I rode in the 50 mile Tour de Cure ride on June 5 and it is now July 5. There are a couple of reasons for a late report: 1.) I was mad that I got hurt and couldn’t run for three weeks so anything I wrote directly afterwards would have been marred by frustration 2.) I wasn’t really sure how to explain that I told my husband I didn’t want to ride with him.
I am now feeling better about my knee and about my decision to ride solo.
Mike and I had both signed up for the 62 mile ride thinking we’d have enough preparation and oomph to do it. Then a few weeks before the ride he received an invitation to speak at a prestigious conference in Lake Placid for work that conflicted with the date of the ride….long story short – the talk got moved and he came home late Saturday night to make the ride on Sunday. In the end we both thought doing 50 would be a better choice since he hadn’t really had any opportunity to prepare by riding to work (rain, rain, rain) and I had had two rides – a 10 miler and a 50 miler. I was still kinda bitter after the 3 ½ hour ride in the pouring rain a few weeks before (my bike was stuffed in the corner of my garage with its chain rusted, poor thing) and I just wanted an enjoyable ride with minimal misery. I did feel bad for telling my riding partner Sheryl only a day or two before that I was bailing on 62. I think she was disappointed but was overall a good sport about it---though she did sneak in an “I’m surprised, you usually tough it out”…ouch. I gave her short notice and she heard it first from Mike (bad, bad) so all was forgiven.
On our way up in the car it occurred to me that Mike wouldn’t have anyone to ride with since his riding buddy was doing 62. I had flashbacks of our bike rides together while living in Alexandria, VA. We enjoyed several long rides, including the scenic bike path to Mt. Vernon to visit the home of George Washington as well as the gravely, beautiful ride to Great Falls, MD. I had a heavy, purple Trek mountain bike that I loved but it was not fast. Mike also had a mountain bike but his was leaner, lighter (ok, it was probably the same as mine but this is what I recall). He was always way ahead of me and I was always behind, plugging along at my own sweet pace. I was a believer in joy rides, taking in the scenery, and he was a believer in getting a good workout. But now I have a road bike. A real bike. Mike had gotten it for me for my 40th birthday (my first brand new bike!) so we could ride together. And I loved it. It was fair that he would want to enjoy the ride by pushing himself…but it was also reasonable that I wanted to have a good ride and not obsess over pace per mile for three or more hours.
We started the ride out together. He was ahead, but very attentive. He wanted me to pass him. I did. He said I had a nice ass. I ignored him. A few slow people were ahead of me. Mike passed all of us. Then I was behind him. And then I went ahead of him. And then he was ahead of me. And so on. The shoulder of the road was not very wide so we did a lot of back and forth and couldn’t ride side by side. I told him to just GO. He insisted he wanted to ride with me. He seemed sincere. We continued on.
I had to pee. Uh-oh. I’m usually a camel. We had coffee in the car ride up. I had a Vitamin Water (“Endurance” flavored!) at registration. I looked down and saw 7 miles. I knew there was a rest stop at mile 10. We passed mile ten but then I saw a rest area around mile 11. Relief was in sight. I told Mike I wanted to stop. He said, “Already?” I knew then that I was going to hold him back. I knew that he would have ridden with me without complaint but this was a great opportunity for him to GO and have a great ride in Saratoga on this gorgeous, 75 degree and sunny day. If he had signed up for 20 rides and wanted to ride with me this time, fine, but this was the only long ride on our summer docket and I just wanted him to go and not worry about me or my bladder. I had to be direct so that we wouldn’t do the “No you go ahead,” “No, YOU go ahead” dance all morning. “I prefer not to ride with you” I said bluntly but softly. He seemed more surprised than hurt---he knew I meant no malice---and made sure I was SURE about riding alone. He rode off. I felt relief.
I started to tune into other couples riding together. One woman sounded annoyed, saying to her husband “Where are you going?” (Where did she think he was going?), to which her husband responded “I gotta get up this hill, hon. I’ll wait for you at the top.” This was mile 13. I wondered what tone she’d have at mile 35. And then there were the couples who dressed in identical clothing. Yikes. No thanks. Mike and I are in total agreement that unless we are on a team we’ll never dress alike. Ever.
I enjoyed the ride through rural Saratoga County. I saw interesting barns, ranging from the dilapidated to shabby chic. One had a big heart painted on the side that read, “WENDY AND BOB 1994”. Huh. I wondered how Wendy and Bob were faring. That the barn was still standing was a good sign. Did they have little Jimmy and Susie? No swing set in the back yard. Maybe they’re all grown up and in high school. Time sure does fly.
The mixture of homes on the ride was quite astonishing. There was an old, beautiful, colonial brick home with black shudders with a fancy sign out front HOME OF EDMUND JENNINGS, WAR HERO and then a nice paragraph of his Revolutionary War achievements. (This is indicative of how fast I am going, reading these signs along the way…). I wondered how Col. Jennings’s horse felt about living on top of this hill, poor thing having to hoof it up every time the family needed to leave the house.
And then there was a dingy home with a Compost For Sale sign leaned up against its mailbox next to a sprawling estate, and I wondered how neighborly they were to one another. How did Mr. Farmer feel when Mr. Stockbroker built a luxury home next door and jacked up his property taxes? Maybe they got together on the porch and shared cool lemonade on hot summer afternoons. Maybe they didn’t ever have eye contact.
I wished I had had my camera. I would have taken black and white photos of the barns with their crooked roofs. I have been known to stop on long runs if I see something spectacular or if something really catches my eye.
Hills, hills, and more hills. Mile 22. I felt an ache on the back of my left knee. Hmmm. It occurred to me that I may not have proper technique riding, perhaps hyper-extending my knee while pushing myself uphill. I tried to pay closer attention to form, cadence, etc. and avoided obsessing over the distance traveled. It wouldn’t do any good to turn around, I was nearly half way. I was not feeling tired. I felt pretty good other than the knee.
I passed by an old saw mill, a timber mill, and stopped again for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and water at a rest stop. The volunteers at this ride are always upbeat but not annoyingly so. For the most part, the riders are very pleasant too. The Tour de Cure staggers the starters with the 100 milers beginning earliest, then the 62, then the 50, 25, and 10 so that we all basically come in within an hour or so. At different points along the way the routes converge and we share the road with the other riders. I loved to see the 100 milers towards the end of the ride, clumped together like bees but with their long, lean legs pumping hard. The tough part was sharing the road with the 25 milers because many were families with kids, and occasionally (I’m being generous here) neither parent nor child has any concern for rules of the road. One parent stopped (!) to answer a cell phone call on a road with little shoulder and the child just rode on wobbily ahead. Dangerous. Stupid.
Mile 40. Final rest stop. I see the 62 milers. SHERYL!!! Yea! She is there with Jim, who was supposed to ride with Mike. He asks where Mike is and I pointed out into the distance. He rides off and Sheryl and I do the last ten together. She is BEAT from a ghastly hill that the 50 milers were spared but we settle into a nice pace for the last few miles and crossed the line together. We see Mike and first thing he asks me is what my time was. I looked down at my computer. 3:20. He said he rode in under 3 hours, and I knew riding separately was the right thing to do. He had a good ride. So did I. We went to the cafeteria and enjoyed tall plates of pasta.
Knee: UGH. 3 weeks no swimming, biking, running. Feels better now. Haven’t been on my bike yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment