Ride Reports.

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Mark Cheyne's attempt at the TWMBT was the first, read his story

On Wed, June 2 I rode 98 miles from Madison to Hazel Green, and that felt fine, except for the most epic T-storm I've ever seen let alone ridden in for a few hours. Nancy at the Ambrosia Inn showed me to a nice cabin, dried my clothes, and set me up with breakfast while i went to the tavern for dinner. At least the storm gave me some confidence that riding in bad conditions wasn't all that bad.
In the AM, I rode 3 miles down STH 80 to the historical landmark at the border for a 7:15 start, and started to follow the GPS breadcrumb trail. The typical rolling Wisconsin prairie there for awhile felt fine and familiar. I even hit a short stretch of gravel within an hour, that was a surprise! One thing that was eerie riding by GPS without cues in unfamiliar country was that I never really took much note of what road I was on, nor could take note of how far from a given landmark I was. In time, especially the lack of distance info started to weigh on me, but that was later. The first major landscape change was as I descended into the MS river valley and hit a slough at what I think is the bottom of Indian Creek Rd a short while after Dickeyville. I saw the magnitude of the climb out the other side - "holy crap...", and rolled to a stop in the boat launch to switch my flipflop from 'road' gear to 'offroad, or hills' gear. Still not enough, I started my first stretch of short hikeabike until the grade mellowed out. This began a pattern that continues at least as far as Viroqua - a pattern that is not surprising for the Driftless Area, but still it surprised me in its relentlessness and how quickly I drained, a new feeling for me even though I've ridden the Driftless Area of Dane, Iowa, and Richland counties many times. That's the difference a loaded bike makes. Huh, lesson #1.
This route follows the most isolated, scenic, furthest back backroads. And I guess they tend to be the steepest too. It was spectacular. I really really enjoyed the route. The pattern was to race down a valley, cross it or go around a ridge, then climb out the other side back up to the prairie, then repeat. Great little towns, scenes of river life that somehow feel more Missouri than Wisconsin, and deeply incised green landscape that feels like the gores of the Green Mountains.
My flipflop changes were always slower than they should be, and I was taking enough breaks that my rest:riding ratio became rather shocking, and my overall pace was getting pretty slow as I fatigued from humping my loaded bike up every valley in too-big a gear. By the time I crossed the WI River near Prairie du Chien it was 2PM and I had my first few decisions. First, was getting an easier gear an option? I called the Prairie Pedaller to see if they had any ring/cog combos that would give me an easier road gear. No luck. In the end, I decided it didn't matter anyway - the route is either up or down, too easy or too hard regardless of what single gear I could have. On to the second decision - should I try to press on to Viroqua or be satisfied with a 75 mile day on day 1? By 3, after stocking up on bars and a few sub sandwiches, I decided to press on. This is an example of a case where it would have helped if I'd prepared a bit better and known just how far it was to Viroqua.
The course north of Prairie du Chien is particularly cruel. You'll see it - a squared-off sawtooth back and forth as you go from one valley/ridge to the next. Sometimes after 10 miles of riding, over an hour in my case, I'd be 2 miles away as the crow flies over the ridge. Again, the course is beautiful - where another course might be less heartbreaking, this one does not compromise in its quest to hit every beautiful top of the world ridge crest and cool shaded valley bottom.
And I continued to slow. I had maps, but no cues, and I didn't have the route hilited on the maps. I had the route on the GPS, basically a dotted line on an otherwise blank screen. I resorted to some basics - 'Well, it was 10 fingers across the map from the start to the WI River, and that was 75 miles, and let's see... its another 10 fingers to Viroqua, so I guess that's another 75 miles. And I'm pretty much at 10mph now, so that means it'll be after 10 PM...' I started to think about how I could either stop or get there faster. I was on Taylor Ridge Rd at Haney Valley Rd, a place I was surprised to recognize from a ride I did one from Richland Center, that I realized the course must cross STH 27 at Mt Sterling. From there, if I left the course it was 20 miles on 27 to Viroqua. So that's what I did, arriving just before 9PM after 137 miles and 14 hours.
At the motel, I tried to think what to do - my pace had slowed from 13.5 on my first day to 12.5 on the morning of the race course, to 10 in the afternoon. If it stayed like that, I'd simply run out of vacation time to keep going and get home. And the further north I got, the less happy family would be about driving across the state to bail me out. It seemed prudent to take the next day as a litmus test - if my pace stabilized, I might continue for a few more days, maybe to Hatfield before I bailed or turned around for a railtrail ride home. If it didn't stabilize, a car ride home would be prudent. Either way, I was a bit disheartened to know, on the first day, that my race was done, mostly by my own hubris or lack of awareness in my bike choice. Next time, for me at least, a fully geared bike is a must.
