2013 Mountains of Misery Double Metric

MOUNTAINS OF MISERY 2013 The Mountains of Misery are named accurately, filled with misery stacked upon climb after climb.  I had quite a bit of trepidation leading into this event due to the memories from two years ago.  I rode the century route in 2011 and that was exceedingly difficult.  So what do I sign up for this year?  Something even harder, the double-metric ride!

126.2 miles with an elevation climb of ~11,390 feet across what felt like 5 mountain ranges.  That's almost half-way up Mount Everest or ~8 times taller than the Empire State Building.  Spider-man can't fight the Hulk because they aren't in the same power class, well this ride is outside of my rider class.

If this image doesn't scare you as a biker than nothing will.

The weekend started really well with an easy drive down to the camp site at the start of the race.  Beautiful weather was forecast, so why did my insides feel like a butterfly parade?  At the registration booth I made the questionable decision to "man up" for the double metric instead of the century.  Has anyone ever told you to "man up" where it did not result in your personal demise?

I slept really well in the tent Saturday night, got ready and rode 1/4 mile up to the starting line to receive my first and only good news of the day ... the double-metric folk get to start first!  There were about 100 of us and around 525 with more common sense opting for the century.  5 waves in all of riders started 5 minutes apart.  I think the only reason all the riders didn't pass me was because the double-metric and century routes diverged early on.


The first 25 miles are a steady incline that isn't too tough.  It's just the 7am hour that's early and it takes me a bit to stop wishing I was still in bed.  Then the first climb of the day up Pottstown Mountain, 2100 feet over 11 miles and it was steep.  You get a real feel for how high you're climbing when you overlook the sides and  and your brain asks you why on earth you're riding 2 feet from edge.  Next time I'm riding in the middle of the road.


The next climb is 1,200 feet over 4 miles.  That is really steep and I had to walk a short bit of it.  My bike gearing just isn't set for these tough mountain climbs and no one was around to tell me to "man up".  Misery was starting to take a toll.


After 3 hours I had gone about 40 miles.  The realization that I was only 1/3 of the way done hit like a ton of bricks and I was thinking the ride would be 10-11 hours.  Wow, I've never been on my road bike that long.  The couple mountain bike centuries have taken 12 and 13 hours.  This ride turned out to be every bit as hard as those single-track nightmares like the Wilderness 101.

I don't even know what to say after this point as all I did was keep pedaling.  Up the mountain, down the mountain.  It's interesting what goes on in your head during these times of isolation and stress.  Keep turning the cranks, check out scenery, pray those dogs don't jump the fence or break a leash.  Why does everyone in the country own a socially disturbed dog looking for a new chew toy?

Approaching the final hill I had a lot of thoughts going through my head.  None of them was that I would actually ride it.  I failed a couple years ago, so why would I be able to do it today with the increased mileage?  To my surprise and excitement I did ride that final hill from bottom to top.  It was very difficult.  I'm actually pretty tickled about making that climb.

At the top I had some good moments with the two riders finishing just ahead of me.  Ron and Hans were in pretty happy spirits.  Especially Ron because he finally beat someone, me.  I took the prestigious position of "last in class" when I crossed the finish line.

Hold up the number of people you beat.  

And what better way to spend the rest of the day with a 4+ hour ride home by oneself from Blacksburg, VA in the dark?  I was contemplating setting up my tent at a rest area but opted for slugging it out and arrived around 12:30am.  A quick shower and I joined the family in the pop-up camper in the driveway.  I felt pretty good on Sunday, just a little fatigued.  Will I ever return for more misery?  Only time will tell.

Official Lucky Last Place Results:  (Don't laugh unless you've tried to ride this course.)
http://www.mountainsofmisery.com/2013/data/2013-all-v3.pdf

Garmin Statistics

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2012 Gran Fondo Garrett County

The Garrett County Savage Century is truly a no-joke, no-frills, bad ass ride through the mountain sides of western Maryland.  This was by far my hardest road ride I've tackled at 8hours 32mins.  102 miles with exhilarating downhills of up to 51 miles per hour, miles and miles up very difficult climbing, and a little bit of rolling countryside along Savage Creek and Deep Creek Lake.  If the elevation profile below doesn't scare you, then layoff the liquid courage.

