Well I made it this far.  I took the bus this morning from REI in Cary up to Banner Elk.  It was a really long ride–but I met some interesting and very chatty folks on the bus. There was one alarming moment when the bus nearly sideswiped an 18-wheeler and once we got in the mountains things were quite twisty especially for the poor guy that used the bathroom in the back of the bus.  But after nearly five hours on the road we got here.

I think I did all the things I needed to do at check in.  Then I schlepped my bags over to a baseball field and took a survey of where best to pitch my tent. Up against the fence seemed like a good spot. Amazingly, I managed to get my little tent all set up–I’m quite certain it’s the smallest one out there.  I’ve decided I’m a bit of a princess–in a very small kingdom.

Turns out there is something called the Bubba Zone, where for a modest fee, Bubba will provide you with an already-set-up tent plus a sleeping bag and air mattress every night. You don’t have to lug it, pitch it, disassemble it, and he has coffee in the morning. Hmmm… Too bad I didn’t find out about that six months ago.

Anyway I wandered into town and found some lunch around three o’clock–the group dinner is at 5.  I was going to go for one of the optional rides, but lunch was a higher priority. So I am going to poke around downtown Banner Elk now and make sure I know where to fill my water bottles in the morning. Cross your fingers and hope this gorgeous weather holds, for tomorrow we head downhill. 

So I’m just going to pretend yesterday didn’t happen.  I’ve been running like a maniac, trying to get ready for Cycle N. C.  Part of my agenda for this ride is to share it with my daughter’s class, so yesterday I went to talk to the students about the route and my preparations and so on.  I went out to the garage to put air in my tires–I was planning to ride to school–and my front tire went flat.  The stem somehow separated from the tube.  Hmm.  Plan B–throw the bike in the car and drive to school.

So last night I figured it was time for some tube-changing practice.  I was getting dinner ready, and I sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor with my front wheel.  It took me 20 minutes to change it.  No kidding.  This is apparently not my strong suit.  I was getting exceedingly cranky, and I was trying to fill the tube with my frame pump, thinking I needed the practice.  I got it nice and tight, and went to pull the pump off, and the valve came off with it and shot across the room.  Instant flat tire.  Unbelievable.  My daughter pointed out, very wisely, that perhaps I needed to take a break and eat something before I tried again.  She was right.  The good news is that the second tube only took me twelve minutes.  I think that’s reasonable progress, don’t you?

So I think I’ve done everything I can do to be ready to ride across the state, even down to practicing my flat-tire skills.  Today I washed every stitch of dirty laundry in the house.  I packed all my camping gear, bike clothes, and warm jammies into ziploc bags.  I have two great huge duffel bags packed and ready to go–we’re limited to two bags, 40 lbs. each.  Mine weigh 30 and 38, so I figure I’ve even packed light!  My husband has written out fabulous instructions that will hopefully enable me to update the blog from public libraries, or even from my cell phone in a pinch.

So I’ll be off early tomorrow morning, on a bus to Banner Elk.  I’ll try and post an update every day, so check back here.

Well, it seemed like one of those rides, anyway.   It could’ve been worse, of course.  Do you ever have one of those rides, where you get a ways down the road and realize things just aren’t going as planned?  Usually, those “things” come in clusters–I’ll ride, day after day, without a hitch, and then one day I’ll go out and there will be 15 glitches, one after the other.  Often on those days, I get myself convinced that it’s all a sign, and I really ought to bag the whole thing and go home.  That just makes matters worse, because then I get anxious, and it just goes downhill (although, invariably, the road itself goes UPHILL) from there.

Today was one of those days.  Now, I should preface this by saying that I fully recognize that none of these things are real problems, and I’m very grateful not to have had a real problem.  Nonetheless, I’m happy to be off the bike for the day.

I took my car to be worked on, having planned out a nice 45 mile loop starting and ending at the shop.  I thought it was 45 miles, anyway.  It turned out to be 41–close enough.  So I hopped on the bike and headed out around 9:30; I don’t like to go out much earlier than that on a weekday, because traffic is so dreadful first thing.  Anyway, I got going and headed from Hwy. 64 into Apex. 

