For the third year in a row, we completed the Ulcer Century, around Utah Lake.  Once again we rode our tandem.  We were joined this year by my brother, Mike and his friend, Steve.  The four of us stayed together for the entire event.  One of their friends also started with and another friend was on a tandem, with his 14 year old son and rode much of the ride with us.

My Brother Mike

Whereas the weather was hot the last two years, this year was cool.  There was even a forecast of rain so we carried rain jackets along, but fortunately we never needed them.  The cool weather really helped because we were not overheating. We started out with arm warmers and a vest but for most of the ride we were in short sleeves.   We made our first stop at 26 miles because some of the other riders in our group were off the back.  Our average speed to that point was 21.2 mph.   After waiting for them to arrive at the rest stop, one decided to switch to the 60 mile route, so we headed back.

This year they changed the lunch stop to mile 47, right off the shore of Utah Lake.  But we did not expect a lunch stop so early in the ride and flew right by it.  Consulting the route sheet indicated there was no food until mile 68, so we plugged on.  Before we reached that rest stop the winds started to pick up and it looked like we might have a headwind.  Our speed started to slow slightly but we continued to make good time.  When we finally reached mile 68, our overall average speed had dropped to 20.3 mph.

It was not like the lunch stop last year where they had sandwiches we could enjoy sitting on the lawn of a park.  It was more the typical rest stop stuck on some corner in the gravel.  But we were running low on fuel and needed to eat what they had on hand.  The other tandem arrived before we departed and joined again with us.  We didn’t want to stick around too long so after about 14 minutes we headed out at 11:18 am.

It was now only about 40 miles to the finish, not bad I thought.  We should be able to finish that in 2 hours and certainly come in before 1:30 pm.  But as we started to bike we realized the turn we had made now had us heading into a headwind.   The last two years that 40 mile stretch was a tailwind and we were thinking something was not right because we had not enjoyed any tailwind on the way there.  We started to realize that it was one of the rides where it feels like a headwind the entire loop.

Driving into a headwind was made worse by a long series of rollers that went on the far side of Utah Lake.  The combination made it seem to go on forever.  After about 20 miles we made another quick stop, mainly just to get some relief from driving into the wind.  Our average speed for that 20 mile segment was 18 mph, still not too bad.

Even though our stop was only 7 minutes, it seemed like someone had turned the wind fan up another notch.  I wish we had some way to measure the wind speed.   The last 20 miles were our slowest, averaging only 16 mph.  So that last 40 miles took us quite a bit longer than the past two years when we had a tail wind on that section.

We don’t have a picture of us, so here is the one from last year.  Notice how it was sunny in 2008!  Also this year we wore our Keen cycling sandals for the whole ride instead of cycling shoes.

Franz’s average heart rate of 150 was slightly higher than last year.  Looking at the segments is more revealing.  For the first 68 miles to our first stop for food, the average heart rate was 152, and we averaged 20.3 mph.  The next 20 miles into the wind the average heart rate had increased to 155 and our speed dropped to 18.3 mph.  For the last twenty miles fatigue was setting in and Franz’s average heart rate was now down to 144 and the speed showed a corresponding drop to 16 mph.

This table shows a comparison with the last two years.  Overall we were very happy with how we did, especially considering the headwinds at the end.

Categories: Cycling
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