The 100 Miles of Tahoe

For me to encapsulate the entire weekend in one go would be just too darned long, so this one is going to be all about the ride itself.

Our team was set to roll at 6:30AM, which meant getting up at 4am to make extra sure the bike, all the gear, the food, everything was ready. I got up at 2am, as I never really got adjusted to Nevada time.

We were warned the night before that the elevators would be jammed with people coming down for the ride, so I was in the lobby by 4:15am, and noshing on a very weak excuse for a bagel and coffee some 1o minutes later. You have to eat that much ahead, so it's properly digested by the start time.

Before we left, Dwight advised us to invest in arm and leg warmers as it would be quite cool in the morning. Once again, he was dead on - it was 38 degrees and those warmers came in handy as my teeth were chattering away. (that's me in the picture to the right, just starting out.)

With the altitude difference (Tahoe is 6,000 feet above sea level and New York, well, isn't), you had to pace yourself to avoid "lung burn". Any impromptu sprinting, a favorite pasttime of mine as Becky incessantly chides me for, led to feverish panting (my inhaler kept it from becoming any more than that). So, a 22 mph pace back home was more like a 18 mph in the mountains of Nevada.

The course itself was simple enough: A 70-mile loop around the lake, with a 30-mile spur out to a place called Truckie, to make it an even 100 miles. After getting out of the strip of hotels and fast food joints, we started to hit the hills, followed by the switchbacks that led to Emerld Bay.

It was abundantly clear very early on that we had been very well trained and that many others were not given the same training and advice. At the very first incline, folks were already walking their bikes. And there were bikes of all shapes and sizes. I saw a tandem mountain bike with knobby tires at one point - that's the equivalent of using a Jeep Wrangler with mud tires in a NASCAR race. And a few true masochists did the thing on unicyles.

One "tradition" of the Tahoe ride is that teams festoon their helmets with decorations akin to their hometown. The Idahoans had little baked potatoes ensconced in tin foil atop their heads. We came across the South Jersey people who curiously had a tomato and a small purple toilet next to one another. My initial presumption was that they were promoting proper colon health by a diet of vegetables.

But one of the Southerners explained that they were tired of people crapping all over Jersey for how bad it was when it actually is full of farms (hence the tomato) and other amenities like beaches. But my thought was, if you didn't want folks to crap on your home state, why then would you provide a recepticle to do so, and put it on top of your head, no less?

Our team affixed NJ license plates to the backs of our helmets and bike seats. Some were funny, and read "NO BRAKES", others had nicknames like "EVEINATOR" and others had small essays on why they were riding or just a name of who they were dedicating the ride to support. In hindsight, perhaps a deceased Mafia guy riddled with bullets strapped to our helmets might have nailed home our Northern New Jerseyness, or perhaps an enourmous oil refining tank.

Part of the "fun" of a 100-mile ride is a religious attention to pain. An ache at mile 5 can become a bear at mile 60. And as my bike is no fancy-dancy form-fitted $5,000 super fiber 15-lb. paragon of aerodynamics, it gives me a few aches. My back, from the 13-hour journey out to Nevada then a very poor night's sleep, was quite angry with me the day before the race.

To be on the safe side on race day Sunday, I tossed two Advil down with my 4am coffee. Around 11am, followed it up with another two pills (I tore them from their wrapper, popped them in my mouth all while passing two riders - how's that for riding skils?). And at the Truckie rest stop, Nancy offered me a ziplock bag smeared with a colorless, odorless goo. I hiked an eyebrow and asked what I was supposed to do with it. She told me it was a numbing gel, so I rubbed a bit on my lower back, just in case. She then announced that it had other uses outside of cycling to allow some one to "last longer". Enough said.

Besides spending a gratuitous amount of every weekend for the past five months on a bicycle seat, Dwight & Co. beat into our stubborn heads: Safety, safety, safety. It was clear that many were not so lucky to have such excellent tutors. With 3,600 people going more 20 to 30 miles per hour packed on the same road, bad things can, and did happen.

