Chet Warman Memorial Ride (6 Gaps)

The 6 Gaps ride is considered to be one of the hardest single day rides in the northeastern US. Most versions of this ride start and finish in Rochester, VT and cover 132 miles including Brandon, Middlebury, Lincoln, Appalachian, Roxbury, and Rochester gaps, in that order.The Chet Warman Memorial Ride included that same route but start/finished in Pittsfield, VT, about 10 miles to the south, adding almost 20 miles of flat roads. It was $100 to participate but was for a good cause and was fully supported.

This type of ride isn’t one that I try and tackle very often. In fact, my previous longest ever day (May 2010) was ~125 miles in something like 6.5 or 7 hours saddle time. That day included Wells Ave and several other high intensity efforts.

6 Gaps would be different.From what I’ve read, 7.5-8 hours is a good saddle time for the 132 mile route. That means I would be doing great if I ended up with 8.5-9 hours saddle time for our 151 mile route. I didn’t know how my body would respond after that many hours.My worst fear was not finishing, and I really did not want to blow up completely and not be able to make it over a gap. On the flats you can move at a decent pace even if you’re only pushing say 2 W/kg. On 10% grade you won’t even move with that low of power. If you blow badly on this ride you’re done.

Then there’s the question of how beneficial this is to my training. As a cat3 very few races are longer than 3 hours.Even the p12 races rarely go longer than 4 hours. What good is it to practice riding for 9 hours? I’d sacrifice intensity training, risk injury, and likely miss additional training days while I recovered.

But of course I had to try. I’ll never know if I don’t. Plus, when my teammates Landen and Alex said they wanted to do it, I couldn’t say no. None of us had ever done a ride quite like this before.

We stayed with Landen’s parents’ place in Barre on Friday and Saturday nights which was great. The 6-gaps group started at 6:30 AM which meant a 4:30 wakeup call. I still felt rushed and didn’t really get in my usual race-morning routine. Unfortunately, my Powertap is once again not working and I do not have power data for the ride.

It was a cool morning, near 100% humidity, but it was going to heat up fast. There were about 30 of us doing the 6-gaps ride. The 2 and 4 gaps groups went off later in the day. I was surprised to see a wide range of bikes were in use including everything from road to triathlon and even mountain bikes.

Riding to the Brandon Gap turnoff went fast. We were cruising right along at first as a larger rider on a p2c led the way across the flats. Then he lost his water bottle and had to stop. Then Alex decided he needed to adjust his saddle height so we stopped again.Yes, we gave him a hard time about that. Then, as we were sort of chasing back on, Landen and I both lost bottles over the same pothole so we stopped again. Great start!

It might have been for the better though. We rode over Brandon at our own pace. For me it was a nice solid tempo effort although I did back off a little and get gapped by the top. No big deal though as the three of us regrouped at the feed station at the top. If every gap went that smoothly it'd be way too easy.

There were feed stations at the summit of each of the 6 gaps. I grabbed 1 or 2 bars, 1 or 2 bottles of water/sports mix, a banana, and maybe a cookie or something at each one. I was trying to stay topped off fuel-wise and I think I did a pretty good job.

The descent on Brandon is mostly straight with only a few big turns and I hit my highest speed of the day, 54.6 mph.You hold 30-40 mph for what feels like forever.

We took turns in the wind as we made our way around Lake Dunmore and to Middlebury Gap. Rt125 was under some major construction and we were advised to take the dirt road option which reportedly doesn’t sacrifice any vertical. The construction really murdered this road though making it miserable to ride on. I like riding on dirt, but this was more like riding on gravel with sharp potholes. I was relieved that none of us flatted.

The middle section of Middlebury Gap is flat when you approach it from the west and we were still in take it easy mode. We passed a few riders around here but were then caught by a group of 6 or 7 right before things got steep. I’m not sure where they came from.

When things did get steep, the presence of the additional riders made the pace much more aggressive. Again, I backed off the pace before going into the red. Landen and Alex fought it out with another rider and we regrouped at the summit. This didn't hurt too bad because I still had my race legs.

Another fast descent and before I knew it we were heading north on Rt 100. What a beautiful road for cycling. We were a group of 8 at that point and made great time. Everyone was cooperative. A quick natural break before setting a very reasonable pace up Granville Gulch and suddenly we were on Lincoln Gap.Saddle time at that point was about 3.5 hours but it felt more like 45 minutes to an hour tops.

Lincoln Gap Road kicks pretty hard immediately after turning off 100 but then goes flat for a mile or two. Landen charged ahead of the rest of us who were all approaching the climb very cautiously. Everyone’s heard of the notorious 20-24% gradients that lie ahead. I’d driven it once in Erica’s car and we barely made it!

The real part of the climb starts on dirt. That was steep, but I pedaled as softly as I could get away with knowing that the worst was yet to come. I had made no changes whatsoever to my gearing and that left me with a 40/26, a much bigger gear than I would have liked. I prefer to grind a big gear, but this was just ridiculous.

