Here it is the middle of March

July Training Update

We are at the beginning of the true training time for the MS150 in September. July 5 was the start of the suggested training period for completing the MS150. All of our riders are in training for this event.

Rider Status

Chris Cowgill Registered

Steve Lercher Registered

Tanya Lercher Registered

Clint Lercher Registered

Martha Lercher Registered

Cheryl Lercher Thinking About It (Training Hard)

Brad Neahouse Thinking About It (Training Hard)

I took the time to call each of the riders that were registered in the MS150 and below is an update from each of them.

Clint & Martha

July has been a great month for training. We have increased our weekly riding distance from 25 to 100 miles. We try to ride 4-6 nights each week. When possible we will go to Searcy and ride with Steve, Tanya, Cheryl, and Brian.

Martha is making incredible progress in her riding ability. We went out with Steve & Tanya on their tandem last week. I had gotten quite a bit ahead of the group and Martha wanted to catch up. She told Steve to catch Clint. Steve and Tanya started pouring on the speed, really cranking it up to almost 24mph. Martha just grabbed their wheel and hung on. They chased me for almost two miles and could not catch up to me. Steve looked back and yelled to Martha, “I am finished, we are not going to catch him!” Martha pulled out from behind the tandem, accelerated, and caught me. If she keeps riding at this level, the family had better take notice as she will be the second best cyclist at the MS150. On the majority of our rides Martha has no problem keeping up with me.

I am feeling much stronger than I did last year (Chris hated hearing this) and believe that I can improve on last years performance. We have a plan to keep increasing our longest ride each week until we get close to the 70 mile mark. Currently we are ahead of the suggested training ride pace. This year has been very different from last year. We have been committed to the MS150 much longer and committed to the training rides. With six of us going out on a regular basis, there is a lot of peer pressure to get out and ride with the group.

After reading last months letter from Chris and watching the Tour de France, I signed up for a cycling study at college. As part of this study they determined my Maximum heart rate and my VO2 max (maximal oxygen consumption). I have a VO2 max of 46 which is far below that of Lance Armstrong’s 93, but well above the average for individuals my age. The purpose of the test is to see if caffeine consumption 1 hour prior to an event will have any effect on your riding ability. After taking all of these tests, I am thinking about buying a heart rate monitor to aid in my training.

In the next few weeks Martha and I are going to do a fund raiser in Little Rock, the Tour de Oink. This ride is about 40 miles in length.

Steve & Tanya

Tanya and I are committed to riding this year. There was a time when we did not know if both of us would be going as riders. I pulled the tandem out of mothball storage (it has been almost two years since we rode together on a consistent training basis. I had promised Tanya two years ago that I would make her ride more comfortable. The reason she stopped riding was how hard the ride was for her body. It was not the distance or t he speed, it was the way she had to sit and the type of seat that she had. We looked at buying a bigger bike and even went out for a test drive on one. In the end we both agreed that we just needed to modify her seat. I went in search of a new seat and seat post. What I found was a wonderful seat that had built in twin independent suspension. On top of that I found a shock absorbing seat post. When you combine the two, it is almost like riding in a Cadillac. After seeing how improved her ride was, I put a shock absorbing post on my handle bars, I am having no problems with my hands going number from vibrations now. The bike is feeling great.

Like Clint talked about above, we are going out almost every night for training rides of 20 miles or more. Each day we are getting a little faster and stronger. Right now Clint has no trouble keeping up with us, but I expect that by September to have made this a little more difficult for him. Since I am not in school right now, I try to get up early and do a twenty mile ride each morning. I will then turn around and do one with the group in the afternoon. The training pace is picking up and I am feeling great. I might not have the speed that Clint does, but I know that experience counts in long rides.

I opened my garage door the other day and thought I had purchased a bike shop. I had two mountain bikes, three road bikes, and our tandem sitting in the garage. I even had a dedicated pit crew out their cleaning the bikes. With Tanya riding in this years race, I have convinced Bob to come up to Tulsa and be our SAG driver while Cheryl rides in the race.

