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i'm really pooped - vermont 50 report

pigboy

in a galaxy far, far away
Hi all,

So JBP signed us up for this race that happened yesterday (Sunday 25th, Sept 2005). 50 miles, 10,000 feet of climbing. Sounded like fun at the time. I figured I'd get in plenty of training time and ride like the wind.

Well for various reasons I didn't get my ass on a bike very much during August and September so training consisted of Friday rides in Kulani forest. So about 50-100 minutes of intense single track, but no real climbing or downhill. And other than that I just didn't get on the bike or the trainer at home to put in any saddle time. WHOOPS!

The VT50 is held near Ascutney Vermont with start and finish at the Ascutney Mountain Resort. Looks like a pretty nice ski area, but who skis anymore? not me. The riding started at about 6:15am. All the eager beaver expert and sport class riders being let out of the gate first (winners doing the route in about 4 hours). Then it was time for us Novices. Whooo!!!!! Off we went. Being that I'm foolish I more or less went charging out of the gate. Not hell bent for leather, but not taking it nice and slow as my training regimen might have suggested would be the wise choice. Pedal pedal pedal. I charged by most of the Novice pack and rolled along the fairly easy dirt roads that start the course. Lots of riders (about 820 total in the race) and plenty of casual conversation to be had if you enjoy that kind of thing. At about mile 5 we passed the first refueling station (they have about 8 on the course serving up sugar laden treats, fruit, performance food stuff, etc. Then we dove into the first singletrack section and more or less immediatley many of us fell off our bikes as we biffed our gear selection. Walk, walk, walk, push push push. Up the hill we went. Most walking. Some riding. Eventually a flatter section was reached (the course features some fairly intense, steep singletrack climbing) and everyone got back to the business of bicycling. On and on we went. I skipped the first three or four refueling stations before my body started to tell me what a fool I was for not training. Around mile 16 or so I started to notice the first signs of impending cramping. Uh oh! So at the next refueling station I finally let the wiser half of my brain prevail and stopped for sugary liquids, fruits and some electrolyte replacement pills. Then back on the bike for some significantly slower riding and slight nausea which i attribute to eating two eggs, bacon and two cups of coffee before the race, but probably was due to the overexertion. Did I mention that between mile 10 and 15 i was seeing the weird shimmering in the center of my vision that presages fainting/blacking out? Wheee!!!! So at this point I'm thinking: "What have I gotten myself into? I'm only about 30% of the way into the race and I'm already showing some really neat symptoms: nausea, impending cramps, impending blackout." But I put my trust into more frequent stops for refueling, hammer gel and the electrolyte pills and slogged onward. You see at about mile 20 riding turned into slogging. Flat sections of the course were no longer fast. They were lived through. Downhills were fast and fun. Uphills were an exercise in being in granny gear, gritting teeth and trying to ignore my pain via tuneless singing. Eventually the highest spot on the course was reached. It's around mile 26 and probably represents the midpoint of the climbing too. The course isn't mostly up and then mostly down. It's mostly up and down and up and down and up and down from start to finish. No real flat sections. Some kinda flat traverse sections on singletrack. Anyhooo.... Eventually I reached the refueling station at mile 38 or something around there. The shimmering visions had faded about 15 miles before. The pain in my hips had become legion. The downhills were now painful too (impending stress fracture in my right hand where i bruised the hell out of it two weeks prior?). My legs were noodles that only moved the pedals through luck and the fact that I was clipped in. BUT I was getting fairly close to finishing this biznatch of a race course and I was having a good time despite all the agony. The course is pretty awesome and the rewards for the climbing are one of the primary reasons that I ride. There was one downhill singletrack section at around mile 30-35 where I hammered downhill until I realized that I was going way too freaking fast. WAY TOO FAST!!!! I'd guess that I was doing 30-40 mph on this section, but that's probably just the fear talking. Somehow I managed to hold the line more or less and avoid falling down and killing myself. After that I did a better job of managing my downhill speeds and only rarely felt slightly out of control as opposed to all the way out of control and on the verge of crippling injury. But back to our story. I'm at about mile 40 the end is almost in sight (over the next 6 uphills) and I haven't cramped, crashed or blacked out. I did an extra big refuel at the next pit stop and actually noticed some bonus energy from all that Hammer Gel. Grind grind grind. Energy disappears really fast at this point for me. Last pit stop at mile 47.1. Coca Cola, gatorade, electrolyte replenishment, hammer gel. Ride, grind, grind, grind. Final downhill on the ski slopes!!!!! And after a mere 6hours, 47minutes I am done, whole, sore like a mo-fo and colder than heck.

more on this later. my flight is boarding.
 

aggrorider

Monkey
Sep 20, 2005
209
0
How did Troy Michaud do?!?!? He races a Gary Fisher SS ridgid Rig that is decked out. He works at my shop and I haven't heard from him because he left for interbike. He just placed second in a national semi-pro SS devision race in Wisconsin. I am expecting that he placed high in this race, but I have no idea.
 

douglas

Chocolate Milk Doug
May 15, 2002
9,887
6
Shut up and Ride
nice job! way to keep pushing :thumb:

I am bummed I didnt get to do it, I went to sign up 2 hours after Reg opened only to find out all 700 or so spots were filled in 45 minutes !!!
 

