06.19.2013 | 10:54 am
In the most recent installment of this series (if you’re not caught up, you should probably read part 1, part 2 and part 3 before continuing), The Hammer was riding up to her first exchange point. Heather was clipped in, ready to take the baton and head off on what is — every single year — the hottest, head-windiest stage of the race.
But right as The Hammer arrived — and I mean literally, right as she arrived — Heather’s back tire exploded. Not just a psssssssss. More of a
POF!
As you would expect, some people jumped, and all heads turned, knowing exactly what that sound meant. But the explosion from the tire — and the resulting head-turning and jumping — were nothing compared to what came from the normally calm, cool, and collected Heather.
“$&*#&$@#! KENNY! MY ^*$@!!^& TIRE JUST %^$$#(&!@ EXPLODED!”
Kenny and I sprang into action. Specifically, we both ran away from Heather. I have never checked with Kenny on his intentions, but I was running away 30% because I wanted to grab the spare back wheel we had pumped up and ready to go in the back of the van, and 70% because my fight-or-flight reflex had kicked in and I’m more a “flight” kind of guy.
Maybe Kenny is too, because he got to the van before I did. He grabbed the wheel and we both dashed back to Heather to get the wheel on her bike in what we hoped was record time.
Unfortunately for everyone, I am even clumsier when my system is flooded with adrenaline than when I’m not. Which is very clumsy indeed. As a result, I thoroughly hampered Kenny as he swapped out the wheel, probably increasing the amount of time it took by about 90 seconds.
I’m not absolutely certain, but at one point I may have heard the Benny Hill theme begin playing.
After what seemed an eternity — but was probably really less than three minutes — we had Heather back on her bike and on her way.
The Hammer took a shower — as it turns out, I would be the only one to not get to use the shower, which is really much sadder for everyone else than for me, when you think about it — and we loaded up and took off to catch up with Heather, hoping hoping hoping that she had not flatted again.
More Trouble
As we drove, looking for Heather, I said, “Well, that’s the worst possible time for a flat to have happened.”
Kenny disagreed. “Really, it was the best possible time. We were right there, the van was stopped and empty. The worst possible time for that tire to explode would have been about two minutes later, after Heather had ridden away from us, so we wouldn’t know she had flatted ’til after we got back to her twenty minutes later.”
Kenny was right, I agreed, and then said, “Well, let’s hope she hasn’t flatted again since she left us.”
I stepped on the gas. (Kenny was in the passenger seat, I was driving, The Hammer was in the back, recovering).
As we got near Heather, the temperature tipped over to 100 degrees, which is where it would hover for almost the entirety of her 45-mile ride. So we made sure we had a new bottle, packed with ice, to hand to her as soon as we rode by.
“How’re you doing?” Kenny shouted.
“My gears keep ghost-shifting!” Heather called out. “And the chain’s dropped off twice.”
In fact, the only gear that would reliably stay in place was a tall gear, meaning that for the first big climb of the ride, Heather couldn’t spin her way up. Clearly, the cycling gods had decided that on this day, Heather would have the mechanical troubles of the entire team heaped upon her.
We had to come up with a fix, fast. One that wouldn’t mean a long stop for Heather.
Kenny and The Hammer swapped places — The Hammer would have to recover while she also took care of Heather. Meanwhile, Kenny got Heather’s old wheel — the one that had just blown — and took the tire off, figuring that it was at least probable that some little undetectable thorn or piece of glass was the culprit of Heather’s blown tire. Kenny then stole a tire from one of our spare front wheels (we could afford this, since we had two spare fronts) and put it on Heaher’s original wheel. He pumped it up while we drove, and then we pulled over, waiting for Heather.
As we stood there, Kenny said, as nicely as he could, “Fatty, just stand aside and let me do this alone. It will go faster.”
I agreed.
But then, when Heather arrived, I couldn’t help myself. I immediately pulled the quick release and started pulling off the wheel, when Kenny caught my eye with a “Really?” look.
“Sorry,” I said, and backed away.
Kenny made the change, Heather got back on her bike, and rode on into the brutal heat and what was becoming a truly awful headwind. And the bike continued to mis-shift.