Cheryl has been a complete surprise to me. Normally when I take a new rider out on a 20 mile training ride, they don’t come back. Not only did she come back, but she keeps coming back day after day after day to improve her training. She can not keep up with the tandem yet, but at her current pace of training, she will be close by September. Looking at all the riders, we have a pretty strong group this year. I will have to say the Clint is still the strongest and fastest rider in the group, but the group is not that far behind him.

I am working on T-shirts for our team to wear during the ride. I have also been doing a little fund raising to help out the team. It has been a very fun month.

Chris

Last year I relied on a new bike to keep me in the race. I was not prepared for the challenges presented to me by Clint. For the year I have logged about 2,000 miles averaging 15.5mph. Compared to the same time last year, I am almost 1,000 miles ahead of where I was prior to the MS150. In 2003, I did not do enough riding at the MS150 first day distance to prepare myself for the riding challenges. I now have 2 rides for the year at day 1 distance. Below is a recap of the longest & most grueling ride of my life.

The fourth annual Absolute Bikes Taylor House Benefit Century Ride ran Saturday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. All proceeds benefit The Taylor House, a home away from home for friends and families of patients of the Flagstaff Medical Center.

We decided to do this ride as cheap as possible. With that in mind instead of staying in Flagstaff the night before, we drove up from Phoenix the morning of the ride. I was up at 3:00 and on the road by 3:30. We arrived at the start line by 6:30, for the 7:00 start. The temperature was sunny and 52 at the start of the ride. The high was 85 with afternoon showers forecasted. All riders were told to either take their rain gear or a trash bag, because they would get wet. I looked around at the cloudless sky and laughed, they are just trying to scare us. I did put a “lifesaving” poncho in my pocket, even though I did not believe I would need it. There would be five motorcycle officers, two police cars, and three SAG vehicles going with our group. The lead group of riders would have a motorcycle officer leading their group all day.

Our goal for the day was to finish with a riding time of 6 hours 30 minutes or better with an average speed of 17mph or better. We knew that the lead riders would finish around the five hour mark, and that they would only stop one time. There was no way we could keep up with the leaders, and that was obvious within the first four miles. We were dropped by the lead group on the 12 mile climb to the highest point in the ride. The last two miles were at 5% average gradient with a top spot at almost 10%. We found ourselves behind the fastest group but ahead of the riders of our level. From mile 6 to mile 30 Brad and I rode alone, taking turns pulling. We had agreed that the rider farthest below their lactate threshold would pull while the other rider recovered. I was able to take my fair share of time at the front during the early parts of the ride.

As we were coming to the steepest down hill of the ride, a ten mile stretch with sections at 8% or better, an ambulance and motorcycle officer went screaming by us with lights and sirens on. I told Brad that it looked like a cyclist had taken a spill. I was right, at the steepest part of the down hill sections, the lead group of riders clocked at 58mph by the lead motorcycle, had a horrible accident. It seems that a truck pulling a trailer passed the riders and then pulled into the right hand lane to close to the riders forcing them to swerve or be hit by the trailer. When they swerved they hit riders next to them causing a pile up. Multiple riders went down and one had to go to the hospital with a broken clavicle, broken rib, and a punctured lung. The other riders had bruises and road rash. The driver of the vehicle that caused the accident had passed our group during the uphill climb. We were single file at the side of the road. He had his windows down and was yelling obscenities at our group and told us to get off his road. It is a shame that there are people in this world like that.

We were caught by a group of five riders at the 30 mile mark. With the two of us riding into the wind, we decided to hop onto the group and draft until lunch. The most interesting part of this group was the mountain biker in the group. He was riding a full blown mountain bike and keeping up with the road cyclist doing almost 22 mph. He even took turns pulling at the front. He was incredible. He told me that he is a professional mountain biker and that this was his normal training ride during the off season. There were only two mountain bikes in the event, I finished with one and was beat by one. To see a person, riding a mountain bike, keeping up with me is incredible. These were big men, on big bikes, turning big gears, and they made it look easy. When we stopped at the 50 mile mark at rest stop 2, our average speed was 20mph. We were cruising.