Echo

crooked smile
Jul 10, 2002
11,819
15
Slacking at work
aggrorider said:
How did Troy Michaud do?!?!? He races a Gary Fisher SS ridgid Rig that is decked out. He works at my shop and I haven't heard from him because he left for interbike. He just placed second in a national semi-pro SS devision race in Wisconsin. I am expecting that he placed high in this race, but I have no idea.
So you think a dude visiting from Hawaii picked your buddy out of the field of 820 people and remembered his placing? :D

Nice job Ben, sounds like a killer ride :thumb:
 

narlus

Eastcoast Softcore
Staff member
Nov 7, 2001
24,658
63
behind the viewfinder
that's one of the toughest rides i've ever done (did it in '98 i think)...good stuff though, great terrain and top-notch organization and support. well done!
 

Heidi

Der hund ist laut und braun
Aug 22, 2001
10,184
797
Bend, Oregon
Nice write-up and congrats for sticking it out. Moral of the story....eat before you feel like it :)
 

pigboy

in a galaxy far, far away
aggrorider said:
How did Troy Michaud do?!?!? He races a Gary Fisher SS ridgid Rig that is decked out. He works at my shop and I haven't heard from him because he left for interbike. He just placed second in a national semi-pro SS devision race in Wisconsin. I am expecting that he placed high in this race, but I have no idea.
race results are here:
http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=131803

Troy finished first in the single speed division with a time around 4:20. frickin stoner.
 

pigboy

in a galaxy far, far away
McGRP01 said:
Nice job!! How did JBP manage? From the sounds of it, I'm glad I didn't sign up!! :D

JBP finished in about 8:26. and he didn't injure himself!!!!

it was a grueling ride, but totally worth it.

in response to the person who was bummed that they didn't sign up in time, for some reason more spots were available a few weeks later. so if you want to ride this race and you miss the reg on your first try, you might want to keep checking the reg page for a month or so after the initial bumrush has ended.
 

pigboy

in a galaxy far, far away
McGRP01 said:
Nice job!! How did JBP manage? From the sounds of it, I'm glad I didn't sign up!! :D
JBP finished in 8:36. Hopefully he'll slack off a bit at work and kick down some of his ride hallucinations soon.

I'm about to get on the 8 hour flight to Honolulu out of Chicago. thank god for opiate painkillers is all i have to say.

-pigboy
 
Some runners did 50 km, some did 50 miles.

I stayed with pigboy about to the first checkpoint (there were nine, approximately one every five miles), then he and Peter evaporated on the first real climbing section.

Just before the mile 20 checkpoint I took a nice break in a grassy field with cramping quads, fueled up at 20 and settled grimly into survival mode; had a few cramp threats after, but not too much.

Took up with Herb at the 20 mile point, but he dropped me sometime in the following ten miles or so.

After a while, my knees got to talking to me on the climbs. I stopped again at mile 37 and did a pretty major refuel, with focus on liquids, but also bananas, potatos, PB&J, coke, Mountain Dew, electrolyte pills.

The last checkpoint was 2.9 miles from the finish. Longest 2.9 miles I have ever ridden. I took to swearing about the course designers - I think they worked about eighteen uphills in the stretch. Every time you gained, they gave it back with a downhill. Fokkers.

There was a bunch of totally delicious singletrack, with saplings so close that you had to stick a bar end in and waggle to get through, There were nmooth no brakes let-er-rip downhills, as well as rutted washouts with babyheads and one filled in with coarse sharp stone.

In the last third, the nuts and bolts forearm was getting really tired. It's sore today and my knees complain doing really difficult moves like getting off the toilet. The van's largely excavated, and I'm stoking on bacon, eggs and coffee.

I might have some pictures later, www.ski-pics.com was taking photos at a couple points on the course.

J

Edit:

Placings from our scattered team

http://www.vermont50.com/html/2005_overall_results.html

Place Time Name Bib City, State Place in category
464 6:46:53 Ben Pappas 828 Hakalau, HI 11 Novice/Veteran/M
546 7:14:20 Peter Lackey 796 East Middlebury, VT 9 Novice/Master/M
662 8:12:23 Herbert Bates 735 Milford, NH 4 Novice/Master 2/M
701 8:36:40 John B. Peters 832 New Haven, VT 6 Novice/Master 2/M
 

pigboy

in a galaxy far, far away
SkaredShtles said:
This sounds like a helluva nice ride! :thumb:
I swear the course was designed by M.C Escher's sadistic nephew. For every foot of downhill I'm CERTAIN that I had to climb three feet of uphill. :sneaky:

and yes i'm hella tired. i'm now in Honolulu airport drinking a Hawaiian microbrew and waiting for the flight to the Big Island. Then I get to drive two hours home to the farm. WHEEE!!!!! today started at 12:30am Eastern Time in Concord, MA when I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. crikey! I'll be home around 8:30pm Hawaii time. That's 2am Eastern. aye caramba! but i don't want to miss my welding and machining classes. so i bite the biggie.

maybe more race notes tomorrow if i get any 'free' time.

pigboy
:blah: