Well, yesterday marked the end of my Spring 2009 cycling season and the preparation for the BP MS150. First of all, a big “Thank You!” to all of the people who donated, on my account or anyone else’s. I have facetiously posted that MS is a disease that causes people to ride bicycles long distances, but in reality it is a debilitating breakdown in the central nervous system. I saw a few folks with MS along the way, and most of them appeared to have a variation on a motor disorder (e.g., Huntington’s, Parkinson’s). Lots of shaking when they were supposed to be still, and these were the ones who were functional enough to bicycle 150 miles. Something like 80% of the funds collected by the MS Society goes to programs, so they aren’t your typical non-profit that spends most of its money raising more money.
That being said, I am currently sitting at $1,020 in donations, well above my $400 minimum. What a success! Since I raised more than $1,000, then I get to “register early” for next year to start the Cycle of Abuse all over again. If you haven’t donated yet, and are considering doing so, please take a moment to donate before July 31st. However, I will also have my 2010 campaign website up in late October, which will still count for Tax Year 2009, unless you make some whacked-out pledge scheme like Shot-a-Stair.
Wed/Thur
I spent Wednesday and Thursday mostly watching the weather. There was a low pressure front moving from the Pacific Northwest down the jet stream, and when one of those hits the moisture coming off the Gulf of Mexico, we end up getting rain. Lots and lots of rain. Oh, yeah, any moving air mass of that size also tends to bring with it wind. Lots of wind. One of the news channels had a cute graphic showing bicycles moving from Houston to Austin, with wind direction and speed. Saturday was looking wet, but with a strong tailwind (off of the Gulf). I am hoping against hope that the rain will come early and hard.
Friday
I spent the morning at REI getting rain gear and rain-friendly camping gear: an 8″ air mattress, a sleeping bag, waterproof compression sacks, chamois towel, etc. Around 10am, the sprinkles started. The first major line of rain storms came through around noon (inch-an-hour type rain). The rain came in waves, with a couple of hours of rain, followed by a couple of hours of light sprinkles. This continued through the afternoon. Around 5pm, the Day 1 ride was canceled due to a few of the day 1 breakpoints suffering damage (i.e., being blown away), and the overnight campgrounds being flooded (i.e., nowhere for 12,000 people to sleep).
Saturday
Lots and lots of more rain in the morning. Around noon, it started letting up, and finally cleared around 5pm. The forecast for Sunday was for lots of sun. Time for revised packing and bed! It’s a good drive out to La Grange for the Day 2 Start.
RIDE DAY (Sunday)
Up at 4am for the 2 hour drive to make it to the Day 2 starting point in La Grange, TX (pop. 4,600) for the 7am team picture and the 8am start. According to the MS150 organizers, more than 11,000 riders (out of 13,000 registrants) started Day 2.
In all of the chaos, we couldn’t make the team picture happen, but that’s not too surprising. This was reasonably impressive for something thrown together at the last minute, as it was. Did I mention that wind comes with the low pressure front that moved through? Looks like we are in for headwinds most of the day.
One of the fun things about the ride is that the locals come out to cheer us on.
While we started out in a big group, by the time we got to the first official break point, the riders were already starting to spread out.
Oh, yeah, it’s still windy.
After about 20 miles, we headed into Buescher and Bastrop State Parks. This is really the signature section of the two-day ride. There are some quad-busting climbs, at least for this flat-lander, and some great scenery that occasionally “peaks” out through the tree cover.
If you think you might want a shot at views like this from a bicycle seat, but don’t want the fundraising or camping experiences that go with the MS150, there is a training ride, Pedal Through the Pines, that is now on my training calendar for next year.
Along the way, I did see a few other Deloitte folks. Despite having over 100 people registered, we never really got any groups together of any significant size. These people were coming into the break point in the park as I was headed out. I like the team jersey — I need to remember to order one next year!
One of the cool toys I picked up for the ride was a GPS-enabled cycling computer (Garmin Edge 705; more on this later). Aside from making sure that I don’t stray too far from the course route, it also has the ability to upload my ride data to a computer. It gives me some pretty cool charts showing things like the elevation profile of the ride (spoiler alert!).
Here’s what Garmin’s application told me for the total ride:
- Total elevation gain: 2,829 ft.
- Total elevation loss: 2,629 ft.
