Six Gaps and Single Digits

My annual end-of-season pilgrimage to the 6 Gap Century up in Dahlonega, GA was a little different this year.  A few days before our Saturday departure we had seven or eight Tulane riders signed up, so Kenny and I put together a second fork-mount bike holder gizmo to fit into the second of two extended cab pickup trucks that I had reserved for the trip.  When properly organized with turned handlebars, we could put five bikes in each truck bed.  As often happens, though, by the time we actually rolled out around 7:30 on Saturday we were down to five Tulane riders plus Kenny and myself.  The 8-hour drive was fairly uneventful and we arrived in Dahlonega around 5:30, which allowed time to pick up our packets before they shut down at 6:00.  Kenny made a snap decision to enter the Cat. 1/2 criterium that started at 6:30, and by the time we finished watching the Women race (Debbie Milne won) and got the trucks relocated to a prime parking spot near the course we were in a dead run to get him and his bike together in time for the start.  With no warmup at all, and starting at the back of the field, the odds were against him. Before he could get settled in there was a big attack at around the third lap and he and a number of other riders were gapped off for good.  Anyway, it was fun watching the races.  We picked up some pizza right on the course and then drove back down toward Dawsonville to check into our Super8 smoking-allowed rooms.  Actually, aside from the smell of stale cigarette smoke, the hotel was quite nice and we convinced the manager to get breakfast ready early so we could get something to eat before driving back to Dahlonega.  Although the start time for the 104 mile ride ("it's not a race") was 7:30, I knew we had to get there before 6:30 in order to get a good parking spot in the school parking lot.  Fortunately everyone in our group was up and out the door right on time so we got some great parking spots about half an hour before there was even a glow in the eastern sky.  The temperature was in the mid-50s, so I decided to wear two jerseys and arm-warmers even though I knew I'd be warm by the time the ride ended.

We lined up near the start about 20 minutes before the start, but within two minutes of the start there were probably 200 riders in front of me and I'd already lost track of Kenny, David and Ben.  The early pace was pretty fast and well before the first real climb there was a big split up ahead of me.  A number of us ended up kind of in-between that big group and whatever was behind us.

I was riding with a low gear of 39x25 this year, since I'd never gotten around to buying a new 11-speed cassette with a 27 or 28.  I knew I'd be paying for that later, but the first couple of climbs actually felt pretty good.  The first "Gap" climb starts at around 22 miles and things quickly got quiet as riders settled into the effort.  I felt nice and controlled at around 9-11 mph for this climb, spending most of my time in the 23 instead of the 25.  Jorge was climbing a bit faster than I, but for the first few Gaps I'd catch up with him on the downhills.

The long Hogpen climb starts at around 54 miles and by then I was really starting to feel the miles.  My calves had been very sore for the past few days (I have no idea what I did to make them that way) and so I was doing a lot of toes-down climbing.  Even so, by the time I was halfway up Hogpen my lower back was killing me from all of the seated climbing.  At one point during that climb my speed dropped below 4 mph, but at least my Garmin never auto-paused!  The downhill from Hogpen is one of the faster ones, and for a change I didn't have any interference by cars this year.  Depending on whether you believe Strava or Garmin, my downhill speed maxed out at either 49 mph or 53 mph.  Either way, it was fun.  The Wolfpen climb was about as painful as Hogpen, again with my speed dropping down into the low single digits.  Yeah, it was painful.  I had lost Jorge on the Hogpen climb which he did maybe ten minutes faster than I.  Fortunately I didn't spend too much time riding alone this year.  After Hogpen, I was playing a kind of reverse leapfrog, latching onto small groups of two or four as they came by, hanging on for a few miles, and then dropping off.

The last downhill is actually one of my favorites.  It's fast and long at 8 or 9 miles in length, and although it isn't as steep as some of the others, it's nice and steady.  This year I came down that section with one other rider who was also a good descender, so that made it a lot of fun.  At the bottom of that downhill there are around ten miles left to go as you come around a very, very sharp downhill U-turn onto a road through a farm.  There are always course monitors there yelling at everyone to slow down.  As we came around that bend we had to hit the brakes to avoid an ambulance that was dealing with someone who had gone off the road and down into a little ravine.  As we got rolling again the other riders looked at his computer and said he thought we could get in at under six hours if we pushed it a bit.  I hadn't been really thinking about that but I figured if I had someone to work with, why not?  Well a mile or two later he pulled off and as I went past him to take my pull I heard him say something like, "Damn!"  The next time I looked back he was a long way back.  I eased up for a while but he wasn't coming, so I guess he had some kind of mechanical issue.  Well, now I was all focused on that 6 hour mark and doing the math in my head I was still very unsure about whether I could make it or not.  The long rollers along that stretch made it difficult to estimate your average speed. When my computer read 100 miles, I figured that I might be able to make it, but then, about two miles later, there was a sign on the side of the road that said 100 miles.  By then I'd caught a group of three riders and could hear them discussing the same thing.  If we still had four miles to go there was no way we could get there in under six hours, so everyone eased up.  A moment later we came to an intersection and quickly realized we were only half a mile or so from the school.  The sign had been wrong.  We picked up the pace again and sprinted into the school to finish at 5:59:00.

It was a really long ride back and we didn't arrive at campus until nearly 1 am Monday morning.  By the time I dropped Kenny off and unloaded, it was 2 am before I hit the sack.  I was out the door by 6:30 for an easy spin on the levee.  Legs were pretty sore!  On the plus side, everyone in our group had a good ride, even though Ben, who had gone out with the lead group, had gotten leg cramps around Hogpen and had to stop for a while to work them out.  I think is actual riding time was probably still substantially shorter than mine.  The winners finished nearly an hour ahead of me, setting a new course record of 4:57.  Wow.