Mile Seventy Five

So yesterday was another century, but this one was a little different. The route was from my house to the Art Museum in Philly and back. It's generally a flat route, because half of it is on the Schuylkill River Trail. To make it interesting, I rode my fixie. Luckily Nancy, Jeff and Rick were kind enough to accompany me on such an adventure.

Interesting group really. Jeff is the one responsible for getting me into singlespeeds, Rick is responsible for getting me my job, and Nancy was responsible for kicking my ass. Nancy is a former Cat 2 road racer and generally uber fit chick. She's doing the upcoming Boston Marathon and Leadville this summer. Ouch.

We started under cloudy cool skies, so I was eager to hit some hills and warm up. Being fixed and running a bigger gear gave me no choice but stand and grind it out to the top of each hill. Somewhere along the way Nancy started throwing in little attacks on the hills. She'd drop it a few gears and surge ahead. Like Pavlov's dogs, I responded each time with a counter attack or what I thought was an attack and counter. Either way, the hills started to hurt and we began discussing options for the flattest route back. Obviously after seventy miles I wouldn't be able to climb with the same vigor as now.

For the most part the trip down the Schuylkill trail was uneventful. Some kind of regatta was going on near boathouse row, so there was some extra weaving needed through all the people. We stood in front of the art museum steps, then headed back to Manyunk. In Manyunk Rick continued home, while Jeff, Nancy and I stopped for nourishment at a little coffee shop. They had great panini's.
Refueled it was back to the trail. There are some hills climbing out of Manyunk. I'm not sure why, but I usually like powering up these hills as hard as I can. Maybe it's a test of my fitness after so many miles or maybe it's just dumb, but I do it every time. Soon afterwards the food in my belly rebelled and my stomach cramped a little. Not a big deal as we had twenty miles of flat to work it out.

Back at Valley Forge it was time to hit the roads and finish the last thirty miles. This is where my fitness truly gets tested. To get through Valley Forge and onto the roads there's a couple of rollers to get up and over. While on the flat Schuylkill for forty miles, your body kind of goes numb. You're just pedaling along not really feeling anything. In Valley Forge you start to feel again and what I felt was uncomfortable. The palm of my right hand kind of got numb and painful on the handlebar. After one particular long climb, my right quad cramped. I wasn't feeling good at all. It was mile seventy five and I just wanted to be home. I knew I hadn't been drinking enough and wasn't sure I could recover enough to finish the ride comfortably. Typically on these kinds of rides, this is the turning point. This is where it goes from a nice long ride to survival, managing discomfort and damage control. When the road flattened out, I chugged all the drink in one of my bottles. When it got flatter and quieter, I ate some food. Meanwhile Jeff was feeling it, but Nancy was just tooling along. I knew she'd outlast us.

Within a few minutes, the food and drink took effect. I felt strong again. Twinges of cramp went away and I felt confident I could finish the ride and possibly finish strong if I was smart about food and drink consumption. We found an excellent semi-flat route back with a little gravel road diversion. In a couple of places I tested myself with some hard pushes. As long as I kept the food and drink coming, I felt strong. Shortly before my house, we went separate ways as Jeff and Nancy headed back to his house. With the extra mileage to his house, they would easily get 100 miles. As I rolled up to my driveway, I hit 98. No good, so I rolled down to the neighborhood below my house and did some loops. It took four loops, some of which I sprinted, to get closer to 100. As I rolled down the driveway and right up to my front step I hit 100.1 miles.

I recorded the trip with my GPS, but it shut off a little over halfway. I thought the batteries died, so I didn't try turning it back on. It turns out it just shut off after so many hours. If you're interested the data is here.

My replaced and wedged cleat worked out ok. Something was wrong with the spring and I had to use Jeff's tool each time I unclipped to reset the spring and clip in again. I'll have to take a look at that. I think I'm finally starting to agree with people about my knee problems. I think I've been pushing too hard a gear all this time. I noticed a couple of times when pedaling got tough if I stood, my knee was fine. If I tried sitting and pushing through the resistance, my knee would start screaming, though a slightly different scream since putting the wedge in my cleat. I've already ordered some different gearing, so we'll see how that goes. I could just switch to a geared bike, but for some silly reason I really like riding fixed.

Speaking of riding fixed, I had no real issues because of it on the ride. I was worried I'd get really sore not being able to stand and/or coast, but I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary for a 100 mile ride. My tail bone was pretty sensitive yesterday, but fine today.

When I got home, there was a whole other adventure waiting for me. Jen had been doing yardwork all day and had some things ready to go in the garage attic. To do that I had to pull the truck out of the garage. When I say pull. I mean pull. The battery had gone dead in the truck, so I hooked up the tractor and pulled it out of the way.

Did some yard work myself to catch up with Jen then put it all away. Couldn't get the truck to start at all. I'll have to deal with that today now that my brain is functioning a little better.

Tonight is the Brewer's Plate. We've been all three years it's been around. Lots of tasty food and of course tasty beer.

-b