Tour de Cure...

So as the summer has started I guess you can see the blog is getting a little slack. I actually got some work the last couple weeks so free time has been at a minimum. What can I say..I do what I can.

The weekend before last I did end up making it out to the Burn 24 for an hour or so. I snapped some pics on the girlfriends camera but of course I don’t have them. It was a huge event as usual with a Woodstock of mountain biking type feel. Seems like the event is more of a huge festival rather than a race at times. Maybe Ill get the pics up..maybe I wont. It was cool to hang out and watch none the less.

Anyway on to the Tour de Cure. I was scheduled to do 100 miles on Saturday and 100 on Sunday but after detours the route turned into closer to 110 miles. I went down Friday night to stay at Marshalls old house which was about a 15 minute drive from southern pines where day1’s race would end and day 2’s would begin. Marshall said it would only be about a half hour to hour drive to get to cary so we left out around 6 to get to a 730 race start. By the time we dropped my truck off and drove well over an hour to get to cary we were pulling in the parking lot at 731. Not the way I wanted to start the day.

We all jumped out and started running around frantically trying to get all the money turned in, stuff gathered, etc as the race announcer was going over the rules and the route. I strapped my helmet on and caught the very tail end of the couple hundred man field as it was rolling out of the parking lot. I wasn’t sure if Marshall and his uncle had rolled out already or not so I decided to work my way up to the front and I figured Id either see them on the way or they would catch up. From what I understood most of the field would stay together at a 14-15 mph pace so I knew they would have no problem catching up even if they weren’t in the field. It only took me a mile or two to work my way through the field and suprising ly my legs felt real good. As I mentioned I got some work the week before but it just happened to be out in the chicken farms. The heat was bad and the work was hard so not the best week of prep for the ride. After icaught the front however the pace really started to pick up. Before I knew it I was in a group of 15-20 rider that were rolling along at almost 25mph pace. I though I might be pushing it to hard but I felt fine and my legs felt good so I just set in. At one point the group split and I was stuck in the back group which was fine with me. All of a sudden though the back group decided to chase the front and before I knew it I had been rotated to the front. About that time a dodge neon cmae around the group and I decided to take the opportunity to jump in its draft and lat it pull the group up to the front. It worked and I sat in again. As we came to the first rest stop at mile 8 we blew right on through still pushing a hard pace. I chatted over the next 8 miles and felt really good to be back in a fast moving group. The group stopped at stop 2 and I refilled the bottle and ate a couple cookies. I decided I would just wait here for marshall seeing as we came to do this together. 15-20 minutes later he rolled in.

The three of us left out a couple minutes later but my legs were froze up after such a long wait. They never really felt good the rest of the day. We joined a few other groups over the next couple miles and probably hit a few hills to hard. By the lunch stop at mile 50 I was starting to feel the effects of my hard effort early on. The new Sugoi RS bibs were performing great with not even a twinge of discomfort thus far. We sat for a half hour almost for lunch and set back out. The three of us rode alone most of the way seemingly stuck between the party pacers and the racers. Around mile 65 I really started to feel my legs ache. The road turned skyward over the next 15-20 miles and took everything I had left. Marshall and I rode off from his uncle around mile 70 and never saw him again. I almost cut out when we hit the split in the road at mile 80 where one way went to the finish of the 75 (now 85) mile rout and the other went to a 25 mle loop to make the 100 (or 110). I decided if I didn’t do the 100 now I knew I wouldn’t do it the next day. So we turned onto the extension with a revived will to just get this thing over. We hammered on pretty good for the next tem miles trying to find the finish line as fast as possible. At one point I passed a guy that I had chatted with in the fast group at the first of the day laying on the side of the road. I was happy I wasn’t the only one suffering. About mile 90 we turned back onto the road we had been on previously that started the 15 miles or so of climbing. I was dead. From mile 90-100 I was creeping. I had nothing left to turn the pedals over except my body weight falling on them. Marshall got out in front of me at this point and the wind started pounding me making the situation even worse. Finally we regrouped around mile 100 and I started ticking away again. Finally we crested the climbing and bombed the decent before the finish.

Iv never wanted something to be over so bad before. It really shocked me how hard the first day was as I was expecting the second to be the real sufferfest. I don’t know why I underestimated this ride so much but I did. I went out way to hard for one and I was probably in the worst shape of the entire season. Whatever the reason it hurt. At the finish Marshalls uncle informed us he wasn’t riding the second day. Marshall and I had been contemplating only doing 75 the second day already but this put the idea into marshalls head to just call the second day off as well. I cant say it didn’t sound like a good idea as I was real bad sun burnt and exhausted but I honestly didn’t want to give up. When marshall made the final call to forgo the second day however I decided to do the same as I knew I couldn’t suffer that much alone. The honest truth is though that I don’t think I could have physically made it if I had tried.

Regardless my first century is under my belt and I enjoyed the challenge..kinda