap to my car and I drove home with this shit-faced grin. I thought it was just 3 weeks ago I pounded out Triple T and now this, and I think I’m going to be in some great shape for Lake Placid, or at least it looks good on paper!
I want to thank Lori so much for driving and also for being my inspiration to stay on top of my personal goals for the day and for listening to me babble about some stuff I can’t write about here—it’s our secret—and just getting to know her better. She’s an incredible woman, and I think a Kona slot is in her future.
Back home, I was so wired from all the caffeine and just from, well, YOU KNOW! I had a couple 2 or 3 beers, a little food (I really wasn’t that hungry), set my A/C down to 70 because I knew my body would be having temperature control issues, and then slept fitfully as I had to pee like 10 times and drink water, but hey, it’s all good. I am about to go for a little ½ hour swim just to move around a bit, and then I’m taking my Dad out to lunch for Father’s Day. I’m happy I didn’t stay overnight in Verona so I could do all this today. I also need to go grocery shopping and, big surprise, clean and mix fucking bottles!
So I guess that in addition to calling me Crackhead, you can now also call me Sexy Bitch!
5 comments:
Damn after all that I'm not so sure I'd even have the energy to drive home :o) Awesome race report, enjoyed reading it!!!
Great report. Good job on the PR. Sounds like "fun." Just for the record, there is a huge hill here we do and the name of the road is Major Hill Road. There is also a road named Lois Lane, but that doesn't really relate. :)
Well...that looks pretty hard core I have to say. Nice TSS - have yet to manage one that high in a single ride.
Impressive.
How could you skip that final climb!?! You ride for 130+ miles and skip the last one?
Seriously, I said to my wife, "Could you imagine riding the HHH today?" That heat and sun must've sucked. Great stuff pushing through.
The heat wasn't really that bad. The other interesting thing is that I experienced ZERO puffiness post-ride. Every other time I have. I don't know if that's from the Infinit or from my exceptional fitness. Whatever, that last 900 feet wasn't necessary this time!
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