She did not look happy.
Bonus Miles Applied
As we drove, it became apparent that moving The Hammer up to the passenger seat had been a great idea. Her nurse persona came out and she pep-talked Heather through her stage of the ride.
Meanwhile in the van, we talked about the deceptive nature of this stage. On paper, its one of the easier stages: 45 miles, 1900 feet of climbing. Tough, but not really that tough. In reality, though, we all agreed that this is — without question — the most difficult stage of the race. It’s the hottest. The climbing is a long, relentless grind — the kind that wears you down, not the kind you stand up and get over with.
And it has featured a headwind every year we’ve done it.
We therefore awarded Heather an honorary 20 bonus miles for the race. When apprised of this fact (by way of having it shouted at her out the window), Heather seemed only mildly appeased.
Suffer
We got to within fifteen miles of the exchange point — where it would be my turn to ride again. By now, Kenny was driving, I was in the back seat, changing into my bike clothes and eating slice after slice of pizza.
There was no pre-ride nutrition strategy to this. I just really like pizza.
I am pretty sure I ate four slices.
OK, back to the story.
We made sure Heather had two full, cold bottles, wished her good luck, and took off.
And then, feeling the wind buck the van, I said, “I don’t think we should leave her quite yet. Fifteen miles is a long way to fight this headwind alone.”
So we stuck with Heather ’til we were within ten miles of the exchange point. During which time, she caught up with and pulled along another rider. Their heads tell the whole story:
Finally, we had to go.
Wait
In ten minutes, we were at the exchange point. The Hammer went to go buy everyone — except me — ice cream, while I got my bike ready. Then I rolled up to the line, my bike pointing forward, my head craned around, looking back.
And there I saw Tommy, from Team 91. Bike pointed forward, head craned around, looking back.
“So you’re the team that’s going to break our streak,” I said. “At the last exchange, you were already 25 minutes ahead of us.”
“Well, it’s not a fair fight,” Tommy said, referring to how their team had three guys racing, while Team Fatty had two. “On the other hand, our woman is pretty new to riding.”
“Well, she’s holding her own on this leg,” I said. We had passed her in the van; I knew she was close and would be handing the baton off to Tommy in just a minute or two.
“In any case, this is an amazing race — just beautiful,” said Tommy. “And this leg of it we’re about to do is the most beautiful of all.” Which made me mad, because it’s really hard to think of a guy as your sworn enemy when he’s really nice and also right.
Tommy’s teammate rolled up, looking exhausted and encrusted with salt, and handed the baton to Tommy. He left only three minutes behind a pack of four riders going together; I knew there was a great chance he’d catch them and together they’d make excellent time on this leg of the course.
I checked my watch and started mentally counting the minutes ’til Heather arrived.
Five minutes went by. I stared back, willing Heather to appear — to have somehow eaten away twenty minutes of the lead of Team 91.
Ten minutes went by. Then fifteen. Nobody had rolled through in fifteen minutes. There was no chance whatsoever I was going to be able to catch and ride with a group ahead of me.
Twenty minutes. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.
And then there was Heather. Even from a couple hundred yards away, I could tell she was cooked to a whole new level of doneness. She came in just a minute or so behind another rider, giving me someone to chase after all.
Heather had been faster than the woman on Team 91, but just by a minute. We were still 24 minutes behind them. Things looked bad.
Still, what Tommy had said stuck with me: she was a new rider. And while she was quite obviously a strong rider, cycling endurance is something you earn over time. And Heather tends to get stronger and faster the longer she rides.
So it wasn’t quite time for us to toss in the towel.
It was my turn to ride now, and I wanted to go.
Which is where we’ll pick up in the next installment.
Comments (20)
06.18.2013 | 9:52 am
A Note from Fatty: Janeen — The Noodleator — makes amazing photos, videos, and words for a living. She’s done a few 100 Miles of Nowhere videos, and they are amazing. This year’s edition, I think, is my very favorite.
Watch it now.
Janeen’s Notes From the Ride
Since I’ve backed myself into a corner with the one-uping myself for 100MoN, this year I thought I’d do something a little different that could serve as my ‘this is my last one’ retirement Nowhere.
