The Dempsey Challenge 2019

Many thanks to all that have supported us in The Dempsey Challenge.  Between my wife and I we got over $1500 in donations this year.  I heard that the challenge as a whole had topped $1.8 million in donations by Sunday morning, a record year.

We were busy late the night before and decided we could get the car loaded up the morning of the event.  That did work out fine but had a few "hiccups" along the way including some severe gastrointestinal issues.  I won't go into details other than that it took a lot of time that was supposed to be spent gathering stuff and loading cars.  And I was loading my wife's bike in the car and checked the charge level on the Di2.  Solid Red.  I assumed that she was expecting to be able to shift during the ride.  Luckily we could plug the charger into the USB port in the car and charge it on the way.

I had applied a $200 donation that would have put me over $1000 to my wife's page and was glad to find out that they could swap it over so I could still get the event jersey.

We got lined up on the street to join the 100 mile ride without lining up in the chute of death when the VIP ride rolled past.  We were going to wait 5 minutes until the 100 milers started but got a personal invitation from Patrick Dempsey himself to roll in.  Absolutely!  The first 5 miles were chilly but at a decent but not super fast pace.  I tried to ride to the start of the pack to say hi to Patrick but I think I passed him by mistake.

We had agreed that I was going to ride with the big boys this year and see if I could get a sub 5 hour century.  And at about mile 5 the big boys started to roll through like a freight train.  I waved goodby to my wife and hopped on.  It wasn't unusual to look down to see that we were doing 25MPH on level ground.  The group started with about 50 people but shrank to about 10 within the fist 10 miles. One of the benefits of being in the first group was that we had our own private police escort that was riding ahead of us and stopping traffic at every cross street, sweet!

Lands End

We got to the turn around point at Land End, 45 miles from the start in about 2 hours, holy shit!  We did have the benefit of a tailwind but the group had averaged 22.5MPH.  Maybe for people that don't ride that doesn't sound that fast but, it is.

The ride from here got less pleasant. Actually the trip up to the mainland wasn't too bad but once we turned toward Freeport I was starting to feel more grim. We lost 2 riders off the back to fatigue and cramps on the first big climb.  I miraculously closed the gap and hung on. At this point in the ride if I lost the draft for more than a few seconds I would have been dropped like a hot potato. This process repeated several times with me grinding to the top of each hill slower and slower.  I really figured it was not going to be if, but when would I get dropped.  I was fighting off cramps that threatened to lock up my legs for the last 15 miles of the ride.  Luckily the group was getting tired too and the pace had dropped enough for me to finish out the ride with them.  Sub 5 hour century complete!  Moving time was actually closer to 4 - 1/2 hours.

Very respectable 6 hour century finish!

I had about 1-1/2 hours to change and hang out waiting for my wife to finish.  Most of the last 15 miles were uphill and upwind.  From there we hung out with some friends, drank some beer, ate some lobster and went home. Tired.

I rode in to work the next morning.  Taint bad.