Fried Green 50

First, a disclaimer: The Fried Green 50 is a 50-mile dirt road RIDE.  It's not technically a race at all.  But we all know what happens when you select a route, line up 49 people on bikes, and say go.  Saturday was no exception.  It was a lot of fun.  This is how it played out for me:

10 seconds before the neutral roll-out, I realized Betty Jean had a slow front leak in her slimed tire.  I began to scramble to help her find a pump.  Trey from Griffin offered to help her with it 'cause he was starting later.  So I spent the first 5 min scrambling to catch the neutral rollout.

Mike Brown and Stony were on the front for the first 10 min or so at a good tempo.  When the first hills appeared, they ramped it up and narrowed the field to about 10.  I was struggling to hang on, but managed to do it.  At about 30 min into the ride, we approached a 1-mile walk section.  I walked with the front group.  After we remounted, we were a peloton of 6.  Stony was on the front going hard.  I'm not sure exactly who was there, because I don't know all the MTB crowd.  But I know Charles Reeves was in there, probably Mike Brown.  At the next turn/climb I realized I could not hold their pace for another 2.5 hours.  So I faded off the back and settled into time trial mode.  I was 6th at that point.

Ten min later two riders caught me and we rode together for 15 min or so.  A yellow jersey and a teal jersey.  Their pace was also more than I could sustain for the 3.5-hr ride, so I faded back again.  In 8th now.

Over the next 2 hours, I maintained my slightly sub-threshold effort and made a special effort to bomb the descents, where I thought the guys on MTBs probably had the most benefit with their suspensions and wider tires.

First I caught the yellow jersey I'd ridden with and passed him.  I often caught glimpses of the teal jersey, but could not gain ground.  One by one riders as riders came into view, I approached and passed them, maintaining my gap behind the teal jersey.

By the start of the 4th hour, I was beginning to crack.  I finally lost visual contact with the teal jersey rider.  My last 3 to 5 miles were pretty weak.  I did a lot of glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see chasers, but gladly I saw no one approaching.  At the finish I found the only riders ahead of me were my teammate, Jeff, and the teal jersey rider.

Even though it wasn't officially a race, it was one of the toughest sustained long efforts I've ever done on a bike.  And I've done lots of long efforts on two wheels in the last 25 years.

R