Ridden Words

Oh, it was hard to get out of bed this morning. My plan was my first 50 miler. I wanted as much time as possible for it and I needed to be home by 10 AM to take the girls to swimming lessons. That meant getting up at 5:30 to be on the road at 6:00. It took all my willpower to not roll over when the alarm went off.

I made up two “2hr bottles” of Perpetium for my projected 4hr ride and grabbed a slice of banana bread and a packet of hammer gel just in case. I checked the weather and since there was a greater than 30% chance of rain I suited up for a wet ride. Temperature was also supposed to be 35 so I layered up.

I headed out just as it was light enough to see. I decided to do the upper valley route which requires me to go up to the beginning of the Uplands climb and turn around for an extra two miles. When turning around, I hit a bunch of sand, that I couldn’t see because it was barely light enough to see. I have no idea how I didn’t fall but I managed to stay up right. Great burst of adrenaline. Not really that helpful at this point of my ride. I kept spinning along and getting warmed up. I felt old and stiff. Guess that’s what I get for not riding for 2 full weeks.

As I was rounding Maloney’s Grove, I decided I was over dressed. I was getting really hot, from my hands to my feet. I stopped and took off one of my jackets and switched to my lighter gloves and headed off again. Much better. I wasn’t going to break any speed records on this ride but I was happy I got up and made it out of the house. It had rained in the night and was cloudy but wasn’t raining so who could complain?

Un-eventful up past Wood River and around past Truck Town. Here came the second adrenaline episode of the ride, as I was coasting down the hill through the Exit 34 interchange (off I-90) I heard something. Kind of a rumble, kind of a - what is that? Oh crap, it’s an elk herd and they’re running with me on the other side of the road. I love to see deer on the road. Elk scare me. They’re bigger and seem a little, err, less intelligent. When deer spook, they seem to know why. When Elk spook, half or more of them seem to be looking around asking, “What are we running from?” - which is the root of my caution - if they don’t know that they’re running from me, they are somewhat likely to run towards / through me.

So these two elk get on the wrong side of the drainage ditch and end up running along the pavement. That’s them coming closer to me instead of running away from me. I coast and keep an eye on them - dogs I want to out run, I don’t want to get hit from behind by an elk. Next thing I see the one closest to me slips and ends up on his belly, sliding along the pavement and still keeping pace with me. He manages to get back up again without slowing down and follows his herd member back across the ditch and over a barbed wire fence. Only I don’t think he so much cleared the fence as scrapped over it. Deep breath.

Uneventful to the top of Edgwick. I’ve totally got the number of this hill. It’s < 4% for sure and according to the Edge 305, not as tall as I though it was, but at the beginning of last season I took every rise in the road in the lowest gear and at 7 miles per hour. I’m spinning easily up this one now at 12. Not the 16-17 of last summer but it will come back to me. I managed to be somewhere else in my mind up that climb and back down. All I remember of the ascent and descent are turning around at the top and watching for potholes and concluding that road patch crews must specifically exclude cyclists from their ranks or they wouldn’t universally conclude that replacing a pothole with an asphalt bump is an effective “fix”.

On out middle fork, the wimpy clockwise direction. It’s wimpy because that way it starts with a screaming descent and gradually climbs back out vs gradually descending and finishing with a killer climb out. Once again my mind was else where. This time - my third adrenaline event - a medium dog tried a new approach. I wasn’t going very fast as I’d just crested a small rise so he didn’t have to work hard to catch me I guess - no tell tale clicking of claws on pavement to warn me. He seamingly just appeared right next to me and then let his presence be known with a bark. I screamed out in fright, startled and then reacted as “American Flyers” trained all cyclists to - I sprinted away from the dog. I began to wonder if this was going to continue. What other surprises would if find on the ride?

It was uneventful as I rode back down North Bend Way and onto Balarat on my way towards Ernie’s Grove. I was tired, and nearly finished with my first 2 hr bottle so fueling was going well. I didn’t feel like I was going to bonk as much as I felt out of shape. Tired shoulders. Tired neck. Tired butt. It was here I noticed I was going along at 16mph and my HR was flying at 181 BPM. I decided to let up some pressure on the pedals and try to get it back down into the 140s. It took cruising around at 12mph to accomplish that. Oh well.

It was at this point I started the debate that would last the next hour and a half - should I ride for time instead of distance today? Time would be a good choice this early in the season. A 3 hr ride would be my longest by a good margin and doing it without putting my foot down would stretch it beyond the Chilly Hilly with it’s 5 minute stop at halfway. But I always go by miles. Always have. Don’t know why.

I was really hurting and doing a lot of debating. I want to do a century this month so I knew I needed to push it through this ride. Around Ernie’s Grove and up Renig, aorund the top of the Mill Pond and up the “extra hill” I went. I saw one more dog, a black lab, who interestingly ran back into his yard at my approach. Then back around the Mill Pond and back down Renig I went. Plodding along. Going slower and slower. More coasting. More riding with no hands to sit up. And more coasting out of the saddle.

I knew I wasn’t going to make it up the climb into the Uplands - well, I probably would have made it but I would have been completely useless the rest of the day, versus the slight uselessness I new was already in store. So now I needed to find 8 miles of flat riding. I didn’t want to ride back over my course again, I was already having a hard time without getting board on the same roads a second time. I decided I’d ride into North Bend and then back to Snoqualmie and back and hope that would give me the miles.

It was close, I had to do two laps around the parkinglot of the outlet mall, but since 49.5 is not 50 I did the two laps and then headed up the 130+ ft climb back to my house. It’s a crappy way to end every ride, on a > 10% grade climb, but riding it is better than walking it in cleats so I ride it. Whew. Glad to have that behind me. Good to push through heavy legs. I think I’ll see if I can get time to do 50 again next weekend and hope it will be easier the second time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Cycle, Snovalley. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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