Now, I had an agenda for this ride.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but I’m riding Cycle North Carolina next week.  My dear Mr. Helpful was indeed very helpful the other day, when I asked him to put my mountain bike pedals on my bike.  For touring, or any other long-distance riding where I’ll need to get off the bike for more than just a potty break, I prefer mountain bike shoes, because they’re easier to walk around in.  So he put them on for me, and today was the test day.  If I’m going to ride 500 miles in them next week, I probably ought to put in a few miles in them before I leave home.  So I started out, and they instantly drove me crazy.  I’ve had these shoes for three years, but I don’t use them all that much, and they have less float in the direction that I like float, and as a result, I felt a bit trapped.  The shoes themselves are also much heavier than my road shoes (for that reason, I use them for winter riding, because they’re warmer).  I felt like I had lead weights on my feet.  So I was crawling from the get-go.

I was also trialling a different spot for my cell phone.  I velcroed a little holder to my seat tube, and put the phone in there, thinking that the less weight I have on my body, the better (it’s usually in my jersey pocket).  So I apparently didn’t tighten the velcro enough, because it kept slipping from side to side, bumped by my inner thighs.  Or maybe I just need to do more Jane Fonda or something.  I don’t know–but the constant rubbing was a huge problem.  That clearly won’t work next week.

So the first hold-up was construction.  I usually find it sort of amusing when I come upon a road crew, you know, where they have one lane shut down, and two guys with stop signs letting traffic from each direction take turns on the open lane?  So I got to one of these spots, and I was first in line at the stop sign.  I chatted for a couple of minutes with the guy holding us up, and then he said we could go.  I waved the cars on around me, to let them get ahead, and then I went last.  But I was very self-conscious.  I realized that there was a line of traffic ahead of me, waiting to use the lane, and I was the only hold-up.  I hadn’t planned to do intervals today, but that really got me moving!

The next hold-up was when I realized it was ten o’clock.  Whenever I’m at home in the morning, painting, I listen to the Diane Rehm Show on public radio.  Today, she was going to be talking about the e. coli-in-the-spinach problem, about which I have heard very little, and I really wanted to listen.  So I had brought along the teeny-tiny little MP3 player that I use on long runs; it has a radio.  So first I had to get it switched to radio, then find the station.  Then I realized that the battery was nearly dead.  Oh well; maybe radio doesn’t use very much.  Then I was trying to get the earbud situated, while still pedaling.  Mistake.  I dropped it, the cord wrapped around my front fork, and I heard the ping as one of the earbuds popped off and bounced away into the grass behind me.  At least it was the left bud; I don’t use that one on the bike.  And at least it didn’t cause me to crash and die.  I kept going.

The next hold-up was when I turned onto Tody Goodwin Road (after asking a very nice gentleman in a church parking lot for directions, because any cue sheet I write for myself NEVER, EVER works the way I thought it would–I need better maps).  Now, this requires another little preface.  I have a long and traumatic history with Tody Goodwin Rd.  First off, for the record, the name of the road is phonetically incorrect.  It is officially, according to the people who live there (I know, I’ve asked), pronounced with a short o.  But phonetically, this would require two d’s.  My son is Toby, with a long o.  Not Tobby.  The road should sound like “toady.”  But I’m sure no one would want to live on “toady” road.  This just bugs me.

Anyway, I have ridden down this road many times, and many times on this road I have been chased by mean, vicious dogs.  I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m terrified of dogs.  I mean, hard-core, serious phobia.  I’m horribly afraid of them under any circumstances; pedaling in the road with the potential for cars while being chased by a growling, snarling, teeth-baring angry animal is enough to paralyze me with fear.  There are two houses on this particular road that have caused me problems in the past; a place on the right with a white fence, and a bit further down, two houses next to each other on the left, one of which has a German Shepherd.  That dog has come after me while the owner just stood there and watched.  We’re talking major trauma here.  So I was anxious all morning, just knowing this road was on my cue sheet (I couldn’t figure out any other way to get where I needed to go–believe me, I tried.  More on that later).

I made the right hand turn, passed the first house (the one with the British telephone box in the yard), and then I came to a large field being turned up by a man on a tractor.  Another man was walking in the field–with the German Shepherd.  This was it–paralysis.  I just stopped in the road.  I had no idea what to do.  Knowing the dog was there made it absolutely impossible for me to go forward–in my mind, the dog was equal to a cement barrier.  There was no way I could get past it.  But I couldn’t turn around, because this was the only way I knew of to get to Beaver Creek Road, which is where I needed to go.  And I didn’t have a map.  So I just stood there, hoping the men would see me before the dog did.  I waved and waved, till finally one of them saw me and waved back.  Not very helpful.  I was reduced to bizarre gesticulating, trying to somehow communicate “I’m afraid of your dog; please don’t let it chase me.”  Amazingly, I think he understood.  He motioned to me to go on, anyway, so I did.  Equally amazingly, the dog ignored me.