So I found a road. In Colorado. Called Nowhere Road. Brain clicked. It made perfect sense to ride 5x 100 miles of nowhere to nowhere. Road. :)
Some quick facts
Rider: Janeen
Bike: Peanut Butter
Team: PB+J
What kind of centuries?
They were out-and-back centuries. Why? Because I was by myself and had to be able to get my car to the next century.
How did I get from one place to another?
It went like this: Drive to start. Sleep in a hotel. Get up, ride a century. Get back to the car. Drive to the start of the next (eat something on the way or stop if time). Sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
What was the hardest part?
Not the riding. That was actually the fun part. Driving and sleep were the issues. For example, I had a 7.5 hour drive to Cedar City from Fallon which only gave me 4 hours sleep that night before doing the Cedar Breaks century (which was the hardest). That was immediately followed by a 5.5 hr drive to Moab after a very long day in the saddle, which again only allowed for 4 hours sleep before the Moab century.
Any injuries?
5 centuries in 5 days was not without consequences. I felt great. The fittest I’ve been in a long time. I could have easily gone out and banged out a 6th century on day 6 had it not been for some compression damage to my ulnar nerve, which caught up to me on the last day. Left hand numbness, and only now, 17 days later with no riding, has the numbness and tingling in two fingers begun to get better. Nerves is crazy!
Overall?
Amazing experience. Fantastic adventure! I’m glad I did it.
Comments (42)
06.17.2013 | 10:25 am
A Note from Fatty: This is part 3 of my 2013 Rockwell Relay Race Report. If you haven’t Part 1 and Part 2 first, you probably should.
I am talking way too much, I thought to myself. And way too fast.
I had just finished the first leg of the Rockwell Relay, where — after a considerable (and embarrassing) struggle — I had managed to hand the baton off to Kenny, who had immediately commenced to take off like a bat out of hell, racing like his life depended on it.
Photo by Heather
It’s one of the reasons Team Fatty — Heather, Kenny, The Hammer and I — are a great team together: off the bike, we’re about the most relaxed four people you’d ever meet. On the bike, we all suddenly transform into the most serious, focused racers in the world.
So now it was Kenny’s turn to pour everything he had into his first turn on the bike, and my turn to clean up (in particular, to wash all the gel off me, my gloves, and my bike), change into more comfortable clothes, relax, and eat. One of our team rules is that for the first hour after finishing your turn on the bike, your only responsibility is to take care of yourself. Relax, refuel. Rehydrate. Chill out.
And so, with my stuff was loaded into the van, comfortable shorts and a t-shirt on, and a bottle of Coke in my hand (I knew I wouldn’t want to eat for another half hour or so), I was talking a mile a minute, the endorphin rush plus the feeling that I had just ridden to the absolute best of my ability plus the excitement of the day (and night and another day) ahead with three of my favorite people, just making me giddy and happy and talkative.
The Flight of Mr Jones
We caught up with Kenny, who was blasting along at an astonishing pace. “Need anything?” hollered The Hammer.
“Nope, I’m good,” said Kenny.
We drove ahead a couple miles, piled out of the van, and got out the cowbell — we only brought one, and wished we (wait for it) had more cowbell.
The racer ahead of Kenny zoomed by. We cheered for him — everyone cheers for everyone at this race, in spite of the fact that we’re all actively competing against each other — and we started our timer.
Three minutes, and then Kenny came by:
Photo by Heather
We got back in the car, leapfrogged past Kenny — nope, he still didn’t need anything (it was still early in the morning [hence not hot] and Kenny [like me] doesn’t really drink a ton while riding. Then it was back out of the car and cheering for our rider again.
Every time he went by, Kenny would smile huge as we shouted the steadily-dwindling time to the racer ahead of him, and we put the cowbell to good use.
Then Kenny hit the downhill, and it was all over for the racer ahead of him. And the racer after that. And the one after that.
