100 Miles of Nowhere (completed!)
May 25th, 2009
Extremely early on the morning of 5/23 (8:43), I began an arduous journey. At 8:43am, I also arrived at my destination. The journey, however, was only beginning. I required four hours, forty four minutes and forty one seconds to reach my goal of 100 miles, and tacked on an extra two tenths (and a ride to the mailbox, if you want to be technical about it) for good measure. To call it “good measure” in fact is a little ambiguous and disingenuous… I rode the Mississippi division of 100 Miles of Nowhere on a 1up USA Trainer, and … lets just say if the resistance levels offered by the 1up were one to 10, I had mine set at about… zero. So that serves as my disclaimer. Let’s call it a “downhill event” and leave it at that. Nevertheless, I did actually spin on my trainer for 4:44:41 hours, to the tune of “100.2 miles.” That gives an average speed of 21.12 miles per hour. The proof that I should be on the pro tour comes when one knows I did that feat of winningness at an average heart rate of 102 beats per minute while spinning my big ring at an average of 66 revolutions per minute (that’s around 20,000 revolutions). I thusly utterly destroyed the competition. As yet, I have no proof there was any competition even finishing in the same state as I finished, much less anywhere near me. What follows is some graphical data related to my ride.
First, satellite from my Garmin Edge 705:
Then a very unrealistic elevation data graph:
Truth is something much more like the following picture:
in that after almost 43 miles, I had gained approximately 2 feet in elevation, give or take 2 feet. According to the “on-Garmin” data, this 2 feet of elevation would be about 30% of my total elevation gained for the day. Obviously with more than 70% of the climbing remaining within the last 58 miles of the race, it was setting up to be a brutal mountain finish…
Another irrelevant graph based on the aforementioned lack of resistance I chose to use for the event. A downhill event, as I said. Don’t judge me… Also since apparently the Garmin Edge 705 will not PICK which to use between GPS and cadence sensor, the “speed” is based on the (motionless) gps. Which means speed is basically always zero, or very nearly so. Relatedly, this is something I’d like to discuss with Garmin, to tell them to record both sets of data, speed from gps and speed from cadence sensor.
“Grade” over distance. I have no idea what this graph represents, and I checked numerous times to make sure it wasn’t pulling data from some other ride.
Cadence versus Time (also, HR vs Time), which among these graphs probably is actually an interesting one, if there is one.
I can report that my arms are very tired. I won’t say “sore” because it just seems that they’d rather hang there than do anything, but aren’t particularly sore. My sit area also had had enough, and by, let’s say, the 2 hour mark, I was tired of sitting on the bike. By 3 hours, I was very tired of sitting on the bike. By 4 hours, sitting on the bike seemed like downright wrong. And after 4 hours… well…
I did a fair amount of carb loading the night before, at a local Hibachi. That worked out nicely for both me and my lovely wife (namely because it’s her favorite place to eat).
I had no specific plan of how to occupy my mind for the time required to finish this event. Here is how it worked out: The first 3 episodes of Season 1 of The Office. Then Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, then another The Office (maybe, memory gets fuzzy here), and then we switched to Dr. Who (the 2005 edition), season 1, episode 1 – 3 or 4. Yes that is much more than 4:44:41 worth of television: I took a fair amount of long breaks toward the end.
My lovely wife kindly prepared sag stops for me.
This was the “breakfast” stop. Lovely Wife started cooking when I started riding, so this worked out nicely.
This was the “somewhere in the middle” stop (the muffins were started immediately after the breakfast stop, and the smell of their cooking and ultimate doneness dictated my second (and third and fourth) rest stop.
And this was the lunch stop. Peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
Garmin tells me I burned 7437 cal, which if resistance on the 1up had been set to “real-world” then I could potentially believe. As it were I only ate like I had burned that many calories, both during the race and after. Actually, probably much more after. I ate for the rest of the day Saturday, and most of the day Sunday my appetite was insatiable.
There was one (official) feed station during the race. I chose not to get food but just got a hand-up from my Lovely Wife. As you can see, much skillful deliberation led to a perfect exchange of loving looks (from me) and water bottle (from her). Notice and appreciate the intensity with which the exchange was facilitated with her attentiveness.
And now on with a few race shots:
Due to the hot day, I had shed my jersey to the team car earlier in the race. Then I heard the shifting of gears behind me (phantom? I might never know…) and so there was but one thing to do: ATTACK!
And finally, photos of the victory itself.
A final disclaimer: If the Lord wills my participation in this event on it’s next occasion, then I already have a small loop in mind, that is probably less than a mile, and I look quite forward to defeating it thusly.
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