Day 523 - Part 1: Century Bike Ride to Montauk (0-50 Miles)

For a long time now, my stepdad Greg, and I had been talking about doing a century bike ride together. And by long time, I do not just mean a few months, We'd been off and on discussing this for a couple of years now. But other racing events and life kept getting in the way, until a few months ago. We researched our different options and settled on the Ride to Montauk Century. We did so because of their espousing of their great on course/finish line support, free pie at aids station stops, and free Blue Point Brewery beer. In case you don't know me that well, I am definitely the kind of person to sign up for a race because the amenities are good. And so pie and good beer meant I was in. Then we had about 3-4 months of training and prep work that went into getting ready for the ride. While I had faith that I could do 100 miles on a bike, I had only gotten up to 56 miles in my training. But I decided to rely on my base of endurance fitness and crazy-ambitious spirit to get me through the tough spots. And of course before I knew it, century day was upon us.

So I drove to NY on Friday, and got in just in time because about 15 minutes after I arrived it started to down pour. And pour, and dump, and storm, and just be ridiculous outside. While eating the biggest-pre-endurance-event-meal EVER, we listened to the storm bashing things apart outside and I started to get a bit nervous. The trickling of thoughts in my brain as I stuffed my face: 'What if it doesn't let up? What if we have to ride in the rain? Can I even ride in the rain with the slicks on my bike!?! What if I get struck by lightening? This is bad news.' But around 9pm the storm let up some, and it was just rain. I fell asleep on the couch (as always) listening to the rain, trying to wrap my mind around the distance I would cover tomorrow.

The alarm blared itself into my sleepy mind at 4:45am. I noticed the house was quiet and took this as a bad sign. No one else was awake yet. I pride myself on very few things, but waking up, getting up, and ready to go extremely quickly are one of my strongest points. It's an odd skill, but in times like 'Shit, we have to get up and do a huge ass bike ride in an hour,' or 'Eff, we are going to miss our red-eye flight home, must get up now,' or 'F*** I'm gonna be late for class if I don't get my ass out of bed this second,' it comes in quite handy. I am stellar at waking up and being ready to go within 5 minutes, that ladies and gentlemen is my number one skill. So I was up, out of bed, and ready to get everyone else up in about 2 minutes. Rushing into our kitchen, I discovered Greg was already up and making us some Earl Grey tea. :) Feeling relieved that I was not in charge of the morning wake-up call, I made some cereal and drank my tea in a relaxed fashion.

Greg and I chatted for awhile about our expectations for the day and how psyched we both were. I was a bit nervous, but over-riding my nervousness was that constant un-yielding crazy voice saying, "LET'S DO THIS!" So I changed into my new fancy cycling shorty-shorts, equipped with a lovely crotch pad for cushioning, and 3 shirts (come on, it's me, would you expect any less?). Before long the bikes were loaded on the truck and we were headed to the start line. The nervous-bottomless stomach feeling I usually get before these things had subsided and it started to sink in just what we were about to go do. I was betting it would take us about 12 hours to finish, so we'd be on the road for quite some time. The only thing I really cared about was that my butt would fair okay with that hard ass (no pun intended) bike seat. This had been my biggest issue to date. But it was too late to change my mind now.

So we unloaded the bikes and got set up to go. It was hard not to start people watching with the massive crowd of people everywhere. I don't think I've ever seen so many cyclists in one area before in my life. It was this crazy mix of extremely fit people with beautiful bikes, fancy cycling clothes, and shoes with the clip pedals and regular Joes riding for teams or just for fun. I was so excited to get going, but we took some pre-trip pictures and headed over to the stop sign, which marked the start area in Babylon. But you could start whenever you wanted so it wasn't a huge crowd. Here's a picture of me before we started in the early AM. :)


Before the start of the journey.

And then we were off, waving goodbye to mom and turning down side roads to ride through my town. Right away Greg made sure that I was drinking my water and eating. The logic being that if you are constantly consuming calories and fluids, you won't bonk. It's good logic and I followed it while training (for the most part). But having someone there to keep reminding you is immensely helpful. I was very focused on making sure I was comfortable and trying to notice if anything was rubbing in an uncomfortable way. I did find that the specially made biking shorts were very comfortable and the pad, which I was afraid would be awkward, was excellent and cushioning the ride for my seat bones. So with my status check complete and all systems functioning properly, I began to think about the ride ahead and the daunting task which was between where I was and Montauk. 100 miles is a long way away. I should mention that while I was contemplating, eating, drinking, and checking in, I was also talking non-stop. I am, have always been and will always be, the loud-mouth of my family and any of my good friends are already aware of the fact that if unleashed, I can talk, and talk, and talk for hours on end. In this case, 10. It was a 10 hour conversation between Greg and I that day; I probably strained my vocal chords going on and on for so long. There was no portion of the ride which was quiet (which I'm really hoping Greg didn't mind!!).

