Hampshire 100 Race Report
I wore my Garmin 305 with the heat rate monitor. I don’t have a bike computer. That’s another in the never ending stream of bicycle accessories I don’t have.
This was a 100 kilometer race that was 64 miles long. I guess none of the organizers are from Europe where there are only 0.621371 miles in a kilometer. Apparently kilometers get longer when they make the trip from France to the mountains of the Granite State.
My Garmin tells me that I traveled this course on my Motobecane 29er in 9 hours and 15 minutes. That’s pretty darn slow! An average pace of 8:45 a mile or 6.9 mph.
I suspect a primary driver behind this sluggish pace was the 14,000 feet of elevation gain and loss that the Garmin also reports. Well, that and the fact that I’m not the best mountain biker in the world! I’m actually mostly pitiful at the sport, but hey, I try!
My heart Rate shows a good effort. With 4:24 spent in zone 3, 2 hours in zone 4 and 2 hours in zone 2. That’s a good consistent curve and effort level.
The best stat was that Garmin estimates I burned 7,984 calories, which is equivalent to 55 Twinkies!
All in all it was a solid effort, I managed not to kill myself, didn’t suffer much and had fun. I was very pleased with my core strength. Not so happy with my legs and my aerobic fitness, but what can you do?
I achieved my #1 goal, which was to finish!
It looks like 421 cyclists started the race – including both the 100k and the 100 mile version. About 60 DNF’ed. I was 20th out of 22 J in the Masters Sport category. There were Veterans, Masters and Open. There was Expert, Sport and Novice. I upgraded myself from Novice to Sport this year.
…
I drove up to Greenfield NH Saturday afternoon to check in and set up my tent. It’s about an hour and a half from my house. I decided to camp this year. My mountain biking friends Dan and Tom decided to come do the race and I met them up there.
We did a quick warm up ride and made our way over to Peterborough NH for dinner and a couple beers at a local pub. It was nice.
I slept like crap and really could have used some sort of cushion in my tent. My back was really sore from sleeping uncomfortably on the ground.
We rolled out of the tents early in the morning and got ready for the race briefing. The organizers were nice enough to have some coffee ready and some good breakfast food. I grabbed a banana and bagel with peanut butter.
My gear for the day:
– The Motobecane 29er running small block Kenda 8 tires.
– My new Mavic MTB shoes with the Mix Brothers Candy pedals.
– Celtic green Zensah calf sleeves.
– Simple bike chamois shorts with my Icebreaker performance wool undies.
– I big dollop of Aquafor on the hind quarters for anti-chaffing purposes.
– A new bike shirt that my wife got me (first one I’ve ever owned) with the packets on the back and zipper in the front.
– Padded half gloves.
– Helmet with bandana hippie helmet to wick the sweat.
– Cheap sunglasses
– Northface hydration pack with, water, tools, and snacks.
– Two 24 oz bike bottles in the cages with half-strength Gatorade.
– And a smile.
I didn’t bring my phone or any of my electronics.
…
They sent us off in wave according to our category. This year I upgraded myself to ‘Sport’ from ‘Novice’ and this turned out to be a good thing. Last year I had a lot of trouble with traffic jams early in the race when I started with the ‘Novice’ crowd. Especially on the technical bits.
There was a little crowding on the decent down Crawford Mountain where instead of sending us down the ski slope, (where Rodger from FinCraft broke his neck last year), they created a new fun-house section in the trees with lots of swoopy obstacles. But, the first couple terrifying decents where I had trouble last year with people riding their brakes, were not an issue this year.
It’s hard for the novices to let go on the decents and my 29er takes them very well so I tend to overtake.
Let me try to paint the picture.
Each decent is after a climb of some sort. You know you have a down coming when you’re struggling up an up. Some of the downs on the Hampshire 100 were quite steep and quite technical.
You start into the decent, find a reasonable gear, and get your weight up and behind the saddle. Gravity accelerates you up to 20 – 30 mph all the while the rocks and roots are jack-hammering your front forks, the trees are a blur and you look down the trail to try to anticipate what’s coming.
When you got good speed you can clear most obstacles as long as you keep your front wheel un-weighted. With my gear I’m racing around 200 pounds and that’s a lot of acceleration due to gravity.
A couple years ago these were the sections that killed me. My back and arms and legs couldn’t take the pounding. It gets dangerous if your core fatigues and you have to come out of your crouch. This year I never got that fatigue. My core was strong and I was able to stay in control on the hard stuff. All those pushups, squats and situps paid off!
I had ridden the first 40ish miles of the course last year, so for some reason I thought the final 20 miles would be easy. I thought most of these races cut you some slack in the final third. Not this one. The hills got worse and the final 15 miles took forever as I had to do a lot of hike-a-bike.