Once I hit the pavement I knew it was about a mile or 15-20 minutes of super ridiculous 20% average gradient. At first I tried to straight shot it but it quickly became apparent that there was no way I would be able to pull that off. My cadence was like 3 and it was so hard to produce power. I resorted to making a slalom course out of the climb and slowly made my way, 1 turn at a time.

Most of the others in my group kicked my butt, except Alex, who had a worse gear than me (39/25). He was walking before we were half way up. I think he refused to zig-zag. It didn’t matter much anyways because walking isn’t really that much slower than zig-zagging. I did lose my balance at one point because of a car and have to put my foot down, so I can’t say I cleaned the ride. Maybe I’ll have to go back.

We went all the way down to the valley floor after Lincoln.The descent was a bit crazy because I was using 99% braking power with all the tight turns. We had been warned that the road was washed out in places, but it didn’t seem so bad. Once again the roads between the climbs were enjoyable and we were at App Gap in no time.

Next up was App Gap, which can be broken up into Baby Gap and App Gap Proper. There is a descent in between the two. I felt darn good on Baby Gap considering I had nearly 5 hours of saddle time.We were a group of 6 at that point and climbed at a pace that felt like it was right around my threshold. On the lower parts of Baby Gap I set the pace but I started to fade quickly on the top half and got a little gapped. I think Landen was gradually increasing the pace and he rode away from us once again.That allowed me to catch back on the group before the downhill section where we soft pedaled. I rode hard until the top parts of App Gap Proper where it got steep again. This is where I really started to have the power sucked out of me for the day.

Alex wasn’t feeling well on App Gap and had to abandon. This put our group down to 5.

It was getting really hot at this point, mid 80’s, 50% RH, and a brutally hot sun. I felt like I was on a frying pan on the top parts of App Gap. It was OK though because I was pretty sure I would finish the ride at this point. I was tired but still had a little gas left.

One of our group members pulled a Sylvain Chavanel move on the descent and tried to go it alone. Brave soul.When we got to Rt 100 again we could see him dangling out there about a minute ahead, but there was a wicked headwind and he eventually came back. The cracks on this road were also pretty bad.Seems like they get worse every year. I’ll be nervous running my carbon wheels here come GMSR.

Roxbury Gap was the only one of the 6 gaps I’d never seen before. The others I had ridden or at least driven. The lower part of Roxbury goes up the new GMSR TT course so I was familiar with that. We rode a pace that was either hard tempo or threshold for me.Once again I detached from our group not long after making the right hand turn to the upper half of the climb. I was obviously the weakest of our remaining 5.This was actually a pretty good point to be the weakest guy because it meant I’d get a ride to the final gap after we regrouped.

I plugged away really slowly on the top parts of this one and again had to make slalom turns to get to the top. I was shattered. No cramping, and I’m not even sure it was a true bonk. My legs just couldn’t press on the pedals very hard. I think it was more just frustrating than it was painful. I also stopped to try and have a natural break but was too bloated.

My group had waited for me at the top of Roxbury which was a huge relief. For a while there I got worried that I’d be so far behind that they’d leave. Once again I topped off my bottles, reloaded on food, and set off on the descent. Unlike most of the other descents though, this one was no fun. The road had such bad washboard bumps that it was super painful for your hands.

The haul on Rt12 south was very long but we were crushing it. When we were on 100S it was obviously a nasty headwind and we weren’t even going 20mph. Somehow we were holding closer to 22mph on 12. We made a quick stop at a market where I had a cookie, Coke, and Starburst candy. I think I was lacking sugar, and I definitely benefited from the caffeine. I just need enough to get to the top of the next gap.

On the very bottom of Rochester Gap I said goodbye to my group and rode at my own extremely easy pace after a successful natural break. Like the other gaps, I knew that this one was way steeper near the top so I wanted to pace myself accordingly. I also tried to avoid doing the slalom turns as much as possible, and for the most part, I didn’t need to.

Landen was waiting for me at the tight right-hand turn near the top where many of the trees go away. He had ridden hard to that point and was cramping badly. He knew I was shattered and figured we might as well finish up together.

It was so hot by this point that I was eyeballing tree shade up the road (which there was very little of) and counting down the seconds until I got there. Any time out of the sun was helpful. We decided that this was one of the very few times where it would be OK to ride without a helmet and we went bare-head the rest of the way to the top.What a difference that makes when you’re climbing at 4mph in the scorching hot sun.

But we were done! I was euphoric. The Rochester descent was great, and we took turns pulling back down Rt100 to Pittsfield. Somehow we still had the legs to keep the pace around 20mph and it went by fast. Flat roads are so much easier than the gaps. I stopped the computer at 150.1 miles, 9:02 ride time, and almost exactly 10 hours total elapsed time. Faster than I expected to go.

So I made it. My legs are toast but in a good way. I was worried that my knees would take a beating by doing this but so far they feel fine. That’s a huge relief. I did 1.5 or 2 hours of snail’s pace riding on Sunday and will do more of the same on Monday. Possibly on Tuesday I will be able to ride hard again, but it may not be until Wednesday. Hopefully this will make me a bunch stronger but if not, I still had a darn good time.

I did ride with a camera and got some pictures but it fell apart in my back pocket and needs a little repair. Hopefully I can add some pictures soon. Thanks for reading.