cyclefreaks

What is it about events that makes you sleep like crap?

The night before the ride, I slept like a baby. The night of the ride… forget about it. And up until that point, I wouldn’t have admitted to any nervousness. I didn’t feel the pressure to finish. Frankly, I thought it would be a done deal. Just show up and pedal and we’d finish in under eight hours or so.

Didn’t turn out that way.

Ten weeks of training down the tube because of 15-20 mile-per-hour winds.

The day started for me at 3:51 when I got up for the second time to go to the bathroom. Between the two of us, we’d polished off a six pack of Propel in a couple of hours and drank enough glasses of water to float the Civic.

Once I got up and looked at the clock, sleep became a forgotten memory. All I could think about was how I couldn’t go back to sleep and how in a little more than two hours, we’d be leaving for the Ride.

We rolled out of bed at 5:15 or so. Steph immediately turned on the weather channel. Expected high 91 degrees. Current wind: 14 mph. If it’s windy at 5:00 a.m., you know you’ve got trouble ahead. We ate a bagel, drank some more Propel and got all our stuff together, loaded the bikes on the car and headed for the Travis County Expo Center. It was still dark, mind you. The twenty-minute drive went by with both of us trying to wake up. Little conversation. We followed the waving flash lights of the Parking Brigade into a grassy field, parked the car, then went about making ready for the ride. Airing up tires, putting on shoes, loading our seat bags, etc. All in the dark.

The sun came up a little before seven. We made our way to the Porta-John Row and took care of business, then headed for Lane 6. Lane 6, allegedly, staged riders expecting to finish the 100-mile ride in 5-6 hours.

We had no such ambitions, but by saying we’d finish that quickly, we gained (theoretically) half an hour on the Cutoff Point. See, the way the race works, the course is only open for eight hours and they have a cutoff; if you’re not to the cutoff by a certain time, you’re rerouted from the 100-mile course to the 70-mile course. This cutoff point would later prove our undoing.

Eventually, Lance, Sheryl, Robin Williams and Will Ferrell all showed up on the JumboTron to say motivational things to us and wish us good luck on our ride. The cheesy announcer then got the ride started. We positioned ourselves at the end of Lane 6 so as to not get caught in the rush of more experienced riders.

As we rolled across the starting line, clouds shielded us from the sun, a light breeze blew at our backs and we felt good. A bit tired but good.

Seeing an endless snake of bicycles rolling down the side of a road… it’s awesome. Breathtaking. And to be a part of it… it just felt cool.

It felt so cool, in fact, we were averaging more than 16 mph, which is fast for us. I think our fastest training ride was 14.9 mph together.

Anyway, we hit the cutoff point at 10:30. They tried to motion us to the 70-mile course, but we weren’t having it. The Announcer guy said they wouldn’t start the cutoff time until the last staging line had left the start. Apparently, no one told the nice highway patrol guy and the volunteer manning the cutoff.

At that point, we’d ridden 30 miles in under two hours.

Then the rolling hills started. Still, we kept pace. Steph said she wouldn’t be able to keep it up, but I think had things not turned for the worse, she could’ve.

We hit the 50-mile marker in three hours and 6 minutes. That’s an hour and 41 minutes faster than our previous fastest 50-mile time. That’s not total ride time, that’s actual time from start.

We felt pretty invincible.

Then we got to our second rest stop and I crashed. It would’ve been funny had some dude not run into my head with his bike. See, our bikes have pedals that you clip your shoe into. For whatever reason, my left foot wouldn’t come out of the clip. I may have had my right foot out already, which makes the story funnier, but I can’t remember for sure. Either way, at a dead stop, I fell to my left into oncoming traffic. Instant headache, but no concussion or strawberry or the like. Other than my pride, I felt good to go.

We took off again and made good time to the 65-mile rest stop. At that point, I said, “Steph, we’ve only got 35 miles to go.”

She said, “Really? Are you serious?”

We felt pretty good. We knew we’d make it. It was only like 1:30, which left us 3.5 hours to finish the ride (officials would close the course at 4:00pm and start rounding up riders into the S.A.G. vehicles).

Then the wind kicked in. The next ten miles were the 15-20 mph headwinds and a series of ever-uphill switchbacks. Goddamn wind. Goddamn switchbacks.

It sucked our energy reserves. Our heart rates held steady in the 160-170 range and would not come down. At mile 70, we were pedaling a paltry 8-9 mph. Steph would try to surge and could only manage 11 mph. Meanwhile, saddle sores had claimed my ass in the name of pain. I could find solace neither in the seat nor standing up. Standing up gives you a lot of power, but it’s very tiring to try to maintain.

In addition to the wind, the cloud-cover and mild temperatures we had enjoyed earlier in the ride had been replaced by bright sunshine and 90 degrees.

At about mile 77, Steph’s rear tire went flat. We could see a water-stop maybe a quarter mile ahead. I asked if she wanted me to fix the flat there or would she rather walk to the water stop. We walked to the stop, got some water and that was it. We had no will to go on. No energy. No nothing. My head was pounding. Worst headache I’d ever had. I think it was probably a combination of dehydration, the heat and having my head bashed in by a pedal.

Either way, the Ride for the Roses defeated us. You know how much we trained for this. You know we’ve been riding six days a week for the past 2.5 months. Didn’t matter. It wasn’t enough. We hadn’t prepared hard enough. Hadn’t ridden against enough wind.

Realistically, at our last average speed, we would have been fished off the road by a S.A.G. vehicle before we’d get to the end of the route anyway, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow. I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to train that hard for something and not finish.

We took the ride of shame from the rest stop to the Start/Finish in a Toyota SUV with another guy who’d had enough. We got back, had a beer and some pasta, loaded up the bikes and skulked back to our hotel room.

This morning when I woke up, my whole body was sore. The crash hurt a lot more than I was willing to admit. I’ve got a fairly good-sized bruise/red mark on my right shoulder where I hit the ground. Everything was stiff.

And we were both pissed off we didn’t finish. Sure, stopping at the time seemed necessary, but neither Steph nor I was comfortable with how this ended. We’re already scheming for next year. I won’t be defeated two years in a row. It simply won’t happen.

I hope you understand just how hard it is to ride this kind of distance on a bike. I feel like we failed, but put into context, what we attempted to do is not easy. Non-cyclists would have a hard time making 25 miles on a bicycle. It’s a kind of masochism, to be sure.

So I know that we failed, but deep down, just attempting it was a success. And goddammit, next year, I’m kicking the ride and Lance’s ass. And there will be a next year.