I’ll be there. We have a group of people from WI that will be travelling out. Some have done it before, others have not. I’m in the latter group.
I’m still nervous about finishing. Some hot/humid rides in June really put the hurt on me and its a drive to find hills, so I don’t ride them as much as I should. I did do a flat gravel 100miler on my mountain bike and felt especially good though, so I’m trying to carry some optimism there. I’m doing my last long ride before the event this Saturday…a 128m/5k ft gravel/road event that I’ll do on my mountain bike. I mainly want to finish the MDH, but as usual I always want to feel like I put in just the right amount of extra effort to do the best I could have…but that is risky with this event.
To add to the original topic, I started training on Jan 1 with SSB 1&2, then Sustained Power, then a couple weeks back at SSB, then finished with Century specialty. All Low Volume. Early on when it was cold, I would add in a 1.5 to 2.5 hour endurance ride on the trainer on the weekend, but then tried my best to do longer outdoor rides every weekend (70 miles plus on the road minimum) once it warmed up. Since this long distance is new to me, I worked in a local 10hr single track mountain bike race (did 56 miles, 6k ft climbing in 95F, high humidity in 7 hours) which taught me a lot about holding back early on, heat, fueling, and stomach tolerance for certain electrolyte mixes. I then did a gravel century on my mtn bike to again work out nutrition and will finish up with a 128m gravel event (not racing it!) on the mtn bike two weeks out. I also tried to pull in an ultra training technique of riding on tired legs, so some of my road centuries would occur after a hard training day. Also, this year has been a lot about comfort (saddle, chamois, minor fit adjustments), as early on even 2-3 hours were painful in the saddle, but now long events aren’t a problem.