At 5:30AM, my alarm woke me up at the motel, and I heard the sound of sheets of heavy rain outside the window. That did wonders for my motivation. I tried to go back to sleep and couldn't. So I got everything together and got back on the road about 7 for a wet windy 21 mile ride back to Mt Sterling to get back on the course. A few minutes before 9, I arrived, about a half hour after the rain stopped. Seeing that the course headed west back to the river near Ferryville before it would continue back east to Viroqua, I figured I was in for a day of valley, ridge, repeat. And I could only guess that it was about 50 miles of it. So I put the bike in offroad gear right there in Mt Sterling, and there it stayed all day. By the afternoon my fatigue reached a level where I didn't even feel spun out on what short 'flats' I encountered.
I was feeling OK, but just slow as snot. I really enjoyed riding, and the course, as I dried out and warmed up over the course of the day. I started thinking how the previous day might have gone differently, and how 'real' racers might do their first day. When I had talked about the race with Joe at the Chequamegon 100, he mentioned the possibility of bandit camping if needed - an idea I dismissed at the time as impractical in Wisconsin with the density of development and attitudes towards private property. I had the mindset that you had to connect state or county campsites and motel-equipped towns. Today, I was starting to see the alternative. If I had understood that Viroqua was 160 miles from Hazel Green, I might have done that first day different - started earlier, been more focused in break times, to keep forward progress happening. With foreknowledge, determination, (and gears in my case), it is doable, especially for faster racers. For others, you might have to bandit on the stretch after Mt Sterling. For the first time, I started looking at the countryside from that perspective- where could I find an out-of-sight flat spot with easy road access at which I might have pitched a tarp? I started to see them. The course takes a big out/back rectangle towards Ferryville. Especially on the short and second long sides of that rectangle, I saw candidate sites. I thinks that is Rutter Hill Rd and especially Rush Creek Rd. First there was an abandoned farm with a garage building on the right, and a silo and other outbuildings on the left. Later, on Rush Creek Rd, there was a small green uninhabited, for-sale cabin up a steep driveway on the right, with a porch. And a bit later on the same road, after (or before?) you round an epic cliffside turn is a stream ford on the right you could cross and be out of sight behind a hedgerow. There was maybe even a corner of cemetery on Prairie Rd. So those were the sorts of things I started to see - abandoned farms, uninhabited for-sale properties, and hidden hedgerows. I just lacked faith on that first day, or I'd have made better mileage and slept better (assuming I could sleep in the pouring rain to come during the night). More unexpected lessons.
It was probably a bit after noon when I started to see what appeared to be a GPX glitch scroll onto the screen. The track went up up up Sidie Hollow Rd, I think, and then seemed to make an almost 180 and make a perfectly straight line back south, then it became a jumble. I figured it was a glitch in the prelim GPX that I had massaged myself, it looked like the sort of join between two tracks when they gap or overlap. As I got to that 180, I was surprised to see that it was real - Campsite Rd, to Sidie Hollow County Park! And that jumble? Singletrack for an hour! Have fun navigating that singletrack, everybody, it reminded me of the Cheq10 warren of trails, complete with lost GPS reception under the canopy. So you could camp here, at about 150 miles - either up on the ridge before you enter the singletrack, or down below, on the lake afterwards. Not that you are likely to stay here - if you make it this far, its only an hour further to Viroqua, which I made about 3PM, after 8 hours and 65 miles, 6 hours and 43 miles of it on the race course from Mt Sterling - that makes the race course 160 miles from Hazel Green to Mt Sterling. And the most unrelenting hilly course I've seen. If you know the Horribly Hilly Hundred or Dairyland Dare, this is more hills, and steeper, for longer. Whew! Super challenging, but super gorgeous too - a wonderful sample of what Wisconsin holds. In that, as a way to see Wisconsin, it is a home run.
So you can see that I failed that litmus test - on my 3rd day of riding, my pace continued to slow, and though I felt good and had fun, especially on the surprise singletrack, I just didn't have power in my legs anymore. As I sat at the Viroqua Food Coop, conveniently right at a turn of the race course off Main St, I arranged a ride home. Since I had a few hours to wait, I decided to ride the course east of Viroqua for awhile to see if my guess that it changes landscape from crazy hilly river country back to familiar rolling prairie held true. I rode about 5 miles, and I think so. I suspect that the course east to the KVR, then beyond to Sparta, presents a more reasonable challenge. But I was comfortable with my choice - my power was so low, I could hardly keep turning even on these gentler grades. So I rode back to the mexican restaurant to await my chauffeur home.
I'm of course going to be nagged whether with another day or two I would have achieved a steady state, and with a geared bike, I think I would have - and I wouldn't have been so drained in the first place. Next time. Have fun, all you racers, I wish you good luck and fortitude.
 
Mark Cheyne, June 6th, 2010.