Six Slow Gaps

The Tulane Cycling group, shortly before heading down to the 7:30 am start

Slower isn't really easier at Six Gap. Saturday morning we loaded up a couple of Tulane's rental minivans with eight riders and hit the road promptly at 8:00 am. It wasn't quite early enough, as it turned out. The weather forecast for my 12th annual flogging was calling for a nice dry weekend with Sunday morning temperatures starting around 65F but rising to around 90F. It was going to be a hot one. Before I left, I put two big bottles on the bike, one for plain water and the other for water with whatever electrolyte tablet I had handy, which turned out to be Nuun. Years ago I would have been planning to do the whole ride with whatever I had on the bike, skipping the rest stops in order to make up for time lost climbing like a turtle. This year, my plan was different. I was determined to stop at a few rest stops to down some Coke and Gatorade and refill my bottles. I'm pretty terrible at hydration and will typically ride myself right in dehydration territory without even realizing it. Anyway, I wasn't going to worry about my time this year, and was going to take a few minutes at the tops of the big climbs to catch my breath before plunging down the other side. I would, however, still be climbing like a turtle.

This year I went up with Gavin, Julia, Frank (Houting), Paola, Ben, Julie, and Kaitlyn. The first three would be doing 6 Gap and the other three would be doing 3 Gap. I knew that Gavin was planning on crushing it, but didn't know about the others. I was just hoping to finish quickly enough that I didn't delay our departure time back to New Orleans. Last year we'd left around 8 am and arrived literally as they were closing Saturday evening registration at 6 pm (eastern time), so I wasn't really holding out a lot of hope that we'd make it there in time to pick up packets on Saturday. The Tulane minivans will beep at you if you go more than 75 mph, so trying to shave off a few minutes by driving faster wasn't really an option. Anyway, the drive went fairly smoothly, but at one point everything came to a halt on the Interstate and we lost probably fifteen minutes. Together with a stop for lunch, and 5 pm traffic through Atlanta, we were looking at a 6:15 ETA. The first minivan was ahead of us by about ten minutes, but when they arrived at around 6:05 they were told they'd have to wait until Sunday morning to pick up packets. I'd never picked up packets the morning of the ride, so I didn't really know what to expect. We made a reservation at Pueblo's Mexican Cuisine, where we traditionally have dinner, and then wandered around town a bit until our table was ready. Dinner was nice and then we headed for the Super8 motel, the same one we'd stayed at the year before. When we walked in I recognized the guy behind the counter who'd given us all kinds of trouble the year before with the credit card situation. Tulane's club sports folks make the reservations, give them their credit card number, and send them a credit card authorization form. You'd think that would suffice, but no. Once again, this guy refused to use the credit card that the rooms had been reserved with. I ended up using my Tulane corporate card, which I'm sure is going to cause all sorts of problems once the charge hits my account and I need to move it to the club sports account.

Kaitlyn and Julia, with Haoting in the background
waiting for the start

So Sunday morning we got up around 5 am, had a quick breakfast at the nearby McDonalds, and got to the high school in Dahlonega around 6:15. Packet pickup was actually very well organized, so the only problems were Paola, whose packet they couldn't find, and Ben who was taking Seth's place. Even so, that was all handled pretty quickly. I rushed back to the cars to unload bikes and get my act together. Time goes by really quickly before something like this. We took a quick group photo, and I rushed through the rest of my preparations - Garmin, HRM, two bottles of HammerGel, electrolyte in one water bottle, shoes, phone, gloves, glasses - and rushed down toward the start a little late. We ended up standing on the sidewalk with about a hundred riders in front of us. Then I saw Gavin walking toward us and told him he needed to go to the front, in front of the rope, because he'd been under 6 hours the year before. I knew that if he wanted to be with the front group, starting where we were wasn't going to work. Julia had said she wanted me to ride with her, but I was pretty sure she was going to eventually ride away from me on the climbs (she did, remarkably easily). The start was the usual chaos as I was trying to keep track of Julia, Frank, and Paola behind me without causing a problem for the riders all around me. Eventually things started to thin out and Julia appeared next to me with, "Were you trying to drop me?"  I'd already lost track of Frank and Paola. We rode up the first climb pretty much together and I could tell Julia wasn't going to be having any trouble with the climbing. I was looking at my heart rate and trying to mostly keep it at or under 160 on the climbs. She waited for me at the top of the second and third (Hogpen) climbs. I think it was a pretty long wait at Hogpen! I'd lose her immediately on the descents, but she was easily climbing a couple of mph faster than I, so I wasn't surprised that she kept going on her own over Unicoi. I stopped there as well, and a few minutes later Frank and Joe showed up. The Unicoi descent was lots of fun, as usual, and basically I was on my own for the rest of the ride. Frank stayed behind a bit at the top of Unicoi and I'd lost Joe right away on the descent. I was never pushing it on any of the descents this year. The aero wheels did seem to make a difference, and so I was coasting a lot. I touched 50 mph for a moment, but mostly I was enjoying the swoopy downhills at speeds in the 40s.

Six Gap riders listed as Louisiana or Mississippi, Frank (Haoting) really flew up the timed climbs!

So after stopping at three rest stops and not bombing any of the downhills, and being old and decrepit, I wasn't even looking at my time. When I finally rolled across the finish back at Dahlonega and looked up at the big clock I was kind of surprised to see it reading something like 6:38. I'd expected to be more like 6:45. My final chip time turned out to be 6:37:43. The really surprising thing is that the year before, my time was 6:37:57. What are the odds that I'd be within 14 seconds of last year's time?  Anyway, I was pretty well-cooked by the time we finished. My neck was killing me as usual for the last 30 or 40 miles, but maybe not quite as much as last year. My quads were pretty sore, though. I spent a fair amount of time in the 39x28 and 39x27 going 6 mph, so I guess that's to be expected.

The drive back went smoothly and we arrived in New Orleans a little past midnight. One thing I know now is that going slower at Six Gap does not make it easier!  There were some impressive finish times from some of the riders I know, though. Elliott finished in 5:12, and Gavin, who punctured out of the lead group on Hogpen, at 5:20. Julia rolled in at 6:26, followed by Frank and Paola at 6:45 and 6:47.