I think I've ridden Six Gap thirteen times. Some years it was chilly, some years it rained the whole time, some years it was hot, some years it was foggy, some years it was some combination of the above. This year, though, was about as close as you can come to ideal weather. OK, so I was a little chilly for the first hour, and wore my thin sunscreen arm-warmers, and had my antique DeFeet UnDeFlector under my jersey, but had I been so inclined I could have gone with just a regular summer kit and been a little colder for the first 45 minutes, which is how long it takes to get to the first actual climb that isn't even counted as one of the official six "gaps."
This year I drove up to Dahlonega on Saturday with Tulane riders Joey, Josiah, and Sean. Joey and Josiah were registered for the 3-Gap ride and Sean and I for the full 104-mile 6-Gap ride. We left nice and early in one of the big vans after removing the rear seats to make room for the bikes. A few days before I had set the bike up in its special "Six Gap Mode," which this year meant an 11-32 cassette and a Wolf Link derailleur extender so my short-cage derailleur would clear that big cog. This would be the first year I'd done the ride with anything bigger than a 29 on the back, and although I wasn't expecting it to make me any faster, I was hoping it would make the steeper parts of the climbs a little easier. It seems that every few years as I age I add a couple of teeth to my cassette. I haven't yet gone to compact chainrings, so I'm still using the old standard 39 - 53 combination.
I had recently installed a new handlebar after finding my aluminum 3T Ergonova, that is no longer being produced, had corroded near the right shifter clamp pretty badly. I searched around for some carbon bars that were both narrow and compact and found not all that many in-stock options. I really, really liked the Ergonova bend, and might have bought the 3T carbon version that was 38 cm at the hoods and 40 at the drops, but they weren't available from most of the places I looked. Then I looked at the Black Inc ones but then when I went to purchase them from Black Inc I got some sort of error and eventually gave up on that. I ended up settling on some FSA bars that were a little cheaper and less aero but were available in a 36 - 38 width. Naturally nothing is as simple as it seems and the slightly narrower bars meant I had to shorten the brake cable housings since I have absolutely no wiggle room due to the short head tube on my 50 cm frame. I should have also shortened the derailleur cable housings but they insert farther down on the down tube and I was too lazy to pull those cables and then have to re-route them through the frame and all. Anyway, I got everything sorted out, put the race wheels and brake pads on the bike, and rode it on the Thursday levee ride to make sure everything was working.
For reasons I cannot fathom, Six Gap closes Saturday packet pickup at 4 pm nowadays, and even with an early departure from New Orleans, we didn't arrive in Dahlonega until closer to 4:30. We checked into the Days Inn and then drove into town so we could to a short loop before dark to get the drive out of our legs. That turned out to be a pretty hilly 25 miles with 1,800 feet of elevation during which I was doing everything in my power to minimize my effort. On the plus side, it did provide the opportunity to fully test each and every gear combination on the bike. We ended up eating dinner at a Mo's near the hotel since it was getting late enough that other options would have required a long wait.
Sunday morning we were up early and stopped quickly at a McDonald's on the way to the High School. That was so quick, in fact, that we got to the parking lot earlier than ever which put us really close to the school building. Registration was really fast and bathroom availability was great since we were so early. As we got back to the van a car pulled into the parking space next to us. That turned out to be Kent Bostick. What are the odds? I pinned on the back number and made my usual modifications to the stupid handlebar number plate so it would clear my computer and cables, and headed down to the start 15 or 20 minutes before 7:30. People were already starting to pack themselves into the starting area as the announcer mentioned there would be a ten minute delay. This year I started with two small water bottles, one with Skratch in it, a full flask of HammerGel, and a couple of emergency gel packs. I planned to stop to refill water bottles at the rest stop on top of the third Gap, Unicoi, which was roughly half-way into the ride.
The ride started fairly calmly. I guess there were about a hundred people in front of me at the start, and probably five hundred behind. There were a lot of riders from New Orleans this year, and although I never did see Pat or Steve, I did see most of the others at some point or another. As it has been for the past couple of years, the route does the northeast loop in the opposite direction from earlier years, which means you go up the steeper, but slightly shorter, side of Hogpen Gap as the second big climb of the day. Also as usual, the predominant language was Spanish. For some reason this ride attracts a lot of riders from Florida and, apparently, Colombia. This year my climbing felt very controlled, using the 39x28 much of the time, and then the 39x32 for the steeper sections. As a result, I don't think I ever pushed my heart rate past 160 bpm for more than a few seconds. As I did the last time I rode this course, I didn't push the big descents at all, and although I was braking more than usual for the first couple, I eventually got more comfortable with them. Even so, I never quite hit 50 mph anywhere this year.
