Horribly Hilly Hundreds

If anything, the Horribly Hilly Hundreds bike ride, in Blue Mounds, WI, is a personal challenge. It is 124 miles, with over 10,000 feet of climbing. For me, I wanted to do this ride for two reasons: First, I wanted to see if I could do it. Second, it fit very nicely into my Tri race season - weeks before the last two olympic races of the year, which lead into the half and full Ironmans.

The ride report is fairly simple. It was hard. Grueling even. And I finish the entire ride. This year, they had to alter the course due to a bridge being out. This made the ride length 132 miles in total. The ride starts out with a large initial climb and it never lets up. The route took every opportunity to cross and re-cross all of the large glacier mounds that make the area famous. Each climb was 100, 200, 300, 400 or more feet, and they just kept coming. You either got into the rhythm of climbing early in the ride or you didn't - it's that simply. We usually talk about how windy the rides were - not this one. It was a beautiful day for a ride. Warm, but virtually no wind.

In the end, the ride is all about the epic finish. After riding 129 horribly hilly miles, the last three miles climb 900 feet to the top of Blue Mounds State Park. It is long and it is steep. Many people skipped the last climb, and many more walked it. We talked about adrenalin getting us to the top - Bull shit. It was all ego. I wanted to know that I could do it, AND I didn't want to walk.

Next up: MetLife Duathlon and USAT AG Nationals.

See you out there.

More Pictures Worth A Thousand Words

A North Shore Training Ride...





Too good to pass up:

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Enough Said!

Where the Buffalo Roam

When I was putting this season together, I needed an Olympic distance race early in June and I preferred it to be hilly. The Buffalo Triathlon in Buffalo, MN fit the bill. As a bonus Buffalo is just outside Minneapolis so I could visit my family and friends!

Minnesota has a tremendous endurance sports culture including running, cycling, skiing, canoeing/kayaking and triathlon. In Minnesota there are TWO triathlon series that have season points contests. Between the two series there are local races almost every weekend - seems like something Illinois needs. The Buffalo Triathlon was the 3rd race in the TriMinnesota Triathlon Series.

The race was Sunday, but to make the most of the trip I went to Minnesota on Thursday. I ran Lake Harriet with an old friend Thursday, and I rode the Lifetime Fitness bike course and ran the Lifetime run course on Friday. On Saturday I went out to Buffalo to tour the course. It reminded me of Galena stretched out to 24.8 miles. There were plenty of rollers, but not quite as severe or high as Galena, but hilly just the same. The run course was out and back and had one big hill that started around the 1-1/2 mile mark and went to the turn around at 3 miles.

Buffalo is a popular triathlon, but most of the participants race the sprint rather than the olympic. Race morning arrived and setup went smoothly. As I did at Galena, I decide to race blind again - no watch, computer or PowerTap. The olympic swim started first with six waves two minutes apart, followed by the olympic relay, then the sprint waves. As a nice touch the swim buoys were big yellow rubber duckies.

The Swim

I was in the last wave of the olympic start, 10 minutes behind the Pro/Elite wave. Since this was the first race of the year for most of the athletes, I assumed many of the swimmers would blast off the front and burnout quickly. So, I started a few rows back. Sure enough the start reminded me of a YouTube video with everyone sprinting and swimming on top of one another. I was probably 20th past the first buoy at 100 yards. By the first turn at 200 yards most of the sprinters had faded and there was a nice small bunch of 3 or 4 of us out front (I discovered later that there was one swimmer WAY out in front of us). Pretty soon we started passing the orange caps from the wave in front of us. Then the blue caps. Then the white caps. Then the Yellow. We had actually swam up to the back of wave #2. Since they started the sprint right after the olympic we also started encountering the sprint swimmers as we exited the swim. Needless to say this made a cluster in transition.

The Bike

First of all I wore the aero helmet for the first time - I definitely liked it. I started out smooth and easy, avoiding the hammer fest out of transition. Since the olympic and sprint had merged in T1 the first 9 miles of the bike were very crowded. Passing had to be done decisively and without hestiation. I saw too many people braking rather than taking openings. Around mile 2 I got into a rhythm and was navigating traffic swiftly and easily. At that point the course turned north, into the wind and into the hills. The wind didn't seem too bad - must have been the aero helmet. At mile 9 the olympic course separated from the sprint course and the bike traffic thinned out considerably. There were now small groups of riders that all seemed to be separated by 200 to 400 yards. This was perfect, as I was fully into the bike groove and I was quickly bridging from one group to the next. Around mile 15 a small squall blew through with several nice wind gusts that pushed the bike around quite a bit. Fortunately it moved through in a few minutes. Around mile 21 we rejoined the sprint riders and headed back to T2. Since it was all downhill to T2, it was like a 30MPH slalom course weaving through the slower traffic. T2 was also somewhat of a cluster with all of the newbie sprint racers. In the end the hills and wind made the bike challenging, but then that's why I choose this race. And, like Galena I didn't get passed by anyone - sweet!

The Run

I came out of T2 with loose legs and got into the run groove almost immediately. This was a huge surprise. I think it is partly due to the Vision Quest bike training and partly due to steeper bike geometry of the Kuota. I didn't have a watch, but I guessed the initial pace to be around 7:20 and it felt good. I was picking out "target" runners 100 to 200 yards in front of me and bridging up to them, then picking out a new "targets" and bridging up to them. At the 1-1/2 mile mark the sprint racers had their turn around and the olympic course started go up - all the way up to the turn around. At this point I guessed the pace to still be around 7:25 despite the long hill. I didn't know if any one from my age group was in front of me, but at the turn around I started looking for oncoming runners that were behind me. The first AG runner I saw was at a gap of around 2 minutes, and he looked like a runner. Since the turn around was at the top of the hill, mile 4 was all down hill and the pace definitely quickened - especially with someone fairly close. At mile 4 we veered on to a little out and back dogleg and on the return I saw my AG runner again, and again the gap appeared to be 2 minutes with 1-1/2 miles to go. We gave each other the wave. It was over. There was no way he could make that up, but just the same it was time to put the finishing kick on the run.

I crossed the finish line at 2:19:31. Considering the hilly course I was very happy with this time. As a nice touch, the race announcer announced our placing as we crossed the line, and I was 2nd in AG. I waited for my AG runner and he was still 2 minutes behind and was announced as 3rd. We introduced ourselves and talked about the race. We both got spanked royally by the AG winner - by 14 minutes! WOW! This guy is a real tri-stud (#7 in 2006 USAT ranking). When the results were posted I was happy with my 36th OA - especially considering there were 19 Pro/Elites included in the OA.

The final results showed a bike average of 22.3 mph, which considering the hills I guess I am happy with. However, the one take away that I was really pleased with was a 44:29 run for a 7:10 pace. I didn't have any soreness after the race and think I could have pushed it a little harder. All-in-all another successful race and more lessons learned about what feels like the correct effort.

Next up is the Horribly Hilly Hundreds followed by the MetLife Duathlon