After coming down pretty hard on the Assault on Mount Mitchell yesterday – at least the first 73 miles of it, I think I should take a moment to point out something that I thought was a good idea.  There was one part of the ride that almost went unnoticed – which was exactly how it was supposed to be.  It was the timing chip.

Attached to each bib number was a plastic strip with a timing chip on it.  We detached it from the bib and then looped it onto our cycling shoes.  To be honest, I only thought about it when we went through the timing loops in Marion, at the top of Highway 80, and at the event’s end.

However, because of the timing, I was able to get a very good idea of how my ride progressed and where my downfall came.  I kind of knew it anyway, but it is always nice for me to put numbers with how I’m feeling.  My Garmin could have done the same thing – had I been in the state of mind to push the lap button.  Thankfully, the chip took care of it for me.

The timing tells me I was the 171st person to finish the ride.  It took me 6 hours 49 minutes and 17 seconds. Contained in that were sections from Spartanburg to Marion, Marion to the Parkway, and the Parkway to the finish line.

It is funny to see that the chip data shows that it took me 3 hours 43 minutes and 40 seconds to ride from Spartanburg to Marion.  This was because when I arrived in Marion, I took a nature break just about 100 yards before the timing loop!  Had I waited to go until after the loop, I would have finished the section in just under 3 hours and 30 minutes.

Without that stop, I was on good pace to be in the top 50 by the time we reached the top of Highway 80.  Even so, I was 111th at that point.  On that section I had the 76th fastest time (59 minutes).  That would have put me at that point of the ride in 4 hours and 30 minutes.  Charlie Brown, who reached the summit first, reached that point of the ride in 4 hours and 27 minutes in 6th place.

It was the next section that killed me.  Consider Charlie’s time again… He covered this section of the ride in a few seconds over 1 hour and 7 minutes.  Me?  It took 2 hours and 6 minutes to cover that same distance.  So, even had I reached the Parkway 3 minutes behind Charlie, he would have left me in the dust on this section.

What does this tell me?  Well, first I have a much better feeling about my attempt.  Though the chip didn’t record it, it feels good to know that I rolled into Marion first and it wasn’t any weakness that took me out of the pack.  It was just not knowing where the timing loop was located.  I am certain had I kept rolling I could have acquitted myself well to the top of Highway 80.

It tells me that my greatest failure was my lack of training for distance.  By the time I reached 80 miles in, I had exceeded my longest training ride by at least 30 miles.  The last time I had completed a century was in mid-March.  It was a closed loop with about 7000 feet total climbing in short gains.

My body just entered no-man’s land during that third section.  Of course, this was also the hardest section on the ride.  The difficulty of the profile coupled with me entering a zone beyond my training was my downfall during those 16 or so miles.

Bottom line is that I could fix it.  I could train and go up there and reach my 6:15:00 finish time.  The only issue is that training all that time for one event simply does not excite me.  For now, I’ll just rest in the understanding that it can be done.

My advice to the Assault on Mt. Mitchell committee?  Keep the timing chips.  Can the waves.

 

Tags: Assault on Mount Mitchell, Charlie Brown, Timing Chips

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 5:58 am and is filed under Events, Rides, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.