Century plus

I told Vic well into our century training that I would only be able to go the full hundred under perfect conditions: sunny, cool, no wind. The forecast for yesterday was chilly rain, gusty wind, maybe even thunderstorms. Yikes.

Rather than give up before we even started we bought more gear. In Ann Arbor, where I spent the week helping with Hazel, I went to REI and bought a blue, stuffable rain jacket. On Saturday when we registered for the ride and got our arm bands, Vic bought an even lighter-weight, bright yellow biking jacket. I bought knee warmers.

When I wore my blue jacket on a 10-mile ride on Saturday I discovered that it contained my sweat very effectively. I was soon soaked from the inside. So much for trying to adapt hiking gear for biking. I’d wear my flimsy red biking jacket and stuff the blue one in a pocket in case of a real downpour.

I was up early on Sunday, jittery.  I could hardly eat my pancakes and hard-boiled egg. I almost left my helmet behind. The weather looked like it was living up to its promise but it wasn’t raining at the moment and we got to the start in Three Oaks and set off before 8. A few blocks down the street I discovered my hands were bare. We circled back to the car. My gloves weren’t there. Then I realized I’d stuffed them in a jacket pocket. Bike gear has pockets in the back and you forget what’s there. But that’s how nervous I was.

The Apple Cider Century has more than 5,000 registrants every year. Thank goodness they don’t all start out at once, or take the same routes—the 15 and 25 go one way, the 37 and 50 another, and the 62-75-100 yet another. And because of the weather a lot of people who had registered didn’t show up at all. I might not have if I hadn’t made such a big deal of doing this, counting it as something of a life decision, blogging about it and all. Nevertheless, the roads were crowded at first, people passing way too close.

Five miles into the ride it started to rain. And although it stopped now and then and wasn’t heavy much of the time, it pretty much rained for the next 6 hours. Temperatures in the 50s.

The weather and the doubts—Can I really do this? Is this really stupid or what?—made the 28 miles to the first sag stop really long. We were ready for the snacks and the port-a-potty. Avoiding the apples and cider, I chose the snacks that would sit best on my tummy—hot potato soup, grapes, nuts, and sesame sticks--and recharged my water bottle with yucky red Gatorade. I took precautionary Advil.

Sags really help. The calories go straight to the legs, which, after a few minutes off the bike, are ready to forgive you for this foolishness and get back to work.

The second stretch went by more quickly but by the time we arrived at the next sag the rain was picking up again and I got cold as soon as I got off the bike. This place had indoor restrooms. In the ladies’ room the hand dryers were going perpetually and it was toasty. It was hard to go back outside into the cold rain.

To make things harder this stop was only 11 miles from our house. I could have biked home directly to a hot shower for a total of 65 miles—more than a metric century. But that was hardly longer than I’d gone on a practice ride. I was determined to make at least 75--and I was sure, at this point, that I would not go farther. Vic, though, was determined to make 100.

Chilled to the bone, I pulled out my blue rain jacket and put it over the red one, which wasn’t very water resistant. It warmed me up. We set out for the decision point some 10 miles down the road, where the 75 route went left and the 100 went right. My legs and I had decided we would most definitely go left. They were tired. Every little hill was a mountain. I was feeling the handicap of my hybrid bike versus the thin-wheeled road bikes that were passing me speedily up the hills--though I would coast past some on the way down. Nobody was going the long routes with a hybrid.

And then the rain stopped. It had stopped before but this time the clouds were lifting. We reached the 75-100 decision point. I took off my rain jacket and debated with Vic. He was ready to go farther. I thought about getting back to the car and waiting for several hours for him to finish and wondering, while I waited, whether I actually could have gone the distance. My knees were feeling ok. My tush was feeling ok. Didn’t I owe these faithful body parts something for cooperating?

I decided to go the distance. Vic promised to wait for me at the top of every hill if necessary.

The stop to debate the decision was enough to recharge my legs. The rain was definitely over and the sun came out for a few minutes now and then. We were now in vineyard and orchard territory. We would get whiffs of cheap bathroom deodorizer—and then realized it was real grape fragrance, coming from grapes ready to harvest. Apple trees sagged with fruit. Soybean fields were golden. I began, at the 65-mile mark, to enjoy the ride.

The fun lasted through the next sag, which, at 80 miles, was only for those going the full 100. Everybody was upbeat. The rain had stopped! Our friends who had peeled off at 62 or 75 had missed the best part! We were going to make it! Only 20 miles to go!

 Feeling optimistic at 80 miles

We were wrong. The finish line was not 20 miles away. We rode into a headwind 18 miles to the final sag  and learned, to our dismay, that Three Oaks was still 8 miles away, into the wind, of course. Something was not adding up.

By this time I was hurting all over—my tush, my shoulders, my knees, even the left knee, which had never hurt before. I tucked up behind Vic and let him draft me when I could keep up but mostly I couldn’t. At some point he yelled, “One hundred!” when we were still miles away from town. I could happily have stopped right there in the middle of nowhere.

It was nice that some bystanders were watching us pass and cheering us on. It helped. When we finally got to Three Oaks, we arrived to lots of cheers.

I was ready to cry. And when I peeled myself off my bike, with real difficulty, I was grouchy. What were they thinking, making us go more than 100 miles?

It turns out that the organizers had not planned for a detour at the start of the ride, which they put in at the last minute because of road construction when the route was already set and marked. Officially, we rode 106.3 miles.

As if we needed just a little extra challenge.