Winsted 9 "Gaps"

I was feeling a bit worn down last week after Tuesday's group ride so I took Wednesday off and then did an easy 20 with Em on Thursday night- avg. HR 108 and a nice recovery ride. I felt as if I was fully recovering from the rigors of the week and so had it in my mind that on Saturday I would attempt my Winsted 7 "Gaps", the little spoof on Doug's Vermont 6 Gaps (actual Gaps, yes) shown below:




I picked up my road bike from Josh on Friday after having the 36/52 front rings put on as I mentioned in an earlier post. I then got to thinking how I could possibly make my Winsted version of 6 Gaps even harder and yes, I'm a complete idiot. Here is the profile from the ride I did on July 4th of this year:


A regular dragon's back, if I don't say so myself. I finally came up with a route- adding a couple more "gaps" (now 9) with (hopefully) a few hundred more feet vertical over just a few miles. I guess my goal is to climb the most feet vertical I can over the shortest distance in the area near my house. As it was, Winsted 7 Gaps was 6500+ ft. of climbing over a distance of just 52 miles- roughly, when doubled, 13000 ft.+ over the course of a century. This is on a par with Vermont 6 Gaps in terms of total vertical- "only" that you're now stretching it over 30 more miles. I would imagine that Vermont 6 Gaps is more difficult than if I were to effectively do 2 laps of my ride, however, seeing that the longer efforts on the steeper climbs of Vermont would most certainly take their toll.

Whatever, the case, I headed out around noon on Saturday under overcast skies or over undercast skies, if you will. Forecast was for some potential t-storms in the early afternoon, though I think they always say this to cover their asses either way. I swear they have the easiest job in the world. Adding more climbing to the already hard route I had done in July I knew would be a challenge- considering also that my minimum gear was now 36X27. I decided on my two small water bottles and two Hammer gels for sustenance and away I went. I figured I'd averaged 16-17 mph on the abridged version of this ride so I wanted to try and maintain that average speed for this one.

Long story short, I bonked. Hard. I ended up running out of water with about 14 miles to go. I spaced my gels apart- 1 at mile 30, the other at 45. They did provide momentary relief and I can tell you that they never tasted so damn good, but it clearly wasn't enough. The last climb of the ride, Bank St., I was absolutely dying and had all I could do to keep the pedals turning. I think Bank St., though short, hits around 17%. I'm usually on top of my hydration/fueling, but for some reason I wasn't on this ride. I guess I underestimated the ride difficulty and the fact that the weather went from overcast and cool to hot and humid didn't help matters. Here is the profile of (now) 9 "gaps":


Final stats: 58.5 mi., 7366 ft. elevation gain, 16.2 mph avg., 149 avg. HR

I suppose it could have been worse seeing that I suffered terribly the last 15 miles. I was hoping to ride this harder route faster than the July ride, but my inattentiveness to nutrition did me in. Oh well, maybe next time. And I have a few hundred feet of vertical I can add over a couple of miles.