It was absolutely brutal. My moving time was 5'49", which is on the slow side for a century, but when you take into account the amount of climbing (over 4,000 feet) it makes a lot of sense. I had awful calf and quad cramping from my 65 on, and you can see that my speed dropped a lot once that started happening. Luckily, I wasn't the only one, most of the field was equally shattered by the difficulty. I can honestly say that was the single most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.
It gives me a new respect for professional cyclists: that would have been an average to moderately difficult Tour de France stage. And it left me completely wiped out. They would have to go repeat that ride, and much harder ones too, 20 more times before the end of the Tour. Their fitness is at an unreal level, and I completely understand the pressure on them to use performance enhancing drugs. To have to compete in races that difficult for 21 consecutive days, and to be expected to excel in them, let alone simply surviving them, the pressure must be enormous. When you expect people to be super human, don't be surprised when they resort to super human resources.
Anyway, I thought I'd share this with you guys. Have a good Thanksgiving.
Properly impressed. I'm just getting back into cycling and you're right on the money. What the professionals can achieve is incredible.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's an excuse for substance misuse though.
Either way, congratulations on your completion of this route and happy thanksgiving!
I'm not excusing it, I'm just saying I understand why they do it.
ReplyDeleteWell played man... I'm in the process of getting ready for a half-ironman for this summer. It's not really the same as 'only' cycling, but I think it'll be hard enough :)
ReplyDeleteHow much do you bike every day? Biking is my hardest 'event' in tris, since I did running and swimming in high school. I'm interested to hear your training regimen.
Unreal. Are you a fricking superman or something? Your hip & ass were still torn up from your crash and you raced this crazy thing? just reading about it makes me tired. I'm going back to bed. (tease!)
ReplyDelete@Loquacious I'm paying for it now. I think I tweaked my groin muscle a bit in the crash and it was healing up, but the race seems to have re-aggravated it and I'm walking worse now than I was a day or two prior to the race.
ReplyDelete@Xaereth I typically ride about 30 hours a month, but not really an hour a day since M-W-F I take off cycling to do weight lifting. I just ride extra on my 'on' days to make it average out.