Shortly after we started we saw our first flat tire. It's a classic scene, bike upside down on the side of the road, tire off, 3-4 cyclists stumbling around hands covered in grease, pushing and pulling on rubber tires. They had it all together so we kept riding, and about 5 minutes after that we saw our first roadkill, a very flat squirrel. We decided at this point that we should keep a running tally of both flats and roadkill. Near the end of the trip, this became a really fun way to forget about how tired we were. But the first part of the trip was going pretty well. We were moving along at a steady pace and feeling pretty pumped about the day ahead. As we rode along, Greg gave me great advice to keep loose while riding. I learned such tricks as (yes, I should know these things, but didn't until now) moving my hands around on the handle bars, so they never cramped up in one position, and moving around on my seat, aka - switching butt cheeks so that I didn't go entirely numb. One of the cool things I was looking forward to was the first Aid station at the 25 mile point (which turned out to be at mile 21), because two Thanksgivings ago my mom and I ran a 5K race together starting there and I liked the memory. I also was excited and intrigued to see what food would be served at the aid stations. Since I've recently started to get into trail running and ultra races, I've become increasing obsessed with the food at aid stations. How people respond to different kinds of foods while doing physical exercise really fascinates me and so I was pumped to see what would be offered at Aid station 1.


Greg and I really excited about making it to Aid Station 1

Before I go any further I'd like to stress that Aid station 1 was the best checkpoint/aid station of the whole race and with good reason. Aid Station 1 was the only checkpoint which the "lesser distance" riders would not be stopping at; read as: the one aid station where those riding less than 100 miles would NOT stop at and hog up all the dang food! But seriously, this check point was awesome, it really had it all. There were bananas, strawberries, blueberries, nutella, peanut butter, jelly, bread, pitas, hummus, pretzels, water, gatorade, and chafing cream. The only thing that could have made that station better was grilled cheese sandwiches. I was so happy about all the food. I grabbed handfuls of fruit, not nearly enough hummus and pita, and used the bathroom more than once. Additionally, I discovered putting nutella on the banana was an amazingly smart and delicious idea.

Nutella + Banana = Happiness

While it was super cool to see all the cyclists milling about, before long it was time to head out and get back on the road. The experience of being in a crowd of endurance athletes was both really exciting and super intimidating. Everyone had on fancy cycling gear and clothes and looked very professional (this dissipated as we went through the other aid stations which had the lesser-distance riders). It was really interesting to be in such a huge group of dedicated people. In endurance events for running, like ultra marathons (a reminder: anything above 26.2), the turn out is usually pretty small. So I was surprised at the huge number of people committing to ride 100 miles. Possibly I didn't take into account how immensely hard it is to run 100 miles and the amount of training that goes into preparing for a 100 mile race, but I was still surprised given that riding 100 miles on a bike is pretty hard too. Anyway, long story short: the amount of people out riding on this beautiful day made me really happy.

And off we went again to ride another large set of miles as the sun crept higher into the sky. I am not sure if it was the nutella banana or the endorphin high, but almost immediately, I wanted to go faster. We had been averaging a respectable 10-12 miles per hour for the first 25 miles, but now I was ready to go. This was interesting for me, because usually I get slower as the ride goes on, not having any desire to pedal faster. But whatever it was, the endorphins or sugar, I told Greg I wanted to take it up a notch or two. So for the next 10-15 miles we really hauled ass. I think at one point we got up to 26 mph. It was really exciting. Then as we were pushing along, passing "fun riders" (like fun runners, only on a bike, usually a Schwinn), we saw/encountered our first of two major accidents. The woman went down about a minute before we rode up and was lying in the middle of the street. Luckily all vehicle traffic stopped and Greg and I leapt off our bikes to help. She was conscious, but very out of it. Greg asked her if she knew her name and where she was. She knew the answers to those questions, but was clearly disoriented and foggy. At least 3 people popped out cell phone and called an ambulance and the race director for assistance. We made sure she was okay and then I got the bike out from under her. While it was a serious accident because she went down pretty hard, she only had minor road rash on her arms and leg, and probably just some bumps which would bruise up later. It was pretty scary seeing someone go down like that. After we'd determined she did not have a concussion or any broken bones, we moved her to the side of the road onto the grass where she was able to sit up. After that we could hear the ambulance approaching, so we got back on our bikes and decided to head off and let the paramedics do their job. As we started back on our journey to Aid station 2, Greg said, "And that's why you HAVE to eat on rides like these." It was very clear that the lady didn't have any food supplies with her, not enough water, and predictably seriously bonked and the bike skidded out from under her as a she lost consciousness and fell over. She could have been killed had a car not been paying attention and hit her when she went down. So for all of my friends who like to ride bikes, please pay attention to your body's needs and don't try to be a bad-ass and push through bonking. It wont work and you could get hurt... And always wear a helmet. Looking cool is nowhere's an important as, you know, not splitting your skull open on the concrete. Just saying.

The next 10 miles or so we went through some interesting "ghetto" neighborhoods and began to get to the really nice parts of the island. While I was still super energetic and wanting to ride like the wind, my enthusiasm was tempered by seeing the woman go down and that image was very fresh in my mind. So we still rode pretty hard to Aid station 2, but much more cautiously. I have always been terrified of falling and or crashing on my bike, so I didn't want to be one of the injured people on the ride. During this portion we also saw about 5 more flats, and 3 varmints (road-kill). It was great fun and our energy levels were super high as we pulled into Aid Station 2 (mile 50) at a church in West Hampton Beach to see mom waving at us from the side of the road.


Aid Station # 2 - Mile 50!!

To be continued in the next post for the sake of space. Go take a mental breather, do a push-up or two, and come back to Day 523 - Part 2: Century Bike Ride to Montauk (50 - 101.4 Miles)!!