Mike's Bike Blog

For those of you that don't know the Tour Das Hugel is 110 mile ride of Austin's Hills. In the 110 miles it accounts for roughly 10,000 feet of climbing. Most hills are only 1/2 mile in length but average 10-14% grade with 20 to 24% thrown in for good measure. The Hugel is not a race, it's not sanctioned, it's a pirate race of sorts. In the years past a t-shirt is available for purchase for those that complete the entire 110 mile route. There generally are rest stops along the route, this year's support would be a little less prominent with the departure of the original organizers and a few individuals stepping in to take up the reigns. One new addition to this year's ride was that strava.com was putting on a competition based off of participant's uploaded GPS files. They had broken up the Hugel into 9 stages of the bigger climbs and would be offering prizes for each person that posted the fastest time on a stage. The person with the fastest overall accumulated times would be crowned the King of the Mountain.

I didn't have any expectations for this years ride. I had hoped to go for a time under 6:30, but since I hadn't done any specific training to accomplish that I was just going to go ride. In the past 4 months I haven't done long distance rides, I've gotten in maybe 2 rides of 60 miles and a couple 40 mile rides have been my distance rides. Not what I would want to be doing to prepare for the Hugel. The one saving grace is I have been riding the hills when I do do my rides, but those rides are in the 40 minute range or 15-17 miles. In the last 30 days my longest ride was 27 miles. This season I did not do 1 century ride, my longest ride was 70 miles back in March. Here's another shocker when I look at my 2010 numbers I only went over 50 miles 6 times (including the Hugel). In 2009 I had 22 rides over 50 miles.

What's the right approach, more miles or shorter intense training? I'm not entirely sure, I can say this year hurt but reading last years report it would appear this year was a little better. Now for the report.

I was with the lead group once we got on 360 and we stayed surprisingly together. Some separation  on Toro Canyon and I purposely let a gap go so I wouldn't be crammed in with everybody climbing up The High Road. As I was coming down Toro Canyon about to turn onto The High Road the big pack was just coming up Westlake Drive, they had went the wrong way and was back tracking. I again let them get a little separation and I'm glad I did as at the top of the first climb of The High Road a guy on a tri bike fell right over. It caused quite the commotion. I kept with the main group until we were approaching River Hills on Bee Cave and I slowed up to take in some endurolytes and they attacked the downhill and I ended up riding up River Hills with Dave McLaughlin.

The next thing to report was Bluegrass, approaching Bluegrass I bombed down Spicewood Springs and got caught at the light. I politely waited behind the cars for the green light but the front car didn't immediately go on the green. They waited for the light to turn yellow and then ran the red light along with the car right behind them. I was stuck waiting again for the light. Once across 360 I started to make my way up Bluegrass. Waiting at the light allowed a couple riders behind me to catch back up. As we started the climb one of them asked me how I was doing and I replied I felt pretty good. 5 Pedal strokes after those words came out of my mouth I went to stand up to power up Bluegrass. As I got out of the saddle my quads cramped up along with my right calf. The calf cramp was a little below the calf so it was a little different. I wasn't sure I could make it up I was hurting so bad. The one saving grace was this year I had brought along enough Hammer Endurolytes & Anti-Fatigue caps. I also brought Hammer's Tissue Rejuvenator. This Hammer concoction is what probably got me through the ride this year. As soon as I got up Bluegrass I took my Hammer mixture and felt decent. At least it kept the cramping at bay, it brought it down to a minor twinge.  I had hoped to get a full our out of my mix but it seemed to last about 45 minutes.

From that point on I had no power out of the saddle, and if you've ridden hills with me you'll know I prefer to be out of the saddle. On the rest of the hills I had to alternate sitting and standing with doing more sitting. Not sure if it was more sitting than I was accustomed to or just not being ready for the number of miles but my left knee started to hurt as well. The weird thing is I still had good power so once I got up the hills I was good to get after it and make up time. With my 3 to 4 riding partners I would catch back on and end up pulling everybody along. On Bullick Hollow me and another guy lost contact with the others and I did a monster pull on 620 into the wind and caught back on before going down to the  dam.

As I was climbing up River Hills and about to turn to go down Big View my Garmin beeped at me that it had lost Satellite reception. I'd never had this happen with the 705, it happened regularly with my old 305, but it would always quickly find the satellite and be good. I really didn't think anything into it as I was still getting data displayed, but that was coming from my PowerTap. I hit my max speed flying down Big View at 53.6mph.

WIth Jester completed all that was left was to get back to Zilker Park. Once I got off of 360 I saw that I still had a chance to get done under 7 hours. I kicked it up a notch and got back to the finish at 6:59. That's riding time, overall time was 7:29. The majority of that time is stopped at lights, I only stopped twice again this year. Both times to refill my bottles at the River Place rest stop, along with the transition from loop 1 to loop 2 where I refilled bottles.

Comparing my rides from last year to this year this year's climbs were a little slower, not by much anywhere from 3 to 10 seconds off. My overall speed was down as well from 15.9 last year to 15.8mph this year.

I did end up winning 2 stages of the strava.com competition, I had the fastest times up The High Road and River Place so I won a tshirt and a year of strava.com service! Since my Garmin lost reception it didn't map 10 miles worth of the route, satellite reception came back near the finish. It did not record the GPS data for Big View & Jester (I was able to gauge my times up Big View & Jester off of the PowerTap data & the Garmin recorded the altitude so it wasn't too difficult). My time for the 7 stages was 39:31 and my time for the 2 missing stages was 14:33 (16:24 overall as I stopped at the rest stop on top of Jester to send a tweet) so my overall time for the 9 statges was 55 minutes 55 seconds. That would have been good enough for the overall win, the fastest time was 1:03:47. I suppose I could have protested but their time was inflated because of the rest stop on top of Jester, because of it's placement it was placed before where the end of the climbs end point. So riders that stopped at the Jester rest stop for awhile registered a really slow time. I stopped for 2 minutes to send a tweet before I realized the climb probably ends at the first road where it traditionally ends. If we leave Jester out of it I would have been in 3rd place.

Next year I'd like to do more of a mixture of intensity & longer rides. I think one of my 2011 goals will be to do a century a month to keep my body use to the stress of the longer distances.