Kenny’s kind of insane on the descents, you see, and there was a lot of descending on this leg of the race — 3400 feet of it (although there’s also 2441 feet of climbing). Like this:
After an hour or so, I moved into the driver’s seat, Heather moved into the passenger’s seat (this is the person who takes care of the racer and is the busiest person in the van), and The Hammer went into the back of the van to get dressed for her turn racing.
Moment of Realization
“Are people going to make fun of me if I wear my Tri singlet?” The Hammer called out from the back of the van.
“Nobody gets to make fun of you when you’re passing them,” I replied.
The Hammer knew that her upcoming leg of the race was likely to be hot, and windy. A form-fitting outfit would be a good idea, and her tri singlet wicks like crazy.
So the Tri outfit it would be. Although not the pointy helmet. That would be a step too far. (Oh, and also not the Shiv; aero bars are specifically prohibited in this race.)
We shot ahead of Kenny for the last ten miles of his ride, giving us plenty of time to get The Hammer’s bike unloaded, take care of using the restroom, and basically being at the exchange point ready to go.
Then, since we had the time, we thought we’d go and verify that we were, in fact, the leading co-ed team. The woman who was recording times through the checkpoint was happy to loan us her binder and we started looking through it.
By each team name and number was a code. Like nc-m, c-w, or c-c, for example. It took us a moment, but we figured it out: the part before the dash indicated the type of team: competitive or non-competitive. And the second part was the division: men, women, or coed.
Luckily for us all the competitive coed teams (labeled “c-c”) were bunched together.
And one of them — Team 91, “Lifetime’s Beauty and the Beasts,” had already gone through.
We were not the lead coed team. We were in second. And Team 91 (as we called them, because that’s much easier to remember) was getting further ahead of us every second.
The Hammer…Hammers
Well, there wasn’t much we could do about it now. Just do the best we could. We were either faster than they were, or they were faster than we were.
Looking down the road, I could see Kenny approaching, and doused The Hammer with water before her leg started.
The day was heating up.
Then Kenny and The Hammer did a rolling bracelet handoff:
Obviously, the two of them are a lot more coordinated than I am.
Kenny was all smiles as he coasted to a stop. He had ridden his leg — 44 miles — in 2:12, moving us up to eighth place overall. Eight minutes behind Team 91. A not-impossible-to-recover time deficit, though we knew that Team 91 was sending out their third man, while we were sending out our first of two women.
We had to admit that we were looking like a second-place bet. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?
Kenny set up the shower rod behind his sprinter van and took a shower. Yes, really. How deluxe is that?
We then caught up with The Hammer, who was flying along, smiling the whole way:
Which seemed deserving of some serious cowbell.
Joining Forces
The day was heating up, and my job — now in the van’s passenger seat — was to holler encouragement at The Hammer every time we went by, and to exchange her rapidly-heating bottles for bottles full of ice water.
Staying cool is absolutely essential when it’s 85 degrees outside and looking like it’s going to get to 100. Or warmer.
About ten or fifteen miles — some of the numbers jumble up in your head after a while — another rider caught up with The Hammer, and they agreed to work together for a bit.
This of course meant that we’d be leapfrogging and stopping with this other rider’s team, which is always great, because it gives you a chance to meet some of the other teams and learn a little of their stories and what they’re up to.
In this case, the story was pretty impressive. This rider was part of a three-person team: a couple of college triathletes from Florida who were on their way to St. George for a training camp. As long as they were there, they thought they’d go ahead and do this race as a two-person team, then picked up a third rider at the last moment.
So the guy working with The Hammer was actually already riding his second leg of the day. Pretty impressive. At some point, however, his youth and eagerness to go hard were too much — The Hammer wished him well and he took off on his own.
At which point, a group of four guys came by and invited The Hammer to join their train. She was happy to oblige.
Unfortunately for one of these racers, by adding The Hammer to the line, the pace of the train picked up considerably and one of these guys dropped off.
How to Smell Good
I was glad The Hammer had been able to join up with a group of riders, because the wind — a hot headwind — was really starting to pick up. I looked back to Heather and asked, “Are you ready to ride in this?”
Heather looked only mildly concerned. Which was brave of her. (Oh, and by the way: that was foreshadowing for the next installment of this story.)
