Live Strong
Philly 2011 Ride Report Doug (Way Upstate NY)
Back home safe in Potsdam after another LiveStrong adventure. This year
Cori and I went to California so that I could ride LiveStrong
Davis which was an amazing experience. The ride was relatively
"easy" and I was able to crush my best time on a century. I met Elden
and Lisa Nelson (aka Fat Cyclist and the Hammer) and rode the entire
ride with them. Last year I rode Philly and met some awesome people. I
was not sure I would be able to ride in Philly (I was expecting to be
away for work) but the weekend opened up. Thanks to some friendly peer
pressure (thanks Maggi and Joel) I decided to go down and visit with
friends and ride the course. Philly was different for me than Davis.
This course is hard, and I wanted to
challenge myself to see how far I had come in the last year with my
riding.
On Saturday in Philly they hold a 5k and 10k run. Since I was not
running I went to support my fellow Fatties who were running. Joel and
Maggi ran the 10k together. Jenni "Hoops" did the 5k, but she did it in
style, hoola hooping the course. Here are the Fatties who ran.
We celebrated the run in grand Fatty fashion by eating burgers at a
diner (with Milk Shakes and Cake of course).
The weather forecast for Sunday was what we have come to expect for the
Philly LiveStrong ride....cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms. Last
year we rode in a monsoon so we were all looking at our smart phones
checking the weather constantly. Sunday morning dawned.....cloudy
(sigh) with thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. We got out to the
venue and lined up in the shoots. OK so it wasn't that simple. I was in
the parking lot with Joel just starting to ride off to the shoots when
I heard a voice call out "Doug, Joel" from behind me. I turned to see
who it was. Mistake #1. I was trying to clip in, going slow, and
turning around. Then I lost my momentum, couldn't get unclipped, and
did the slow motion flop to the ground. Nothing hurt too bad (except my
pride). My story is that someone on the team had to crash and bleed, so
I took one for the team, early on to get it out of the way. I do have a
really nice scratch on my calf with the exact spacing of the large
chain ring. Hum. Maybe time for a memorial tattoo.....
Anyway I made it to the shoot without further incident. This year they
were starting the bikers in groups of 500 to prevent congestion on the
streets. The start was a little chaotic, but eventually I got onto the
street rolling with Christine (who was the person who called out to
Joel and me in the parking lot). I had decided to do the 100 mile
course (since someone on Team Fatty had to do the stupid hard course).
They had moved the cutoff for the 100 mile course up from 10:30 to
10:00 due to the weather. OK, 32 miles just over 2 hours. Gotta roll to
get there. Once we were rolling Christine said "see you in a couple of
hours". I took that as my official start and hammered it. There were a
lot of riders on the road all going at different speeds. I managed to
hook up with a train, but they were going REALLY fast and I did not
want to blow up later in the course so I backed off and set at a
leisurely 22 MPH average after the first 15 miles.
Bike and I have been having "trust issues" for the past month or so. We
experienced the dreaded "death wobbles" on a steep decent back home a
couple of weeks ago that precipitated a new headset and fork. There was
a section on the road where the road was torn up for repaving. I hit it
REALLY hard and the front end wobbled. Just enough to bring the trust
issues back up. I kept going but took it very easy on the decents. I
got up the first big climb of the day passing people the whole way and
made the cut off with plenty of time to spare. Right after the cut off
there was a powerstop. I was 119 into that stop. Nice since I started
about 20 minutes after the first group of riders went out. I went over
the mechanic at the stop and had him look at my headset, fork and
wheel. The wheel was straight, the new headset was tight. The wobbles
and trust issues were between me and my bike and not mechanically
related. OK time to press on. I rode out of the stop with another
Fatty, Jeff. We rode for about 5 minutes and Jeff said "go at your pace
I can't keep up" so off I went. I was in a zone.
