Thursday, June 14, 2012

Nervousness and beer.

This weekend I have on the schedule The Harpoon Brewery to Brewery ride, a 146 mile (or so) bike ride from the Harpoon Brewery in Boston to the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, VT. I am nervous on a variety of levels:
  • 146 miles is a long way, longer than I've ever ridden before in one day.
  • I feel very under trained for this.
  • There are 3 official rest stops: at 46 miles,97 miles, and 125 miles. This is expected to be a rider self sufficient ride. I'm told it is difficult mentally to get back on the bike after 125.
  • I am fat, very fat. I'm afraid that I won't fit into the official jersey.
  • Fat guys hate hills.
  • I live in a flat area and most of my training, the little that I've don, has been on flat terrain.
  • There is a rumor of a 5 mile long hill starting at mile 90. This isn't the only hill on the route.
  • It is an early start and my taper is to drive about 5 hours to Boston.
  • My bike's power meter is still broken so I'm going to do this ride almost naked. Almost.
  • I am slow and may not make the cutoffs.
  • I haven't ridden in a paceline recently. The send out 25 people at a time ever 5 minutes starting at 5:15AM. If I can hang with the big dogs, maybe they'll drag me along.
I've decided to go into this with the mindset of I'm just going for a ride. This will be a time during this ride when there will be some visible body carnage. I'll ride as long as I can or until I get picked off the course by a marshal or which ever kind soul may take pity on me. I wonder what the Vegas odds are on the under/over for the mileage.

This ride ends at the Harpoon brewery in Vermont so I expect to drink some beer when I'm done. Probably a lot of beer. Good thing I'm not nervous about drinking the beer. Maybe that should be what I visualize all day?



8 comments:

Unknown said...

Holy cow! That is a whopper ride. I don't even know how you would carry enough nutrition for the ride, unless you stop at stores along the way.

Unknown said...

That is a long one Joe. Surprised so few rest stops. I like it when the organized rides like this have rests every 15-20mi -- makes it seems much more manageable!

Good luck and have fun, ditch the dang power meter for this ride and just go by feel. After 100 or so the numbers won't mean a dang thing.

Kate Geisen said...

There's a lot to be said for determination. And here's the thing, I bet if you get to mile 125 you're for darn sure not going to want to not finish when you're that close. I don't know what your cut offs are, but hopefully your training has put you in better stead than you think. A 5-hr drive to get there sounds worse than the 146-mi ride!. Good luck!!

Big Daddy Diesel said...

146 miles of hills is a tough ride, take advantage of the paceline, let it do some of the work for you, after 90 miles, it suck no matter what, everyone one will be tired and the pace will slow, stay in the middle of that paceline, yes we hate hills, take advantage of the other sid eof physics for us on the downhills. Most importantly, enjoy the ride

Unknown said...

That is one serious ride! I hope the rest stops at least have water you can fill up with? I have no idea how you could carry enough hydration otherwise.

Good luck!

Unknown said...

Good luck! Definitely visualize the beer. Make "Beer" your mantra, even. And more importantly, have fun!

TriMOEngr said...

What is it they say about bad days making for great stories? I hope it isn't too bad, but no matter what expect a great story.

ONEHOURIRONMAN said...

That is a long one... It is over now but I would drink a six pack at the 125 stop, then you wouldn't even know you were doing the other 21