The Elusive One
The Mon Valley Century is the most cursed ride in southwestern Pennsylvania.
The first time I rode it (2016), the organizers abbreviated the route at 80 miles due to a landslide on Bunola Road. Despite everyone missing a waterstop that the organizers decided to move at the last minute, I went and actually rode the missing 20-mile segment of Bunola Road solo just fine to finish with 100 miles.
The ride wasn’t even held the next two years due to additional reconstruction of Bunola Road.
In 2019, the event returned, finally avoiding Bunola Road completely, and tacking the missing mileage onto the start of the ride, which cuts across quiet and scenic Pennsylvania farmland. However, in true cursed fashion, the organizers didn’t provide GPS directions, large sections of the route were on milled or loose gravel roads, and one rest stop consisted of two empty cooler jugs and a canister of Gatorade powder dumped on the side of the road, unattended and with no water source in sight. Truly PedalPGH levels of negligence!
So perhaps it’s good that the tiny ham radio club that organizes the event didn’t even bother to announce a ride this year (or its cancellation). Over my five summers in Pittsburgh, they've hosted just 1.8 rides, a sparse 36% success rate.
Presuming they had cancelled it due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I was left to simulate the mid-August event on my own on the indoor trainer, as I’ve done with all my other annual cycling events. On the plus side, at home I can count on getting something to eat and drink at the rest stops!
My process should now be as familiar to you as it is to me. I consulted the Zenturizer to find the Zwift routes that most closely matched the 2019 MVC ride’s 102 miles and 5,925 feet of climbing. Out of several options, I chose to undertake seven laps of the 15-mile “Greater London 8” course, which includes the short 450-foot climb of Box Hill.
Outdoor temps that ranged from 73-82º made riding much easier. After dancing away from a couple wheelsuckers, I spent the first half of the ride testing my defective Wahoo TICKR heart rate monitor, determining that it will only work if I’m sitting upright in the saddle in the “no-hands” riding position. If I was in any normal riding position - on the bar tops, brake hoods, drops, or even standing - it would give me obviously erroneous readings… if it gave any readings at all. Time to return that piece of slag and go back to Garmin.
The highlight of the second half of the ride was randomly coming across Herd team member Simon Keeling, who was doing the similar-but-not-identical century-plus PRL route. We exchanged encouraging messages then vectored off on our own again.
My legs started cramping on the last of my seven laps. This was made worse when I had to make an extra climb up the back side of Box Hill to make up some climbing I’d need to properly approximate last year’s MVC ride.
But I limped home to complete my tenth Zentury of 2020. I only realized after a friend’s comment that I’d logged no less than 96 Strava achievements on that ride, 16 of which were PRs!
In terms of lessons learned...
Doing long rides on a weekday is a big improvement, because you don’t have to worry about neighbors trying to sleep in. But if you don’t start until 10am, even a fast century is still gonna kill an entire day.
If you know you’re gonna have to do some extra climbing somewhere along the line, don’t leave it for the end of the ride, when you’re tired and cramping.
And if you want to keep some fruit on hand to munch on, either freeze it beforehand or keep it cool with some ice, because warm fruit just isn’t as palatable.
And finally… I’m getting tired of Zwift’s courses. That’s not surprising, considering I’ve ridden 4,860 miles on them over the past ten months. Zwift hasn’t implemented that many virtual roads to begin with, and it doesn’t help that only a few of them are adequate substitutes for real-world events.
And that’s not a good thing now that I’m at peak season, with three more events to mimic over the next 4-6 weeks. Plus another round of barf-o-tronic FTP tests.
But before that, a bit of rest, please?