This year, I decided to challenge myself: if I could raise $1,000, I'd ride 100 miles, over double my current longest one day ride. The tour organisers were offering an official 100 mile / 160 km route, but the time limit was ambitious, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to meet it (8 hours). As it turned out, we were seeing people coming in from that route over 45 minutes after the cut off time. So the revised plan was to ride the 60 mile route and from there, ride home 40 miles.
I started my training a bit more ambitiously than I planned, as a 17 mile ride to Natick led to some detours on the way back, and a 40 mile day. My second training day involved running around the city by bike, racking up another 40+ miles in between stops. My last training ride was more "real", as I rode 40 miles out to Groton, 10 miles back to the train station, took the train back in to Waltham, and meandered home via Harvard Sq to hit 60 miles. Then movie plans materialised and we biked there for an additional 9 miles on the day, my highest milage so far. In retrospect, the hour long train ride broke up the riding long enough for me to cool down and recuperate, I was flagging when I hit 50 miles during the Tour de Cure ride. Other than that, I was just riding to work every day, 11 miles round trip.
Friends offered to put us up in Rockport, so we took the train up the night before so we could ride home w/o having to fuss about the car. Train service starts too late on Sundays to be able to take that out to Gloucester and arrive in time for the start of the longer routes.
Cris and I rode over to North Station and took our bikes on the commuter
rail up to Rockport. I was really impressed with the new "bike enabled"
car.
One column of seats was taken out and the space was filled with bike
racks, and at the end were a couple of wall mounted car racks. We had a
few other cyclists in with us, we were going up on the 2:15 train and it
was already getting hot so I suspect that people went up earlier. Once we
got to Rockport, it was a short block to Tim and Jessica's house where we
were staying. We cleaned up a bit and changed for dinner and filled out
the forms for the next day, then went out for dinner. We were going to sit
outside for a while, but Tim discovered a wasp's nest as he was digging
out the shade umbrella. He got stung, and the rest of us retreated inside.
Baking soda paste worked well, and he was mostly fine by the time it came
to go out. We stopped in at the grocery store so that Cris and I could
stock up on Clif bars. We went to Duckworth's Bistrot and it
was a wonderful meal, I'm glad that T&J were willing to eat so early to
accommodate us! I had the cucumber soup (with roasted red peppers and crab
meat, somehow it all worked wonderfully), then Cocquilles St. Jacques and
a half order of the lobster rissotto (tonnes of lobster in it!). Cris and
I tried to split an order of bread pudding with rum raisin ice cream, but
the pudding was topped with nuts I'm allergic to and there were no raisins
in the ice cream, so I passed. I was pretty full, but I wanted to have a
good amount of food to fuel me for the next day. Back to the house, and I
went up to bed at around 8pm, setting the alarm for 4:45.
I slept lightly all night, traffic and birds or insects breaking my
slumber on a regular basis, but I was ready to get up when the alarm
sounded. We basically threw on clothes, packed everything onto our bikes
(I'd stuffed my rack trunk with the change of clothes for dinner, wearing
slacks so I could get away with my runners) and were on the road at just
past 5am, as the sun was rising. We biked into Gloucester, 5 miles, to
Lee's for breakfast. Huge huge pancakes, I could only finish one, and had
a couple of cups of tea as well. Pre-dosed with ibuprofen, and then up the
road to the starting line.
Went in with Cris when he registered, and then
waved him off on the 7am-ish start to the 160km route, 40-60 people
attempting that route. It was already getting hot, I went in to register
and then found a spot of shade to hang out in. I had my back brakes looked
at by the REI mechanic, mostly the cables needed to be oiled. I was lined
up first behind the starting line, grabbing a spot of shade in the
driveway of the school. They cautioned us to drink lots of water, thanked
us, played the national anthem, and we were off.
Cris decided to bail on the 5 mile detour that the 160km riders were supposed to do, and stayed with me. We were stopped by the drawbridge being up *again*, and quite a few riders bunched up. I ended up finding some energy from somewhere and powered up the hill on Washington St., passing a few people. We followed the markings to get us around Grant Circle and Cris pulled away at the last hill, rolling in first. I got the finisher's bells too, and rolled up to join him in the shade. We went inside and had some of the grilled chicken breast and salad and bread that was on offer. It was about 2:45pm, and I could hear the tour organiser trying to get in touch with riders who had bailed w/o telling anyone. I'd only passed two flat tire changers, but two guys had to drop out at rest stop 4 and one at 8, the latter one of my slow group, who had a van come pick him up as I was waiting. He, and the rest stop 4 guy, seemed surprised that I was determined to finish, he said I was tough. Just determined, I answered.
Their air conditioning wasn't working so people were dithering about if
they were going to stay or not, but it was cool enough (to us) inside and
out in the shade. We got a table on the patio (like the last time I'd
ridden this route), and sweated quietly out there. I'd started to get a
cramp in my left calf, I'd totally forgotten Cris's advice to get enough
salt and was only drinking water and eating Clif bars all day, no
gatorade. So, a nice big plate of sweet potato fries was ordered and then
dosed with extra salt. As I was trying to rub my face clean with the paper
napkin, I thought it was road grit under my fingers, but it turned out to
be some of that salt I was losing, crystalised in the heat. My appetite
wasn't that big, I had about half my stir fry (it didn't help that it was
hot, I envied Cris his nice cool lobster roll), but did manage to finish
the fries. The patio was right next to the New England Pirate Museum, and
we locked our bikes up right in front of it - it has cute murals of
pirates scaling the side of the building. I was re-applying my sun block
and checking for white spots in the museum's display case. The amount of
road grit, sweat and pollen (the creases of my elbows were bright yellow),
made it look like I was smearing something grey all over me, it was pretty
gross. But I'd already felt parts of my neck and face crisping, so it was
necessary to stay on top of it. The sky was pretty much blue all day, we
had a few clouds block the light, but I lived for the shade of trees. Even
headwinds were welcomed, since hot sun + breeze was survivable.
Food ingested, glasses of water poured into our water bottles, it was time
to head off again. 24 miles or so to home. The way was a bit trickier from
now, lots of turns. We missed one, but it didn't matter since it was a
fork and one turn got us back to where we needed to be. We stopped in
Winchester for water at a convenience store, and I asked for a couple of
stretch breaks as my calf was starting to hurt a bit. We raced down Mystic
Valley Parkway, enjoying the wide shoulder but trying to avoid getting bit
by the bugs that were coming out as the sun was setting. Once we came off
that and got onto 60 I was in familiar territory and I refused Cris's
offer to stop when my knee started twinging. I was wearing an elastic
brace on my right knee and it held up remarkably well. We turned on our
generator hub powered bike lights, but I regretted not bringing clear
lenses for my sunglasses, I hadn't thought ahead to how long it would take
us to get home and was trying to bring the bare minimum to survive a night
and day. But the bike light threw enough illumination to let me see
easily, so I was fine. I had had bugs bouncing off of me all day, I didn't
want to chance a bug in the eye so close to home.
We rolled up to the
house at just before 9pm, with my odometer reading 110 miles (so 115
miles for the day including the ride to the start). I checked the weather
forecast, it was still
28C when we got home, it must have been 30+ for most of the day. Ice,
stretching, and the best showers in the world, and we were dead asleep by
10pm.
I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who contributed to my campaign ($1125
raised!), and proud of myself for going the distance. Next year, 60 miles
will be enough. :)