Meanwhile, the paceline was working well together and battling the wind as best as they could. When we pulled alongside the group and The Hammer was taking a turn pulling, I shouted — in (I swear) mock anger — at the group, “Shame on you for letting the woman take a pull!”
The Hammer rolled her eyes. One of the guys laughed. One guy said, “She wanted to!”
But the guy directly behind her — the racer from Team Green Gecko 1 (remember that name, because you’ll hear about them again in later race reports), yelled, “But I like riding behind her! She smells good!”
Which caused me to turn toward Kenny and say, “I’m pretty sure the guy behind Lisa just told me he likes the way my wife smells.”
“Yup,” said Kenny.
“Should that bother me?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Kenny replied.
For the rest of the trip, however, it became a running joke to stop mid-sentence and say, “Gee, Lisa, you sure smell good.”
We Reluctantly Begin To Try To Resign Ourselves To Our Fate
As we got to within ten miles of the next exchange, we made sure The Hammer had two full bottles of ice-packed drink, then drove on ahead to get Heather ready to go.
We had everything down to a system by now. Kenny took care of getting Heather’s bike ready, I got drinks into her bottle cages, and Heather got herself ready to go. Kenny set up the shower so Lisa could clean up before we headed out to support Heather. Meanwhile, I put lights on one of my helmets (the plan was for me to be able to swap out helmets mid-ride, rather than have to carry heavy lights before I needed them), and set lights up on Kenny’s bike. It was weird to think of it now, in the middle of the day, but we’d be needing those the next time we rode.
Then, with plenty of extra time, we checked: Team 91 had put still more time on us. In fact, by the time The Hammer got to the exchange, Team 91 would be twenty-five minutes ahead of us, making our chances look pretty bad. In fact, we reasoned, the only way we were going to win was if Heather was a lot faster than the woman on Team 91’s team.
Even so, 25 minutes was a lot to try to pull back in a single leg of the race.
Well, we knew the Rockwell Relay Coed dynasty couldn’t last forever.
Surprise Ending
Heather rolled around on her bike, making sure everything was good. It was.
Looking down the road, I could see The Hammer coming, now with just one of the racers from the train she had been on. They had dropped the others during the climb.
We stood and watched. Heather got ready to start pedaling.
Lisa rolled up and held out her arm to hand the baton to Heather.
And that’s when Heather’s rear tire exploded.
Which is where we’ll pick up in the next installment of this story.
Comments (29)
06.14.2013 | 6:59 am
A Note from Fatty: If, after reading today’s 100MoN story, you feel like you’d like another for the weekend, check out Giro d’Jenny’s really excellent writeup.
Another Note from Fatty: I love this race report particularly, because it’s absolutely positively totally old-school, taking the 100 Miles of Nowhere right back to its roots: on a trainer, going nowhere. And then he takes the idea even further back than that.
100 Miles of Nowhere: Winner of 29-yr-old in East-Central Indiana stationary category
by Eric B.
I hadn’t intended to do the 100 MoN. As I a regular reader of Fatty’s blog I’d heard of it, but decided it was too much….but then I read this post. Now as a relatively sane man, I should have stopped there, but then I read Fatty’s original 100 MoN race report. As I am evidently a very damaged man, I went ahead and read every post and clicked every link I could find on Fatty’s blog about this event. I shouldn’t have.
100 miles…in a garage…on a trainer….with a MTB
I really didn’t understand what I was getting myself into. I knew that it would be tough, I knew I would hurt. I underestimated it.
See? That’s a pic of my mug at 6:45 am happy and hopeful, engergetic and pleased with myself, naïve and stupid.
To sum up my experience, I have a list of good ideas and bad ideas that others may want to take note of.
- Good Idea: Doing the 100 MoN. Great fund-raiser for a great cause. ‘nuff said.
- Bad Idea: Riding a 15-yr-Old MTB:
- It’s slow. At a high cadence (90-100) in top gear I could only maintain 20-21 mph.
- It’s loud. The noises it makes when you get it into its top gear are dazzling and horrifying. It sounded like an evil popcorn maker was chasing me with a maladjusted dentist’s drill while also randomly opening and closing a zippo for over 8 hours.
