Sometime last winter Lana and I were thinking ‘you know, we
need some more glassware.’ Well, rather
than doing what a normal person would do, and
buy some, we decided that if we both completed the three triple crown
rides, we’d take home a combined total of 6 commemorative pint glasses. That clearly seemed like the smarter
choice. So, off we went to sign up.
Every year Spree Touring puts on the Wisconsin Triple Crown,
which is a series of three very difficult bike rides. If you can complete all three you get a cool
Triple Crown Jersey. This year Lana and
I had worked all three into our schedule.
I rode the 100K with Lana for the first two, Arcadia’s Brute and The
Kickapoo Kicker. The plan was to cap
off the series with the 200K Dairyland Dare route.
So, that was the plan.
Ride 126 miles, and climb almost 11000 feet. The terrain is such that the ride would take
me about 8-9 hours to do. Here’s what
happened.
Race Day -1
I’ve been so busy lately, that details have been falling
through the cracks. I finally got around to cleaning my bike and
checking it over on the Friday we were supposed to leave. As I was going over it I noticed a bulge in
the carbon on my handlebars. I took a
deeper look, and sure enough, they were damaged. I’m not sure how, or what happened, but they
needed to be replaced so I had an emergency to deal with.
Luckily, Bloomington Cycle and Fitness was able to save me
(yet again) and had a very nice set of s-works shallow drop carbon bars. Unfortunately those bars had to be
installed. So, I spent a few hours
racing around getting that done before we left. Nothing new on race day, right? Oops.
In the haste of switching out my bars, I forgot to reattach
my garmin mount, and I had to attach my bike computer with electrical tape.
I didn’t sleep well at all that night.
Race Day
We woke up about 5 am, and I had coffee and a PB&Honey
on white bread. My goal was to practice
ironman style nutrition all day, so that included my normal pre-race breakfast. I’d also be aggressively hydrating, taking
salt, and eating cliff bloks.
Once we got to the start, I realized I forgot my phone and had to bike back to the hotel (we couldn't get the car out), but that was cool, I like a nice long warm up before I do a 200K bike ride anyway. That's 4 bonus miles, bringing my daily total to 130 btw...
Mile 0 - 60
The first few hours were pretty uneventful. I was averaging about 16 mph with the climbs
and targeting .68 IF. My NP was up near
80% most of the time, in an effort to keep my cadence in at least the 60s on
the big climbs. The climbs were
frequent rollers most of the time, with a fairly steep 20% climb. At about mile 30, Lana caught up with me and
we rode together until about mile 58.
Miles 60-87
The hills got just a bit worse, but in general Dairyland
Dare was the easiest of the three rides.
Don’t get me wrong though, it’s still plenty hard. We ended up on some bike path on this
portion of the course and that wasn’t so fun.
It was soft, slippery, and a little dangerous.
Also of note was the absence of Roberts Road. From 2010, I learned about this massively steep
climb, at about mile 90, that was something like 22%. It was gone this time. I wasn’t sad about that.
At the mile 87 aid station I snagged a PB&J, I had been
eating bloks for about 6 hours at this point...and I could have kept doing it,
but PB&J just looked way better.
Mile 87 – 107 (The Dark Times)
This part of the course was a bit surreal. I swear I was the only cyclist on the
road. It was quiet, lonely, surreal,
and, well, hilly.
I started coming up
with some theories that I decided I was testing, including:
- Wisconsinites are really sadists that lure us here to suffer on their hills, put numbers on our backs, and race us for sport. Bonus points for their ‘miles until beer’ signs. (Thus far I haven’t disproven this theory, and am of the opinion that it’s true.)
- Riding a bike is fun, but riding a bike for this many hours is kind of stupid.
- Am I lost? I’m not sure…I’d ask that cow, but, well, I don’t speak cow.
Mile 107 to the End
At the mile 107 aid station I lingered a bit. I tend to do a bit of a self-assessment, and
I felt like I was doing good. Let’s
see: Body? Butt sore, back sore, hands sore, legs…doing
ok. Shiney. Energy…meh, well, I just
rode a bike 107 miles, felt worse.
Hydration? Still peeing at
reasonable intervals. Food? Never want to see another cliff blok, other
than that, pretty good.
All in all, I was a bit shocked. The last time I did the DD 200K I’d have
ranked it as a 10/10 in difficulty.
This time through, I’m holding steady at about 7/10. Feeling good, just keeping my head in the
game.
So, then some of the hardest climbs hit. There were a few 12-15% grades that just
went FOREVER at about mile 118 I think?
I was riding with a few other guys, but they were holding me back and
making things take longer, so I decided to just go and drop them. They were very nice, but I was just ready to
be off the bike. At about mile 120 I
was on a flat into town, and I decided I might as well get this over with so I
got down into the drops and pushed at about .85 until the finish. Someone caught my wheel and I pulled him all
the way back home, which I’ll admit felt pretty good.
In the end, my moving time was about 8.5 hours. Not stellar, but not at all bad for a heavy
guy, untapered, on a very hard course. I
finished strong and, honestly, could have ridden another 100k, but I was plenty
glad I didn’t have to.
Post race was at the Lands’ End corporate offices. It was a really awesome post-race event. I got
a shower, a massage, some beer by capital city brewery, and some post-race
food.
The next day we ran 6 very very slow miles and checked out “The
House On The Rock” which was, the best I can tell, an interesting collection of
junk in the middle of nowhere, assembled to separate tourists and their money,
but to be honest it was totally worth it, definitely a must see place.