Mom has become a frequent participant, camper, sherpa, cook and volunteer on these weekend extravaganza's.  We set off Friday afternoon and had camp set by early evening.  Crab cakes were the meal of choice for my pre-ride meal from Springfield Butcher.  This was the first trip where we really did the camping right.  

 

Wake up call was at 5:30am.  A cream cheese muffin, banana, and OJ served as the "Breakfast of Champions".  A 10 minute drive over to Adventure Sports for packet pickup, then a drive up Wisp Mountain to reach the starting point.  We saw two crazies riding up Wisp mountain, and I can only guess their car must have broken down.

There were around 1300 riders combined for all riding options.  The craziest is the Diabolical Double (125 miles) of pure pain.  We'll have to wait until next year before tackling that.  At the starting line, I ran into Dan Wolfe, my frequent riding buddy on centuries.

The beginning of the ride is a few miles of downhill.  Couldn't go all out due to volume of riders, but after the first few climbs the pack thinned out and then the training wheels came off.  I'm not sure which downhill I reached 51 miles/hour, but I'm guessing I was pretty close to that speed on plenty of them ... pure exhilaration.  

Where's Dan Wolfe?  Lost him at the first decent climb.  Turns out he just needed a jump start to get the blood flowing.  He did fine for the remainder of the ride.

Mile 25 up to Morgan Town Road was long and what exactly were those girls implying by passing me on the way up?

Mile 36 and still climbing.  The combined totals of one hill after another makes one cry for one's Mommy.  Unfortunately, mine was resting at the campsite about now.

I stopped for a panoramic shot of the country side and a good view of an upcoming hill.  I did zoom down that hill, went through the woods, and slogged it up what you can see in the video.  Perhaps I was overcome with delirium, but I could swear a 70 year old lady passed me on the climb.  For the record, I did pass her at the top and never saw her again.  Perhaps she was just a big fan of tanning booths, remember this lady?

Bowman Hill is more sinister than Silent Hill in many ways, minus the demons.  This road doesn't seem to  have been built by educated engineers.  Someone far more sadistic created this ridiculous climb.

Nice of this farmer to let us ride through his property ... NOT!  That climb is longer and steeper than it appears.

Mile 55 is called "Killer Miller" and guess what, "It's hard, really really hard."  There's another little bump to get to the Eastern Continental Divide.  The bonus side is there is a really long descent to Savage Creek after the divide.  

This rolling terrain is the first part of the ride you could truly relax and enjoy the ride.  100 miles of this kind of riding would really be a popular event.  

And here we are at the finishing line, 8 hours and 53 minutes later.  The last hill up Wisp Mountain is cruel.  I was gearing up for a tougher climb, but in the end it was just another bump along the way.  Riding up the hill after 101 miles is an accomplishment that should be shared by all .. who's with me for 2013?

And here comes Dan Wolfe slugging it up the finish line in 9hrs 51mins 36secs.  I agree Dan, this ride really was ridiculously hard.

Back at the campground, here's a post-meal recap.  Rib-eye steak's from the "Springfield Butcher" were incredible over the open fire.  Good thing for GroupOn's, we got a two-for-one for purchasing the steaks and crab cakes.

The best part of this adventure was easily the camping, as usual.  The weather was beautiful, very few bugs, nice facilities, almost makes me think about tackling this ride again next year.  I asked once already, but who's with me for 2013?


Garmin statistics: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/192635790

2012 Garrett County Savage Century - Check!

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2012 Mohican MTB 100

The Mohican mountain bike race is a 100 mile loop consisting of 11,000+ feet of climbing along mostly singletrack, doubletrack or dirt roads, spanning 4 counties through some of the most remote and scenic areas in the rolling hills of Mohican Country, Ohio. Climbs of nearly a mile, with elevation gains of 300+ feet, rock gardens, streams, and more!