I was a wreck, though, and then two minutes later, I got to the house with the white fence.  I went as hard as I could, and by the time I got (safely) past, I was quite certain I was going to throw up.  I’m not sure if it was the effort, or the fear.  Whichever–I was definitely not having fun.  Then a couple of minutes later, there was a woman out for a walk on the road.  Now, this is out in the country, and you don’t often see someone out for a power walk out in Chatham County.  So I slowed down to chat with this woman.  She was ever so nice, especially when I told her I was about to throw up from my fear of dogs.  She said that the ones by the white fence had been tied up by their owner ever since she called animal control, because they used to chase her, too.  And the German Shepherd is apparently too old to chase anymore.  She says she walks on that road every day, and hasn’t been chased in a couple of years.  Yay!  I can put Tody Goodwin back in the mix!

So the reason  I absolutely had to ride that road was that I was trying to scout out a small portion of the CNC route, to find a spot where my daughter’s class can go have a picnic and cheer us on as we go by.  I’ll stop and have lunch with them.  I’m planning to talk to the class before I leave, and then they can read my blog entries from the road.  This will be the kick-off for their NC studies for the year.  I’m looking forward to it; they’re a lot of fun.  Plus I’m excited about the idea of riding all the way across the state, and I want to share that with someone–they’re a captive audience!  So I found a spot, and hopefully the weather will cooperate for us to rendezvous next week.

The battery on the MP3 player eventually died (but not until after the spinach segment, so that was good).  I made it back to the mechanic, finally.  The ultimate indignity was when I got in the car, forgetting that there was an open pack of fig newtons in my jersey pocket.  Yuck.

And they never did figure out what was wrong with my car.

I’ve been having some difficulty settling into a routine.  I’ve been trying, in these pages, to mostly talk about my cycling life, but in reality, I do lots of other things.  I have two children–my son is nearly 13, and my daughter is 9.  I spend a lot of time being Mom–carpooling, supervising homework, making lunches–all the normal Mom stuff.  I help with my son’s cross-country team (which ends this week).  I love running with the kids, but it does wreak havoc on my schedule for the first quarter of the school year.  And I try to drive on field trips periodically, because it seems to matter to my children. 

I’m also, in theory at least, a writer.  I’m working on my first novel; I have a complete draft, but it still needs a lot of work.  Unfortunately, most days it gets shoved to the bottom of the to-do list, and as a result, it’s been moldering for an embarrassing number of months now.  Must get back to it . . .

I love to cook, and eat, and buy groceries, and read cookbooks (seriously–cover to cover), and plan menus, and just generally obsess over food.  It’s a huge part of my life.  I’m currently reading Heat by Bill Buford.  Fabulous book.  Much of it takes place in the kitchen of the restaurant Babbo, in New York, which I ate in once about two years ago (right after I ran the New York Marathon–that was a bad day, but that’s another story).  Great restaurant; fascinating book.

I love to garden.  I’m not very good at it, but I have ideas in my head about how our yard should look.  They don’t always match my husband’s ideas, and the reality rarely matches my ideas, but I do enjoy dabbling.  Unfortunately, it’s just that–dabbling.  As a result, our yard is usually half-overrun with weeds, the mosquitoes are horrible, and there are bald spots in the grass where the children have scuffed out homeplate and bases.  But it’s September, and I have a pile of bulb catalogs next to the bed.  I need to order some things, because it’s that time of year.  I’m going to get around to that real soon.

And I’m currently painting our house.  I decided about a year ago that it was time to act like I’m here to stay.  We bought this house in the spring of 1995.  I’m not much of a decorator, and I’ve been busy for the last ten years, so I managed to just sort of live in the house, without really paying much attention to it, for a very long time.  But I realized that I don’t really like maroon and green wallpaper, or builder beige paint.  So I started stripping wallpaper, and then painting, and what started as a little freshen-up has turned into a major overhaul.  And it’s taking FOREVER.  The dining room is violet, the library is apricot, the living room is yellow, the hall is turquoise–definitely no more beige.  At the moment, there is a large Gorilla ladder on the front stairs, which has been there for several weeks now.  I’m trying to finish those stairs this week, so that I can move to the back stairs, and then I will officially be finished with the downstairs.  Halfway.  How alarming that I still have half to do!