- It has flat bars. You are severely limited in riding positions. Normal and side-saddle are about it.
- Good Idea: Electrolytes: It was hot, the Half-Evil from the swag bag and a whole load of G****ade kept me from bonking. My engineer/coach/younger brother told me I sucked down 2 ½ gallons of funny-colored liquid over the course of the day.
- Bad Idea: Drinking 2 ½ gallons of G****ade: I suffered from worsening symptoms of pyrosis , eructation, and flatus as the day went on…and on… and on.
- Good Idea: Being a Musician: I discovered that I am able to count my cadence without a cadenceometerajig. This ability started to slip at about the 75 mile mark.
- Bad Idea: Letting your engineer/coach/younger brother be an engineer for the 100 MoN:
He will want to build a special rig to capture/store/monitor the data that corresponds to your suffering. You will start riding over an hour later than you intended. Just have him coach, or do the engineering part of it the day before.
- Good Idea: Eating: Once I started riding, I ate anything I could find. I had prepared 6 peanut butter sandwiches; gone before mile 60. I had the snacks from the 100 MoN swag bag; gone before mile 30. I had flatbread pizzas in the fridge for my lunch and my brother’s; I slapped them together and ate both of them like giant sandwich. My wife made pasta for 4 for dinner; I’m quite sure I ate half of it before anybody noticed. Eating is awesome.
- Bad Idea: Riding 100 miles on a trainer:
I hadn’t thought it through, there are no hills to coast down on a trainer. You have to grind out every single mile. Knobby tires also drag down your inertia…a lot.
- Good Idea: Watching movies with the dog to get through it:
Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The Avengers all only had a few slow spots that were tough to maintain pace.
- Great Idea: The 100 MoN: It’s a crazy challenge, but worth it.
Here’s proof I actually did it, with breaks, in 8hrs 44min.
I made my wife present me with the shirt like I’d just won.
She made me change clothes before I could come in the house. I’m making my engineer/coach/younger brother ride with me next year, someone needs to share this suffering and madness.
- E.b.
Comments (23)
06.13.2013 | 8:16 am
by John M (aka Arizona Guy) – MON racer # 6467
Living in the Boulder foothills, I had some interesting options to consider. I thought the local famous hills, Flagstaff and Old Stage seemed to fit the dimensions… but frankly sounded too painful. There are the ‘fruit loops’ in Lyons with some beautiful canyons and very conveniently located near Oscar Blues Brewpub, but I decided to ride back and forth on a stretch of road known as Rabbit Mountain.
This is a nice out & back option off the one of the standard road loops around here, that I estimated at about 5 miles, with a good grunt of a hill at the end. I declined to measure it on Google ahead of time, and preferred to measure it on ‘race’ day. I also remembered a trailhead there with a shelter, bathroom and the hope ( later dashed) of water.
Race day turned out to be rather cool, about 50 when I got up and I lazed around gathering food, reading the paper and feeding the dog ‘til about 8. I loaded up one of the kids old school backpacks with a jug of water, a couple juices and my excellent Honey Stinger snack pack as well as a baggie full of Gu Brew in a suspicious blue color.
I rode out through the tail end of a local triathlon with back-of-the-pack riders providing some traffic and scenery. I’m no powerhouse, and was taking it easy riding up the road AND carrying a 15 pound backpack, but I nevertheless was overtaking some people struggling up the hills on their tri bikes, aero helmets and all. Soon enough, the racers turned off and I had the road mostly to myself heading to the Rabbit Mountain turnoff – which turned out to be 12.5 miles from my front door. That made for easy math – I owed 75 miles of laps on Rabbit Mountain to qualify as a MONarch.
Rabbit Mountain road (actually 53rd St) borders a Cemex quarry and trends up gently, through prairie (you can’t see the actual quarry pit) makes a bend or two until it reaches the Rabbit Mountain Open Space trailhead, then makes a left turn up past a few houses perched on Rabbit Mountain itself and a fairly steep climb.