That's the description of the race from the official website's perspective.  My description of this ride is a brutal, technically challenging, bruising, difficult and crazy hard 100 miles through Bigfoot country.  My hopes in entering this race was to improve upon my finish time from the Wilderness 101 last year.  And I barely did, with a time of 12 hours 44 minutes.  Hey, that's an improvement of 19 minutes!

It's a long day in the saddle.  This ride I felt was much more of a mental challenge than a physical one.  I've been riding a lot leading into this race so physically I wasn't ever hurting.  However, after the first 42 miles of this course I was not sure I wanted to sign up for another 60 miles.  Fortunately, the real demanding riding was behind me, mostly road, gravel and little single-track was ahead.

As is customary on these rides, my mom came along for shotgun.  We had an easy 7+ hour drive out to the Mohican Adventures campground.  We had a good Friday night dinner at the local Sojourner Cafe on Main Street. Here's a couple shots of our campsite.

Race day started with a wake up call around 5;45am.  We had a "Breakfast of Champions" at McDonald's that provided all the calories one needs for a 100 mile bike ride.  Bikes were streaming in from all over the place toward the starting line in Loudonville.  Here's a few shots of the starting line.

 

The riders in front are the ones trying to win the race.  I'm more of a "completer" than a "competitor".  So I took my spot near the tail-end.

Here's the good news as heard in this video.  There will always be someone behind me.  

Around 600 riders started this race, not all of them finished.  One guy had a dislocated shoulder, others just couldn't make it.  I saw numerous people stopping with cramps and this was within the first 32 miles.  

Watch the video and to the left you can see where we had dinner the night before.  The last building on the right is Kim's Bike Store.  I talked with these guys about the ride, and met up with them at the aid station at mile 80.  

Just like the morning commute in DC, here we were all standing around to merge.  The initial road segment is not very long before going into single-track.  As every second passed, it was getting harder and harder to catch the leaders.  I'm sure this is where I lost the bulk of my time :-)

At Aid Station 1 (mile 20) I was feeling pretty good.  Not a lot to report here, just smooth sailing.

Here's a shot of a particularly nasty part of the trail.  I walked less of this course than the Wilderness ride and pretty much only walked where everyone else was walking too.  

One of the nice portions of the trail.  Unfortunately it didn't last too long.   I did like riding in small packs through the first ~40 miles of this ride.  It was later in the ride that I was out there in the woods on my own.  Which is very peaceful.

Aid Station 2 is 32 miles in, and took 4 hours and change to reach.  It was at this point that I was wondering what I had gotten myself into.  Any one read "Fablehaven"?  If so, check out this video.  I'll never look at a butterfly the same again.

This was a crazy ominous sight of a hill around the bend.  For the record, I did ride up the hill that many weren't.  And check out the video below for what I found at the top!

This was the sight of my biggest wipe-out.  When one gets tired, everything gets more difficult.  I was coming down this little hill negotiating the rocks when all of a sudden this log jumped out of the woods at me.  I hit it dead-on and flipped right over the handlebars.  Fortunately it was a soft landing.

Debate time.  I stayed at Aid Station 3 for almost 25 minutes. All the smart people were going left, very few of us nuts were going right.  Check out the video to see what the big debate was about.

Bigfoot Country if there ever was one.  This is 78 miles in, extremely remote, and I hope there's no one out here but me and fellow riders.

The finish line never looked so sweet!  Catered BBQ ribs, chicken and all the extras were waiting for me.  I was glad the other riders left me some.  And of course Mom was waiting right there for me (she must be very patient).

Mohican ride - Check!!!

Official Results: http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/national-ultra-endurance-nue-series-mohican-100-2012/results

Garmin results: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/185549213

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Seagull Century 2011

The 2011 Seagull Century will forever be known to me as the ride of Danimal's life.  Let's back up to October 2010 for a moment to explain why Danimal rode this ride.  We're both 40-something and trying to hold on to younger days by pushing ourselves to crazy extremes.  Danny with the marathon's, myself with the centuries. So we made a deal, I run a half-marathon and Danny rides a century.