Anyway, all of that is just to say that when it seems like I don’t ride regularly enough (which I know I don’t at this point), it’s because I’m doing all those other things.  The beginning of the school year is particularly tricky, what with the need for new routines and schedules and all.  But it’s time now–I need to get settled and organized.

So tomorrow I’m taking the car to be serviced, and I’ll wedge in a ride while they work on it, then I’ll go to cross-country.  There–I’m feeling more settled already.  Really.

I had a great ride today; 60 miles of beautiful weather.  I practiced talking on the cell phone.  Verdict–it’s a mixed blessing.  I used my earbud, so I was able to (mostly) keep both hands on the handlebars, but talking and riding at the same time is hard work.  I suppose that explains why I ride alone so much–chatting really takes it out of me.  On the other hand, it was a nice distraction for quite a lot of miles.  Thanks Catherine, and Lisa, and Lee.  I probably won’t do that very often, but sometimes I just need a little extra something to get me out the door.  Besides, sometimes I just need to get the phone calls returned.

While I was out there, I got passed by several guys who were apparently on a lunchtime ride originating at SAS.  I enjoyed chatting with them for a brief moment at a traffic light (even the tiniest diversions are welcome on a long day!), and then their next wave caught up with us, including Cid Cardoso.  Cid owns our local triathlon shop, which also happens to be one of the largest tri gear suppliers in the country.  Check out their website sometime–insideoutsports.com.  They do a booming mail order business, but if you happen to live in the Triangle area, visit the store in Cary sometime.  Nice guys.

Another guy was on my mind while I rode today:  Dean Karnazes.  If you don’t know about this guy, you must, must check him out.  I first heard his name several years ago; can’t remember where.  But then he was suddenly everywhere.  He wrote a book, Ultramarathon Man, which I bought as soon as it came out and LOVED, and did the rounds of the talk shows and radio programs.  His story was fascinating–how he went from stressed out, overworked, unfit suburban Dad-type to hard-core ultra-distance runner, practically overnight.  Great book.

But it gets better.  He has now embarked on a fund-raising effort to benefit a foundation that he started:  Karno Kids.  He’s all about youth fitness (a subject near and dear to my heart, as well), so he has set out to run 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, all to raise money and awareness for the foundation.  AND–here’s the cool part–we can all go run with him.  He started running this past Sunday, on Sept. 17, and will finish up with the NYC marathon in early November.  In the meantime, on the weekends he’ll be running in “official” marathons, with lots of other folks.  But given that regular marathons aren’t usually held on say, Tuesdays, he’ll be using sanctioned courses, with the help of race organizers, to put on his own mini-version.  And we ordinary mortals can join him!

His NC race will be in Greensboro on Halloween.  Check out his website endurance50.com, as well as his blog enduranceis.com.  And come run with us!

I was out of commission most of last week because I chaperoned my daughter’s class field trip–3 days, 2 nights with 21 4th and 5th graders.  They were fabulous, but it took me all weekend to recover.  So I’m going out for a ride now, but thought I should send out the next chapter in my 2003 saga.   This is what I wrote when I finished the second qualifier for the 2003 running of PBP.

My Second Brevet - 195 miles is a long way.  I rode my second brevet, 300k, on May 3rd.  And a bit on May 4th, as well.  It was a really, really long day. We followed the same route that we had for the 200k, riding about 30 more miles out beyond Siler City, to turn around at Seagrove, the halfway point. The morning was beautiful-perfect riding weather. I felt great-no lingering illnesses, no problems with my cleats, and lots of fun new gear on my bike to keep me entertained. I’ve added a handlebar bag, a back rack with a bag, a special front wheel with a generator in the hub, and lots of lights.  Riding it fully loaded, I look like a very strange explorer-an odd hybrid of high and low tech.  I spent a good portion of the morning just getting used to balancing with so much extra weight in new places. Beyond Siler City the scenery was spectacular. The road flowed over constant rolling hills (when I finally got to bed, much, much later, I had a bit of vertigo trouble every time I closed my eyes), with beautiful views of bucolic spring countryside.  There were only 25 or 30 of us this time, so I rode off and on with various of the 6 or 8 folks who made up the back of the pack.  Mostly, we were a group of four-me and three very gallant guys.  They let me have the bushes first at the gas station that has no bathroom.  Actually, I’ve discovered that I love engaging in activities that are mostly populated by men.  On these rides, when we stop at a store or gas station that does have a bathroom (is it legal for these places not to have one?!), I’ll pass by two or three of the guys using up precious rest time standing in line to get into the men’s room.  I just breeze by into the empty women’s-I love it!