The hard part of the Philly 100 mile ride is the second half. It starts
with a 4 mile climb to the Landis Store power stop. I was feeling good
but I had forgotten how steep the top mile of the climb was. It is
brutal. Down shift, stand up and crank. I passed people the whole way
up the climb and was never passed my self. Into Landis. Last year at
Landis they had chicken soup. Salty hot perfection (especially in last
year's rain). No soup this year. Hot dogs. Really? No thanks. Orange
slices and trail mix. Fresh water with ice and back onto the course.
The last 40 miles are where the mental and physical challenge of this
ride come. Landis is the last big hill, but the remainder of the course
is filled with 5 or 6 relatively short, but very steep hills. They seam
to get bigger and bigger as the day goes on. On I went still passing
people. I saw Fatties on the course who had done shorter rides and
shouted encouragement to them as I went by. At one point I hooked up
with a bunch of guys from a cycling club and rode pace line with them.
20 miles out there was a power stop. The guys I was riding with pulled
in. I was going to go on, but a loud call of "Go Fatty" caught my
attention. I saw fellow Fatty Jamison, who was manning the stop, and
pulled in to say hi. Jamison said the radar was clear and the weather
looked like it would hold. Quick stop, fresh water, more trail mix and
oranges. Off onto the road. With 10 miles to go my lower back started
to hurt and so I pulled into the 9 miles power stop just to get off my
bike for a minute. Then came the first indication of trouble. Thunder
in the distance.
Since I was alone on the road, there are no "action" pictures of me
biking (oh, the sacrifices I made so that the team would have at least
1
100 miler ;). But here is a picture of some Fatties on the road. Notice
the wet pavement? A sign of things to come......
Back on the bike and hammering hard. The rain came off and on for the
last bit. I hooked up with two other riders from the 100 mile course
and we road back to the finish together. The lightening and thunder
were coming closer and everytime we heard a boom the speed went up a
little bit. When I got to the finish the announcer was telling people
to get off their bikes and go to their cars or to the school gym. I met
up with Christine, Joel and Maggi and we went to put Maggi's bike in
her car. While we were doing that, there was a simultaneous flash and
boom. A tree in the parking lot was struck by lightening. Cleats off
quick march to the gym. The gym was like a refugee camp from a
hurricane filled with wet people. We found a place to sit (and stretch
out). All good except I wanted a burger, fries and a coke! All I had
was Honey Stinger bars and chews and my water bottles. Christine kept
offering me her food (more honey stinger products, what no burger?).
While honey stingers are heaven when you are riding, they are tough to
eat right after you are finished. I couldn't eat another one.
We waited out the storm and eventually went back to our cars when there
was a break in the action. The LiveStrong village was flooded and
deserted. A ghost town. Back to the hotel. Time for a hot shower
(heaven) and chips and coke from the lobby (double heaven). We were
able to find out over the course of the afternoon that everyone had
finished and was safe (major relief). We got to spend the afternoon
chatting and talking in the hotel room and ended the day with dinner
and chocolate brownie sundays.
So how was the ride? Bike and I were able to work out some of our
issues. We went moderately fast down the decents on the second half of
the ride. We need some alone time on roads that we are comfortable on
to really work those issues out. I finished the course in 5:28 for a
17.6 mph average. About 1.25 mph faster than I did it last year, which
felt nice. Here is the course map and profile. This is easily the
hardest century ride I have every done. It is a relentless ride that
never stops being a challenge. The second big climb is the Landis Store
climb and it rivals any climbs we have here in the Addirondacks. The
weekend was filled with talking and laughing with old friends. As a
group we managed to raise over $28,000 for LiveStrong (without being a
focal ride for Team Fatty) and Jenni was able to get a couple of bikes
donated to World Bicycle Relief. So I would call the ride a success.
BTW. Thanks to Maggi and Jenni who (unknowingly) allowed me to steal
some pictures for this report and to Philly Jen who helped to organize
the group. :D
