The Flint Hills Death Ride - CycleOther

We went out about as hard as we could to make the cutoff times near the half-way point. We had until 11am to get about 40mi done, and with the wet start and the long uphill grinders on very rocky roads, we were pushing it. I got WAY behind on my nutrition, and started cramping up between 30 and 40 miles.

Stopped for a few minutes at the 4th SAG stop (final cut off) and had some food. Pretzels and Watermelon helped a ton with the cramping. So we soldiered on. The terrain became more rough, and we had a total of 4 flats in our group of 3 for the ride.

My GPS says 7hr 30min moving time, 2hrs stopped time (flats and sag stops...mostly flats!)

Train a bit more for HILLS! My cousin Jason did a hill specific training regimen, along with P90X, and he was rocking the hills with no problem the entire ride. Hat's off to him!! I made it, and am proud I did. We'll leave it at that ;)

If I do this ride again, I will want to be about 15lbs lighter, and have more hill specific training under my belt. I will also make damn sure my nutrition for a 6hr+ ride is figured out.

Got finishers medal. Showered at the public pool. Ate two briskit sandwiches, and slammed two ICE COLD iced tea's. Then started my 3.5hr drive home.


20lbs overweight. Not enough hill training. Improper nutrition.


Event issues. We snuck out early since it appeared things were not very organised at the start, and the time cut offs had us worried about not making it the full distance. We found out that the start was 10min late, and it seems that they didn't actually enforce the 11am final cut off time as stated. We were stopped with a flat for about 20min 1mi from the final cut off, and people were passing by the entire time. We left the cut off point only minutes before they were supposed to start stopping people.

The SAG stops seemed to be well spaced. One about every 10-15 miles. Having known this, I would have taken my small camelbak, instead of my 100oz MULE! The only thing that would have been better, is if they had some folks on ATV's to patrol the course in case of problems.

After the ride, there wasn't a whole lot going on. Maybe because we were only 2 people ahead of being DFL, but the food was good, and the service was friendly.