Six Corners Challenge

It has been a few months since our ride on the Great Divide. I had this event in mind for when I got back and after a short break I have been training and preparing my bike for this since we got back.

This was my biggest day ever on the bike. This was not a race but a personal challenge. The objective was to visit 6 different points in what whatever order you wanted and return to the start.

I prepared quite a lot for this event. I even used best bike split to make a power plan. It gave me target powers for different grades. It was fantastic.

I decided to do the bulk of the climbing right away while I was fresh on the southern 3 corners. This was my first time with a power target and it was surprised to see my average lined up near perfectly after 12 hours.

I decided that since I had done the bulk of the climbing on the first half, the second half should totally be doable in another 12. So at 6 pm I rode into the night hoping to finishing this by 6 am -24 hours after I started.

I made it to the 4th corner Anatori River and felt quite good power wise. Shortly before arriving there I had started having cramps in my stomach and the worsened soon after I started my return. I could not drink my carb mix with immediately feeling like l needed to use the bathroom. Unfortunately the bottles I had left all had carb mix in them. So I just became more and more dehydrated and under-fueled. My power literally halved and I needed more layers to stay warm.

After the 5th corner I finally found a bathroom and decided to take a quick nap. I climbed into my emergency bivy set an alarm for 30 minutes, put my head down and next thing you know my alarm went off. The nap made me much more alert but the under-fueling and dehydration only continued and I was on a death march to the last corner. After another trip to a random toilet a I still could not push. It was extremely frustrating. I made it to the 6th corner. Thank god there was not much climbing. The return to the finish went by quick mentally but the actual pace was slow.

I felt completely wrecked. Like never before. I did the last 2 corners and return on a sleeve of Oreos, 3 dates and half a OSM bar. I don’t think I drank more than half a bottle. This ended up being my longest ride with the most climbing, 450km, 6500m of climbing. 13000 calories. 30 minutes of sleep. I am honestly not sure how I pulled it together.

It was an incredibly beautiful course, I had to hold myself back from stopping to take photos. The out and back nature of the corners was really fun actually - riding out to them I would see Adam, Shamus, and JJ heading out. We would do a wave of solidarity and keep on pedaling. Then I would reach my corner ride back and do the same for the people behind me. It was really neat to see that there were other nut cases out riding in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

I am happy to mark this one done. Thanks to my wife for all her support and encouragement leading up to and during the event. Also thanks to my friends for their support as well! I couldn’t have done it without you people.

Stats

Distance: 450km (279.6 miles)
Elevation: 6492m (21299.21 ft)
Total Time: 28 hour 2 minutes
Riding Time: 24 hours 51 minutes
Sleep Time: 30 minutes
Calories Burned: 13,211