Every Ride Has a Story

Who cares?

I've been a fairly avid cyclist going on 14 years now, and though the mark may vary slightly, I like to think that for most of us amateurs, every ride of 50 or more miles has a story to tell.

To be truthful, most of the time it's not worth telling.  It's just something small logged in your mind for a few weeks or to pull out sometime when you're bantering about with another rider after you've both just completed a 50+ mile ride--anything less was really just for fun and not worth the fuss, or at least that's how we act together...

What makes my recent ride worth talking about is that I sort of had to blow a relative off in order to get my super-sleepy 3 year old home tonight, and yet her family supported me on this year's BikeMS, and she'd asked me how the ride was. I was truthful when I said "It was 101 and a half miles in one day- BOOM!  It was awesome!"  It really was-- it was a great ride and I was proud of it.

So this post is for Susie, and is probably to her advantage because this is what I would've told her if I'd had the time, and it's probably pretty boring so she has the option to just click right on outta here as she sees fit :).

Day 1

I've been working hard to be in form for a century this year, mostly because I have my sights set on the 2017 Dirty Kanza 100, and it's an early season race for someone like me.  So I really needed to get my miles up anyhow this summer and keep the wheels turning through this winter if I'm to finish the DK100 on the bike and not walking!  For this reason, I had done plenty of 65 milers over the summer and really thought bagging the BikeMS Century on day 1 would be no problemo.

Mostly it wasn't, once I got to about the 64th mile or so!

The trouble is that I put new cleats on my shoes the Tuesday before the race, with no time to really break them in and make final adjustments to have things where they needed to be.  I knew this was a risk, but I also knew that 1) I'd changed my cleats a few times in the last 14 years with no major issues, and 2) there are bike mechanics every 10 miles in this ride, so things couldn't get too far out of hand.

Well despite my best efforts at cleat alignment, I knew at the 20th mile rest stop (my first for the day) that something was amiss.  Unfortunately, the mechanic there that took a look at my shoes opined that nothing was wrong and he simply torqued the bolts down a little.  I took 2 ibuprofen and off I rode, thinking yet that it wasn't a big deal.

Oh how wrong I was.  Some 20 miles later at my next stop, I was truthfully unsure that I could even finish the 75-ish mile route, as the outside of my right knee now hurt so bad I could not put much downward pressure on the pedal at all.  The mechanics at the stop were slammed, so I thought "surely I can make it on into DeSoto."  Thankfully, the ride from there has a majority of downhill grades-- as it turned out, I'm not sure I would have even arrived at that 56 mile lunch stop if it wasn't for that.

I came creeping into the DeSoto lunch stop as bad as I have ever been in 'bike pain'.  I could put no pressure on the right crank-- it was ugly.  I got off the bike and had to step gingerly for the sharp stabbing pain coming off the outside of my knee.  I went to the stand that Biscari Brothers bike shop was running and explained the predicament.  "Pull those shoes off and hand 'em over!  We will get you fixed up!"  He was right-- with them off my feet and the cleats themselves aligned, it was clear my right shoe was kicking out at the heel by quite a few degrees.  Since the left felt completely fine up to that point, we squared the right symmetrically off of it and tightened everything up.  While this sounds like something easily accomplished before this time, I would say it actually wasn't.  We used a table, the side of his van, and a ruler all at once to actually have the cleats aligned where we could watch what the shoes were actually doing-- it was the most advanced setup of the day to that point :).

I loaded up on 2 more ibuprofen, and had a good long stop of about 30 minutes, doing some walking and stretching after a nice "sit in an actual chair" lunch, all in the hopes of giving it my best shot.  Back in the saddle, it took about 5 miles before some mixture of the shoes being aligned, ibuprofen, endorphins, and grit finally put the pain on the back burner.  By the time I rolled into Eudora a few miles later I was actually using my right side strength again!

Eudora was a short stop--maybe 7 mins, but that was enough for the endorphins to lift and some swelling and stiffness to set in:  2 more ibuprofens and I rode out a bit alarmed at the immediate return of the stabbing, but was joyful just over a mile later that it had indeed lifted right out.

