Cheaha Mia

I threw the bike into the Volvo at the luxurious hour of 9 am and headed northeast toward Jacksonville, Alabama, hoping that the recently struggling A/C would at least keep struggling for the duration. It's a pretty smooth 6.5 hour drive via I-59 and I-20, and I was in no particular hurry. The plan was to check into the motel room in Oxford and then make the 20 minute drive up to Jacksonville to pick up numbers and partake of the $15 pasta dinner buffet at 5:00. Somewhere along I-20 traffic came to a standstill because of a crash up the road, adding a good 40 minutes to my drive, which didn't really matter since I was so early anyway. I unloaded the bike and bag at the Hampton Inn and headed north to Jacksonville, enjoying the increasingly hilly scenery. At the school where everything is staged I picked up my numbers and chatted a bit with Stuart Lamp who is kind of in charge of the event. Stuart was our regional USAC rep back when we had those, so we go back far enough that I remember him before the beard and greying hair. After I'd paid for the dinner I found out that Joe Paul, Lisa, MJ, and Jason were having dinner right down the street. Oh well. I had a reasonably nice plate of pasta and salad and headed back. Back at the hotel I affixed the chip-timing number to the seatpost, which of course barely fit between my tiny saddle bag and the rear tire (#shortpersonproblems), watched the highlights of the Giro, Googled how to properly set the time on the hotel's clock, and finally went to sleep around 10 pm.

Not knowing what the event day situation would be like I arrived kind of early, which turned out to have been unnecessary since the parking lot was more than adequate for the turnout. Lisa, Joe Paul, and Jason were all doing the UCI 100-mile qualifer, so they started ahead of the regular century ride group that MJ and I were in. Our group started out surprisingly slowly. I guess all the fast people were riding the UCI rides. There's a significant little climb four or five miles after the start, and as usual my physiology refused to adjust quickly enough. I was soon in the second group about 30 seconds behind the lead group. The next fifteen or so miles are mostly flat, and the lead group was obviously not in race mode or anything, so after a long chase we finally made contact with it shortly before turning onto Talladega Scenic Drive, which is the main road that goes up to the state park at the top of Cheaha. That started with a lot of ups and downs before coming to the main climb at around 38 miles, by which time the group had completely disintegrated. I spent a fair amount of time in my lowest gear, not feeling particularly rushed. Even the "big" climb up to the park entrance was only two or three miles long, so nothing like the longer climbs at Six Gap. On the other hand, the steep sections were definitely steep, so I was constantly going back and forth between the big ring and small ring.

It was getting pretty warm, especially on the steeper climbs where I was crawling along at 4-5 mph. I had one big water bottle with Skratch, plus a smaller bottle with plain water, and by the time I was halfway back I knew I'd need to stop to refill one, which I did at one of the rest stops. I had a full flask of Hammergel, so about the equivalent of five gel packs, plus a few backup packets, and although I emptied the flask by the end, I never resorted to any of the gel packs. After coming over the top of the mountain on the way back there was a lot of nice downhill, virtually none of which required any brakes, although I did slow down for a few of the curves just in case they were sharper than I thought. They weren't. I hit almost 50 mph at one point without trying. After the longest of the downhills, there were roughly 20 miles of constant little climbs, and when another ride came past me I followed her. She said something to me that I didn't understand at all, so hopefully I wasn't a problem. 

After turning off of the scenic highway, I eventually got in with a small group that was cruising at a nice pace. We were briefly on a part of the road race course from a few weeks ago. That little group kind of fell apart, but there were two other riders who came through, so I stayed with them the rest of the way. 

Although it was pretty hot by the finish, I have to say how nice the scenery was along the way, with a number of impressive scenic overlooks. Lisa ended up winning pretty much everything she could have, and was on the podium three different times - overall women, age group women, and QOM, finishing just under 5 hours. Joe Paul and Jason finished at 5:14 and 5:25, and Devin finished at 5:21. I cruised in at 5:42 and MJ at 6:05, although MJ's time included a fair amount of time at rest stops. His actual ride time was more like 5:48. For the record, it looks like I was around 7th among the non-UCI 100 riders after subtracting the ones listed ahead of me who had turned around early.

It was kind of a long drive back home, but I rolled into town around 9 pm, more than ready for food and a shower. The legs were still a little sore this morning when I went out to the Mellow Monday ride, which got fast enough along Lakeshore Drive to make me question whether I should have paid more attention to Strava that suggested something like three days for recovery. Anyway, I was glad to have finally made my way to this ride after threatening to do so for years. The Cervelo seemed to handle climbs and descents well and despite all of the front chainring shifting, never dropped the chain.