ICEntennial
“You’re gonna do what?”
That was pretty much what most people said when I mentioned doing a 100 mile indoor trainer ride.
This is usually followed with: “You’re nuts!” 
“We did what?”
That’s what I keep asking myself now.
And it is definitely followed in my mind with: “Yep. we’re nuts!”
The Spinervals Hardcore 100 is hard – just plain hard. One would assume that any indoor training ride of over five hours would be hard, simply due to its length. But true to the series.. this Spinerval has some very difficult sets. It does start out mostly at tempo rides in the 70-75% effort range, but instead of maintaining a fairly steady endurance kind of rhythm in the sets, they actually build in intensity.
All in all I’d say that doing this is actually harder than any of the weekend centuries in these parts. I’d stop short of saying it’s harder than the combined Hilly 100 century I did by doing both routes consecutively, but it’s close. It definitely also falls short of the many-thousand-feet challenge rides we’ve gotten ourselves into, such as Highlander or even CFC.
This is all relative of course… you can go as hard or as easy on a trainer as you want to. But if you really get into the spirit of the thing and do it at the intended level of difficulty, it hurts. I think the biggest reason is that there is NO coasting on a trainer. The pain of grinding away in the 15/13/12 repeatedly approaches the pain of climbing some of those challenge ride grades, but at the ‘top side’ of those sets there is no earned payoff – namely the descent. You spin and rest a bit but never completely let off the tension.
In my opinion, doing an indoor century this way was way harder on the joints and tendons than it is on the muscles. I have found very quickly that risking injury is a very real issue… as I am limping on very sore knees. With about 45 minutes remaining, I was starting to get some real pain in the tendons around my left knee. I didn’t have the sense to back down. I also didn’t have the sense to reduce the tension on the fluid back before doing the whole thing.
As much as such a thing hurts, and no matter how much limping and pain I suffer over the next few days, the ride was great because I had company. Company in the form of 3 decidedly brain damaged individuals. I had originally planned this ride on my own and hadn’t even thought of inviting anyone. Then I jokingly told Egg that he was doing it with me, whether he wanted to or not. He just laughed, but a day later he told me he would do it, then gradually built himself into an event promoter and, to shorten the story a hair, I ended up being joined by PK and Rhino as well. That last one was a surprise, not because I have any doubts in Vince’s ability to ride hard, fast or far, but because I never would have guessed he would bother with such a thing.
Anyway… everybody rode hard, pushed it to the limit right up until the final set was done, and we’re all gonna be hurtin’ pups. But it was an awesome achievement and I can’t thank ‘em enough for sharing in the suffering!