One unfortunate woman had to be airlifted by helicopter due to the extensive head trauma she suffered on a relatively flat stretch of shade covered pavement. You see, it's very easy to let your concentration lapse, and just the touch of another's back wheel to your front wheel will send you down to the asphalt, and hard. By the end of the race, I must have passed three other similar accidents.

Some time after that, our little group of seven speedsters (Peter, GPS Eric, Paul, Nancy & Becky, Paul, one of the Dons and myself) attracted an unwelcome guest to our paceline. This bearded gentleman decided that he would form his own little line right off the hub of my back tire - very dangerous.

He was freaking me out, and I told him so, in no uncertain terms to either get in the pace line or get away from me. He gave me a look like I just insulted his mother and then proceeded to dangle off of Becky's wheel. A moment later, she sprinted to the front of our line just to get away from him.

And even with our training, Team Northern NJ did not go unscathed. On the way back from Truckie, Don, now known as "Bleeding Don", rubbed the back tire of the bike of GPS Eric and went down while barking out an F-bomb.

One second we were all in a cozy pace line cruising at 22 mph, the next we're prodding Don's helmet to see where he had landed. Don had a few healthy scrapes, including a particularly gruesome injury on his hip that resembled a smooshed PB&J. And when he showed off that particular war wound, we all got to see a bit of "Little Don" as well.

But Don's noggin was intact (or as intact as it was before we started), and we were all glad for that.

About five minutes after that, Paul blew out his back tube on a pointy rock, and our Group of 7 was torn into pieces. At the next rest stop, with an amazing view of the lake, Bleeding Don and I hung back and leisurely enjoyed our lunches as the others hit the road. What lay ahead was Spooner.

Spooner was a name that had been branded into us, instilling fear and utter dread - the Darth Vader of hills. Eight miles of climbing, up and up and up. My 22-mph pace, ground down to 7 and the sun seared down on us. At 7 mph, that meant spending just over an hour going up hill.

Bissell and Allen and all the hills in New Jersey were all smaller siblings of Spooner. The road twisted and bent, dipped and climbed. Any momentum built up on a zippy downhill patch was bled away on subsequent steep climb, and I cratered the road with f-bombs.

At the tippiest top of Spooner was the last rest stop at about mile 82. Somewhere along the way, I lost Bleeding Don in a bottleneck and he later passed me in that long climb up Spooner. Being by myself, I stayed at the rest stop long enough to fill up my waterbottles with something called "Revenge Sport". They also had mini popsickles, but it was no fun flying solo and my legs were tightening up, so I skipped the pops and hopped back on what GPS Eric calls "Orange Lightning".

What should have been my last chance to hit 50 mph proved to be a wrestling match for my handle bars with a gust of wind that had old Orange shuddering. In my top gear and peddling my heart out, I could only muster about 35 mph. (The best I did all day was 43, after the first switchback.)

Now, I had read in one of the myriad emails from our coaches incorrectly that while the course was labelled a 100-mile course, it was actually 108. So in the 90s, I was holding back thinking that I had another 10 to go. Yes, I was wrong again and that rectangular "Finish" sign caught me by surprise at mile 100.

As I made the final left turn into the Finish area, crowds on either side cheered, whooped and maniacally shook cowbells to greet me, just as they had for all of us throughout the long ride. That night we were told that together, we'd raised about $8 million. I am really proud of what we accomplished, not so much in the ride, but in the potential good that may come from reaching out to all our friends, family and many strangers.

Now, with 40-odd people on our team, some joining up just before Tahoe like Josh and the "Three Guys from Wayne", it was tough to get to know every one. Folks that rode at a certain speed tended to ride together and thus little cliques formed, and there were little teams within the team.

But those superficialities dissolved as Lori, who was never seen without a smile though she finished last at every ride, came through the avenue of cheers. Dwight came in with her and you could see every mile she pumped through for nearly 12 hours in her eyes. We enveloped her with applause and Dwight and Lori hugged and that's when I truly understood the "Team" in Team In Training.

God bless each of you for helping me get close to my goal. And while I made it through the hills of Tahoe, I have just a bit further to go in my fundraising. So, if you haven't yet, there's a link on the upper right that will take you to my fundraising page that can handle online donations.

Thanks.