One Clydesdale’s Journey

Yup, it is every bit as rough as the name implies!

The race is at Devil’s Lake State Park and if you haven’t been there before then there is only one way to describe it; HILLY!

And it was at this race last year when Shelly finished that I got this crazy idea. So in a way I guess I’m returning to the scene of the crime.

Now in case I wasn’t accurate enough the first time I mentioned this, let me emphasize the fact that this area is very, very hilly. I actually rode the course last year with Shelly the week before the race and I thought that it was going to kill me.

In fact at one point during the ride I asked Shelly if she had taken out extra life insurance on me that I should know about. Keep in mind that at this point I still wasn’t training! In fact I had only been back to riding again for about 2 months.

The good news is that due to road construction they had to change the bike course this year. The bad news is that it isn’t any better as far as the elevation changes go.

The usual course has a hill climb that starts during the first mile of the course and continues for one full mile, as well as one other nice killer hill a little later in the race.

According to the map of the course for this year; the new killer hill doesn’t start until mile 4, but it continues until mile 5! With another one almost exactly like it about 10 miles down the road.

My hope for this race is to finish the bike route with enough strength in my legs to have a half way decent run time. I’d really like to try and finish the run in under 30 minutes if I can. And since it is a fairly flat run course I’m hoping that I can accomplish that.

My overall goal is to try and come in under 2 hours again. But between the killer hills the old grocery getter I’m not sure if that is going to be possible.
I guess it will all depend on if I’ve done enough hills training these last few weeks.

I’ll let everyone know next week.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training