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Balltown Classic Double Cenury
By Dave Thompson
Challenging weather and a tough course greeted us yesterday morning for the Balltown classic double century timed event. 3 of us DICE guys were there: John Harrington, Scott Swanson and myself. We started an hour late from DewItt because of thunderstorms. We still rode the first 20m in medium rain and strong NW winds, which happened to be headwinds. We had a group of 5-6 riders behind the lead pack, riding tempo. We had rain the first 70m, fortunately with temps in mid 60's so it wasn't cold. We went thru Lost Nation, Baldwin, Bernard, Peosta where the sun finally came out. Epworth into the heavy climbing by Graf. Bankston, Holy Cross, the high point at 1355ft. Onto 7m of wonderful scenery on top of a ridge where you could see across the river to the bluffs in Wisconsin. By this time it was only John and I. We covered the first half in 5:31 with some tailwind. At that point we had only done 2 major climbs: a couple of 3k 8% ascents. The rest was continuous rolling terrain. The first 10m out of Balltown were quite challenging. We took a different route back to the 80m mark. Fast downhills and 4 major climbs in that first 10m. The last one was 1k with avg grade of 15%. This came 110m into the ride to only make it tougher. After that the story was headwinds. John was riding very strongly so I cut him loose and wished him well. I wanted to ride conservatively. I hooked up with a couple of other guys for the next 50m. I would drop them on climbs but wait up to work with them on flats/downhills. At the last checkpoint we kind of went our separate ways. The wind was very tough out in the open on the straight south sections. I hit a bad patch at 170m, had to stop at Lost Nation for water and food. But once out of there the road turned east for 17m. I had a slight cross tailwind and flatter roads and after that I felt good. I finished at 703pm with more rain on the horizon. John finished about an hour before me. Scott will have his own story to follow.
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