I ran the Suntrust half-marathon earlier this year and followed a 10 week training program to make sure I had a good experience.  Danimal did an admirable job in training for the century by going on 3 bike rides around Burke Lake and getting in a few hours on the recumbent while watching football games.

Perhaps the best part of rides is the camping the night before.  We stayed at Woodlawn Campground in Salisbury.  Beautiful, clear and crisp night that we spent a good portion of shopping on Craiglist for a pop-up camper.  Here's a few videos of the evening.

Our Campsite

Danimal was legitimately worried the night before the race about the effort he was about to put forth.  He may have been feeling better when we arrived at the start because how could he be the only one out of almost 9,000 riders to not make the finish.  Here's a shot of the starting line:

And we're off with a strong 17mph pace!  Danimal couldn't keep a 17mph for 2 minutes down at the beach last year in August.  I'm thinking;

1. Danny is insane.
2. How is Danny going to finish?
3. Who's going to drive him to the finish line?
4. Confucious say, "Man who climb mountain too fast, not reach top".

Mile 1	Mile 6
Mile 11	Mile 20 - Aid Station #1

Miles 20 through 40 were not overly difficult, but there was a windy difficult stretch of a few miles before Aid Station #2 around mile 40.  This was just a taste of the 40mph wind gusts that we would feel later in the race, along with the constant head wind that would soon take a miserable toll on me. Mile 50 and Danimal is still setting a blistering pace.  I'm thinking that it was a really good idea he got slick high-pressure tires on his bike.  I was riding my huge 29x2.2" knobby's at around 45psi.  This turned out to make the ride much more difficult than it needed to be. If you listen to the riding videos closely, you can hear a low humming noise.  Those are my tires on the pavement.  Listen to the mile 6 video above for a great example.   Danny's previous max distance was 26 miles that we rode twice at the beach this past August.  Amazing how strong he looked at mile 50 and beyond.  Danny, how do you do it?  And in his own words, "I'm quite a specimen."

Mile 40 Mile 50

We cruised into mile 60 at the Assateague Island Aid Station #3 with a little fatigue setting in.  The wind was just ridiculous as you can hear from the videos.  It was a cross-wind at this point and it makes we wonder why no one was sent flying into the water.  There were a few horses out feeding and I'm always amazed at how much attention a few ponies can get.  Did I mention the wind?

At Mile 60 I was thinking that Danimal was going to start getting tired and that interesting times were ahead of us.  I had no idea that he was going to be the one chugging along strongly and I was going to be feeling the pain in the quads.  As a matter of fact, my quads were about to start screaming at me for taking my mountain bike on this ride.  My road bike would have been significantly easier and then perhaps I could have laughed at Danimal more.  As it turns out, too much effort went into the riding and not enough heckling Danimal.

Riding to mile 80 and the apple pie was a challenge for the both of us.  Coming out of Assateague we had a little scare with Danimal's hamstring as it tightened a bit.  He rode through it and I bet he rode through a lot more that he didn't bother to mention.  At least he didn't ride into a mailbox like some bone-headed guy, or get tossed to the pavement like a few other riders.  I was surprised by the number of riders getting flat tires.  That would be the ONLY benefit to riding 29x2.2" tires on this ride.

Let's just say that I was pretty spent at this point in the ride.  My quads were absolutely screaming at me and there wasn't much I could say to them, outside of "sorry".  Perhaps what kept me going was preventing the irony of Danimal finishing the ride without me.  Again, here's the mental toughness that comes into play on these rides.  They are all hard and have different challenges .. some you can predict and some you can't.

Danimal appeared to simply cruise to the finish line.  We were able to draft a little bit during the final few miles and at least I benefited from it.  Danimal kept looking like he was just riding around Burke Lake for another 5 mile practice ride.

I could not have been happier reaching the finish line at this point.  You can hear the fatigue in my voice in the video.  Danimal continues to chug along with no recognition of the physical toll that he just put out. All kudos to Danimal for making this ride.  In the two days after the ride, he has felt no knee pain whatsoever.  Even indicating that it feels better than it did before the ride! I hope that he remembers the therapeutic benefits of riding a bike and decides to go on future rides.  The simulated 40 mile hill with the wind from Assateague is a good indication that he's ready for more difficult events. Great job, Danimal !!!! Ride time: 7 hrs 9 min's.