There was quite a lot of climbing, throughout the day, but I still felt strong when we got to the last control at about 130 miles.  I’m not sure of the exact mileage; my computer was dying, so all I had was my odometer total.  But I know that we had 60 or so miles to go when we got back to Siler City. While we were hanging out at the Pantry debating what to do about dinner, it started raining. So we ducked into the local cafeteria, and had a lingering (although not exactly gourmet) meal-really, we were just shoveling in calories at that point.  Finally, at about 7:15, three of us decided we just couldn’t wait any longer, and headed out to brave the storm.  Remember the Saturday night all those tornadoes hit in Missouri. It was the front edge of that system, I think. Things went downhill from there.

First off, lightning is really dangerous. And riding along on top of a metal bike in the middle of a lightning storm is really scary. The two guys I was with seemed not to be bothered by it, but I nearly had a nervous breakdown. I kept thinking of my two little children (okay, they’re not exactly babies-nine and six-but they still need their mother!) and wanting desperately to find some kind of shelter. But I also desperately wanted to be finished-I was starting to get tired, and it was raining and the temperature was dropping. So I just kept pedaling and panicking, certain I was going to die a horribly painful death at any moment. One or the other of the guys would note a flash, then count until the rumble of thunder, and announce that it was a mile off or so. This did not help my mental state.  This went on for several hours.  No exaggeration. It rained for a long time-I was never sure if it was actually coming down at any given moment, because my glasses were streaked with water for so long that it just ceased to matter. My jacket serves pretty well in the rain, but my feet were soaked and freezing. (Note to self:  buy waterproof booties!)
 
In Snow Camp, we stopped at our usual watering hole (a very cycle-friendly little country store), and a well-meaning father came running out with his son to tell us that there was a tornado on the ground in Denton(where exactly is Denton again?), and that we couldn’t keep riding, especially if we were headed toward Chapel Hill. Morrisville isn’t quite the same direction as Chapel Hill, is it? I didn’t even bother getting all the way off my bike, and I yelled at the guys to hurry it up. We were back on the road in about 5 minutes.

Then it got dark. Well. At least I wouldn’t be able to see the funnel cloud long before it swept us away. It kept raining and lightning, of course. But riding in the dark in the middle of nowhere when you’re utterly exhausted (having blown through a lifetime-worth of adrenalin because of your very healthy fear of lightning) is a whole new ballgame. Did you know that it gets really dark in rural Chatham County when there’s no moon and total cloud cover? And there are no street lights. I’m pretty certain it was the darkest dark I’ve ever been in. Except for when the flashes of lightning lit up the sky, causing my heart to jump into my throat. I was completely freaked out by the total darkness, and was nearly heartbroken to discover that my lovely new lighting system was not even close to what I had hoped it would be.  I had to ride very slowly and carefully because I just couldn’t see the road all that well.  We heard creepy screaming noises off in the woods to our left (I convinced myself it was a peacock, but it was still pretty creepy). My friend James said he could tell my speed spiked up when I heard that.

There was no way I could sustain it, though.  I was absolutely exhausted, and having trouble keeping the bike moving in a straight line.  Sometime between 10 and 10:30 I hit something (in retrospect, probably the shoulder of the road), and went down. My first crash. Luckily, I was going so slowly I wasn’t badly hurt.  Of course, as I went down, James hit me and went sailing over his handlebars. He landed in front of me, with one foot trapped in my front spokes. Luckily, none of his bones were broken either-a good thing, given that his collar-bone was broken in a crash last fall.  We managed to scoot the whole tangled up mess off the road, and finally managed to get his foot disengaged from my front wheel. We shakily got back on our bikes, only to find that my tire was flat-the valve had snapped off. My first flat tire.  Did I mention that it was raining and very, very dark? We fixed it, but it took all three of us. Once more, back on the bikes.

