crap crap crap

Way way off in the not-too-distant future, I have signed up for a little thing called the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic. It's really creeping up fast...

Here is the cue sheet describing the elevation profile:

Iron Horse CueSheet // Approximate Distances and Elevations

Leg Mileage Elevation Gain (Feet) Leg Description 11 300 Iron Horse Inn to Bakers Bridge 6 1300 Bakers Bridge to Haviland Lake 11 800 Haviland Lake to Cascade 6 1800 Cascade to Coal Bank Pass (steep) 3 -800 Coal Bank to Lime Creek 4 1000 Lime Creek to Molas Pass 6 -1600 Molas Divide to Silverton 47 Total

Here is the elevation profile - except the ride ends in Silverton, not Ouray:

Make no mistake, I'm absolutely crapping myself about this. This is due in part to the number of people I run into who tell me their horror stories. Like,

"Oh are you training for that? Cool! You're training for it, right?" (uh, no - I was kinda hoping this would be my training for Buffalo Springs)...
"Oh yeah, I did that one year, and I didn't finish." didn't finish? "yeah, I gave up and got beer. we tried Coal Bank the next day, it was too hard."
"I did it a couple years ago, it will be the hardest thing you've ever done."

*ulp*

Oh Crap.

I have other friends who are more comforting. Friends with a lot of experience and excellent athletic ability. Friends who say yeah, it'll be hard, but you can do it. Sure you can do it.

Another friend says I can do it in a pretty decent time (has he seen me climb? does he know? I think he overestimates my ability).

(All of these friends, of course, could potentially read my blog and know that I'm talking about them)

So I'm trying to break it down into things I know and have done.

The steepest climb, Coal Bank, is an 1800ft climb. That's about 300ft gain per mile for 6 miles. I have done a 300ft per mile climb, so I know it'll probably be about like the hardest part of Jemez Dam, which looks like this.

The steepest part of Jemez Dam has only 1 mile of that, and I know it's painful, but I know I can do it.

Much of it will probably not be as bad as the Crest Climb. I haven't done the Sandia Crest Climb- I hear it's not quite as bad as that. I think I'll have to do it once before I go out to Colorado.

I've also done 9-mile hill, which is even more of the same.


There are others I've done I can't even find the profiles for.

Here's the thing: I've done all these climbs, but I've never done them back-to-back in one 47 mile long day, in possible snow. Snow is a deal-breaker by the way. If there is snow on the ground, I will walk to Silverton...

If I subtract all the screamin' fast downhills, that's a whole 9 miles I'll get for free, so that leaves only 38 miles of climbing. And there's some flat - I'd estimate about 15 miles based on my knowledge of the road, so that leaves 23 miles of climbing.

23 miles of hard. serious. up hill. eyes bleeding.

My hope is if I just slow down, sit, settle into it, I can do it. It may not be pretty. It will probably not be fast. I want to find a slow climbing pace and just do it.

I just hope I'm not delusional.