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Me, Keith and Steve - still pretty dark! |
Keith, Kris and I hit the road early Saturday morning for the long drive up into the foothills of Georgia for the annual pilgrimage to the Six Gap Century. Compared with last year, the weather forecast was looking quite encouraging, with a low of around 50, a high in the low 70s, and virtually no chance of rain. We arrived at Dahlonega in the early afternoon, giving us time to pick up our packets and watch the Juniors and Masters criteriums. If we'd gotten there a little earlier and I'd have had time to find out how many masters had registered, I might have convinced myself to enter. As it turned out they had only about 13 in the combined 35+/45+ race, so winning back my entry fee would have been a distinct possibility. Anyway, we met up with Steve and Pat and headed over to our host's house for dinner and vino. Kris had made a last-minute decision to switch to a compact crankset, which FedEx had delivered that morning, so we swapped that out in the driveway before it got dark and he took it for a very brief test ride. It was a little too brief, as it turned out, because he dropped his chain a couple of times the next day. Afterward, we stayed up to watch the LSU game on their enormous TV before hitting the sack ... or couch. I didn't sleep well at all, as my stomach was giving me grief for some reason.
As usual, Sunday morning was kind of a rush. Even though we arrived at the school where the ride started about an hour ahead of time, there were about a thousand cars ahead of us as we inched our way into the parking lot. I put a flask of HammerGel in my pocket, made sure my two water bottles were full, and contemplated the temperature. By then the sun was starting to peek over the horizon, but I was already pretty chilled. Knowing I'd probably regret it later, which I did, I put on two jerseys and arm-warmers, and headed down to the starting line about 15 minutes before the 7:30 start. They had a little area roped off at the front for people who had gone under 6 hours, so I stepped over the tape and waited there, shivering, as the overly enthusiastic announcer tried somewhat successfully to raise the general level of early morning excitement. He started asking people in the sub-6 hour corral what their last year times had been and asking the crowd if they were "worthy." I wasn't paying much attention when suddenly he stuck the microphone in front of my face. I said "5:50-something" (I looked it up later, it was 5:56), and for some reason he seemed doubtful (more on him later). I was tempted to respond to the big guy with a Yoda-esque
"Judge me by my size, do you?" but just let it slide.
The ride
started right on time (I'm in the video!) as over 1,000 of us rolled off into the Georgia countryside for 103 miles of long slow climbs and scary-fast downhills. The first ten or fifteen miles went pretty smoothly, and I was a little surprised that the pace wasn't any faster than it was, not that I was complaining. Although I can't help wanting to finish with a respectable time, for this ride mere respectability would have to suffice. I was hanging out somewhere in the front 40 or 50, mainly to stay out of trouble, as we rode up and down the rollers leading up to the first significant climb, Neel's Gap, at mile 19 or so. Once we started up that climb I looked up ahead and could see a fairly big group of maybe 35 riders already pulling away rather quickly. I settled in to a nice steady pace of 7-10 mph and stuck with the riders around me. Attacking Neel's Gap was definitely not in my game plan. After a fast but welcome downhill, I found myself in a nice steady group of 30 or so that was rolling along at a brisk but comfortable speed. We went up the next two climbs, Jack's and Unicoi, more or less together. The descent down Unicoi is probably my favorite, but this year it was interrupted by traffic. I had just gotten the speed up into the 45-50 mph range when I came up on a truck that couldn't pass a couple of slower cyclists on the narrow winding road. It was very frustrating to be dragging the brakes where I'd normally be flying through the curves, but there was just nothing that I or the driver could do.

We finally came to the start of Hogpen at around mile 44. For that long climb it's pretty much every man for himself as each riders quickly settles into whatever pace he thinks he can maintain. In my case, I was alternating between standing in the 39x25 at about 9-10 mph and sitting in the 39x27 at 7-8 mph, mostly sitting. I could see riders all up and down the road, all crawling along at about the same speed, but was careful not to look up the road too much. Every time I'd look ahead and see the seemingly endless climb I'd hear this little voice in my head saying, "Why don't you just stop and take a break?" Fortunately I'd taken the time this year to write down the start and finish mileages of the big climbs on my handlebar tape, so at least I knew how much farther the pain would last. By the top of Hogpen things were pretty well shattered, but there were still a number of riders around, so after the quick downhill we still had a little group as we approached the Wolfpen Gap climb where I was expecting to start unravelling. By the time I got over that one, which involved avoiding the slower 3-Gappers since we were all back on the same route, a little group of six to ten had pulled away and I was pretty much on my own for the rest of the ride. After coming over the last big climb at Woody's Gap, I was looking forward to the fast and fun downhill, but was once again frustrated by slow-moving traffic and ended up spending most of the time on the brakes as I followed a couple of cars that were cautiously leapfrogging from one rider to the next. The rest of the ride was just a lot of rollers where my speed fluctuated from 12 to 40 mph. I didn't really have much left in the tank at that point, so I was taking it fairly easy on the climbs.
I ended up finishing with a time of 5:50, which was right in line with my other times. In fact, it's kind of amazing that after doing this ride four times in four years, my finishing times have not varied more than about ten minutes. As I rolled past the tent at the finish the announcer, who looked exhausted, recognized me and asked me my time. I stopped to chat with Donald Davis who had finished around 5th, or 3rd, a full half hour ahead of me. As I rolled off to seek liquids and food, Donald headed back out onto the route to ride it backwards back up to the top of Woody Gap so he could cheer for his friends and teammates. The results, as of this writing, are a little screwy since they include the times for riders who obviously didn't do the whole ride, but anyway they're on the
Epic Sports Marketing website. If you want to see what it takes to ride this thing really fast, go over to
Brian Toone's blog to see his extensive and annotated ride data and read his reports of the
Criterium and
Century Ride. Brian and one other guy, Jimmy Schurman, whose timing chip was obviously not working well, were the first to finish, just under the course record. Jorge finished at 6:35 and Steve finished at 6:37. Keith was at 7:20 and Kris, who was pretty dehydrated and exhausted for a while, finished at 7:43. Sadly, I never got over 52 mph because of the traffic, but Keith had a maximum speed of a bit over 56 mph.
We were on the road by around 3:30 or 4:00 and finally arrived back in New Orleans right around midnight. It's Tuesday afternoon now and my back still aches! Apparently those climbs up to the top of the levee aren't doing it.