There were a couple of really nice things about this year's ride. One was that I found a nice group that was staying together early in the ride and climbing at a solid but comfortable pace. I was probably with that same group for 50 or 60% of the entire ride, losing them at times and then finding them again later. The other nice thing, which was surprising considering the nice weather, was that I never got stuck behind slow-moving cars on any of the downhills. That was surprising because I don't think I've ever done this ride and seen quite so many cars and motorcycles on the route.
So my climbs were going smoothly and with the temperature mostly in the 60s for the first half of the ride my water bottles were still half-full when I finally stopped to refill them 56 miles into the ride. I picked up a couple of gel packs while I was there that I never ended up needing, and in retrospect could have easily done the whole ride on just the two water bottles I'd started with thanks to the spectacular weather and I guess also the fact that I wasn't pushing myself too much.
I came over the top of Wolfpen and then Woody feeling reasonably good, and as usual really enjoyed the long swoopy descent down to the infamous traffic circle of death. That's where there's a steep downhill 180° right turn that riders always misjudge. There are always crashes there, and even though I've done it many times now I still come into it a little too hot and have to switch to Criterium mode to make it through without going over the edge of the road.
So at that point you're around 13 miles from the finish and into a nice farmland area that is a continuous stretch of rolling hills, some a little steep. I soon found myself again with that same group I'd been with a few times earlier, and then a little later was with a group that was being towed by Chris M. We were maybe eight miles from the finish when Chris suddenly accelerated and opened a gap on the rest. He later told me that he had been looking at his ride time and knew he had to pick it up a bit to make it in under the six-hour mark, which he did. Anyway, a little bit later the group started to disintegrate and I found myself a little ahead of them on my own. We were only about six miles from the end at that point. As I was rolling down a hill at about 30 mph I saw a car ahead of me put his left turn signal on. He was far enough ahead that I figured he'd make his turn well ahead of me, but then he pulled over to the right edge of the road and practically came to a stop. I couldn't figure out what he was doing, and his heavily tinted windows kept me from being able to see if he was looking at me or what. I guessed that he was waiting for me to go past on his left before making his turn onto a little dirt road.
My luck was about to run out. Suddenly he turned left just as I got there. I grabbed two handfuls of brakes and slid/turned left with the car, bumping into the back door with my side and kind of tumbling down as the car continued. I didn't have a scratch on me and my head never hit the ground since I'd almost, but not quite, gotten it stopped in time. The driver jumped out in a panic and was very apologetic (my guess is he was looking at his map to make sure that was the dirt road he was supposed to go down). I picked myself up and put the chain back on and told him I was fine and jumped back on the bike. That's when I noticed that one knee kept hitting the top tube. Looking down, I realized that the seat had been turned about 5°. It was only about 5 miles to the finish, and right about then a nice little group came past, so I jumped on the back of that for the last stretch, finishing up with a chip time of 6:20, which I was very happy with under the circumstances. Sean finished up with a chip time of 6:58 but he spent a lot of time at rest stops and his actual ride time was 5:56. The fastest La/Ms rider was Elliott P with a 5:26.
I later found that I'd cracked the screen on my phone that had been in my pocket. The bike had landed on the derailleur side, so the derailleur was a little scratched up. It was also shifting a little poorly after I fell and I thought I must have bent the derailleur hanger, but it turned out that the rear wheel had shifted just a bit in the dropout which was causing the misalignment, and the hanger was fine.
After eating in the cafeteria (tacos instead of pasta this year) we finally hit the road for home in the early afternoon. Joey drove for the first couple of hours and then I drove the rest of the way. The drive back went smoothly and we arrived in New Orleans around 11:30 pm. I dropped myself off at home and left the others to go back to HQ and re-install the rear seats and then drop the van off on campus. My neck and shoulder were just a little bit sore, presumably from hitting the car, and as usual my quads were pretty sore, but in general I was in better shape than I was in some prior years. I ended up not riding at all on Monday, unless you count commuting to and from work, because I had an early meeting for work.
That was probably a good thing.
