Anyone else doing the MS150 this weekend? Anyone done it before? This will be my first time and would appreciate any tips. Hell, I dont even know what one should eat the night before a 100-mile ride..... And of course you can donate to the MS Society at http://www.ms150.org/MS150/donate/donate.cfm?id=52849.
Man, that thing is a BLAST!!!!! Unfortunately I really, really hated this wet and cold winter so I stayed OUT of shape and off the bike for far too long to consider doing it in any decent bike shape. In fact, I think I was MORE than ready last year. OK to start with, you're gonna be just fine. What kinda bike you riding? You'll see all kinds of people, fat, skinny, small, tall, old, young, road bikes, mountain bikes, recumbant bikes. EVERYTHING. dont try and beat anyone, go at your own pace. There'll be a fair share of posers and wanna-bees tryin' to look all baddass. IGNORE THEM. For this final week, I did nothing over 20 miles at a real easy pace (may last two 50+ mile rides were the weekend before). Basically, you're in as good as shape as your gonna be for this weekend so save you energy but keep your legs loose. The support along the way is simply f^cking awesome. There will be stops every 12-15 miles or so. Gatorade, water, bananas, power bars, oranges etc... they really do take care of you. I dont know if its true, but I did the carb overload the week of. I think the night before I had rigatoni and a salad. The morning of, definately eat breakfast. Bananas are the best. Oh and of course, be drinking alot of water, but you should do that anyway. The only thing I would have changed this year was to ride slower. I was really hauling a$$ the first day and I paid for it the next day. Remember the 2nd day is the hill country so save yourself. Keep your pace at around 17-19mph even though you may feel good, just take it easy and conserve. Don't try and keep up with the hotshots. Just go at you're own pace. Oh yeah, USE sunscreen! Shieet, I'm mexican and got the **** burnt out of my neck and arms. Use it both days and lots of it! Take a picture when you get to Austin. I had this guy take a pic as soon as I arrived in Austin on the most incredible natural high ever. It shows, my skin is glistening, my eyes are clear and I felt AWESOME!!!! Endorphines kickass! Enjoy man, let us know in this thread how it went, ok? Damn, I wish I would gotten in shape. What a slacker!
Stupid question time...how the heck do you get back to Houston? Do you need to make travel arrangements beforehand, or do they load all the bikes in a truck and give you a ride back?
Your bike gets on an 18 wheeler and you get on a bus. Its all organized really good. You're bike is in Houston before you are...at least mine was.
I'm riding a hybrid, with slicks on them. I trained on my knobby tires for a month and switched to the slicks last weekend. I did a 60-mile ride on Saturday around Montgomery and survived, but I think I overdid it as far as speed goes. When you are riding by yourself and you forgot your watch you sorta forget to pace yourself. I know that the hybrid is not as smooth as a road bike but I'm a mountain biker on the weekends and I could justify buying an entire bike for this. I did change some things on my bike. I added one of those seats with the canyon down the middle to save my ass, I bought some slick tires as mentioned earlier, I raised my seat about 2 inches to get a better angle, and I added two water bottle holders (one for H2O, one for Gatorade). I also bought some gloves with gel in them which may or may not have been worth the 25 bucks. On Saturday I blew off the sunscreen because at 7am it was foggy and cool. By 11am the sun had burned through and I now have a farmer's tan. I cannot imagine what an entire day w/o protection would have done to me. I'm figuring 8 hours of road time a day if you include breaks for lunch, stretching, and bathroom. Is the second day as bad as they make it out to be?
I've never ridden this but cycled around Austin alot when I lived there. It gets worse when you get closer to Austin because you will encounter rolling hills, and maybe some steep hills. There's that one hill on the trail around Buffalo Bayou in town, and then if you go out on highway 6, there's a hill about 25 miles out of town, but you haven't seen hills until you've gotten to the *hill country*.
Second day soreness for me was NECK and ASS! Probably a good idea with the new seat, but your ass is gonna hurt either way. I mean your cheeks!OW!!!!! Your neck you cant do much about. Its from looking up bent over for 7 hours. Oh well. I think I finished the first day in about 7hrs. I stoped every 20 miles until the very end, then I was stopping every damn stop. The last few miles of the first day, I kept looking at my cyclometer, slowly moving 96.5...96.6...96.7. DUDE, I WAS HURTING!!! Those last few miles of 100 miles are a b****! The second day isnt that bad and its shorter. The hills are ok, but not that bad. I accidentally went into Beuchler park which was supposedly hillier and about 12 miles longer. It wasnt that bad but it wasnt easy. Take the long slow hill along 71 if you're worried about hills, especially on a hybrid. I was on my road bike and still suffered in that hilly park. Good luck!