My small block tires were the wrong choice for this course on this day. The summer had been bone dry until the previous week when we had some downpours. As a result there was less overall standing water to navigate but the course had just enough water to make the surface slick. I would have done better with a bigger lug on the tread for the mud. The rocks and roots and bridges were very slick.
My overriding goal was to finish so I took it very easy in the beginning. I hiked the challenging obstacles and didn’t’ spend too much time in the red zone. I wasn’t going to be a hero because I knew one wrong turn could end my race if I didn’t pay attention, like it had last year.
I only had one bad crash and it was a fluke. It happened when we were coming out of a downhill section to what I thought was a road crossing somewhere in the 20 -30 mile range. I was prepared to let my momentum from the downhill carry me across the road when the volunteers started screaming and waving at me to turn right. I instinctively turned hard but unfortunately they directed me right into a patch of sand on the paved road. My tires went right out from under me and I went straight down bouncing my head and right side.
I sat with my head in my hands, bells ringing and little cartoon birds circling for a few moments while the volunteered fussed about like nervous mothers. I got some decent road rash on my right side and they volunteers wanted to cover me with antiseptic and bandages, but once my head cleared I mounted up and got going leaving them behind with an admonishment to sweep that sand off the road.
I was a little worried because I remembered some really gross standing water on the course from last year and I didn’t want to go into that with open wounds. Luckily most of the water hazards were avoidable this year. The only ones that weren’t were actually caused by beaver dams and the water was flowing and clean.
Turns out I did crack my helmet. So – kids remember to wear a helmet! If I wasn’t wearing a helmet you’d be feeding me through a straw right now.
I didn’t have any issues with energy, water or nutrition. This course is very well supported. I think you could ride it with one bottle if you had too. I only refilled my hydration pack once. I had picked up a handful of Gu gels and was eating those along with cliff bars whenever I felt hungry.
They had plenty of Hammer gels and other food on the course. Since I haven’t been using gels for the last few months the first one I ate hit me like a freight train – like a handful of jelly beans to a 5 year-old! Whoosh! Those things have a kick when you aren’t use to them!
My new shoes were great and I had no problem with my pedals this year. I had bought new sunglasses for the race but when they showed up they were way too dark. I rode for the most part with my sunglasses down on the end of my nose like reading glasses. You can’t see in the woods with the sunglasses on but you don’t want to pitch them. When you come out of a muddy section and speed down a hill you get a spray of dirt in your face and you need the glasses.
I was riding with some guy from Columbus Ohio for a while who said he was ‘just hanging on’. When we went through a section where you had to cross several stone walls he commented that they don’t have walls like that in Columbus and how old are these walls. I told him these walls were over 200 years old. These were most probably sheep walls and at some point in the past, what was now forest had been pastureland.
I don’t know if he finished. I lost him at a aid station.
I rode for awhile with a lady named Hannah who was a good technical rider and was doing the 100 miler. She was having a bad day and was hating the slippery rocks and hills. I lost her eventually and I think she may have DNF’ed. She said she had done the Wilderness 101 in 13 plus hours and thought that was an easier course.
I don’t know about harder or easier, but this course had much more technical riding and shorter more abrupt elevation swings.
The best story, the karma story comes from somewhere around the 40 mile mark. It was a couple miles before the point where I DNF’ed last year. If you remember, I took a corner too tight and tore off my derailleur hanger and my race was over.
I came upon two guys working on a bike on the side of the trail. I asked them if they needed anything. The jokingly said “not unless you have an extra derailleur hanger”. Which, it turns out I did! Because I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. So I gave it to him with a couple tie wraps – hopefully he was able to get it to work.
The hard core guys laugh at me because of all the stuff I carry but I usually give most of it away during the race because I’m coming up on these guys from behind.
How was the race overall? I got a little sick of climbing nasty technical hills in the last 10-15 miles. This course didn’t relent until you could see the finish line. I’d look at my Garmin and see that there were only a couple miles left, turn a corner to look up at some new monstrosity and curse the organizers out loud “Really? Really guys? 3 miles to go and you’re slamming me up another technical climb? Really?”
It never ended.
I got tired but never hit the wall. The song that was going through my mind that I kept singing over and over again – which is what happens to me in long races – was a traditional Irish song called “The Irish Rover”.
We had sailed seven years when the measles broke out
And the ship lost it’s way in a fog.
And that whale of the crew was reduced down to two,
Just meself and the captain’s old dog.
Then the ship struck a rock, oh Lord what a shock
The bulkhead was turned right over
Turned nine times around, and the poor dog was drowned
I’m the last of the Irish Rover
Nothing to outrageous to report. 64 miles. 14,000 feet, 8,000 calories and 9 plus hours of pedaling. Slowly but surely we picked our way along and now I’m batting 500 for the mountain bike with two finished and two DNF’s.