The thrill of victory! The agony of the rest of the ride! I made a serious mistake on this ride, that could cost me the ride itself. But it all started out so well...
The weather forecast for Saturday was perfect- start out about 60F, high in the 80's, partly cloudy, 10% chance of rain, wind less than 10 mph, then a low in the 60's that night. I asked the RBA (Regional Brevet Administrator) if I could skip the bike inspection the night before, and save an hour and a half trip, and he asked me to just be there early the next morning. I had a good night's sleep, and woke up at 1:20 AM. Way too early! I wasn't hungry; it was too early. I wanted to put sunscreen on my back, but BF was at work, so I thought I would try with a long-handled wooden spoon. It worked! I got dressed in shorts, a T-back tank, my new Bolero, and an Illuminite vest. I already had my bike loaded, and my small trunk bag packed. I was traveling light because of the perfect weather. I had a couple drinks in the trunk bag, and spare lights/batteries, and my tiny camera. In my new Baggins Candy Bar bag I had an assortment of energy bars, the theory being last time I didn't eat enough because I didn't want to stop to get things out of the trunk, so if I had food in a handlebar bag, I would eat more. Never opened it all day!! (But it sure looked cool!) Then I had my cell, truck key, Jelly Belly Sport Beans and Succeed Electrolyte caps in the Bento box.
So I get to the parking garage departure point at 3AM, and no one is there! Is it the wrong day? I bike over to the host motel, and circle the parking lot until a car with a bike finally shows up. By the time he's ready and we head over to the garage, there are plenty of riders there, eventually a total of 20, of which I am the only female...I greet the by now familiar riders, and have a couple pieces of home made banana bread.
We head off at 4AM into the darkness, and unlike previous rides, I am totally unfamiliar with the route. The fast A riders who will average 25 mph are soon out of sight, but I manage to stick with the B riders at 19-20 for quite a while. Good thing, since I am not following the cue sheet, just sticking with the pack. Almost immediately I discover that the new Baggins bag has the ability to turn my headlights off and on at will. Should have pre-tested it with lights! It's an annoyance, nothing more. As usual, the recumbents pass us with ease, stop to retrieve things that have been launched off their bikes, then pass us again. After about an hour, still dark, we come to a sudden halt in a traffic jam of bikes. What is going on? Just a Secret Control...already! The guy checks my name off the sheet, stamps my card, and off I go, still with the B riders.
The early morning is lovely- mockingbirds are singing, and frogs are chirping. Dawn arrives, we pass a couple stores, and no one wants to stop. Finally, a guy peels off for a pee break, and the entire group joins him with sighs of relief. My first group pee! I back into the weeds by a fence, and am on my bike before the majority of the guys. Still the group sticks together, and I am amazed that I can continue at this pace, faster than I have ever ridden for any distance, much less 78 miles. I have, in fact, knocked 30 minutes off my usual 100k time. That's 25% faster! But at last the speed without major caloric intake catches up with me, and I have to stop for a quick Amp energy drink. I continue on to the Control, and meet up with a slower guy, Buddy, and agree to partner up at a slower pace and let the B riders go on without us.
Still, I'm impatient to be on my way. Buddy wants to take a 15-20 minute break, but, at our present pace, I have visions of finishing by 9PM! I try to conceal my impatience, and drink a Cookies and Cream milk, and refill my Endurance Formula Gatorade. (I am _so_ happy that many stores are stocking this now!) My friend from the 300k, Dan, arrives, and joins our "team." Off we go, supposedly at a slower pace, but with a nice tailwind, the pace turns out to be up in the 17-19mph range. We have a nice paceline going, and arrive at lunch _much_ earlier than my most optimistic estimation, at 11:30 (115 miles). The only thing is, my knee, actually my ITB right above the knee joint, has been almost hurting for the last 15 miles. I figure we'll take it easy, _really_ slow down a bit more. I've had ITB problems in two very long running races, in the 10-hour range, but never biking. Obviously, though, the unbelievably fast pace first thing has taken a toll, but this early on, I have no idea how serious it is to become.
From the first stop on, I am managing my electrolytes by taking one Succeed cap every hour (sodium 344mg, potassium 21mg) and drinking Endurance Gatorade as needed (twice the sodium, 200mg and three times the potassium, 90mg, of regular Gatorade). This plan seems to really agree with me in this weather, and all day, my stomach never feels "sloshy," a sign of not enough electrolytes. At lunch I also take 800mg of Ibuprofen. I forget to check my Century time, but when I finally remember at 109 miles, my riding time is 6:20, 18 minutes faster than my Century PR, and 9 miles further!
We are out of the lunch stop at noon, (mmm! ham and swiss sub, with potato chips and an ice cold _regular_ Coke!) and head north, almost to Georgia. This section has two long stretches, north and south, with a short connector in between. My knee is seriously starting to hurt, and we stop two times so I can raise my saddle a quarter inch each time. It doesn't really help. Maybe my knee pain is distracting us all, because we figure out we have missed a turn, all three of us looking for what is actually _two_ turns ahead, not the immediate turn. Fortunately, this was discovered only two bonus miles after we passed the actual turn. We go back, and pedal on.
The weather is perfect- 80 and sunny, but not too hot. The countryside and company are wonderful, but I can't appreciate that so much, because of my knee pain. And all the shifting around, trying to accomodate my knee, is causing problems "elsewhere," too. We have a moment of excitement in White Springs, at a road construction site, when our turn is across a road in the process of being paved. We cannot find a way around, and have to dismount and carefully carry our bikes through the wet tar and gravel.
