Training and falling

Did you ever get stung by a bee while bike riding?  I have had this happen three times now.  Recently, I got to experience it once again.  The stupid little insect decided to give up its life in return for a pain in my leg; his decision was my downfall!

I was out training for my next bike race that day, pushing it hard up a 16% gradient.  I do this for several reasons: first and foremost, to train my max heart rate up to a higher level, secondly because I know that being clipped in to the pedals on such a hill is a sure guarantee that I cannot stop in the middle and wimp out as there is no way to unclip fast enough to avoid rolling backwards and eventually crashing.  The older I get, the harder it is to love pain!  When I train, I am looking to put my heart rate just below the anaerobic threshold (AT) and train there.  In case you didn't know, this hurts!

My violent reaction while trying to kill the bee, caused me to jerk the handlebars with my other hand and I lost momentum, swerved hard left and went crashing down into the oncoming lane.  Final resting position was on my back, feet up in the air and still clipped into the pedals.  I managed to get free and fortunately, there were no cars on the hill that night.  I suffered an expansive set of road rash from fingers to knee, and a sore hip on my left side, but otherwise nothing serious.  It probably was highly entertaining for anyone in the nearby farmhouse that happened to see the incident.

Clipping back in at 16% grade was tough, but I managed, finished up that hill and another 1700' more of climbing that night.  I took the next day off, but was back in the saddle the day after that.

Mt Equinox Race 2013

I had a great day on Sat at the 2013 race up Equinox Mtn in Vermont.  It’s an average 12% grade hillclimb with max gradient of 26%.  Said less technically, “how fast can you ride a bike up 3200 feet with just 5.4 miles to do it” … even less technically, “very steep hill!”

I awoke to the sounds of rain and low 50-degree temps.  The “warmup” was very tough on me as I tend to just freeze to death when I get wet in those temps.  I had leg and arm warmers, along with a polypropylene long-sleeved shirt under my jersey, but still, it was more like a cooldown for me.  I came to the line in my current category, the 50-to-ancients, without much presumption of a great placement.  This race falls two weeks before the big, sold-out 600-person race up Mt. Washington and most of these folks are in final training for that race as it’s a very similar grade, just not as long and without all the weather hoopla offered up by Mt. Wash.

The sun came out briefly as we waited to start, but the top was still fogged in like pea soup.  The race organizer (bless and/or darn his soul), set up a nice, $500 cash prime at the one mile mark (in other words: the best time for the first mile in all heats will take the cash).  What a mean thing to do to us at the start of a 5-mile hillclimb!  I was fouth in our heat over the 1-mile mark, not concerned at all with the prime, and very quickly dropped the two that had gone out hard.  I picked off the last person in our heat just beyond a slight downhill (200 yards), in which I briefly hit a 26MPH pace.  I cranked hard up the next hill and had the heat to myself for a while there.  Around mile 3.5 or so, I was hitting 90% of my max heart rate and began to get light-headed from lack of oxygen intake and seated myself (at 16% grade) to recover my heart rate and allow a bit less aggression to calm me.  I was passed by three folks then.  The first one had a climbing bike that had no brakes, only a fixed gear up front, and a 9-speed freehub in the rear.  He had a mountain bike handlebar on a carbon fiber road bike and was pretty much just going to cook anyone in his way, so I didn’t chase.  The second was looking very strong, seated and spinning a high cadence when he flew by.  The third was breathing like the sounds of a sump pump sucking air when its cutoff switch is broken: sucking up every breath of air with a gasp.  I figured I’d try to keep him in sight.  When I recovered down to an HR of 149, I was back at it again, pushing hard.

Beyond mile 4, we finished some steep gradients and briefly came across “the saddle” between the false summit and the real one.  I dropped the gearing into fifth gear, was standing and hammering to try to bring in the sump pump guy, but just closed the gap by about half.  After mile 5, we only had 4/10ths left to race, but we hit the 20+ percent grades.  I went a tiny bit wide to avoid the worst part of a 26% grade switchback (see below), but not nearly as wide as the sump pump had steered.

I knew I could take him and neatly passed him by on the next 24% switchback.  I had broken contact with him, and dropped into second gear just after that, beginning my finish sprint.  I came over the line about 25 seconds ahead of him.

Third in my heat of “ancients” did not take into account the elite riders who had pre-qualified for the top-notch heat, so I had another 5 folks in my age bracket in that heat.  Overall, I placed 8^th in my age range and 31^st overall.  This put me into the top third.  I did a 51:12 for 5.4 miles, which is pretty slow, unless you know about the 3200’ of ascent :-)