Several of my friends have asked me to do a ride report on the Six Gap Century. I thought that I would start off by mentioning that I used to think it was funny that many of my friends called these bike rides "races" although the event organizers do not call them races nor do you wear numbers nor are they timed. I mention this because at the Six Gap Century the organizers constantly say "THIS IS NOT A RACE, THIS IS NOT A RACE, THIS IS NOT A RACE", however they give you a number for your bike and one for your back that they insist on you wearing. You are given a timing chip and you are timed... kind of sounds like a race to me. :) I met up with David O'Rear, Lou Hablas, Brian Rell, and Jessica at the start of the ride. We just missed Justin who did the 50 (58) mile ride with Jessica and we must have just missed Brian O'Neal.

They changed the course this year a bit and made it about seven miles longer and bit more difficult. Here is probably a good place to mention that I tell people all the time that the Gaps are not that bad if you ride them properly. I tell everyone that as long as you have the proper gears all you have to do is to take it easy and pace yourself. I did not ride the Gaps properly on this particular day and I paid dearly for it. I started off way too fast trying to keep up with the "big boys". It was a huge crowd riding together for the first 20 miles until we got to Neel's Gap where things started to smooth out a bit.

Obivously, you do not do much drafting going up the Gaps or even down them, but there are a lot of places where a pace line is pretty cool and I love to ride in a good pace line. My problem was that I got in a few pace lines that were a bit over my head and I wore myself out too quickly trying to ride with the "big boys". I did fine over the first three Gaps of Neel's, Jack's, and Unicoi. I had one minor incident coming down Unicoi which is my favorite gap to descend. I only had one person pass me on the descent of Unicoi. I stayed with him after he passed me though. As I was chasing him around on of the switchbacks down Unicoi I caught my inside pedal on the ground ...HARD. I have scrapped my pedals many times on corners, but I have never hit the ground with the pedal so hard nor at anywhere near that speed. I was going about 35 where the speed limit was 20 when I jammed the pedal. I have tried to think what actually happened with the bike but it all happend so fast I am not sure exactly how the bike moved. It reminded me of the time I broke my collarbone mtn bike riding. I thought I knew what happened, but I think I may have imagined some of it. Anyway, I will say what it felt like. As I said, I was chasing the guy who passed me on the Unicoi descent. I was going to pedal out of the corner and when I did my pedal hit the ground HARD. It felt like the rear tire came off the ground and shifted to the outside a couple of feet. It probably was not that far, but I do know the rear tire came off the ground because I felt the bump when it came back to the pavement. That was a bit of a surprise. It was kind of cool, but I do not want to do it again... been there done that kind of thing. We passed a lot of people on the way down Unicoi.

After I hung with him to the bottom of Unicoi we started forming a pace line. I was number two in line and my turn seemed to come up very quickly. I was actually tired from chasing the guy who was one of the "big boys" and had a hard time maintaining the pace he had set. Eventually, three pretty fast guys passed our paceline and invited me to hop aboard. This was probably a mistake, because they were too fast for me too. I had some minor cramping start a mile or so before we got to Hogpen and I thought,"chasing the "big boys" was definitely not a good idea!"

When I got to the bottom of Hogpen I was averaging 14.9 mph which I thought was pretty good since that was three gaps and 57 miles but I paid for it going up Hogpen. Although, Hogpen was as arduous as ever, I only felt "really bad" going up it instead of exhausted. I stopped and got a drink at the sag stop half way up. The descent of Hogpen was ok, but I did not go quite as fast as usual although I did hit 47.6 mph. However, only one person passed me on the descent of Hogpen. Hogpen's descent is much faster than Unicoi's or Wolfpen's but it does not have the sharp curves which are fun to negotiate.

I started cramping a lot on the ride from Hogpen to Wolfpen. For those of you who do not know. Wolfpen is the second most difficult gap to climb after Hogpen. I was really starting to have a bad day and I still had 30 miles to go. Somewhere in there I was started puttering along. I was OUT of gas, bonked, hit the Wall,...whatever. It was BAD news. I stopped at the rest stop at the bottom of Wolfpen and felt sorry for myself a bit and admonished myself for trying to ride with the "big boys" instead of my normal pace. It was really hard to leave the sag stop at the bottom of Wolfpen especially since several people were getting on the sag wagon and riding back. I went up Wolfpen in a slow trance of agony. I hardly remembered it by the time I got to the top because I was in a daze of misery and self pity. It was TOTALY humbled. My spirit was broken. I finished those last 30 miles on hurt pride alone because I was COMPLETELY out of gas. It did help thinking about Felix and the first time that he went up Wolfpen. I thought if he could make it up considering the amount of agony that he was in, then I could make it too. Nothing much left to tell. If you have ever ridden three gaps, there are some pretty good rollers between Wolfpen and Woody's. Woody's is the last gap and not much of one at that. By my calculations it is only 406 feet of vertical climb which is less than the climb at Stonepile gap which is 521 feet of vertical according my calculations and it is not even mentioned in the ride. I struggled the rest of the way in and those last 10 miles after Woody's were pretty tough miles for a person who is exhausted. My offical time was 8:20:54 which included my rest stops. My bike computer had 7:51:22 for an average of 13.3 mph which was about one mph faster than last year and the course was about seven miles longer and a bit harder.

Not try to hang with the "big boys" that are out of my league.

What limits everyone's ability to perform faster? Training, duh?


I do not know how you can hurt so bad and still have such a good time. I guess that officially makes me a masochist. I encourage everyone to do the gaps at least once, at least the bottom three. If you want to run with the "big boys", give the top three a shot. :)