On Friday my office had a company BBQ in Westchester, NY so I spent the weekend in CT since I was in the area. I pinged Phil who is a fellow CREW member and one tough SOB. He's dong the Rev3 ironman in a few weeks so his training blocks are peaking now as well. It seems we only get to meet up once a year, and it is always to do the hardest bike ride imaginable. He wants to know why I hate him so much, but I tell him I just express my affection with tough love, that's all. Like 8+ hours of grueling climbing on a tri bike. So, we make arrangements to do the Hilly Hundred ride on Saturday morning. This crazy bastard rides his bike 20 miles to my parent's house to start the ride at 7am. The Hilly Hundred ride itself is 117 miles long. I'm telling you, Phil is nuts.
This is the same ride we did last year where I sheered off my rear derailleur from generating 1700 watts on a climb at mile 72 (or mechanical failure, the investigation was inconclusive). It's hilly, thus the name. The route goes through the CT section of the Berkshire mountain range. A lot of the climbs were in the 8-10% grade, which is just a nice, hard grind - but not a killer. A few long climbs spiked into the low-mid teens, and Treasure Hill Road was long stretch of 20% with some parts steeper. I made it up Treasure last year on my road bike but this year on the tri bike it bested me and I was forced to dismount. It wasn't all the bike, I'm not as strong as I was before at the moment. Just prior to that hill was about a 6 mile haul up Warren Hill, a steady and relentless 6-10%'er. It was just amazing training territory. Over the day we hit several miles of ripped up pavement and even dirt, we didn't seem to catch a lot of luck in terms of road conditions. The final climb back into Ridgefield would have been Cains Hill Rd which we bypassed to take a longer but less severe climb, even Phil had started to crack in the last few miles.
Phil bricked a 30 minute run after this 137 mile bike day and the SOB took my running shoes so I couldn't run. That's the kind of sacrifices I make, nice guy, right? hahaha Anyway, the data on our ride is here, we came in just 215 feet short of 10,000 feet of vertical climbing so it was very similar to the ride I did in NJ the past 2 weekends. The jury is still out on which one I think is harder. I gave Phil a ride home in my car, another 20 miles home was a bit much for sure.
I ran out of time to do a long run on Sunday due to golfing and traveling home so I need to get that in tonight or Tuesday night. Then that's the end of my big training. It's all the cramming I can do, now it's time to rest and get ready for the race...which is now less than 2 weeks away! My weight is down to 153 pounds, and everyone I see keeps telling me how skinny I am which I like. I will put in a final push to try and get below 150 before race day (in a healthy way of course). That would be totally sweet. Jury is out on if I'll bring meat, poultry, dairy, bread, or any of the other things I've given up back into my diet after the race. I have some thoughts which I'll share in another post sometime.
Phil, thanks for joining me on the sufferfest, it was an epic day of training. And your craziness to bike to the start is inspiring. By the way, that photo is Phil on one of our pit stops clearly not sticking to his nutritional plan. I believe on that stop he ate a bag of beef jerky, a bag of hot fries, a coffee, and part of a chocolate candy bar. The pit stop of champions.
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