Vision Quest ride at Verona...

Saturday morning:

Woke-up super early to drive up towards Madison, WI to ride out of Verona with the support training ride put together my Vision Quest (Robbie Ventura’s company) as I rode in their event last month also on the IM WI bike course. This month they had about 65 riders signed up for the event and many of them were training for IM WI in later September. They had 4 different abilities groups as I mistakenly signed up to ride with the competitive grouping of about 10 riders as one of the guys I rode with last month was in this group also. Also they informed us of several sections of chip gravel & seal sections that were new since the previous month…nice!

So at the 8am roll out these riders were wide open throttle within feet of leaving the parking lot as my friend Paul and I realized these guys provide no warm-up time. The first hill climb was only a half mile into this 41.7 loop and they flew up this grinder hill. At the top of the hill Paul and I just let them go ahead and rode on at our own pace individually. He dropped back by mile one as I could always see off in the distance the group of fast riders. I pushed onwards solo as stubborn as I am until about mile ten when the large grouping of advanced riders slowly caught me from behind. I let the group of about twenty riders go by me as I hooked up on the back of the peloton style grouping to help recovery my HR and body for the remaining mileage. At about mile twelve is the first bigger climbing hill as I dropped off the back since I slightly shredded my legs from the earlier solo efforts. After that was done I was always able to re-gain the group on the longer downhills when at about mile 15 we hit the 1st of many chip gravel & seal sections on the IM WI bike course. Ever since my nightmare, wheel destroying training ride last summer on the Steelhead course I’m now very cautious on these gravelly roadways. After a mile of this I re-gained the group about a mile afterwards on the proper roadways as this would go on for several times throughout the remainder of this loop ride.

The quick rest stop is just around mile 23 but literally 500 feet before this on the two lane county road with gravel shoulders I saw a bunch of cars stopped in the gravel in both directions with numerous bikers stopped also. As we all rode close to this situation some Vision Quests coaches informed us the ambulance was called and to continue to the rest area. As I slowly rode by I could see it was one of the riders from the fast group, he was being attended as his face was all bloody as he was lying in the shoulder gravel. He was conscious, arms moving as the coaches had him staying relaxed till the EMT arrived just seconds later. Our group re-organized at the rest stop and headed out to finish off the loop after seeing this situation. No one knows what happened; did he crash because his wheel went in the gravel at speed or did a car force him into the gravel or worst did a car hit him? To this moment no one knows what happened…

As we started back out on the county roads to start on the second portion of the loop I hung around with the group as we all worked paceline single file before heading off on the last vehicle traveled back county roads. At one point we have a great rolling stretch that follows an active gravel pit quarry where I went off the front speedily in my TT positioning to hammer this section. The roadway eventually curves around the lake before setting up for a nice gradual climb of about a half mile. At the base of this climb I let the group catch me as I rode up the hill at my own tempo pace as my hamstrings were screaming at me at this point but I still rode the hill in my threshold zone. After that hill there’s only really one more really tough hill so since it was only about a quarter mile long and close to the end of the ride I stomped on the pedals just before it climbed upwards and pushed an the low end of my VO2 max while I climbed this hill. The rest of the ride I rode at pretty much cool-down level.

Once we got back to the Fireman’s park start point since I was only riding one loop I weighted myself back in and lost one pound only & signed out. The ride distance for the loop with a couple gravel road detours came in at 41.7 miles in 2:04:47 with an average HR of 141bpm and max during that last hill climb of 162bpm. For my HR charts I rode this distance in a higher level endurance zone burn with multiple times riding within my threshold zone and even VO2 zone.
My average watts for the ride duration came in at 208 with a max wattage at 932 during the stomp grind going up the last hill climb.

I wasn’t exhausted or beat up after this nice ride which is a positive indicator of my certain cycling abilities towards my A cycling race at the 40k team relay at the Chicago triathlon on August 30th 2009. Plus now I’m more comfortable just incase in the future I do eventually end up racing IM WI ;-)

b