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Goshen Cub Scout Camp

This week I took off for Goshen Cub Scout Camp with Jared.  He's staying the whole week and stayed through Wednesday.  I wasn't sure what to expect from a camp in the middle of July.  We had 17 total kids go down and 5/6 parents for each half of the week.  Only 1 parent was crazy enough to stay the whole week.  Below is a view of Goshen Lake.  There are multiple scouting camps in the area.

It's a really rustic camp.  There are no frills about it.  Food is basic, but enough sustenance to keep you alive and functioning.  The only place where you find air conditioning is in the medical clinic, which Jared and I visited a few times.  One was for a boo-boo on the knee, but the other was a whittling accident.  We go over knife safety all the time, but he managed to put a longer shallow slice in his left thumb.  He's fine, just has to wear a bandage for a few days.  The cut might be worth it just to spend a few minutes in the a/c each day.

I will admit that the first day, Sunday, was a little rough on my pampered self.  First off, we had to carry all our stuff about 1/2 mile to the campsite.  The site is on the other side of a ravine, so you go all the way down, then all the way back up.  None of us ever stopped sweating the entire time.  Even the shower facilities which we managed to get the kids to a few times is on the wrong side of the ravine.  I took cold showers and felt great for a few minutes after.  But I was sweating again before getting back to the camp site.

The tents were no more than a piece of canvas.  Bugs flew and crawled through them at will.  We had to get several wolf spiders out of the kids tents.  Turns out those big spiders are your friends, as they eat other insects.  Let's talk about tents for a sec.  Has anyone ever seen what a tent looks like after a couple unsupervised 8 year old kids live in it for a day or two?  It's a complete mess.  Everything from their pack is all over the place.  Good luck finding clean clothes, or even getting some kids to change clothes.  I asked one kids why his shirt was inside-out and backwards.  He told me, "So when I wear it tomorrow it will be clean."

The campsite itself was pretty nice.  We had a lot of room for 17 kids to run around, plenty of tents, two fire pits, a couple benches with tarps for cover.  We only needed the tarp for one day where it rained significantly.  That rain was a welcome relief from the heat, until it stopped and the steam came.  The rain didn't damper anyone's spirits.  Our first activity in the rain was to build a fire which would have been easier if the camp counselor didn't leave the matches in the rain.

The mess hall was a big room with four fans blowing everywhere except where Jared and I sat.  There were about 275 people at camp this week.  Food was acceptable and everyone ate, no one complained.  We were all so hungry that it didn't matter what was on the table.  The best food was the Tuesday night meal we made on our own.  Precooked burger patties, with onions, potatoes that were grilled in aluminum foil over our campsite fires.  That was really good, and even Jared agreed.

We stayed at Camp Ross at Goshen.  There are other camps on the lake.  We visited a boy scout camp and the boys were very excited about the rifle range.  The boy scouts get to shoot 22 caliber rifles and 50 caliber muskets.  We got a demo from Braden that was cool.  From the smell of things, I'm not sure the boy scouts showered any more than the cub scouts.

Here's one additional link of a Pack 1864 camp song: Pack 1864 Song

I've never experienced this with Jared before, but when I left on Wednesday it was a real tearjerker.  Jared held it in pretty good, but we both had a few issues.  He's a strong kid, both physically and mentally.  He definitely made me proud this week.

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2011 Mountains of Misery

MOM Finish at the Top

Sunday May 29 may go down as the hardest day of biking in my life.  The Mountains of Misery 104 mile ride in Blacksburg VA is a very up and down course with at least 3 or 4 ridiculous climbs, and a bunch of others.  Did I mention how hard it was?

Dan Wolfe and I headed down Saturday afternoon and camped over night.  Perfect night for camping, as the weather got down to around 60.  Surprisingly, I got a good nights sleep.  And I am very fortunate to have slept so well.

