Rapha Festive 500: Day Five

Distance: 58 km
Time: 2:03

I had a devil sitting on one shoulder and an angel on the other today. The devil was telling me that with 405km logged for the Festive 500, that I should just go out and lay down 100km to finish it off and still have two days left to add to the tally. The angel said that there were three days left and therefore no hurry, especially since three consecutive 4+ hour days can take a toll on a man, and if we wanted to avoid a possible Christmas hero / July zero situation, that I should simply do a 2-hour ride on one of my staple routes. In this instance, the angel won and I opted for the shorter effort. However, during the ride the devil reappeared and made me do it—not a longer ride, but something else. Let me explain.

Before the Festive 500, I didn’t know what Strava was. But since Rapha seemed to have some kind of deal with them, I created an account and started logging my Rapha rides there as well as on Garmin Connect, which I’ve been embedding. Basically Strava is a lot like Garmin Connect only there’s a much more integrated social component that allows you to not only follow other riders but to see course records (and where you stack up) for big climbs or circuits around the areas you ride. I’m not really one to be all macho and Type A about crap like that but today for some reason I decided to look up what the top times were for one of the more legendary climbs around Baltimore: Jerome Jay Drive. Here’s where the devil took over.

The theme of this year’s Festive 500 is “Ride to Redemption.” I haven’t really felt a terrible need to ride in order to redeem anything (or myself) so far; training has been going well and I don’t tend to overeat during the holidays, which are two things I wager a lot of people are looking for redemption from this time of year. Well, I wasn’t riding to redeem anything at least until I saw the Jerome Jay to Cleghorn course record. If you click on the link now, you see that I occupy the top step of the podium, but before the ride I didn’t (frankly, I didn’t even know people were keeping records on segments of local roads). And the dude who was first was the only dude who beat me at the MABRA Hill Climb Championship this year.

Like I said, I don’t usually care about these local road honor badges, but I thought I should probably ride to some sort of redemption during this Rapha Challenge and here was as good an opportunity as any. Plus, the devil on my shoulder started barking like my neighbor’s dog and I just wanted him to shut up so I did what he said. (N.B. I know devils can sometimes be female, but this particular one was definitely a masculine one. And, yes, some females can be masculine but . . . whatever.) The results are documented above to the chest-thumping lyrics of J Dilla. It seems like there’s a slightly longer version of the Jerome Jay climb that some people like to do that includes the short Ivy Hill section also. Well, that’s for another day. As for now, I guess I feel redeemed.

Just the facts: