It's MS150 time--again...

bluej, the DC ride and the MD ride are the same weekend. :-( so i'm doing the MD ride which has the start / finish / overnight in Chestertown, on the East side of the bay, somewhere North of 50.

gamby, my training has not been great this year but i'm not worried. the MD ride has something like 800 feet of climbing over the 100 mile course, and i think most of that is from overpasses. the mid-michigan ride is similar.

tuesday i rode with some friends from work, our office is about 4 miles from the trailhead of a sweet MTB ride, so we warmed up on the road, crushed the 10-mile trail, then cooled down on the road back to the office. it's my favorite trail, and i know pretty much every rock, root, log ride, etc. a couple of the younger guys accused me of sandbagging earlier in the year, because i gapped them in a section that's pretty tight but has a nice flow for me -- i don't ride by brute force, i become one with the trail.

this evening we rode a different trail, this one only 5-3/4 miles with about a one-mile paved road from the parking to the trailhead. there were six of us on the first lap, and only three of us stayed for the second. i love singletrack way more than road, so i'll probably do two trail rides and one road ride per week from here on out.

Nice, dude. The singletrack will condition you WAY more quickly than road riding.

Sounds like a very solid plan.

I rode a TON of singletrack in college in the 90's (90-94) with a brief revival in the mid 2000's.

In the near future, I hope to get back out there with a friend for whom I rebuilt an old Cannondale Super V.

hey gamby, how's the training? i see you're almost to your fundraising goal. that is outstanding! you are way ahead of me on that, which is very cool. i knocked out the road / trail / road ride again last night, kept up with the young guys just fine.

My (tech tycoon) brother came through in a ridiculous way and his contribution will be getting matched by Microsoft (for whom his wife works).

Went to the MS Society VIP party a couple of nights ago and one of the organizers said that it would be a helluva goal for the RI ride to generate a million dollars. RI has a population of a million, so our per capita fundraising would be better than anyone else in the country. Pretty lofty, but I'm doing my part (and I STILL need to donate to you!!!)

Training has been good. I put in 297.75 miles in for May. It's raining today, but I'll get in some hills on the singlespeed tomorrow and a long, hilly ride in mid-week with a friend who is taking a few days off from work to ride He's my regular riding partner who does the 150 with me.

I threw down a flat 62 mile ride in 3:50 a week ago and felt great. I'm pretty much ready to do this.

LESSDOODISS!!!

gamby, you suck at bumping this thread.

Over the weekend I rode in the Maryland chapter's "Chesapeake Challenge 2012". This event is five weeks earlier than the mid-Michigan MS ride, and my training was not good. At the 44-mile mark on Saturday, it became my longest ride of the year. For the Mid-MI ride, I would've had 4 or 5 sixty-milers under my taint.

I rode with someone way faster, and I worked way too hard in the first half. We averaged 17.4 mph for the first three hours. That's 52.2 miles. Then she (yes, she) dropped me like a bad habit and I averaged 12.6 mph for the next three hours. If you're bad at math, that means that after riding for six hours, I still had ten miles to go. During that three hours, I realized that at 12.6 mph, there's plenty of brainpower available to generate thoughts like "I suck," "I shouldn't even own a bike," "I may never do this again," etc. The trick to surviving those thoughts is to pick out small goals along the way and keep knocking them down. "I can do 14 mph from here to that sign," "I wonder how many pedal strokes to that corner," etc. Seeing another rider up in the distance is a big rush, because it reminds me that I'm not the only one hurting. It took me 45 minutes to close the gap to two riders that were probably only 1/4-mile ahead when I first saw them, but they motivated me and eventually I caught them. There was a rest stop at 90 miles, so I laid down in the shade for a few minutes, poured some cold water over my head, had a big drink of water, peed (first time since breakfast), then got back on the bike. Knocked out the last 10 miles in 40 minutes, for a total riding time of 6:42:05. That is my second-slowest 100 miles ever, and is 47 minutes slower than my personal best, which I did last July.

I chose not to ride on Sunday because I still had a 10 hour drive ahead of me and I needed to be at work bright and early this morning. So after cheering for a bunch of riders as they started their Sunday grind, I jumped in the car and drove home.

Go Gamby Go!

AC, sounds like a classic bonk! How was your food and water intake?

Still got it done though so way to go! Anyone doing distance training has been there! Seems like a good way to jumpstart the training for the MI ride.

The DC ride went well. National Harbor is a nice place to have an event and it worked well for both participants and organizers it seemed. We had a good ride with only one minor crash (no injuries) and the typical mechanicals. The route ends with you riding down a big hill into the harbor area and the view out over the potomac from the top and as you go down was an awesome way to end the ride.

In reply to bluej:

i thought i was doing OK on water intake. i only saw gatorade at one stop, the rest of the time it was gallon jugs of store-brand kool-aid type stuff. i did not eat enough. i had a big breakfast, then just a few bananas and oranges, half a PBJ at lunch, a clif bar, and a package of shot blocks during the day. i was probably 1500 calories short by the end of the day.

i think i will try to avenge myself on the mid-MI ride...

Dude. You should be peeing at every rest stop. You know by now that you need to eat an insane amount over the course of a ride, as well. You simply can't slack on it.

Oh well, you made it--and props to your fundraising, as well. Killer number.

I've got a 4AM wake-up time this Saturday and it'll be on. 7AM start in Middletown, RI for the ~85 mile day 1 ride. Day 2 is ~65 miles.

Picked up my rider packet yesterday. Here is my baller-ass number:

AngryCorvair wrote: In reply to bluej: i thought i was doing OK on water intake. i only saw gatorade at one stop, the rest of the time it was gallon jugs of store-brand kool-aid type stuff. i did not eat enough. i had a big breakfast, then just a few bananas and oranges, half a PBJ at lunch, a clif bar, and a package of shot blocks during the day. i was probably 1500 calories short by the end of the day. i think i will try to avenge myself on the mid-MI ride...

I've always used just water and maybe an electrolyte tab or two with a lot of bananas for real food. I knew this was holding me back so I finally started using an energy mix. GU Roctane is like biking crack! I've been amazed at how much better I feel when riding and my endurance has jumped considerably. Which I would have done this earlier. Most of the other mixes contain stuff that upsets my stomach but so far the Roctane has been easy to take.

In reply to gamby:

a single-digit number is truly baller. nice work!

in reply to mapper:

I will have to check out the GU Roctane. i've been looking for biking crack, but my local hustlas only have regular crack.

Just remember, the longer something takes to get in you the longer it stays with you. Gu is in your system fast but can drop you just as fast. Good idea to follow it up with a bar or banana, something you have to chew. By the time the Gu has worn off the banana will be coming on strong.

Baller 7 dude.

There's a lotus joke somewhere in here with that bib

Good luck and kick some butt this weekend!

EastCoastMojo wrote: Just remember, the longer something takes to get in you the longer it stays with you. Gu is in your system fast but can drop you just as fast.

That's why its crack!

Seriously though, I have a hard time getting enough real food in. The Gu (taken in moderation) has turned out to be perfect supplement to real food.