Dog park with K

Delivering cookies

Post Christmas quiet-ish roads

Family Christmas plus Ross Bridge plus Hwy 31

Short commute route lots of traffic on Christmas Eve

UPDATED DESCRIPTION:
What an amazing turnout for the 2021 Cheaha Challenge. Sooooo many people. Soooo many friendly faces all out there suffering together taking on the super steep hills of the challenge.

It was awesome to have Frankie Andreu announcing and sending us off at the start. He sent off the first three waves of challenge riders and then called us ultra riders up to the start line mentioning we were taking on the crazy challenge of the steep bonus climbs.  True that, but I was also arriving at the start line 768 miles into my ride. 

I left Tuesday night at 9:10pm to beat the rain (the rain won) and rode 225 miles up to Delano, TN to race the Vista 300 (325 miles - bonus miles!) setting the fastest known time of 36 hours, 30 minutes with no sleep finishing at 7:00pm on Friday night. 

After a good night's sleep I biked 168 miles from Delano, TN back down to Jacksonville, AL arriving just as the early packet pickup was ending at 8pm. My friend Chris Winslett was there to meet me and pick up my packet in case I didn't quite make it by 8. I was spending the night with him at his family's home near DeArmanville near Oxford.

After another good night's sleep, I drove with Chris back up to the start where I then raced the Ultra before riding all the way back home to Birmingham completing a 928 mile trip in just 5 days with a race in the middle and one near the end!

Since I was already 768 miles into my ride, I was expecting dead legs ... especially after struggling into a headwind on the way back down to Jacksonville the day before. I was riding "hard" but not really because my heartrate was still below 100. It's just that everything hurt so much and I was carrying so much weight on my bike that it felt "hard" even though my legs were probably getting a bit of rest.

So when we arrived at the start and I saw all the people there and lined up. I got excited to race my bike again ... and also I had a bad case of summit fever where the closer I get to the finish, the more excited and determined I get. With all the excitement and being so close to the finish of my adventure (even with 200+ miles still left to ride), I took off at the start with a ton of adrenaline - combine that with delirium from just being tired - and I was able to keep up with one of the groups towards the front of the ultra.
I expected I'd go a lot slower than most on the climbs, but since I wasn't spinning out and since aerodynamics wasn't quite as important, I started to pass everyone. I'd get passed again on the descents b/c my gravel bike with water bottles mounted to the fork was nowhere near as aero as road bikes. But I put enough of a gap on the climb up Cheaha that I was able to stay away for good from the group that I had been with.

On the descent down Cheaha towards Adam's Gap, Ashley Folkes caught up to me and we stayed together all the way to the Chinnabee rest stop before our second longer climb up Cheaha. I expected he would catch back up again on Hwy 281, but instead, Mark Miller caught up to me at the very end of 281. We both stopped at the rest stop and took off almost together so that when we ran into a couple century riders who were moving fast, we had a nice group of 4 to tackle the long flat stretch of Hwy 9.

Even with a tailwind, it helps so much to be in a group through here so I was thankful for a very strong group - powered by Mark who was clearly the strongest by how long and hard he was able to pull. At the turn towards Bains, the century riders went straight and Mark and I started to approach the Bains climbs into a stiff headwind.

We both have cramped on that climb before so we took it quite conservative, although Mark still dropped me towards the top of the first climb up Bains. I super-bombed the descent on the other side to try to catch up but didn't end up catching up until the rest stop where a number of ultra riders were pulling away as we were arriving.

We took our time b/c it was very hot by this point and a couple extra minutes in the shade was very helpful with cold water soaked towels. But fueled up for the rest of the race with just 23 miles left, we took off and headed back up Bains.

We caught one rider who was having to walk. Looking at the results, I think it was David Hester because he almost caught back up to us, so I'm guessing he recovered from his cramps? Mark and I made it over the top together this time and rode together to Cotaquilla until towards the top when we were catching my friend Scott Trousdale who I knew was trying to break 7.5 hours for the ultra. 

Mark was starting to struggle and I was feeling amazing again so I rode on up to Scott to try to encourage him, but he was at his limit and I thought we still had a ways to go on the climb. Instead, we crested shortly after I passed him so after bombing the descent I waited for him to pull him up to the bottom of the climb. During that time, Mark made his way back up to us. So it was the three of us making the righthand turn to head up Chimney.

I started out at a good steady pace that was a bit faster than they wanted to go so I moved on ahead thinking that Mark would catch me at the steep part since I was struggling to keep up with him on Bain's. But I think he was pretty exhausted by this point. As it turns out, so were two more people in front of me!

I didn't see anyone the whole way up the climb until I made the last turn and right there in front of me were two more ultra riders struggling up the climb. Summit fever for the end of the race on top of summit fever for the end of my super long trip meant that I flew up that last section too. I caught and passed Ashley right at the grafitti turn out where he ended up getting off the bike to walk.

The next person I caught was Alberto Blanco, a fellow RAAM finisher! He was still struggling up the last 20% grade when I went past, but he is a bit bigger than me so I wanted to push that descent as fast as possible since I couldn't go much more than about 25-27 mph once it flattened out (instead of 30+ on a road bike). So 52mph later, I made it to the bottom and spun a very high cadence almost catching recent high school / NICA grad Caleb Jarrard finishing up his race! He saw me coming though and stepped it up a bit to make it in ahead of me.

I was super happy to finish and having passed a few people at the end meant I moved all the way up to 10th place. Alberto came in just a few seconds behind me to finish in 11th with Mark shortly behind in 12th. I got to chat with Alberto for a few minutes before heading over to the amazing post-ride bbq buffet where I joined Mike Flowers for a fun post-ride recap in the shade under the tent before setting out to tackle the 80 miles back to home sweet home, where I arrived at the same door from which I left 928 miles earlier.

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION:
Will update in the morning, heading to bed! But I did want to say real quick that I was flying today. My only explanation is that the 168 miles I rode yesterday on the way down fully loaded was sooo slow with heartrate average down below 100. Maybe that was really good to spin out the legs? In any case, from the gun I felt great and moved all the way towards the front of the ultra and kept waiting to blow up ... but it never happened! I owe so many people so many thanks - will write up more tomorrow!

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Brian Toone

2021/05/16 Jacksonville, AL Cheaha Challenge ultra top 10 plus commute home

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Dog park with K

Delivering cookies

Post Christmas quiet-ish roads

Family Christmas plus Ross Bridge plus Hwy 31

Short commute route lots of traffic on Christmas Eve

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