By this time, I was really weaving all over the road. And the only problem with generator-powered lights is that when you slow down, your light dims. I rode some of the hills in those last couple of hours with very little light at all. When we got to 15-501, we just had to stop one more time-we hung out in a gas station, eating Little Debbie cakes, until the young guys working there had to close up at 11.  They were as nice as could be, but we must have been a real sight. Drenched, exhausted, muddy, and pretty strangely dressed on a Saturday night. I was beginning to feel like I had some scrapes and bruises, but I didn’t even bother peeling back my layers to look. For all I knew, there could have been blood seeping through my clothes.

Fortified with sugar and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, we headed once more into the dark and stormy night. The lightning had eased up. Once I stopped shivering, it didn’t seem quite as cold. But I was still mighty tired. On these winding back roads, we would occasionally turn a corner and see the orange-ish glow of the Triangle-area lighting up the sky, but then we’d go around a curve and be back in pitch-black. It was heartbreaking.

We finally got back to the finish in Morrisville at 12:40 am. That’s way past my bedtime. It’s also way past the time that I had hoped to finish by-we were at least two hours slower than I had predicted. The last 60 miles took us five long hours, after sustaining a nice, steady 15mph all day. It was quite a ride.

There in those last couple of hours, when I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it, I made up my mind that this was it-I was throwing in the towel.  I’m too old for this, I have too many other responsibilities, it’s eating up my life.  I’m not having fun.  The next morning, after very little sleep (pain in my shoulder kept me up, and I was too tired to remember to take ibuprofen), I got up, already planning what I need to differently on the 400k.

The shoulder is fine now, the bruises and scrapes have almost entirely faded, I’ve replaced the ripped arm warmers and jacket, and Matt has rebuilt my damaged front wheel. I’m ready for the next round!

Yesterday I decided to do a do-over.  I figured it was Monday again, time to do another long ride, preferably without bonking.  I got distracted by things in my house (like the telephone, and the email, and the breakfast dishes, and, and–the list goes on).  But I managed to get myself out the door around 10.  Because I was later starting than I had planned to be, I decided to cut it from 50 to 45 miles.  Don’t ask why.  I figured it would take me about 3 hours, which seemed a more sensible amount of time than 3 hours and 20 minutes.  I don’t know.  Somehow, in my head, it all had to do with lunch, which really should be irrelevant.  I must work on my tendency to cop out when the thought of missing a meal crops up.

Anyway, I did have a great ride.  The humidity has started to drop here in central North Carolina, and we’re just beginning to move into the glorious weather of early fall.  Yesterday the air seemed cleaner and clearer, the temperature was perfect–all in all, it was a really beautiful day, and I was happy to be out in it. 

My husband often asks me what I think about when I ride by myself for hours at a time.  (I think he secretly wants me to say “nothing” because that would confirm that only an empty-headed dolt would do all this crazy riding, but I try to make it sound like I’m having deep philosophical insights into the meaning of life).  But here’s a summary of the various topics I contemplated yesterday, some profound, some random, and some downright strange.

–Food.  I spend a LOT of time thinking about food, whether I’m on my bike or not.  Yesterday I repeatedly calculated calories, even though I had done this before I left the house.  I sort of have to calculate before I leave, otherwise, as evidenced by my experience last week, I’ll bonk.  Keeping myself fueled is a constant battle; I grew up with the same body image issues as most women my age, and I really have to detach myself from those emotional issues and think of food as a purely clinical fuel issue.  So yesterday I drank two servings of Accelerade (120 calories each), and I ate 1 homemade energy bar (containing peanut butter, slivered dried apricots, pine nuts, and chocolate chips, among other things.  I’m still tweaking the recipe.  But I think it contained about 200 calories), 1 Gu (90 calories), 2 snack slices of Kraft 2% sharp cheddar (90 cal. each), and 17 Crispy Wheats crackers (130 calories; I buy them at Whole Foods, but they’re just like Stoned Wheat Thins).  I also drank a bottle and a half of water.  That added up to 240 calories per hour.  I aim for 250/hour, so that was about as close as I ever get.  And I felt great all the way through.  I followed up with a 16 oz. bottle of Nesquick fat-free chocolate milk, my recovery drink of choice, for 320 calories.   Then I ate normally for the rest of the day, and tried to get some extra water.  We’ll know how it all worked in  half an hour or so, when I go run with my son’s cross-country team.  The next workout is always the proof of the pudding . . .

