Covid ride 2

Covid ride

Covid walk

Samford meeting

Afternoon Ride

This was a tough day. Last year, I rode to the Vista bikepacking race, raced 320+ miles, rode to the start of the Cheaha Challenge, rode the Challenge Ultra and then rode home as part of a 983 mile five day adventure. This year, due to so much going on here at home with my daughter graduating I decided to drive to the Vista and race it as an ITT early in the week and then do the out/back to the challenge.

My mistake was thinking that I would be "fresher" with a few days of rest. Well, the problem with that thinking is first that your body kinda goes into recovery mode after backing off from a huge mileage. The second problem is that even though I had all those miles in my legs leading up to the challenge last year, I still spent the night with a friend near the race and started out the ultra with 0 miles on the day last year. So even though I had less total miles in my legs, those 80 miles BEFORE the race starts can cause lots of problems ... specifically cramps. I tried to drink as much as I could all day, but I felt the first twinge of cramps climbing back up Adams Gap just over 50 miles into the race (130 miles for me). So I had to back way off, and once you start to back off it's kinda hard to get moving again. Eventually I did find a good rhythm climbing Bain's Gap the second time and held a good pace all the way to the end from there, but I was going slow and getting passed by tons of people from the bottom of Chinnabee all the way to Bain's Gap.

The ride home was hot, hard, and wet. I called Kristine on Vandiver and reminded her of the 500 mile race where the climb up Vandiver is near the end and told her I was going about the same speed ... slowwwwww. I wanted to push through this ride though even though I wanted to quit a few times or catch a ride home to Birmingham with someone. Sometimes you just gotta do things that are hard so that when things get really hard it won't be too bad.

Top Sports

Brian Toone

2022/05/15 Hoover, AL cheaha challenge plus there and back again … tough

20 Photos

23 Comments

Segments

Sign up to view more activities from Brian Toone

Covid ride 2

Covid ride

Covid walk

Samford meeting

Afternoon Ride

Want to see more?

The #1 app for runners and cyclists

Sign Up for Free. Track your progress and reach goals. Join 100 million active people on Strava.

See More from Brian