At some point we come to an unmanned Secret Control, complete with RUSA sign and a blinking red light, my first! We stop, put the little stickers on our cards, and go on. I decide raising the saddle hasn't helped, and stop to lower it back to its original position. We stop at convenience stores twice to refill Gatorade and have bathroom breaks and at each I have a flavored milk. At the last convenience store before dark, I change out the battery cartridges for my lights. My plan was to save weight and just change the four-AA cartridges rather than carry two spare lights with new batteries, but I am so tired, I question the logic of this when it seems impossible to get the backs off the lights. Fortunately, it's just because the batteries have slid foward, and a sharp blow to each puts them back where they will allow the access doors to slide off. I also take my last 800mg of Ibuprofen.
Finally we come into the town of Brandford, check in at the Control, get our cards stamped, and head over to Pizza and Subs for dinner. I look forward to a sit-down rest, and the cook kindly gives me a bag of crushed ice for my knee. I check in with my emergency bail-out person, and tell her that I'm am safely to dinner, with only 50 miles to go, and there is _no way_ I will not finish the ride, even though my knee hurts quite a bit.
After a nice dinner of cheeseburger and fries, we head out. Now it's dark. My knee seems better, and, because I am familiar with the route from here on in, I lead off. At about five miles out, though, my knee hurts worse than ever. I go slower and slower, until it's all I can do to manage about 6mph with much coasting and very painful restarts. I call for a pee break, and am horrified to discover that my knee hurts _so much_ I can't turn my foot to unclip. My knee feels as if someone has stabbed a white-hot poker into it, and is now wrenching it about. Dan steadies my bike, and I force myself to unclip, then stagger off the bike, and into the weeds, screaming very quietly to myself, trying so hard to not look like a weenie. Back on the bike, and barely able to sit, or pedal, things are looking grim. I discuss matters with Dan, and decide the best plan is limp home, right on the course, and let them continue on without me. It absolutely _kills_ me to make that decision- my home is only 15 miles from the end, but I feel like if I can't unclip, I can't ride safely in traffic. I _know_ Dan and Buddy would gladly stay with me for the rest of the night, no matter how long it took to get in, but I can't put them through that, though I would do the same for them.
At my driveway, I say goodbye, and ask them to let the RBA know that my plan is to continue on before daybreak. I have fleeting fantasies of quitting, but rely on the old axiom "Pain is temporary, quitting is forever." But who knows if that is true; "It never always gets worse" didn't seem to hold true for me tonight...Nevertheless, I retrieve the key from the lockbox with great difficulty, and head inside. Wait, are the motion sensors on or off? I can't tell, and if they are on, I don't have the remote with me to shut them off. I can make it into my bedroom and bathroom safely, but am cut off from food, Ibuprofen and any liquids other than water. I finally decide there would be a blinking red light if they were set, and luckily, I am right.
I get undressed, and survey the damage to my undercarriage. It looks a bit like I have been sitting on a wasp nest all day rather than a bike saddle, welts and all, and unfortunately pretty much feels like that, too. I would even go so far as to say swollen beyond recognition. I've never had this problem before, and blame all the shifting around trying to find a comfortable position for my knee. Oh well, maybe I can fix it later with bag balm and ice. (And yes, by today, 48 hours later, everything is thankfully back to normal!) I "hop" into a nice hot bath after downing a tasty lime Endurox. Oh, it feels wonderful! A quick soak, and it's off to bed with an ice pack. I set my alarm for 4AM.
The phone rings at 2AM, and it is the RBA, checking in on me. I say I thought he had gotten the message that I would be coming in before 7AM, and he tells me to knock loudly when I get to the motel room. He inquires about my knee, and I tell him I haven't walked on it yet (having slithered out of bed, to the phone, like a snake) but am hopeful that after two more hours of RIE I should be able to limp in.
At 4AM I get up and survey the damage. It feels a little better. I pack up, head out the door, hop on my bike (SHRIEK!!!) and off I go. I am hopeful that at this hour most of the Saturday night drunks are home in bed. I have one scary incident with a white Mustang that speeds past me, parks up in someone's yard which I notice as I pass it, and then roars past me again a few minutes later, but nothing comes of it. I have occasional top speeds of about 15mph, but average 10 mph for the final 15 miles. I'm really just happy to be moving at all.
I finally arrive at room 106 about an hour and a half after leaving home. I knock politely, twice, then proceed to beat the door down. RBA Jim groggily answers, signs me off, notes my finishing time of 5:59AM, and I'm on my way to my truck a mile away to pack up and be done with it. I feel disappointed, let down. I feel like it's my own fault for riding faster than I should have. I had _no idea_ that there could be knee pain so bad that having a root canal while in labor would seem preferable! I _am_ grateful to have finished, and after all, it is not a race. The finishers' names are written down on the big list in Paris in alphabetical order with no times noted. Still...my goal was to finish before midnight, and I am severely disappointed and saddened. I have doubts about the coming 600k in three weeks, even though I am positive I was well-prepared for the 400k, as evidenced by almost no muscle soreness immediately after the ride, or even the next day. The only glimmer of hope is that I have _almost_ experienced what it would be like to do 400k, sleep a few hours, and then get back on the bike. It wasn't so bad. With all the trouble, I still managed a pace of 15.7mph, my best yet! I was only _on the bike_ for 16 hours. That's pretty good, right? Yes, not so bad. I am forgetting the awful parts already...
Nanci
