A Hundred Miles Of Rain

It was cold, it was wet, the wind was fierce, but I rode hard and took no prisoners. The most difficult part of the ride was fighting the wind. There was a 20 MPH wind blowing from the East all day long. Unfortunately nearly 50 miles of the ride was riding directly into the wind. There were several times when the wind was blowing so hard that I had to stand up on my pedals as if climbing a hill just to keep enough forward momentum on the bike to prevent falling over.

The gear that I bought did a reasonable job of preventing me from freezing in the 45 degree temperatures all day long but it didn't help much to keep me dry. In the first 5 miles of the ride my socks were soaking wet and shortly after that everything else was as well. Surprisingly that didn't bother me so much as long as I kept moving. It was only when we stopped that it really became a problem.

The adverse weather conditions actually caused a lot of grief for the event organizers. It was taking everyone significantly longer to complete the ride than they had planned. We started riding at 8 in the morning and I didn't finish until nearly 5 PM. James finished a little after me closer to 6:30PM and Chris was having technical difficulties so he dropped out near the 75 mile mark.

The three of us had ridden together for most of the day but at the 65 mile mark I split off and wanted to open it up on my own for a while. It was actually kind of fun to test my legs out on a road bike. On that last 35 miles I was really riding hard and passing people like they were standing still. Not a single person passed me on that stretch of the ride. I'd like to think that I was just riding like a madman, but it could be that all of the really strong riders were already in front of me.

I have to admit that I was a little bit of an asshole at one point during the ride. I was climbing a fairly large hill but was taking it really easy because I didn't want to get too far ahead of Chris and James. A group of bikers came chugging past me riding in formation. As they passed the lead biker looked at me with contempt for going so slow as if he were saying to me, "You have no right to be here". It kind of pissed me off.

So, I let them pass and then decided to show them what I was really made of. I started pedaling at my full capability, easily caught back up to them, paced the leader for a couple of yards, gave him a dirty look and then went flying past him without even breaking a sweat. When I got to the top of the hill I turned around and came back down. I probably could have passed them a second time but I didn't want to rub it in that much and I wanted to get back to riding with Chris and James.

Unfortunately no bad deed goes unpunished by Karma. A minute after coming back down the hill I got a flat tire and had to stop. Luckily James had a spare tube and all of the right tools for getting flat swapped out. We were back on the road in a couple of minutes.

That was the first of 3 flats that I had while riding. The second happened after I had split off from Chris and James. Unfortunately I was not bright enough to think to carry a pump or spare tube with me when I left. So, I stopped another biker and used his pump to put a little air back into my tire. I knew that it wouldn't last forever but I was hoping that it would at least get me to the next rest stop in 6 miles. I got about 5 miles before the tire had so little air that I couldn't continue. Fortunately a guy from a local bike shop (they were all there manning the race) happened to drive by and helped me swap out a second tube. This time we found a big chunk of glass embedded in the tire.

All in all I really had a lot of fun. The weather did make it a little grueling but it wasn't too bad. My month of training definitely paid off for me. I wouldn't have survived the ride if I had just shown up without any training all. I might have survived in fair weather, but not with the crap that we had yesterday.