–I passed a giant field in which the dirt had just been plowed up for the foundation of some large building to be poured.  The dirt smelled nasty.  Several years ago I took a soil class from local gardening guru, Tony Avent, and learned that when you turn up several feet of dirt like that, you release anaerobic organisms from their homes deep in the soil, and that’s why it smells so bad (I know there’s a leap of faith in that statement; my memory of the class is sketchy.  But I know the smell has to do with the anaerobic organisms; that phrase stuck).  Tony Avent is great, as is his nursery at plantdelights.com.

–I am painting my house, and contemplating colors, and I wondered for a long time about the difference in visual impact between a light pattern on a dark background, and a dark pattern on a light background.  I need to look that up.

–I thought for a long time about the series of letters to the editor that our local newspaper has printed in the last couple of weeks, in response to a column regarding the nuisance that cyclists on the road present to drivers behind them.  This column apparently suggested that cyclists be compelled to pay a steep licensing fee in exchange for our right to ride on the road.  I’ve read these letters to the editor, but I admit I didn’t see the original piece.  Nonetheless, I chewed on this for a good hour yesterday, and managed to get myself quite worked up.  I decided that I would actually be more than happy to pay an extra fee to ride my bike on the road, but that said payment would remove any obligation I might have previously felt to be an accomodating, considerate consumer of pavement.  If I pay this fee, I’m done sharing the lane.  No more staying way over to the right, hugging the white line, trying meekly to stay out of the way of the cars.  No sir.  I’m taking the lane.  The whole thing.  If I’m paying extra, the cars can just wait.

Actually, I’m very conflict-avoidant, and I do drive a car myself (a minivan, actually, so not even a particularly tiny car), so I don’t think I’d ever go out and publicly argue such a position.  I certainly wouldn’t do so without doing some more research.  Perhaps I should at least read the original article.

So, yes, plenty goes on in my head when I’m riding–some of which is constructive, some not so much.

Off to cross-country now. 

I know that’s a strange title.  But I read back through what I wrote about the first qualifying brevet that I did in preparation for PBP last time, and I remembered the struggles I went through to acquire and understand and feel comfortable with the equipment part of randonneuring.  It turns out that when you’re on your bike for 12, 15, even 24 hours at a time, the bike begins to matter.  It feels irreverent to say so, but in some ways, it really is about the bike.

Unfortunately, I am often a bit blase about things that I perceive to be minutiae.  In many ways, my lack of perfectionism is a good thing–it keeps me sane in my role as mother to two very active, exuberant, out-there kind of kids.  But it also means that I sometimes gloss over details that I need to focus on a bit more carefully.  So I’m trying, as part of my preparation in the next few months, to pay more attention to the small stuff that can grow to be big stuff if left unattended.  Some lessons shouldn’t have to be learned twice.

My First Brevet: April 2003. Okay, so I did my first brevet.  In order to ride in P-B-P, you have to qualify by doing a series of increasingly longer rides called brevets.  The first, and shortest, is 200k-for those of us who are metrically impaired, that’s roughly 125 miles.  I (and about 40 other people) tackled this first major distance in mid-April.  There were a couple of glitches First off, I had been sick in bed the entire week before with a stomach bug.  I managed to get up and around a bit on Friday, but when the ride started at 7 am on Saturday, I was still pretty wiped as well as nauseated, dehydrated, and weak from four days of not eating.  This did not bode well.

I felt pretty decent for a long while.  The route we’re using begins in Morrisville and winds around through the northern part of Chatham county, then drops down through Snow Camp to Siler City. It’s an out-and-back; the turn-around was at a gas station in Siler City. Every brevet has official check-points, or controls.  At these predesignated places, you go in and get your card stamped as proof that you stayed on course.  The caveat:  the control is only open certain hours.  This particular ride, because it was so short (hah!) had only one control, at the turn-around.  But as the distances increase, I’ll pretty much have to keep moving to make it from one control to the next before closing time. 