The ride start has 5 waves at 5 minutes apart.  Wave 3 was our starting block.  Most days, I'm not even out of bed until close to 8am.  This ride started at 7am and to be honest, I was not at my peak between 7-8:30am.  I started near the front of wave 3, but it couldn't have a been a few miles before I was dead last in the wave.  A look over my shoulder saw wave 4 coming up strong.

I clocked 17 miles that first hour and steadily improved in time.  It was beautiful rolling country side.  100 miles on that terrain would really be a great ride.  The first 60 miles was similar, and then it pretty much comes to a close.  The first ridiculous climb is around mile 60.  To be honest, I think this was the toughest hill I've ever climbed.  There have been steeper ones, like Blue Ridge Mountain Road, but this was longer and at parts steeper.  It took a lot of energy to get up that hill.  Some dude was hurling on the side of the road halfway up.

On the other side was an amazing downhill.  There were several screaming downhills that you really needed to be careful.  I only posted 44 as a max speed, but it could have been quicker.  Too many turns going down the mountain to really stay off the brakes.

Now the up and down starts to drag on you a bit.  There is a gorgeous canopy enclosed country road that goes for miles and miles.  I was wondering if that road would ever end.  It was truly a gorgeous segment.  I remember a 10 mile loop area that starts out rolling, then has some difficult climbs and one really gnarly 60 yard stretch.  As I rolled up to that segment I didn't even try to ride up it.  It was like looking at a wall.  Walking up wasn't difficult, but I just wasn't willing to exert that much energy on the bike knowing I still had ~35 miles to go.

Elevation Chart

The rest stops were about every ~15 miles and I took my time at each one of them to eat, drink and stretch.  The volunteers were awesome, especially one lady at the last rest stop (more on her soon).

After mile 80 there is some more uphill that really isn't too pleasant.  But then the best downhill ever.  It must have been close to 5-7 miles of downhill.  It wasn't steep, just a good rolling downhill where you didn't have to pedal at all and you could cruise at about 25mph.  Really enjoyed that.  And it turns out that's the last enjoyable part of the ride.

The last 5 miles of the ride, after you've got 99 miles on your legs already, is the most ridiculous uphill segment ever.  It's not switchbacks where only the turnarounds are steep, it's pretty much straight up.  There is no reprieve, no rest, no level spots.  I made it without too much effort (ha) for the first ~3.5 miles.  It did take quite a bit of dedication to keep chugging along in 1st gear at 2 or 3 mph.  OK, it was hard.  I made the last rest stop and some dude told me I looked comatose.  After 30 seconds when I could speak, I told him I was just "concentrating".

There was a lady here who was fantastic.  She pours water on you, puts a towel on you, walks you to a chair, refills your water bottles, hands you something to drink, and some other dude takes your bike.  It really was awesome treatment and I guarantee everyone getting to that point needs it.

So this rest stop is about 1.25 miles from the finish.  One would hope there was some reprieve from the steepness but there isn't any.  I made it almost another .5 mile and then shut it down.  I'm not sure if I would be typing this blog if I toughed it out.  I was thinking that I have a family to return to and I wasn't quite sure what would happen if I put forth the amount of ch'i that was required to make it to the top.  I do know that I might have made the top, but it would not have been pretty afterwards.

So I walked 1/4 or 1/2 mile until I saw all the people at the top and the photographer.  Some lady was encouraging me and said she'd push.  I said ok and got back on.  She gave quite a push so I finished on the bike.

There was no huge elation feeling at the top, just thoughts about how hard that ride was.  There were a few people who really didn't look too good at the top.  A feast was eaten at the top and eventually I recovered to enjoy the moment.   Fortunately, you get shuttled back down to the starting area where we picked up our bikes and got in the car for the 4 hour drive home.

I don't recommend this ride for the casual rider.  It's hard, very hard, and deserves it's "Mountains of Misery" name.  My total net time was 9 hours 33 minutes.  Riding time was around 7.5 hours.  I placed about 290 out of 500 starters.  MOM results look like ~90 riders didn't finish.

Post ride comments: YouTube Interview

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