Off the Chain Century...

Today was the day, a 100 mile century ride around the Finger Lakes region. I got to bed at 9:40 pm last night, had a great sleep and we were up at 5:00 am and to the ride side by 7:00 am. The ride was a rolling start, which basically means it's not a race and you can start at 7 am or when you get there. We got rolling around 7:40 am.

The ride we took was Quad-illa. It's 100 miles with over 10,000 feet of climbing with over 20 major hills and grades up to 23%. I've never really known what 10,000 feet of climbing or 23% grade means until today. Frankly, leading up to this event I was more concerned about the descents that the climbing. When it comes to descending I'm a chicken and often give myself a speed wobble from tensing up to much and not letting the bike do it's thing.

Daryl, one of the guys that joined us was a professional rider in his early days. Traveled to Europe and cycled for the Canadian National team. He's now 39 years old. He gave me a little advice which was to keep loose on the descents and let the looseness of the bike and your body guide you.

I was quazi-bragging that I did Ironman St. George which is one of the toughest bike rides in an Ironman and I did Lake Placid which was a similar ski type region, how much harder could it be riding the Finger Lakes. Two words "INSANELY HARD". Ironman St. George is a baby compared to this ride.

I've done two charity century rides before, Palm Springs and this year the Tour de Cambridge. The first took me just under 5 hours and averaged 33.8 kph and the other just over 5 hours. This ride took me 7:24:54 and I averaged 21.85 kph. Word's, numbers and stats can't even begin to tell you how tough this ride was, the only way to fully experience it is to do it. It's the only ride that I've done that when you finish, those you did it with feel like a band of brothers, just like when you finish an Ironman.

The day started a little cool. I wore a long sleeve under armour shirt and cycling shirt. We rolled out and within no time we started our first hill, then another and it seemed like all we were doing was climbing. To put it in perspective, in our area we have a very steep hill called Rattlesnack Point. After this ride I want to go and do Rattlesnake, and 6th line and Bell School Line and number 14 side road, I'll eat them up. Most of the climbs had that same gradient but went on forever and when I say forever I mean some lasted a good 20 minutes at 6 kph and 36 rpm. The slowest I did on one hill was 5 kph and 27 rpm.

The amount of sweat that poured off my face was amazing. I was shocked I didn't run out of sweat after the first 3 hours. There was a few descents and I set a speed record for me, I hit 79 kph. One of the other guys got up to 90 kph. After the first decent which I rode my brakes a little, I tried the other descents without any breaks and most of the time did not use my breaks unless there was a bend coming up. I think what also helped was the roads were the best roads I've ever cycled on, period, end of story, no comparison, amazing. They even had paved shoulders on most of them. To think the Finger Lakes is just under 3 hours away from our house and the quality of the roads and riding is amazing. Not to mention as a vacation destination it's spectacular with all the lakes and beautiful vistas.

Around 11 am it started to warm up and by the third rest stop I was so cold from the sweat retention on my base shirt I took it off and hoped I wouldn't freeze with just my cycling jersey. I didn't. It was just what the doctor ordered. I started to feel dry and warmed up a bit. Although you were never dry for long as every where you rode was a hill and I mean BIG LONG STEEP HILLS. When they said 23% grades, I figured it was just one hill to scare us and brag we did 23% grade hills. I can't tell you which was the 23% grade hill, they all seemed like 23% grade hills. I'm seriously not joking. If some weren't 23% grade, they were 21% grade. There was literally very little rolling hills. You were either going up or down and it seemed like there was double the ups to the downs.

After the first couple of hours I was asking myself what I got myself into. I figured we'd be done in about 5 hours. I was doing the math and realized this is going to be a minimum of 7 hours in the saddle. It almost felt like I was going down the rabbit hole like you can in an Ironman on the run and when you have those come to Jesus talks with yourself. Before I could do that I snapped myself out of it.

I told myself that "there is no other place I'd rather be". I also remember being a kid and always wanting to go on an adventure. I had no problem walking into the woods at the beach and hike my way lost or take my bike out around the neighbourhood and ride miles away to foreign territories when I was under 10 years old. I loved the adventure. I thought back to that part of me and said "you got what you wanted, you are in an adventure just like you were a kid again". And finally, I started to think that I'm turning 46 years old in a couple of months and I'm riding a 102 miles and doing the hardest bike ride I've ever done. Even though my birth certificate says 46, my body doesn't.

Those thoughts snapped me out of dread and I started to love it. In fact, I started looking forward to the hills. Good thing, I had about 4 hours of hill climbing left. On virtually every hill guys were walking their bikes up. Even Mike, one of the guys with us, a firefighter, had to walk his bike up one. I'm proud to say I didn't walk my bike up on and pretty much stayed in the saddle 99.5% of the time. I tried to stand a couple of times and it felt I had more power in the saddle. Even Daryl, the pro said he was at one point considering to walk and this is a guy that flies up the hills. He blew my mind how fast he could climb a hill. He said it's all in keeping a steady tempo to be a good hill climber.

I was the only guy on a tri-bike and the only guy with an aero helmet. I was in the dragon's den. I found that I was a bit of an outcast at the rest stops. I definitely got some stairs. I was the albino in the crowd. I loved the rest stops and made sure to eat at every one. There was about 6 over the entire course. I had peanut butter sandwiches at most every one and filled the bottles with Gatorade and water, which I went through a lot of. I didn't eat any of the junk food stuff like pretzels or cookies. I was still honouring my bet with Reid about healthy eating. Even with that, I'm sure I gained weight over this ride. The one thing I know from doing Ironman's is not to let yourself get to the bonk stage, eat your way as far away from the bonk as possible.

