The weekend starts out on Thursday for the wife and myself. We drive down to Virgina and set up camp on a portion of the race course called Braley's Pond. This is a nice quiet place to camp. Below is the THD Subaru ready to head off to Stokesville.
Friday we drove the half hour over to the Stokesville campground and set up. We spent the early part of Friday in Harrisionburgh. We picked up some water at the Walmart and headed back for a nice day of lounging around the camp. Saturday morning we woke up and went out for a nice 20 mile spin of the Virgina back roads. I felt well on this ride. Managed to pick a couple of long climbs in the route and became very comfortable with my gear selection.
From this point it was all down hill. See we had these neighbors that had 3 dogs and a gaggle of kids. The dogs liked to bark and the kids liked to yell. Kind of hard to chill out on the day before you are going to attempt a hundred. So darkness fell and we went into our tent. I managed to fall asleep around 10:00 pm only to be woken by the barking dogs at 1:00 am from this point on I never fell back asleep.
5:00 am came early but the race bike was ready to go. But was I?
I made some coffee took care of other business before making my way to the start under the cover of darkness.
The start was slow and painful they made every rider go under the start gate. The gate itself only accomidated about 5 riders at a time.
From there came the 2 mile roll out to the first climb. I stayed to my plan and kept a nice 90ish RPM cadence. This put me right around 11 mph in my 32 X 20 gearing. As all the gearies flew by me I knew that I would soon be passing them on the first hill. Shortly after this point the road started to kick up to the first climb. Which would take us up 978 ft in 9 miles. I felt good, I felt really good. I made it all the way up this climb and I felt strong. Down the hill and off the next climb. The second climb of the race is a whole lot oof hike a bike. This one takes us up 1500 ft in 5 miles. On the way up I started to notice a few things. First off I was sweating like Jared in a spin class. My jersey was completely drenched and I felt somewhat clamy. I just pushed on and ignored this. I rode across the ridge to the downhill. This is where the next issue came along. I developed a headache, not just any headache, but a monster sized headache that pounded even harder with every bump I hit. Then came the leg cramps. My legs siezed as I was going down the hill. I was hoping that on the road section my body would begin to cooperate but it just wasn't my day. So I packed it in at aide station 2.
Here is a piece of fungi for all of you.
I also came home with some little presents to be shared with THD to celebrate an unsuccessful 2012.
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