Well I did it. The Breathless Agony. If you are looking for a physical challenge here it is. 7+ hours is a long time on a bike. And climbing mountains while you are doing it makes it even harder. This ride is like one of the difficult stages in the Tour de France. Which makes those pro racers seem even more amazing. I did this one day thing and it was really hard. These guys do similar stuff almost every day for a month. I had to work up to the task. Although I have been using bikes for fitness for the better part of 20 years, you need to notch it up to do this kind of a ride. I was up to five days a week between two and five hours per ride. Once you can do 70 or so miles on steep hills, you can probably do this 7 hour 114 miler. Actually this ride felt like three hard ordinary training rides back to back. After 80 miles or so the hard part is over and the last bit is almost all downhill. Not that you can ignore it because its on a winding road and you need to keep your wits. It was cold at the top at 8600 feet, but there are some refreshments and a bit of celebration. Then trying to keep warm in the wind chilled descent. Back under 6000 ft it was much more pleasant. Near the end there was a major headwind, but only a few miles to deal with it.
As much as I enjoyed earning the achivement, I can't say I'll ever do it again.
Click here to see the ride web site.
No comments:
Post a Comment