Last Sunday I rode in the Spring Saddle 100. This was to act as a sort of training race being about four months out from Ironman Hamburg, to test the legs and see where my cycling is at.
The course was 100 miles or 160 km long over fairly punchy undulating terrain of Suffolk and Essex. Weather wise we were blessed with dry conditions and only light winds, so not much to complain about on that front. Much to my amazement there were over 1,600 riders which made things difficult for me in the first few hours.
The goal was to ride completely solo so I had to face the wind resistance un aided without having any riders directly in front of me, just as I would during an Ironman bike leg. After the first hour and 10 minutes, having passed through the first feed station replenishing my supply of gels and water I got stuck behind a line of traffic being held up by a large peloton of slower riders. This was a pain, as I couldn't push as much power as I wanted for about 20 minutes...precious time gone. Speaking of power the goal was to put down about 2.5W/KG for the whole course. From the start to the Second feed station I averaged about 200W over the course making good speed, however I'd often surge to upwards of 400W on some of the short punchy climbs.
Ride data.
The fueling strategy was to sip water throughout and have a gel every 20 minutes, plus some solid food at each aid station, I also carried a bottle of electrolyte solution to stop any cramping. This worked pretty nicely for me, I was well hydrated with a good stock of Carbohydrate coming into my system. However the electrolyte solution was not enough, my quads and calves started to cramp badly the final few hours.
As a result of the punchy climbs were I'd have to get out the saddle repeatedly and surge my power output, I become pretty fatigued and had to lower the average power for the rest of the course, although I still managed to average the 2.5W/KG goal. This shouldn't be so much a problem at Hamburg as the course is mostly flat.
Inside the cool bag in the support car, lots of gels, coke and flapjack...
In terms of the organisation of this event, everything was pretty well organized. However, the biggest let down was the route. Some of the road surfaces were awful, tons of loose material and gravel on the surfaces and potholes everywhere, plus all the mud from the country lanes made my TT bike look as if I had tried to do cyclocross on it, which again cost precious time, but thankfully nothing I will have to tackle at Hamburg. Speaking of bad road surfaces, at around 140 km into the course just a few km after leaving the final feed station I had a pretty bad crash, I came to a stretch of road where there two potholes next to each other with gravel between them. I wasn't going very fast and tried riding over the gravel, only for my front wheel to slip to the left into a pothole causing me to go flying over my handle bars and onto the road in front, whole my bike came crashing down in front of me. Thankfully my bike was mostly fine, the alloy handle bars took most of the impact causing the left aero bar to twist, I was also fine part from being a little cut up and bruised. Also thankfully there were no cars or riders behind me. So I rode on. It was a blow to moral, but I was less than 20 km to the finish so I just rode on. Had no excuse to quit, bike was fine, I was fine, a little road rash and bruising never killed anyone. That said I would be telling a different story if I wasn't wearing a helmet, as the right side of my head came down pretty hard on the tarmac.
I made it to the end in about 5 hours and 50 minutes. A lot slower than I hoped, on account of getting held up, the poor road surfaces and taking flight over my handlebars. Would I do this event again? Absolutely NOT. The course was trash, plus there were a lot of people riding very dangerously putting other riders at risk, every 10 km or so there were cyclists on the side of the road either fixing punchtures because of the bad roads or who had crashed out. I've come to the conclusion I don't like riding with strangers, high risk, you don't know who's going to hold you up or crash out in front of you. In future I think I'll be planning my own "test races" with myself. That all said it was a highly fruitful experience, I know what I need to work on in the next few months in terms of my cycling abilities. It's time to start cranking out those longer rides.
The route.
Also on a side note, this was my first official event since coming to faith. It made things an awful not less stressful when things were going wrong. Like crashing, or getting held up, or whatever the issue. You just take a step back and trust in the plan going on. You accept you can't control everything, and that it is not for you to control.