by Coach Anthony James
The Hazel Valley Rally’s Have Mercy On Me route lives up to its name — 62.5 miles of relentless Ozark gravel, more than 6,000 feet of climbing, and a brutal mix of heat and humidity that tested every ounce of grit I had.
What began as a calm 5 a.m. start with careful prep and steady pacing turned into a battle of heat exhaustion, head games, and, ultimately, redemption when a rainstorm revived both my legs and my spirit.
The day started at 5 AM to get up and eat, and finish my final packing and food preparation before packing up the truck to pick up my friend Rob as we were riding the event together. We did the Have Mercy On Me route. We pulled in, picked up packets and goodies, and then got to the start line to roll off at 8 AM.
When I opened the car door when we arrived, I knew it was going to be a tough day for me. The forecast was for a cloudy 85 degrees, and the humidity was already 90% with very little wind. The humidity was going to be my struggle for the day. If the clouds disappeared, my day would be much harder, as I am not a hot-weather rider. Literally out of the gate, it was roughly a 2-mile climb at 6.5 percent. My goal was to just settle in for the ride I would be shooting for on the day.
My goals were staying steady on the climbs, as there were three big ones were to try and maintain about 225-230W for the climbs and on the flats/rolling terrain around 195-210. I hit that first climb, and it took me just under 17 minutes. My average power was 225, and my normalized power (NP) was 230 with about 550 feet of gain.
Not long after coming over to the top and rolling to catch up to my friend Rob, I got a flat. I stopped, quickly put in a plug, pumped the tire back up, and rolled off to catch him. I did not jump back on my bike and go full gas; I eased my way back in. I knew I’d catch him in all the downhills. So, for about 40 minutes, my average power was 195 watts and my NP was 205. That covered about the next nine miles of the course. With the rolling terrain, the elevation gain was only about 520 feet.
From there, we had a short, steep, really technical descent where many people had crashed or were descending beyond their abilities. I did catch my friend Rob just as the descent started, and we rolled down together and were laughing and having a blast. But we hit the bottom and started the next little climb out. It was steep and slippery. The gradient was at 9.4 percent, 357 feet of gain. My average power was 219, and my NP was 226 with a max of 330 watts. Time to get up was 8:45. From there, we rolled over the top and made our way on the rolling terrain to the long descent.
Across the top, I was still sticking to my plan. My average power was 203, and my NP was 211, and I was feeling good. The temperature was rising, and the humidity was still stuck at about 90 percent. At this point, we had covered 17.5 miles and climbed about 1,400 feet so far. We hit the 8.5-mile rolling descent, which took us about 30 minutes. My average power was 131, with my NP being 181 and max spiking to 450 watts towards the bottom for about 15 seconds. As we hit the bottom, my body was so hot, and I was starting to feel the wheels come off. There still was no wind, and we were about to hit a climb that was 2.5 miles, 6.8 percent gradient, and 929 feet of climbing, which took me 25 minutes to get up with an average power of 207 and NP of 20,9 and a max of 329 W over a steep little ramp.
But, as I said, I was starting to fall apart due to a lack of cooling. I was so hot, there was no wind, and the humidity was off the charts, and I could feel my HR going up fast. At this point my HR was peaking close to my LTHR, which is 179. I lost my friend Rob halfway up the climb, and he was on a good day and just scampering up the hills due to his light weight and about the same FTP as me. He told me that after I told him to go, he ran about 230-250 Watts until the end.
So, from this point, mentally, I was struggling. I had the fuel, I had been drinking and eating but my core temp was just rising. For close to the next hour, I was on the struggle bus. I felt as if I could barely turn the pedals. My average power for this stretch was 161 watts while my NP was 173, coasting a lot, and I could feel myself getting slower and slower. There was nothing I could do about it. I was about three miles from my planned aid stop at this point and was just hoping for an ice-cold Coke and some time off the bike to regroup.
But just as I was about to start the climb to the rest area, a storm came in. The temps dropped close to 15 degrees, and the rain, oh ma,n the rain. It was like heaven to me. In literally a matter of minutes, I rebounded. I made the next climb up to the aid station, which was about a 5% gradient, 644 feet of climbing in about 25 minutes. But my power was back. I averaged 191 watts with an NP 204. I stopped at the top, filled my bottles with water, added my drink mix, slammed a small Coke, and had zebra cake in about four minutes.
From there, it was like a whole new me. I went screaming down the second big descent on the day in 18 minutes, covering about six miles and dropping 1,215 feet. Man, I was back to feeling giddy again. I hit the bottom of the descent, made a right, and all I could see was a long tree-covered climb, the last ascent of the day.
The main portion of the climb from the bottom was about 3.5 miles with a gradient of around 5.5 percent and 1,040 feet of climbing, with some steep little loose techy ramps that stung. For this section, I managed to hold an average power of 200 with an NP of 205 and maxed out at close to 600 on one of the ramps for about 10 seconds. But I was still feeling good.
The last bit after the main climb was like a false flat drag. And after the rain, it felt like we were riding quicksand. Pushing power, going slow, and wheels just dragging to get through. It was roughly a six-mile false flat. My goal was to just keep pressure on the pedals, as I knew I just had a super-fast descent to the finish line with one last steep ramp to climb to the finish. For that six-mile drag to the descent, my average power was 185 with an NP of 195. But it felt like an eternity to get there.
I hit that last descent, which was about four miles to the finish. It took me 13:39 to get to the finish from there. In that stretch, I averaged 151 watts with an NP of 171, and to close out my effort up the last ramp pushed 731 for 8 seconds, which literally put me on my knees by the time I got to the finish.
For the day, I covered 62.49 miles, 6,606 feet of climbing in 4:57:02, average power 177 with an NP of 197. My average HR was 160 (top end of my Z3) with a max of 174, which was about five beats below my LTHR. Kcals on the day were 3611. My fueling for the day was two 25-oz bottles to start with 120 grams of carbs. I filled up at the aid station around mile 45 with 120 grams in each bottle. I took six gels that each had 30 grams of carbs and three tubes of Clif Blocs. When I finished the race, I had half a bottle left and one gel. Looking at the total day, you can see I did a really good job at managing my power until I hit mile 25 when it started to drop, due to the heat.
Hope you enjoyed the recap.
Contact Coach Anthony James, certified NICA coach and experienced mountain bike skills instructor, at [email protected] or 414.915.6788.