I've riddent the MS150 for the past two years. As long as it's not raining and the wind is not blowing against you it's a great ride. Like Oily said, there are plenty of rest stops with tons of food, drinks etc... The main thing is not to take it too fast for your endurance level and if you have clipless pedals, don't clip in at the mass start. Wait until you are pretty sure you can pedal freely without someone running into you. Also, don't forget your sunscreen and drink plenty of fluids. Even if you don't feel like drinking, drink. Drink constantly. Drink a lot of water the night before. Eat breakfast, lunch and snack at the rest stops. The last thing you want to do is cramp up because of dehydration or bonk because you didn't eat enough.
mr oily, I'd be cautious about using the words "soreness" and "ass" in the same sentence...especially with a monikor like yours.
Mr. Oily (and anyone else interested in the ride): It was a fantastic experience. Got up at 4:45 Saturday, snarfed down two sausage biscuits and a fried egg, and made it to Tully by 6am. Filled up my camelback with water and my water bottle with Gatorade and got in line. There were almost 11,000 people riding this weekend, and the majority of us were at Tully. Lucky for us, one of the Reliant volunteers got us a decent spot near the front of the line so we were able to leave by 7:20. After hearing ZZTop's "La Grange" blasted on some stereo four times, we were finally off and running. As soon as we left Houston, we hit the fog. It was cold and dewy but it stayed with us until around 9:30, and kept the sun off of us. We hooked up with the Rhodes rider somewhere north of Brookshire and made lunch in Bellville by 10:20. Then the sun kicked in. I took waay too much time chilling out at lunch, checking out all the people and chatting with different folks, so I didnt hit the road again until 11:40. By the next rest stop it was getting really hot, people started slowing down. The rest stops seemed really congested with people pounding water and laying under trees. I think a lot of them were like me, still trying to get a feel for the hills and when to shift and how to pace ourselves. Lots of people eating bananas and pounding Advil to keep away cramps. Still spirits were really high and the volunteers were great. 20 miles outta La Grange it got a little more hilly and a lot more hot. My legs felt fine although my hands were a but numb from gripping the bars. When we got to the last reststop I figured that I had consumed over 4 camelbacks of water and 6 waterbottles of gatorade. However, with only 10 miles left there was still some juice in the tank and we hoofed it to La Grange. Outside of La Grange I saw one very bad wreck where 3 paramedics were working on a guy who had eaten it at the bottom of a hill. That was the only serious accident I saw on the whole ride so that was a blessing. We made to La Grange at 4:15 to cheering, cold beer, and a 30-minute massage....and a shower, thank god. Stayed in my corporate tent. Good grub. Forgot my air mattress but I was so tired it didnt matter. Asleep by 9pm. Woke up at 4:15, packed up, and (tsk tsk) tried to sneak out of the park early to get a head start. Got busted by cops so went back to line....we were still early so we were in the 4th group out. Once again we had the fog/mist but this lasted until 10:30, so it was cool the entire ride. I dreaded the second day because I feared all the hills but I thought they were a blast. Yeah, going up was horrible but shooting down hills at 30mph on a mountain bike was way too fun. I made killer time on the second day, rarely stopping except to grab more water or pee...got to Elgin by noon. We were 20 miles from Austin and figured we'd be there by 1pm. Then, suddenly, a headwind kicked in....and we hit the "wall" people had spoken about...where you start going more on willpower than anything else. Despite the fact that we were all slowing down, everyone around us was as well, so we joked a lot about pain and wind and how much we think Austin's hills are overrated. The scenery was beautiful, esp the bluebonnets everywhere, and that kept our mind off our screaming quads. Arrived at 2:04 in Austin, great screaming crowds..cold beer, a quick shower, and a drive to Chuy's Hula Hut for Shiner Bock fajitas and queso compuesto. When I finally got back to Tully my bike was waiting for me. Nice program. Very well organized. Cool people. I raised over 700 bucks, too. Glad I did it. I'll do it again next year.
mateo... off topic but since I'm sure I will be spending some of my time this weekend at it i thought i'd ask you... is this vandy rites of spring thing way overrated?