- Calories Burned: 5,716 C
- Total Ride Time: 3:50:19 — more foreshadowing here
And my speed, as well:
Since I spent a lot of time riding my brakes on the downhills (why there are so few places where I am over 30 mph), I didn’t exactly think to take a lot of pictures in the park, either. However, here are some cool videos that someone took last year from a helmet cam. This will give you something of a sense for what it’s like under the canopy. Pay a bit of attention to when people aren’t pedaling. That’s when it is the most fun!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WekL4X1gOfk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsY1nptl9RU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxBX3eCBPjA
What you will notice is that there is a lot of coasting during the downhills and a lot of places where the riders are up out of the saddle on the uphills. Shifting during this time can be problematic due too much tension on the chain, and my bike was no exception. I ended up “dropping my chain” when I found myself in the odd position of being in too small of a gear during the first big climb (about mile 25). Unfortunately, I didn’t just drop my chain, I wedged it in between the smallest and middle cog rings on my front set of gears (the “chainring”). With the chain completely caught tight, the rear derailleur arm snapped hard against my drive-side chainstay (the arms of the bike that go from the pedals to the rear wheel), gouging my frame. This would prove to be my undoing after lunch. On one of the places where I let myself get a bit aggressive, I felt a bit of a twinge in my rear wheel, so I backed down and made sure to ride a bit more within the limits of the bike and the course than I might otherwise have ridden.
Anyway, here’s a gratuitous picture of a group of us Deloitte folks at lunch. On the menu: 6″ turkey sandwich from Subway. This is a welcome change from what had been a steady diet of PowerBars and Oatmeal Protein Bars.
After lunch, I was really dragging. Lethargic just doesn’t begin to describe it. It wasn’t the wind, though I hadn’t appreciated at the time how sheltered we were in the park. It turns out that I was rubbing a brake, and at mile 48.5 I finally had enough frustration with going slowly to check my bike out. I found adjusted the brake, and caught site of a prickly pear cactus that was just coming into bloom, so I crossed the road in my bike shoes to snap a photo.
Getting back on my bike, I didn’t think about what gear I had been in before stopping, and I clipped my left foot into the pedal and pushed off with my right. With a light heart and a determination to finish off the ride in style and grace, I clipped my right foot into its pedal, gathered myself and prepared to unleash a pedal stroke so mighty that it would strike fear into all of the residents of Tokyo that the wrath of Quadzilla was about to fall on them once again!
POP!
Lurch!
WTF?
Instead of taking off like a rocket, I was rapidly slowing down. Time to unclip in a bit of a panic (Quadzilla is apparently built to “go”, not to “stop”), so that I don’t fall over onto rocks, barbed wire or cactus. I get unclipped, and what do I find? My chainstay, that was previously gouged, had snapped! In trying to put too much power into too big of a gear, I ended up folding over the gearing mechanism and could no longer put power into the bike. Day’s over, thanks for playing.
Let me zoom in on that crack, to give you a better view of what my dilemma was:
What followed was approximately four hours of sheer torture as I waited by the side of the road for a support van that had spare room to haul me up to the next rest stop. Then it was a wait in a LONG line of cyclists trying to make it into Austin. I’ll spare the gory details, but this was where I became most irritated by the unprepared cyclists around me and the organization trying to pander to their dreams of glory for an event that sold out in seven hours. Let’s leave it that by the time we made it into Austin, all of the food was gone and there was nothing left to do but to grab a shower (an appreciated luxury by me, a necessity for the people with whom I shared a bus) and a bus back to La Grange.
We got to La Grange at 8:45pm, but the truck with our bikes wasn’t due in until 9:15pm, since it was the last one of the day. Great! Yet another reminder of my ignoble end. A smart man would have eaten dinner at the Dairy Queen in La Grange, but I, I am not such a smart man. I hung out with a beverage, and daydreamed of a nice meal to lighten my spirits on the trip home. Since my bike was one of the first ones on the truck, I didn’t get it back until close to 9:30pm, at which point, my dreams of a nice dinner turned into a Filet-o-Fish from a McDonald’s in Columbus. If you are ever thinking of pushing dinner just a few more hours or even minutes on a Sunday night in rural Texas, just don’t. When life hands you a Sonic, make a Lemon-Lime Slushie.
I pulled into the house around 11:30pm, utterly exhausted and still fuming about the SAG experience. I was also feeling a complete lack of closure from my first MS150 experience. No feel-good story here about man-vs-nature (and/or man vs. farm-to-market road), merely a broken down bicycle and an itch I’ll have to wait a year to scratch. I hope you will join me then, too!
Unrelenting heat and minimal rain have combined to turn Houston’s swimming pools into bathtubs.
Today’s Houston forecast called for “abundant sunshine” and 0% chance of precipitation. In Bob’s world view, that’s practically perfect! I took the opportunity to don my sneakers and iPod and walked around North Montrose for a good 50-minute workout. Whee!