Mike's Bike Blog

On Saturday I competed in the 2nd Annual 100 Miles of Nowhere. The race the brainchild of Elden, the Fat Cyclist, is a 100 mile race on your trainer. For the 2nd Annual event Fatty lined up some great swag from the sponsors. Entry fee was $75 which $50 of it went to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Thursday was packet pickup for me as the package from Twin Six arrived. The swag included 2 team Slipstream camelbak water bottles, DZNuts, CarboRocket, Clif ShotBlocks, a saddle bag, a Pro Bar and the event Tshirt.

The concept is to ride your trainer for 100 miles, but since cheating is allowed I opted to do it on a 1 mile loop near my house. When I was explaining the concept to Jennifer she thought I was crazy. Not so much riding 100 miles, that's nothing, but doing it on a 1 mile loop. She thought for sure I wouldn't be able to do it, that I'd get bored as the miles dragged on. To be honest I had some doubts as well. I thought there would be a good chance I'd only get about 3 or 4 hours before I'd crack.

The plan going into it was after every 10 laps to go down the hill that is just off the main course and come back up. The down and up is 1 mile as well and would get me 220 feet of climbing each time. After 25 miles I would change directions to mix it up a little. The main course has 2 small rollers, nothing you have to get out of the saddle on in fact I stay in my big ring the entire loop and most times in a 14T cog. The longer of the bumps is about 1/4 mile long. The other other one is much shorter and a bit steeper. In most situations these wouldn't even register on anybodies radar, but after 100 laps the ascent adds up.

When I parked at the course and got out to get everything unpacked and ready a vulture was perched on the light pole where I'd parked. I thought for sure this was not a good sign. After the 1st lap the buzzard flew off, I guess he figured he would check in on me later.  Normally when I ride I don't bring along music, I don't like to ride with headphones. For this event I made an exception since I would be on a low traffic route. I only plugged in the right earbud in leaving the left open to listen for traffic.

It was a great morning to be out and there were a lot of walkers, joggers and cyclists out on the route. Most were going the opposite direction than me, I guess because I consider the counterclockwise direction to be easier. After passing one particular jogger for about the 20th time she gave me the funniest look as it finally donned on her that I was the same biker to have been passing her for the past hour. On my next time through I was going to stop and ask her for directions, but she ended her workout and I didn't see her again.

As the time rolled on I was feeling great and the worry with boredom was a non issue. I felt great the entire time. I brought 4 bottles of Hammer Perpetuem and kept one on the bike and the others resting in the cooler. Having cool bottles when needed sure was nice. I didn't use the products from the swag since I didn't know how they would sit with me and didn't want to risk any surprises. I also consumed 3 6oz cans of V8, Hammer Gel (Raspberry), and a granola bar. I did use the Camelbak bottles. Let me tell you, I'm going to switch to these bottles, they are so nice. I was a bit surprised when I first reached for one though. I didn't realize the concept to them I raised the bottle to my mouth and gave it a squeeze. My normal bottles nothing would come out, I'd have to put my mouth to the nipple and suck to get any water out. You can imagine my surprise as a gush of water shot out and ricocheted off my tonsils and down my throat. I was sold and fell in love with these bottles.

I only made 4 or 5 pitstops the entire time. They were short, long enough to pick up a new bottle or take in some other calories. The longest one was when I slathered on sunscreen. In all it looks like my total pitstop time was 22 minutes. At the 85 mile point I started calculating my time left and saw that I was close to my season goal of a Sub 5 hour century, my previous fastest time is 5'20". To get in at a sub 5 hour time I'd have to kick it up to 23 MPH and I knew I wouldn't be able to hold that pace this late. I wish I would have been better attentive to my pace to begin with, but I was too worried about getting through without the boredom that I didn't regulate my speed better. In fact I got into the ride so much that at the 60 mile mark I totally forgot to do my hill circuit. The wind was picking up so I abandoned doing the hill till the end and would shoot for a hill finish.

A few fans came out to cheer me on from their front porches, at least that's what I told myself each time I passed them. One older gentleman sitting in his rocking chair yells out, around lap 85 "where you going?" I replied "Nowhere".  Now that I think about it having all the joggers and other cyclists out on the route helped, it kept the monotony down to a minimum. I wish the other riders were going the same direction I was, when I was going the same direction as someone I could tell it motivated me to keep my speed up. I would work harder to pass them. Unfortunately, they only did a few laps and would be gone.

As soon as it began the 100 miles was behind me. It really did go by really fast. I finished in 5 hours 10 minutes (5'32" total duration). My fastest century to date! 6 times up the hill plus the gradual hills to the route added up to 3364.8 feet of climbing. I won all 6 KOM sprints. I averaged 19.44 mph. I reached 39.7 on the decent down the hill.