Earlier this year Mel and I were talking about different bicycling adventures, schedules, and travel. I had my eye on doing the 2023 Ride the Rockies in Colorado. I was looking forward to riding in the mountains again after having so much fun last year. I was looking forward to the massive climbs and descents that are part of this ride. However it didn’t make sense this year with other things we want to do and wanting ample time for our Granddaughters. Instead I found a local 1 day ride called the Horribly Hilly Hundreds in Blue Mounds Wi. This was the 20th year for a ride that is all about challenging climbs and bombing down steep descents. It is a fundraiser for Blue Mound State Park with a 100k (62 miles), 150k (93 miles) or 200k (124 miles) option. The 200k route totaled ~11,000’ of “coasting” up hills. Of course this is what I signed up for because why not…

I was blessed to have a friend also sign up for this craziness which was great. It is so much better to have someone to share the fun (and pain) with in both training and the event day. So for about 8 weeks we worked on speed, endurance, and hill climbing. Knowing it was not nearly enough time to be completely trained – we still gave it a shot. Last Saturday was the ride. There were a total of 1,200 riders from 12 to 79 in the event.

We started at 6:45 am with a mass start. Immediately we knew we were in the company of so many strong riders! These folks were flying both down and up hills. But that’s ok.. it wasn’t a race for us…. We were just hoping to finish. To get a sense of the hills, most were at least 8-10% grade. Some were 15% and one measured 19%!!! This meant very difficult riding up and exhilarating descents. This translates to some climbs at 3mph up at maximum effort and 40-46 mph down.

All was going great until about mile 72. I ended up eating something at a rest stop that really upset my stomach I wasn’t able to eat or drink anything for a couple hours of riding. I was burning about 800 calories per hour and not being able to drink or replace the calories isn’t sustainable. It also significantly slowed my pace and made cramping a real possibility. So.. at the 4th rest stop (mile 97) I decided to shorten the ride and took a detour to get to the finish. I knew trying to do another 27 miles was risky with minimal energy and I was also scheduled to preach the next morning – which is much more important than a bike ride. Even though I cut off the miles, I still had to complete the hardest challenge of the whole event. The final climb to the top of Blue Mound State Park. This is about 3.25 miles of climbing, 910’ of elevation gain and the steepest part over the last 1/4 mile. Being short of calories and fluids I stopped a few times to keep from cramping. However I never walked at all. We finished to the encouragement of spectators and family at the end. Overall it was 9 hours riding, 105 miles ridden, 10,125’ climbed and I lost 6 pounds.

This ended up being one of the most difficult endurance events I have completed. At times it was Horrible but it was at all times fun. I could look at this as a disappointment not meeting my original goal of doing all the miles. Or the fact that I was definitely one of the slower riders. However that would overlook the blessings from doing something like this.

I had a great time doing “hill rides” with friends for weeks. I had amazing support from friends and my wife during the event. I did the most climbing ever in a single day. I watched my riding friend do more than he thought he could, and I was able to ride through some beautiful scenery all day.

In the end I call that a great day in the middle of something that was Horribly Hilly…