Strategy for a hilly century? Tell me I'm ready!

[fallstoclimb]

I'm registered for the Civil War Century in a month. Here's a description from the website:

"This hilly ride has about 10,816 feet of climbing with four mountain climbs and lots of up and down in between. This is a difficult ride. You must commit to training for this event. It should not be your first century. But, if you do get tired, you can bail out at 65 miles, skipping Gettysburg (and the last mountain climb) in favor of a scenic nine-mile descent back to the start/finish."

I am NERVOUS. I've done one century previously, but it was pretty flat and easy. I'm fitter now than I've ever been and I have been doing lots of hill work, but haven't had as much time as I'd like for long rides so haven't made it past 60 miles yet, and I haven't done anything near 11,000 feet of climbing in a day. I rode 330 miles in July, am hoping for 400 miles in August but since I'll have to start a taper towards the end I'm not sure if I'll hit that or not.

1) Tell me I'm ready for this. They sent out an email yesterday asking people not to do the ride if they aren't prepared LOL. How am I supposed to know I'm prepared?? And boy am I nervous about that 65 mile bail-out.

2) What would you aim for your longest ride to be before a century? For my other century, I think my longest ride was about 70 miles. I do wonder if I should be focused more on climbing than going long though. Pretty confident I could do a flat century today if I had to.

3) What should my day-of strategy be? I have this awful habit of getting competitive and picking riders to chase the whole ride, but my husband tells me I am not allowed to do that and I have to start slow, haha. However I'm more concerned about what my hill strategy should be, because there are a lot of hills -- should I go up them ridiculously easy to save my legs for later? Moderately easy? I also don't want to be out there all day, of course....

4) I'm thinking I'll aim for a very hard ride Sunday August 24th, and then just do my regular commute (11 miles roundtrip, 3 days/week) and the usual Saturday group ride in the two weeks before the ride on September 6th. Good strategy? I might skip some of my commute days that last week...

5) The ride is about an hour from where I live, and the century organizers have created a "practice route" that includes 2 of the major climbs. Should I do this beforehand or no? I can get a little mental about these things, so if I do it and its easy it would be a nice confidence booster, but if I'm really struggling I'll get even more nervous. I'm wondering if its better to not know *exactly* what I'm getting into.

[roo4]

1. You are ready.

2. 75 miles.

3. Stop being so competitive. Go out there and have a fun ride. Why would you attack the hills if you are worried about climbing?

4. Sounds fine.

5. Yes, of course you should ride the practice route.

Bonus 6. You knew the answers to all of these questions before you asked, didn't you? Relax, have fun.

[ny biker]

Ride the practice route. Based on that, you can decide if you want to go for the full century or switch to the metric route, which has way less climbing and no mountains. (Bear in mind that you would have to make that decision before you start, because the routes are not the same in the beginning.)

Whichever route you do, ride your own pace, and do not start out fast and burn yourself out early. There will be pacelines of fast riders who will be looking at the butts in front of them and not noticing any of the beautiful countryside around them. Ignore them, they don't know what they're missing.

p.s. The food at this ride is fantastic, and the Antietam Dairy ice cream at the end makes it all worthwhile. I'm doing the metric.

[khg]

You're ready--go for it, and have a fabulous time!

Definitely do the practice route. It's really nice to have some familiarity with a hard course, so you can tell yourself "go easy here, there's a steep part around the corner" or "power through, there's an easy bit coming up."

Keep eating. I am still surprised by how much caloric energy a difficult hilly course requires. More than once I have struggled on a hill, and thought my legs were just done by that point in the day, only to have later hills feel easy--after pausing for a large meal. I try to keep snacking as I ride, but sometimes in retrospect I can see that I obviously wasn't eating enough.

Try to pick a pace that pushes you a bit, but doesn't put you at your limit. And if you feel like it, on the last climb open it up and see what you can do! Don't get caught up by people whizzing past you in the beginning, unless there's a paceline that is a comfortable speed for you--if you can find your own rhythm and ride your own ride, you'll probably be passing a lot of people at the end. This has always been my experience, and I was interested to read yesterday in the NYTimes an article about women marathoners being better at pacing themselves than men. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/0...r-than-men-do/

It sounds like an awesome ride, and a great accomplishment, whichever length you end up doing. Have a great time!

[fallstoclimb]

Keep eating. I am still surprised by how much caloric energy a difficult hilly course requires. More than once I have struggled on a hill, and thought my legs were just done by that point in the day, only to have later hills feel easy--after pausing for a large meal. I try to keep snacking as I ride, but sometimes in retrospect I can see that I obviously wasn't eating enough.

Yeah I'm a little worried about this. I did a 60 mile 5500 feet climbing ride a couple weeks ago and my legs just were barely working at the end -- I ate 2 cliff shot blok bars (so 12 shots), a payday (lol) and 2 baby potatoes, plus gatorade. At the time that seemed like plenty but at the end of the day I wondered if that was my issue.

When I did the century before, I was too nervous/excited to eat much in the beginning, and by the end had a real hard time getting any food done. I'm really hoping to eat consistently on this one. Unfortunately I don't have a fancy computer that can beep every X minutes to remind me.

[Veronica]

I do have the fancy watch that beeps at me and it's great! But you could use your cue sheet as a reminder.

Veronica

[fallstoclimb]

Ride the practice route. Based on that, you can decide if you want to go for the full century or switch to the metric route, which has way less climbing and no mountains. (Bear in mind that you would have to make that decision before you start, because the routes are not the same in the beginning.)

Whichever route you do, ride your own pace, and do not start out fast and burn yourself out early. There will be pacelines of fast riders who will be looking at the butts in front of them and not noticing any of the beautiful countryside around them. Ignore them, they don't know what they're missing.

p.s. The food at this ride is fantastic, and the Antietam Dairy ice cream at the end makes it all worthwhile. I'm doing the metric.

I DIDN'T KNOW THERE'D BE ICE CREAM. Score!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah I mean honestly there's no way I'm going to decide to do the metric haha. I've been training for this ride all summer. I'm just nervous, but shortly after I posted I looked at the elevation map which calmed me down -- looks like theres only two MAJOR climbs, one at the beginning and one at mile 57. I can do this.