Time Limit
60 days remain until I ride my bike 100 miles around Montgomery County, PA, just North of Philadelphia. Up until recently, I’d been thinking, “So long as I train to not die, Cledus has the gears and I’m pretty sure I can average at least 10 mph for 10 hours.”
I’d been thinking this because I don’t always read all the documentation associated with toys, tools, or adventures like this. After spending a little more time looking at the route, and reading fine print, I see that there’s a cut-off at 4 hours for a checkpoint 32 miles in, and then provisions for getting riders off the road if it doesn’t look like they’re going to make it in 8.5 hours. Recalculating, it looks like it will take an average of 11.8 mph to make it with seconds to spare, or 13 and a third to get there with an hour to spare.
Last night I took a very long way home, grabbing the Capital Crescent Trail down in Georgetown, taking it to the Sligo Creek Trail in Silver Spring and down through Takoma Park, then into Hyattsville on the Northwest Branch Trail and finally back to Brookland. I did the reverse this morning, certainly because I want the miles, but also because it’s a gorgeous day, the trails are beautiful, and I felt up to it. It’s about a 22 mile trip, and I handled it on Cledus in about 90 minutes and change. A little checking indicates I averaged 14.8 mph, sweet! So all I have to do is stretch that out over the next few weeks, and I’m golden, right? Right?
Except for the fact that DC is really, really flat. That whole loop involved, according to MapMyRide, about 540 of total climbing, none of it on grades above 2%. The Philly Livestrong course, on the other hand, has about 4331 feet of climbing, including a couple climbs of about 500 feet over the course of about 1-2 miles. Hm.
So I’ve still got a lot of work to do, Cledus might get some skinnier shoes, his fenders are definitely coming off, and believe me when I say that depleted uranium bottom bracket I’ve been running is history.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
hill repeats. if you got in 1 75 mile ride before then, close to the ride date, you’ll kill it. good to see you posting.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Tanks mang! Good to hear from you too, I take it you’ve done something like this before? And whatta ya mean, “hill repeats”? Is that a good or a bad thing?
June 25th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
i’ve done a couple of centuries. first one i did a couple 100 m training rides prior just to know what to expect. the next one i just bumped up mileage until i was riding 75 pretty comfortably and there wasn’t a real difference in suffering on the actual event ride.
hill repeats are awesome especially if you don’t have any big climbs convenient for your regular training. just find a decent grade and go up and down a few times trying to hold a steady pace (whether LT, HR, or speed). i’ve used the little hill here where you get off 101 north at county line and go up the side to the 150, probably 1/4 mile between 6% and 9%.
when i did sea to summit, i just trained by doing rose valley from the coast once, down to ojai and back to rose valley then down and back home as one ride.
cool thing about this ride though, since you’re on team fatty, there will be plenty of folks to ride with so you can share the work and make it more social as well.
you’ve intrigued me with your truckers. i’ve been looking for a setup on craigslist that i could convert… any reason to get more diversity in the bike collection.
June 25th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
By “truckers” you mean the Xtracycles, yeah? (This is one of the funny thing about having a Long Haul Trucker and two Xtracycles, the LHT becomes the zippy road bike and “Trucker” becomes an almost ironic name for it.) They’re life-changing, no two ways about it. If I had to get rid of all the bikes but one, losing the rest would be heartbreaking but Nigel would be the one to keep. Super useful + fun – miles in car = winner.
There are some decent hills in the neighborhood here, in the 5-8% range anyway, if only for a block or two. But a quick check suggests that 20 laps of that would get me 40 miles and around 3000 feet of climb. Hm! Excellent, I’ll give that a try. I’ve also seen a couple rides in MapMyRide that go out to Sugarloaf Mountain and has a respectable amount of elevation as well, but those rides are in the 90’s. Ain’t there yet :)