Tomorrow I line up on the starting line of a bike race for the first time in about 35 years. I had to double check my own math on that several times because it doesn’t seem possible but yeah, I was 20 years old the last time I entered a bike race.
Tomorrow’s race is the first stop in a month long training roadtrip across the country. I decided to escape the cold muddy New Hampshire spring to head to the midwest. Tomorrows race is in Louisville Nebraska where the temperature is going to be 35 degrees…. and it has been raining all week so the roads will likely be muddy. So, that part of the plan didn’t quite work out but it will still be a good race. The good news is tomorrow is supposed to be dry with some sunshine, so beyond the cold it should be a good day.
The next several weeks I will be roaming about and living out of my little home on wheels. After this race in Nebraska I will be heading south to Kansas and will be doing some training rides on parts of the route they used for previous Unbound XL races to really get a better sense of what I will be experiencing at the end of May.
Training for an endurance cycling event in the middle of winter in New Hampshire has of course been a challenge. Between the cold and the higher than average amount of snow the majority of my training has been indoors with the bike mounted on a trainer. Following a virtual route with computer generated graphics does help a bit but I have been eager to get back out on real roads.
There are a couple of advantages however. One of my biggest issues is simply being comfortable on the bike for hours on end. With the bike mounted on a rigid indoor trainer it is even harder, less movement of the bike and less time out of the saddle means the body really gets uncomfortable on long training sessions. Over the winter I was able to increase the length of time before it became unbearable by significant amounts. Hopefully this translates to even longer times on long outdoor rides.
The other advantage is it gives an opportunity to do heat training. While my basement gym is pretty cold what I have been able to do is wear several layers of clothing, including a full painters suit to prevent sweat evaporation, and a heavy winter coat on top of it all and get my body temperature up on training rides. Through the use of a Core temperature sensor (which is just a sensor you can attach to a heart rate strap, no it doesn’t need to be stuck “up there” like you might imagine?) I am able to do long sessions at an elevated body temperature in a safe and controlled manner. Kansas can often get very hot at the end of May and I want to be ready!
Riding the indoor bike with multiple layers of clothing for heat training.
I will soon be able to put all that training to an early test over the next couple of weeks….
Back in November I got some news. I won the lottery! No, I didn’t win any money, in fact winning this lottery costs me money.
Let me back up first a bit for some context…
In the last couple of years I had gotten into running however a few months before a foot injury had curtailed my running and marathon training. In order to stay fit and active I started spending a lot more time on the bike. As I child I was constantly on my bike riding around town and this continued into college where I did a few small bike races. Nothing special and I certainly wasn’t at a competitive level but I really enjoyed it. Once I moved to New Hampshire, between hating riding in traffic (most of the roads are narrow with traffic moving too fast) and just being busy with work I stopped riding. I would do some trail riding on a mountain bike but I missed the joy of covering longer distances under my own power.
Then I discovered this thing called a “gravel bike”. Basically like a road bike but a bit more rugged and with bigger tires. Something better able to handle the unpaved (and often unmaintained) back roads than a road bike but more efficient and better for covering longer distances than a mountain bike. I have been discovering miles and miles of remote back roads (with nearly no traffic) near my home.
Some might call it a character flaw but I say it is just a sense of adventure, either way when I get into something new I want to push it to a limit. This typically means getting into some form of competition. When I got into dirt bike riding I didn’t just stop there, I had to go race in Baja. When I got into running I had to run a marathon (and hope to eventually run an ultra-marathon but that is a story for another day). Of course pretty quickly I had similar thoughts about my gravel bike riding.
As it turns out there is a lot of gravel racing in my home state of Kansas. The biggest of all of them is a race called Unbound Gravel in Emporia KS. This one isn’t just popular with the locals, it is gets riders including top pros from around the world. The event has gotten so big they cannot handle the number of people who want to do it so they use a lottery.
There are multiple race distances. The shorter races are 35 or 50 miles which really would not be worth traveling half way across the country for. The popular races are the 100 mile and 200 mile distances. These would be interesting but honestly they are TOO popular and honestly I don’t want to be in that big of a crowd (there are 1500 to 2000 riders in these races).
But then I heard about this thing called “Unbound XL” which typically is only around 200 riders. This race is 350 miles long and completely self supported (i.e. if you need it you either get it from convenience stores along the route or bring it with you). You have a time limit of 36 hours so you need to average about 10MPH in order to make the cuttoff and be considered an official finisher.
I must have something wrong with me because of course the 350 is the one I entered the lottery for. My first thought when I got the email saying I got in was “oh crap, I need to get busy training”.
When I won the entry to the race I had 6 months to train. I have been training (mostly indoors due to winter in New Hampshire) and am now down to just 2 months left and the real serious training begins. Do I know for sure I can handle this? No, but that’s what makes it an adventure.
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