Cherohala 07-Tellico Plains Pain

Saturday was the big event...well, maybe no big to any of you, but it's the one I plan for all year. I'd like to say that in addition to planning for it all year, I also prepare for it all year, but life gets in the way and somehow, the preparation is never quite what I hoped it would be. Throw in a few last minute changes to the routine and you are quickly stirring a recipe for disaster.

The first change was losing two weeks of training to a trip with the Boy Scouts to the Florida Keys. I wouldn't choose to not go again, but losing those miles can really hurt.

The second change is that I'm heavier than I was last year. For some reason the weight just has really been stubborn this season and I can't seem to make it go away.

Third, my 10 year old is playing baseball. I have surprised myself by getting caught up in his joy in discovering a sport to love and let many precious Saturdays (when I usually log an 80-100 mile ride) slip away whilst I sat in the bleachers watching him shut down batters foolish enough to hit one his way at 2nd base. Yeah, I could have been riding, but I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed watching him.

Fourth change, and more immediate to the ride at hand was that my family ended up not joining me (my two older boys were planning to ride, but never got around to training adequately (my fault...baseball again)) and so I opted to stay in town for an All-Star game and then drive to Tellico Plains rather than drive up in the early afternoon and relax around town as I did before last years successful Challenge. Instead I arrived around 12:30, climbed into the bunk in the cabin my friends had secured and set my alarm for 5:30.

My goal this year, originally, had been to improve on last years time and set a new PR for the ride. This gradually became less of a goal and more of an "it would be nice, we'll see how it goes" as the Saturdays passed without me piling on miles. Nevertheless, this was on my mind Saturday morning as I finished suiting up and waited for The Beast and Doug to finish putting their gear together. We were laughing and giving The Beast a tough time because he'd forgotten his sweatband for his head which meant nobody would want to ride behind him and get "rained" on. The sweatband was important because, unlike last year's cool start, it was already about 80 degrees at 7:30 am. It was sometime into this Abbot and Costello act that I noticed that we were standing around by the car alone. Everyone was gone. The start line was clear and I could see bikes heading out over the hills northeast of the town.

For anyone not familiar with mass start events, let me explain something...it's always, ALWAYS!!, better to start near the front of the group and be riding with them when they leave, and not just because of the obvious reason that it's no fun to start out 5 minutes behind a pack and have to chase them for miles on end at the limit of your ability on the off-chance that you might catch a group to ride with. No, the best reason to be up front is that when "selection hill" comes along, as it always does on any group ride and the group is blown into smaller groups, you can easily choose a large enough group to make sure that you are delivered to the foot of the real climbing relatively fresh.

Now, on a ride with 450 other people, it's a given that if you're reasonably fit, you will catch some of them. The problem is that few of these stragglers will be working as a group, and if they could ride as fast as you are anyway, you wouldn't have caught them, would you? That's why they are "stragglers" and not riding in that pack that you're burning all your matches trying to catch somewhere up the road.

Thinking that The Beast and Doug were right on my wheel I took off and built up speed, settling into my drops and doing my best imitation of a time trial, watching my heart rate repeatedly go through 175 bpm as I did my best to find a group that would stick. I eventually caught up to a group after 15 miles of chasing that looked solidly large enough to stay together and not disintegrate on the rollers. Though they were moving a touch slower than I wanted to go, I decided to sit in and let my HR moderate some and try to recover. I looked around and saw the Beast and Doug catching onto the back of the group...I had left them solidly behind at the start, (Beast hadn't even put his shoes on yet...who knew?) and they had buried themselves to catch me. We all decided we could use a breather for a while and settled into this group of 20 or so (a small group yes, but large enough to get a little recovery time before the climbing started at mile 43).

to be continued...

coming tomorrow, Blood on the Shores of Lake Chilhowee, and why you shouldn't make the Beast angry by leaving him in parking lot.