My Kind of race

I wish it hadn't taken me so long to do one of these, I suppose South Mountain was similar, but really doesn't compare.  I drove up to very upstate New York on Friday afternoon with Mo and we ended up spending a little time waiting for someone to bring us some diesel...  But we didn't get in a ride that evening like we planned though we did have some nice trout (supposedly caught from the river behind the restaurant...)

The next morning we got up and went for one of the slowest rides of my life, just lolly-gagging around and watching the hordes of triathletes pass us.  Apparently it is a big practice weekend for the Lake Placid Ironman coming up in a couple weeks.  So the geek factor was extremely high.  The poor quality of this photo is also in the extreme range but off in the distance covered with clouds is Whiteface Mountain, the hill we'd climb later that evening along with several hundred other nuts.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing, had an incredible lunch at the Chair 6 in Lake Placid, a little house that happens to house a really skilled chef whose lunch prices are not out of reach though dinner might be.  After we picked up our packets we relaxed a bit more and then strolled over to warm up.  And by stroll I mean rode slowly.  I did a bit of warming up, maybe rode the first half mile or mile with some guy that talked a lot about how he'd ridden the thing more than anyone alive.  Interesting.

We start in age group waves, sort of random, women and tandems first, then 20-29 and 60-69 started five minutes later.  Then us 30-39 year-olds started up the road.

True to what I've heard, in many ways the first two and a half miles are probably the hardest in terms of grade as they have (I thought) a couple steeper sections.  But in general, this thing just goes up at a steady 8-9% for the entire 8 miles.  A group of three guys shot off the front and I was trying to be conservative so I didn't chase.  I sat around with a group of guys for maybe less than a minute before it was clear that they weren't going to be getting up the road too well and so I moved on with one guy for company.  he was pretty quickly shed though.

So for a long time I watched the three guys pulling away slowly but just tried to keep my heart rate from going too far north of 180, not really wanting to blow up but also wondering if I couldn't sustain 185+ for the entire thing.

But I loved it, just grinding away, trying to change gears every so often and taking advantage of slight changes in grade to pick up some speed.  It was also nice to be passing people the entire time as the waves in front of us started coming back.  I started to see one of my age group foes fall off the wheel of the two guys in front and he slowly came back over the course of mile 2.5-3.5 until I caught him.  I briefly sat on his wheel figuring I would give myself a little rest, but it seemed better to just keep up my own pace so I moved on in search of the other two guys.  I thought I could still see one of them so I just kept my eyes focused on that red jersey off in the distance.

The gap slowly came down over the course of about two miles and not too long before 6.5 or 7 I caught up to him and did the same thing, sat on his wheel briefly and then tried to move on.  I even tried to pick it up a little bit as I didn't want him to sit on my wheel and then muster the energy to beat me to the finish but he hung on pretty well.  So we rode together for a bit, then just after mile 7 we hit the short bench that is pretty flat.  I actually got into the big ring and really tried to push, hitting maybe 23 mph after quite a long time doing 8-9mph.  The guy in the red jersey stayed right there and the road started to kick up again before the last switchback to the top.

Then, suddenly he was gone and I was on my own.  I couldn't see the other guy from our age group (and the people were getting pretty scarce at this point) but there was a guy in front of me that I wasn't sure about so I set about chasing him but wasn't really sure I could get him.  I thought the finish was at the castle thingy but it actually was quite a ways before, catching me a little by surprise.  I tried to "sprint" through the line but it was rather pitiful.  There were a lot of people up there cheering and ringing cowbells and it was really fun.  Supposedly Lance said that the difference between a flat time trial and an uphill on was just pain and then "sweet pain" for the uphill ones.  I'd have to agree.

The couple times you come around a corner and get an exposed view it was breathtaking, even as I was breathing far too hard and loudly.  But the view from the top was tremendous, and I hadn't quite started freezing yet from the wind and the significantly lower temps at the top so I could enjoy it, have some orange slices, and wait for Mo and the guys who'd been kind enough to give us a ride down to show up.

I ended up riding to the top in 51:10, and I was feeling pretty good about getting second in my age group.  Turns out I was 8th overall, (in the men, there was one super-woman who beat me by 18 seconds) and times were significantly slower thanks to the headwind that was with us for a lot of the race.  Really a blast, I can't wait to do it again and maybe even find another one of the BUMPS that I can do this year.