Gaps and Gravity

It was a weekend of rain and pain; of slow grinding climbs, roller-coaster descents, missed connections, big crashes and long midnight drives. It was Six Gap.

By 5 am I was ready to roll, just waiting for Rich to arrive at 5:10 so we could pick up Mitch and Mignon and be on the road by 5:30. At 5:20 Rich was MIA. I called his phone repeatedly to no avail. He'd recently moved to the West Bank and I had no idea where. Mignon and Mitch drove over to my place while I waited. Finally we decided he'd either gotten lucky or arrested, or both, and hit the road to Dahlonega about an hour behind schedule. Half an hour later he called. He'd left his phone in his car and forgotten to set his clock. A little while later he was on the road too, an hour or so behind us. By the time we hit Atlanta it was pouring rain. Pat sent us a message that the registration location had been moved to a local school gymnasium because of the weather. The forecast, fortunately, was still promising good weather for Sunday. That night our hosts in Dahlonega fixed us an awesome dinner and by 10:30 or so we were all out for the count. Most of us, anyway. I didn't sleep well at all, bothered by a stuffy nose and scratchy throat that I attributed to a little allergy flare-up.

So Sunday morning we arrived at the big parking lot just early enough to get some of the last parking spaces, and by the 7:30 start time we were ready to go, along with the other thousand or so people who were doing the 104 mile Six Gap Century. The announcer reminded us, repeatedly, that "it's not a race" as we anxiously crowded the start line in the cool morning air.

The first ten miles or so went smoothly, a bit less hectic than last year, I thought. The roads were still wet from the night's rain, but the sky was looking promising. I started out near the front, along with Donald Davis and Eric Murphy, and was trying to stay up in the front thirty or forty riders in order to keep out of trouble. Trouble nearly found me nonetheless when, as we started one of the first little climbs, an inattentive rider started a big domino effect in the middle of the pack ahead of me. I heard someone yell "go left," and luckily I was able to slip past the carnage. There must have been a pile of thirty riders on the ground.

The first few climbs went pretty well for me, but I could already tell that something was not quite right. Joints and muscles were just a bit more achy than they should have been, even under the circumstances, as we started up Unicoi Gap. As usual, the group soon started to break up. I knew better than to try and race up these climbs, so I went straight to the 39x25 and stuck to my own pace, spinning at a nice steady speed. I wasn't the only one, and unlike last year, I came over the top with a few others. Then came the fun part -- the long fast winding downhill on wet roads. I just absolutely love this part. Thanks to the combination of wet roads and common sense, I doubt I got over 50 mph, however. Still, there is just nothing like the feeling of sweeping through these turns at high speeds and hitting them just right. The downhills are definitely worth the price of admission all by themselves. As the road started to level out a few miles later a little group started to come together and I figured I wouldn't be seeing any more of the thirty or so riders who had ridden away on the climb. A little later, though, we spotted the group about a minute up the road and so a few of us started working together until we caught back on. I looked over at one of the other guys and said, "Wow, I didn't think we'd be seeing these guys again!" I knew it was only a temporary reprieve, though.

When we got to the infamous 7-mile Hogpen climb, I didn't even think about trying to stay with the leaders. There was a KOM competition for this climb and the Wolfpen climb, so I knew there would be a few riders who would attack them. With 50 miles still left to ride, I was not feeling good at all. This climb was, for me, 42 minutes in the lowest gear I had, struggling to maintain a speed of eight miles per hour. To put it in perspective, Eric Murphy did this same climb in 28 minutes and Debbie Milne did it in 32. That's well over a minute per mile difference. I think each ultimately won the KOM and Eric also finished the whole century ride first. So I came over the top of Hogpen with a few other riders in the general vicinity, which was good. I also came over the top of Hogpen with a runny nose and a lot of back, neck and shoulder pain. After the fast and relatively non-technical descent of Hogpen I ended up with a nice-sized group of a dozen or so riders. The lead forty riders or so were long gone by then.

Like last year, Hogpen was a hands-on training course in Newton's law of gravitation and it had pretty much sucked the last few watts of power right out of my legs. I knew that Wolfpen would see me off the back for sure, but I was glad to have a group to ride with until we got there at mile 74. As my little group came around the turn shortly before the start of the Wolfpen climb I noticed something didn't feel right. I bounced up and down on the pedals and quickly confirmed that my rear tire was going soft. Somehow my obviously compromised capacity for rational thought, or perhaps my reluctance to leave the relative comfort of the group I was with, made me think I might be able to make it to the top before I'd have to stop to change it. Hope springs eternal. Well, of course my spongy tire and I came off the back as soon as the real climb started, and a mile or so later the rim was hitting the ground and I had to stop. Man, there's nothing worse than going straight from hard overgeared climbing to standing still. I took my time changing the tire as a steady stream of 3-gappers and a few 6-gappers rode by, occasionally offering a comment about bad luck or checking to make sure I didn't need help. Ten or fifteen minutes later I was back on the road riding the rest of the way to the top of the last major climb of the day. My legs felt like blocks of wood and it took me a long time to loosen up and get going again. This was really the only part of this year's ride where I spent a lot of time alone. Since I was already hurting before the flat and was now riding alone with 80 psi in my tire and little hope of putting in a better time than last year, I was pretty much in "limp home" mode. Then, with maybe fifteen or twenty miles to go I caught up with three Spanish speaking riders who were going just the right speed. That gave me a chance to recover a little bit, and also kept my speed from really going through the floor. Just before we turned into the high school parking lot for the finish, two of them turned off. I guess they weren't actually registered! Anyway, I ended up with an official time of 6:01 for 54th place. My computer showed around 5:49 for actual riding time. Considering that I felt significantly worse than last year, I was rather surprised I wasn't a lot farther down the list. Mitch finished a few minutes behind me, having ridden the whole thing with a low gear of 39x23. Once everything was back, we loaded the car back up and headed over to Atlanta to meet Gina Voci and Jon Atkins for a quick dinner at Six Feet Under. It was great to catch up with her while Mitch took the opportunity to talk them into doing next year's Rouge-Roubaix. We also talked about maybe getting few of the local riders to go up to Athens for one of the infamous WBL rides this winter. So after an excellent Guiness Stout and oyster loaf up on the rooftop deck overlooking the old cemetery, we finally hit the interstate for the long drive back home. Unfortunately, once I got home I began to realize I was coming down with another cold, or perhaps the same one I had a week ago was coming back. This time, though, it's turning into a bit of a chest cold so I'm back on the cold medicine for a while.

We made good time, arriving a bit before 2 am, which was a lot better than Steve and Pat. I learned today that they had broken down somewhere around Mobile where they waited on the side of the road until 1:30 am for a tow truck. They didn't get back to town until this afternoon. The results listing that was posted this afternoon is missing Mignon and Pat, so we're hoping they can fix that. It's also missing Rich, but he apparently forgot to put his timing chip on. Brady apparently hammered up the two KOM climbs, posting the 20th fastest KOM time while Donald Davis from Pensacola finished 5th overall. I'm impressed, and very sore.