Confident in the fitness that I had obtained through the summer, and confident that indeed the adjustments, rest, and medicine had done their thing, I turned off on the century loop just outside of Eudora.  It was easy miles, really, with the pain gone and both legs doing their thing.  Two rest stops later, there was only about 20 miles left to go and I was feeling great!

There was a huge hill at mile 81, at least 3/4 mile long and a "cat 4" according to some Garmin owners that were discussing it at the stop prior.  It was like a bad 80's movie as I approached the hill and literally thought "well, this is what all those Buchanan County miles were all about this summer!"  And that really was the case-- I nailed that thing shut and came off the top with a giant downshift to get back into the 18-20mph range for the next 4-5 miles into the final rest stop!  It was a great feeling to be riding the back half of the century this strong when at mile 56 I was truly asking out loud whether I would even make it to Lawrence without the SAG...

The other rumors coming from the Garmin owners were that the route was, variously, only a 95/96/97 mile route.  I heard this again from some riders at the final rest stop, and I really didn't want to roll into Lawrence short of a true century.  So I took off in the direction I had come and backtracked a solid 2.0 miles in order to gain 4-- my mileage at the time was 87.1, and the paper route guide gave it 10 miles to the finish.  Passing the same rest stop again, I smacked the trip reset on my bike computer and kept a nice, steady, and strong pace the rest of the way into Lawrence.

All's well that ends well:  it was a fantastic day in the saddle looking through my post-lunch lenses at 101.53 miles.

Day 2

The TL;DR for this day is: I totally should have realized that regardless of the strong finish, I tore that knee up for some 56 straight miles and should have just taken the "1-day bus" back to Olathe Saturday evening.  But I didn't-- after a nice hot shower, I tossed on a knee brace, had some beers, had some tacos, and took a walk downtown.  Returning to my fancy army cot about 7:30, I took a seat while I futzed around getting the next morning's kit ready to ride.

Well I tell you, I stood up from that cot about 10 minutes later and nearly fell down.  That was the first time I had given my knee a total rest, and it wasn't having it.  I looked right down at my watch to see if I'd already missed the bus--which I had--and so I took 4 ibuprofen and immediately closed up shop and got to bed, thankful that my bag contained another, stronger knee brace for the next day's ride, which I already knew was not going to be pretty.

The next morning was an ugly start.  Ibuprofen, knee brace and all, I limped my way from Lawrence to Eudora.  It took nearly the entire 9 miles to warm up enough past the stabs on the outside of my knee to where I could actually put some power onto the leg.  Finally getting to that point, I didn't dare stop in Eudora for fear of the stiffness returning and just rode onward to DeSoto.

I made quick work of the rest stop there also, and began to pay the price of the "majority of downhill grades" I had appreciated so strongly on Day 1, as it was now almost all uphill to get to the rest stop at 30 miles.  And it was ugly.  I had made the decision to ride the short route for Day 2 almost instantaneously when getting off my cot the night before, but now I was rolling into the 30 mile rest stop feeling about as bad as coming into DeSoto the day prior. My cleats were fine now, I was feeling aerobically on top of the world, but the pain in that knee was almost unbearable as I limped into the rest stop just 10 miles short of the finish.

This rest stop was the same one that was used for the outgoing 20 mile stop the day before-- it was where I had my first 2 ibuprofen that first day.  I got them from a lady who had been standing there shouting "Ibuprofen, aspirin, tylenol-- whatever you need, we got it here!"  Spotting her, I walked over to the cots she had set up, one of which was covered with all the medicines she had on offer.  It took me about 2 seconds to spot the saving grace of my ride:  a pump of Biofreeze the size of my forearm.  I was sooooo happy to see that!  I took a lump of that crap the size of a golf ball and just laid it out all over the outside edge of the knee, a nearly 1/8" carpet of menthol snot that promised to take me home.

Pulling the brace up and over the green goop, I was already Feeling the Burn-- and it felt AWESOME.  I slow pedaled for about 2 miles while all the ingredients came into play-- the ibuprofen, the stretching, the endorphins, and most importantly, the Biofreeze heat doing its thing.  With that lit up, so was my ride, and I slammed on into Garmin's Olathe parking lot at an easy 20+ mph pace.

All in all, what a ride!