From rest stop 2 until rest stop 4, 42 miles in length, it was all uphill and the hardest part of the ride. The average hill was 5% in gradient with two climbs over 9%. The hardest hill was only ¾ of a mile long, but it was steep. What made this section so hard was not how long the uphill sections were, but how many there were. It was a rolling hill section with hill after hill after hill. You would get to the top and hope for a downhill ride, only to see another hill ahead. The longest hill was only one mile. It was very hard to recover before you started up the other side. I never stopped except at the rest areas, but the farther we went into the rolling hills, the slower I went up and the longer I coasted on the downhill side. This section was the hardest and I only averaged 13 mph. I had ridden the first half of the ride, 55 miles in 2 hours 45 minutes. The next 35 miles I rode took 2 hours and 40 minutes. That should tell you how hard those miles were.

At the last rest stop, 90 miles into the ride, I wanted to quit. My legs were aching, my back was hurting, my hands were numb, my body was overheating, and the rain was moving in. If I could have gotten in the car, I would have. We took a 20 minute break here, and I only got on the bike to finish because I was not a quitter. When we started pedaling after this rest stop my heart rate shot up to 160 and stayed there for the next six miles. My body was aching and each turn of the pedal was killing me. I had gone to the well one time to many and there was nothing left. I had used up my training, sucked down a bottle of courage, gobbled up desire, and all that was left was the pot of shame. I had gone through the emotions and I was finished. Brad kept trying to let me draft off of him, but he was too fast on the uphill sections. I could not keep up with him. So I rode most of the last 20 miles solo at 15.5mph. The second mountain biker in the ride caught up to me on the last twenty mile section. He would pass me on the downhill side and then I would pass him going up the other side. Back and forth we went for 20 miles. The only reason I would try and pass him was pride. I was not going to let another guy riding a mountain bike pass me. If it had not rained on me, I do not think I would have finished.

We knew that it was coming as the sky darkened and the temperature dropped. According to my bike’s computer the temperature dropped from 96 degrees in the sun to 53 degrees in the rain. I show a wind chill in the rain of 35 degrees. My hands became frozen holding onto the handlebars; however, the rain cooled me off and my heart rate dropped down to an average of 145bpm over the last 15 miles. This allowed my body to start recovering and allowed me to finish the ride. While riding on the interstate in the pouring rain, you could see the spray from the trucks giving every rider a bath. We all looked pretty funny with these long ponchos flared out like capes as we rode 16mph or faster in the rain. Our group was lucky; we did not get hailed on. The lead group of riders came through the same section of the course and had marble size hail hitting them for ten miles. I asked them why they did not stop under an overpass and they told me, “That’s what helmets are for”. Those guys were crazy.

At the finish there was a nice BBQ for the riders. I ate this funny looking hamburger that was one of the best I had ever eaten. I later found out it was a vegetable burger, man was it good.

I learned a few things from this ride:

Conserve energy in the early parts of the ride (I went out too strong)
Keep nutrition constantly going into the body (did not eat enough at the rest stops)
Stay with a group (we kept leaving before the groups)
I need longer rides before I do this again.

I have three events planned for the remainder of the year:

1. MS150 in Oklahoma – September (Family Championship)

2. Mission House 100 in Sedona – October

3. El Tour de Tucson 109 miles – November (This is a timed event)

Look at the chart below to see how the ride looked. We did over 3,500 feet of climbing for the day. I spent over 4 hours with my heart rate over 155 bpm. I know how to suffer. The blue line below is the speed. The red line is the gradient of the hills. I did not put my average heart rate on this graph because it was so ugly.