The Trailhead Parking lot, the thunderbox, and the welcome cloud cover
As it turned out, the Trailhead was 3 miles from the road, and almost exactly 1 more mile to the crest of the hill, where the pavement ends and I made my turnaround. Total distance was a nice even 4 miles, making an 8 mile loop. That seemed great, I had estimated 5 miles – so now I only had to do 10 laps instead of 15!
The elevation at the low point near the road was exactly 5280, and the peak of the climb was 5670, so about 400 feet of climbing on each lap, with half over the first 3 miles, and the last mile climbing 200 feet with the steepest pitch at about 10-11%.
Of course, this also meant I had a 400-foot descent every lap.
I dropped my backpack at the trailhead rest area and got to work. I clocked my first lap at just over 30 minutes and for the most part held that pace throughout, my fastest lap was 28:30, my slowest 31:something.
One of the nice features of the road was that it was a dead end with almost no traffic, except for hikers and bikers driving to the trailhead. I was hoping for a steady stream of roadies to chat with on my laps, but outside of my second lap, I rode on my own the whole way, although a dozen or two riders passed me going opposite ways on the road.
My company for the ride was a steady whack-a-mole progression of barking prairie dogs who would wag their tails and bark to alert their neighbors of my approach, scurry to the mouth of their burrow and watch to see if I looked hungry. As the miles and hours passed, I got hungrier and began to consider how I might catch and roast a few, so their concern was not entirely misplaced.
Since this was a quarry, there was also the possibility of entertainment in the form of large explosions. I rode for hours in the hopes of hearing ‘Fire in the hole!!’ but finished the day disappointed.
I also had a field full of birds to watch: hawks, mockingbirds, some optic-yellow number that looked too bright to be real, and for one magnificent lap a pair of golden eagles. I was watching one of them flying over the field from a distance and realized it had to be bigger than a hawk, and about the time I started to suspect an eagle sighting, I realized I was riding past his (her?) mate who was perched on a fence post not more than 10 feet from me. Magnificent.
What I never saw the entire day, was a single rabbit. Perhaps the prairie dogs chased them off….
I did have a low point about mile 40, when you realize that a few hours have gone by and there were many more to go. I was feeling some numb hands and wondering why I should stay out for most of the rest of the day. This seemed like a good time for a break, so I went and sat in the shelter, took a bathroom break, ate some food and did a bit of stretching. The sun came out, and I pushed off and headed up the hill.
Once I got going again, the day went by pretty fast… I crossed 50 miles, then before long I was at 60-something and had to calculate my finishing laps. I figured out that 9 laps would bring me to the end of the road with 83 miles, and 12.5 miles home. Hoping that the 12 miles I rode to the mountain would turn into something more like 15, I gathered my bag and headed for home.
Unsurprisingly, I pulled into my driveway with 96 miles showing on Mr. Garmin. I thought about dumping my bag and riding through the neighborhood across the street which had a few blocks I could make a loop around to round out the mileage – then I remembered that I was out of beer!
This gave me a motivating mission, remembering the friendly liquor store about 2 miles away. I emptied out the backpack and headed off to stock up on Oscar Blues Dales Pale Ale.
Ride Stats
Since there are lots of data junkies like me out there, I wanted to include the data from the ride. You’ll notice I ended up just shy of 98 miles – because when I left the store giddy with my fresh beer, I neglected to restart the GPS. Then when I arrived home, I ran into a neighbor eager to share my beer – so the planned car trip with the GPS in my lap to round things out never happened.
TrainingPeaks Graph
Wrapping it all up
Although I’ve done many tougher events (double centuries, Ironman Tris, 100 Mile MTB races..) I think I have generated more amazement with friends and family for the MON than almost any other. They almost always ask me to repeat the concept and stand slackjawed in amazement that I (and hundreds of other internet race-mates ) would willingly go through the mental struggle of a repetitive stretch of road like this.
It was a bit of a mental breakthrough pushing past the desire to quit, which was quite strong. On most races and rides, there are very few bailout points (Marine Corps Marathon runs you past the parking lot at about 3 miles – always a temptation..) but passing the way home every 30 minutes provides a unique temptation and tug on your determination. I’m proud I could (mostly) stick with it all the way through.
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