Probably a bit overrated, but its fun. When I was in school I saw the Chili Peppers, Bo Diddley, and CSN play there. I also saw the administration try to kill it while I was in college. They actually took it off alumni lawn for two years and tried to put it on the soccer fields on the fringes of campus. They were worried about their precious landscaping. The students got pissed off, and in either 1992 or 1993 there was really bad attendance because they had a crappy headliner and Phish was playing nearby. HOWEVER, I read that its been back on alumni lawn for awhile, you can bring 6 beers per person (so make friends with a mormon, and take him with you!!!), and they are trying to make this years Rites of Spring "a musical orgasm". And I think they have a pretty decent lineup of music. Besides, Vanderbilt is chock full of beautful young ladies.
Mateo, Glad you had a good time. I, too, ran into "the wall" right outside of Elgin. As a matter of fact, up until Elgin I was remarking to my riding partner how easy it was going. Wrong! At the last rest stop I ran into an old business aquaintence who was riding the MS150 for the first time. He asked if the last ten miles were "easy". I said unfortunatly not! Normally ten miles is almost not worth gettiing on your bike to ride if you are only going to do ten miles. But that last ten really killed me. All my training consisted of rides up to 65 miles so the second 65 + mile day did me in. We had great weather, though! This is my third year and I've been fortunate to see three years of nice, cool weather. Hopefully it will be that way next year.
When I hit that area that looked like Kansas, with the winding s-curves and the wind kicking in....man I thought I was going to die. Its funny, when I was at the Elgin break point (with all the funk music blasting) I called our friend who was at our tent in Austin, and I _also_ commented how easy things were going. He already knew about the headwind from the riders who had already finished but he spared us that info. I'm glad he didnt tell me.
mateo.. Yep it's back on alumni lawn.. i'm under 21 and I dont think im quite brave enough to see exactly what happens if a minor is caught drinking at that thing.. I know it doesn't stop people at anything else on campus, but I'm sure security will be a lot tighter. The lineup isn't too spectacular.. i guess nappy roots and pat green are the headliners.. they must have spent all their money on counting crows at homecoming. the non texas people when they saw pat green were claiming texas is taking over this school. governor perry's son goes here as well now.. as for the vandy girls. you are right about that. all my friends from houston think it is some dorky school where the girls can't match up with univ of texas.. .. im sure you would agree they match up quite well ... have you been on campus anytime over the last few years. .. they've added quite a bit.. and the chancellor they have now is great... a few weeks ago they had an imposter hustler that claimed the chancellor was dead. that caused quite a bit of stir. made drudge report etc. gotta love the hustler.... Can't knock their landscaping. Even if they were mowing the grass outside my window at 8am!!! I just ended up in towers for next year.. hopefully that won't be too bad.. you ever attend any vandy alumni stuff in houston or no?
It's funny that you mentioned "Kansas". When I was riding through that stretch a couple of guys near me were commenting on how "this really looks like Kansas" and asked if the other guy was homesick yet implying that the other guy was from Kansas. Having never been, I can't really say. What team did you ride for? I was riding for JPMorgan/Chase but most of the people I rode with were on the BP team. Three guys who started with our group (who we train with sometimes) made it into La Grange at 11:30 AM! Those guys are amazing.
Hey Mateo, I am (mildly) glad that to hear you made it back in one piece. Seems like a lot of fun if one is in proper shape to enjoy the ride.
Thanks Cagey. Now I can return to drinking and whatnot on weekends so lets work on a Stros game in the next homestand...Braves are coming to town....man I hate the Braves. 111Chase111 - I work for Reliant so I rode with Team Reliant, however, there were 3 of us on mountain bikes so we were sorta isolated from the road bikes. We did finish in the middle of the pack for our team. We had one guy with tendonitis in his left knee....whenever he stopped riding it locked up....so he rode straight through. He was in at 12:40 on Saturday and 11:30 on Sunday. Amazing, indeed. RocketFan - Texans have always been taking over Vandy. It used to be a joke that every Texan that couldn't get into Duke went to Vanderbilt. UT people can say whatever they want about their ladies, but go to a Vandy vs. Ole Miss football game sometime and its the best the South can offer. Not as many thick heartland women in the SEC.... I met Gordon Gee at a Houston Vandy event a year or so ago....he's pretty funny. I saw the "HUSLTER" article about him as well. I go to Vandy basketball viewing parties from time to time, in fact two seasons ago I organized a few for the alumni org.
