Ironwomen and Pewtermen

In general, doing anything for one hundred miles is tough, unless it’s napping in the backseat during a road trip, of course.

Well, this past Saturday left no time for coasting, as SuperDwight pointed out after all was said and done. In biking, riding over flat ground means never getting the break of coasting down a hill. And Lincroft, it’s as flat as Iowa. But there were no killer Bisselesque hills, either, so I had that going for me.

And folks, the Farmlands people invented a system so full-proof that even I, the guy that needs a compass to get out of his bedroom, couldn’t screw up. Every turn there was color-coded arrows to clearly and beyond a shadow of a doubt illustrate which was the way to go. I didn’t miss a single turn.

Now, I am not one to gloat, but there was some one, and some one that gave us the “Stooges” moniker, that did in fact miss a turn in a course so clearly marked that even I, the Count of Clueless, the Misfit of Mapquest, the Clown-king of compass, couldn’t muff.
I won’t name names, sufficed to say that her name rhymes with Milarie.

But I did find a way on Saturday to get lost, none the less. To be certain I got there on time, I got there so early (6:40am) that some guy in a bright yellow outfit was not yet outside to direct me to Lot 2, where the check-in occurs. I drove around every part of the campus but where the ride began. I found a dozing police officer in his cruiser and he straightened me out.

At Lot 2, I realized that the road biking jersey was the final resting place for every horrible, awful and otherwise nausea-inducing color. Either road biking causes color blindness, or shows like “How Do I look?” have no worries about subjects for future shows. The Farmlands jersey (I know some of you liked them), looked to me like the rejected costume for the 80s Christian hairband Stryper.

So, after Becky, Nancy and a few others were done laughing at me for even screwing up finding a parking lot, we all got checked in, fed, fueled, prepped and otherwise ready to go. Dwight snapped shots of we three that decided that riding 100 miles was somehow a good idea. And off we went at about 7:30am.

Becky, I found, like the rest of us that like to ride up front, loses all sense of pace the moment some one appears in front of her that she has a remote chance of passing. Hey, I am guilty of it myself, but I am no Becky, so I held back a bit.

We hit the first rest station at 25 miles in, and folks were snacking away as if they just spent a week in a dessert, which struck me as a bit odd. The Farmlands people did a fantastic job of keeping the station well-stocked with a plethora of choices from something called a Lara bar to sliced oranges. I didn’t realize that the PB&J was such a popular staple in the roadie set.
But there was only one Portapottie, so Nancy decided to bushwack a bit and head into the woods as nature had called. But the only thing she ended in relief of was a few ounces of blood from the thorn bushes she unintentionally wandered into. And after a good gouging, she ended up on the pottie line anyway.

Around mile 30 or so, I realized that I was going to have a hard time keeping up with these two rock stars. These two are made of iron, and I am pewter, at best. But I kept on going, in part to see how far I could last, and who wants to be by themselves for 6 hours or more?

At the 50-mile rest stop, I realized how strong a lock Apple has on the mobile music player. It seemed every third person had the tell-tale white ear buds protruding from their earlobes. We loaded up our water bottles once again and off we went.

Somewhere after this I saw my first spill. A rider must have gone around a turn going at least 30. At that speed, he didn’t have time to react to the hillock-sized speed bump that some one decided to put on a side road. The guy clearly had his bell rung. Some one said he hit the bump so fast that he caught air. An ambulance was on the way, and enough folks were giving him first aid, so we headed on.

This is running kinda long, so I will skip ahead. It was nearly exactly at mile 70 that my tank went to E, and the needle slipped hard and fast. Becky and Nancy quickly became specks on the horizon and I struggled to figure a way to finish the next 30 miles. Gatorade? The Clifbar I had (mint chocolate flavored), but wait – Eureka! As a fluke, I threw one of those GU things in my back pocket.

For those that don’t know, GU (pronounced “goo”) and similar products, is something resembling runny icing with a mix of sugar, glycogen and caffeine. I tore the top open and squeezed. Then I realized I should have had the open end in my mouth first, as it ran all over my hand. Yes, I licked it off. (it was PowerGel, double caffeine, Tangerine flavor, for the curious)

That stuff is a close to a miracle as you can get with food. Within a minute or two, I went from Zero to Hero and I toughed it out for the next 10 miles until the 80-mile rest area. Becky and Nancy were waiting for me there, of course. And after scarfing down an oatmeal cookie, a banana and some gorp, we hit the road. Yes, they once again disappeared on the horizon, but I did finish in just under six hours.