For the first time ever I was having sore ankles, my left in particular from climbing and pushing on the pedals so hard. With only about 3 miles left my right knee was also bothering me. Like I said, this ride was torturous. I did have one fall. I was just starting to go up one of the monster hills, the grade was easily 20% and I realized I was still in the big chain ring. I tried to unclip and fix it and I couldn't get out before I was forced to fall. It was one of those sideways fall off the bike and it was embarrassing. One of the shoes still didn't unclip when I fell and when I landed on my back, the bike was above me, like I was riding the sky. One older guy saw it who didn't even attempt to ride up and was walking and asked me if I was okay, I was totally okay, it was surprisingly a soft landing. Just embarrassed. I said it's been at least a couple of years since that happened.

That was just a sign of how bad my gearing and staying alert was all day. One other time I was pushing and did some good distance before finding I was in the big chain ring and the bottom of one of the most monster hills on the ride, this was one that most people walked and it took about 200 meters up until I realized I was in the big ring. DOH!!! I stopped. Then changed it and with difficulty got back on the bike and started back up. Even on the one that I fell over. I had to ride back down to the bottom to start over because the hill was so steep I couldn't get going from where I was.

There was a few time I was pulling up the front end of the bike like a pop-o-wheelie. One other time I climbed at least a mile near straight up and with only 200 meters to go realized I had one more low gear, a 27 at the back. DOH!!! I was pushing so hard I thought I was just weaker because it was the end of the ride. I definitely didn't have my gearing down. Normally I don't ever use the small front ring. This ride it was lots of small rings and then I was also making mistakes on the downhills not putting the gears into the hardest gearing and I was spinning when I'd get to the bottom. My brain was dead for the most part. Understandable. You'd be climbing like crazy and was just glad you be over the top and you just savoured the flavour. You weren't thinking about gearing. You were thinking you made it!!!

I did meat one older guy at one of the food zones that was volunteering and we got on to Hashing, which is running and enjoying beers along the way and afterwards. They say they are beer drinkers with a running problem and there is hashing clubs around the world. They are a huge organization. They have hashes in Toronto and Hamilton and all over the world. I've never done one but I'm told they are fun. I told him, Kenny, about my beer run and he gave me his email, next year he'll come and bring two or three friends. He loved the idea and I even showed him the trophy.

We finished around 5 pm. For the last half of the ride I rode alone. I broke up with Alan and Daryl and Mike cut the ride short and opted for the 100 km ride. He hasn't been riding much and was already sacked by the 60 km point, he was bonking. It still took him close to 5 hours to finish the 100 km's.

When I pulled up to the van, the guys had just got in and where loading the bikes. I then said to Daryl, the ex-pro cyclist, "who wants to go for a marathon run now". He laughed and said "you triathletes are nuts!". It was at that moment that I realized that Daryl got an understanding of how hard / crazy triathlons are. They had a very good post-race hot meal and then we headed back home.

Alan asked me if the course was as hard as St. George and I said St. George can't hold this courses jock strap, this is by far the hardest bike ride I've ever done and the second hardest wasn't even close. Daryl said that he raced everywhere and all over Europe and even in the mountain of the alps and said this course was harder than anything he's done. He said 10,000 feet of climbing is equivalent or even more than what the Tour de France guys do in the mountain stages. When you think about it, we rode 1/3 of the distance up Mount Everest today, on our bikes. It was god damn epic!!!!

The best part was my positive mind frame. I'd say high to some of the cyclists I passed. Most were prickish and didn't say much or anything to the tri-guy and one or two would be polite and ask how I was doing and my response was "Great - There is no other place I'd rather be" and that was all true. It was so hard and epic, it kept your interested and you knew you were doing what very few people could do. I finished that ride and it was the closest I've ever felt to how I feel after an Ironman. If we rode another 2 hours it would have been the same I'm sure. My upper body even got a good workout from pulling on the handle bars as you climbed, even the other guys were saying their triceps hurt.

All I could say it is was F#cken Awesome!!!!

The drive back was fun. On the ride there I was the NEW guy, they had done a 360 km 2-day ride earlier in the year and bonded, I wasn't yet part of the group. On the ride back I was now in the group, the conversation was fluid and the brotherhood grew by one.

Alice picked me up from Alan's place around 8:30 pm and I just relaxed for the rest of the night. So much as I wanted to eat food, I stayed to my plan and only snacked on fruit. Reid is now into running and he does it with his old school black basketball converse runners, just like rocky. And he wears his pullover and listens to rocky music. He comes back all sweaty and says he loves it. He even went out for a second run and says he's getting better, running fast and he doesn't get the side stitches anymore. He also asked me for permission to buy a speed bag for his bedroom and says it's $60 and he'll pay me back. The one thing about Reid is that once he gets into something (aka Rocky) he goes for it. The funny thing is I remember being around his age and doing the same thing when the movie Rocky came out. I was running and humming the song.

One last thought, if this was 10,000 feet of climbing, I'm now a little worried about Vegas, it's going to be over 7000 feet of climbing over only 120 km's. That seems insane now that I know what it means.

A major upside to this ride was my heart rate. I woke up and it was in the 50's. Sitting I had it down to the low 40's and on the largest hills of the ride the highest it got was 164 bpm. I tried to keep it under 140 bpm for the entire time but it was IMPOSSIBLE on the hills.

Unless I come down with Alzheimer's, this ride will NOT be forgotten and I may be foolish enough to do it again next year.

Long Ride - 7:24:54 / 161.87 km / 21.85 kph avg
4850 calories