Anyway, on that particular day, I felt pretty decent when we got to Siler City.  I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I had brought with me, as well as a Snickers that I bought in the gas station.  Things went downhill from there.
 
The second major glitch was that I was using new shoes and pedals.  Yes, I know.  You’re never supposed to use new equipment (or food or technique, or anything else) in an event.  Well, so, okay.  I screwed up.  It turned out the cleats were placed wrong, and by 70 miles I was in agony.  Pain was shooting up my left leg, from my ankle all the way to my hip.  By about 90 miles, my right leg was going, too.  I couldn’t figure out what to do about it, so I just kept pedaling…..slower and slower and slower.   I also discovered, much to my chagrin, that pb&j and Snickers are not what the body wants when recovering from the stomach flu.  Nor is an extremely long bike ride;
 
We took a break at some little country store; I sank to the ground with a bottled water and wouldn’t let anyone talk to me.  The water finally settled my stomach a bit, so I just got back on the bike and kept going.  Later, to my amazement, I realized that it had never even crossed my mind to quit.

By the time we reached the finish, I made quite a pretty picture.  I had started the day wearing tights over my shorts, as well as arm warmers, a jacket, and a fleece headband.  The one thing I needed and didn’t have was full-fingered gloves.  But by mid-day we had all stripped off the extra layers-unfortunately, I had not yet equipped my bike with a rack or bag, so I had excess clothing stuffed and hanging everywhere I could think of.  I rode probably 70 miles with my jacket tied around my waist.  No drag there!  I kept asking people was it billowing horribly; they were all kind enough to lie and tell me it was just fine.

But we made it to the finish, and I was quite pleased to get my medal.  I finished at 5:25 pm.  It was one really long day.  When I got home, my mother-in-law, who was visiting for the weekend, took one look at me and noted with horror that I looked like I had been beaten up.  Okay, I was a tad tired.  She’s going with me to Paris, so I think it was good that she got to see me in rough shape.  Hopefully it won’t freak her out too much over there.
 
The next day, we had fifteen kindergarteners over for my daughter’s birthday party.  Now that was the truly hard part of my weekend, but that’s another story!
 
Back to 2006–

Like I said, I don’t want to have to learn this lesson twice, so today I dealt with a small problem.  I realized a couple of months ago that my saddle was wearing out, so after a few weeks of reminding myself, I bought a new one.  It sat for a couple more weeks before I finally installed it.  And now that I’ve ridden on it 4 or 5 times, I finally got around to adjusting it today.  It was too far back, I think, so I moved it forward a bit, then went out and rode 23 miles on it.  It probably seems like I let the problem go on too long, but for me, that was a prompt response!  I’m doing Cycle NC the first week of October, and I’ve got weeks between now and then to be sure I’m totally comfy with the position.

In the meantime, I suppose I have to get rid of my old saddle.  I’m actually quite proud of it–I’ve never actually worn out a piece of sports equipment before, and that saddle is testament to a lot of miles ridden.  It’s no pile of yellow jerseys, or room full of trophies, but it was certainly hard-earned.
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I need order in my life.  Not tidiness, necessarily (that’s pretty much nonexistent at my house), but a sense that actions and activities have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  When I read a book, I start with the title page, and read through to the end–no skipping bits.  When I assemble a piece of furniture, I read the directions first, then follow them carefully.  I know where I’m going before I leave the house.  I like routines:  the making-breakfast routine, the packing-lunches routine, the getting-ready-for-a-bike-ride routine.  And I tell stories in strict chronological order.  So this blog is bothering me.  I feel like I’ve told you bits and pieces of my sketchy history as a cyclist, and it’s time to come clean, and tell the whole story.  So here’s my confession:  I’ve been to PBP before.  I went in 2003, but didn’t finish.  I quit and went shopping.

Earlier that year, though, when I started training, I wrote a few pieces about my experience, and the owner of my bike shop (thespincycle.com) posted them on his website.  I’ve tracked them down (well, actually, my very helpful husband has), so in the interests of chronology, I will begin here with the first one, which I wrote in March, I think, of 2003.

My name is Lisa Rosen; I’m 35 years old. I’m fairly new to sports in general, and even newer to cycling.  I have a lovely Serotta Peleton Ti, which I adore, but I’ve had it less than a year.  However, I tend to have a rather extreme personality.  What I lack in experience, I attempt to make up for with enthusiasm.  And I do love to go for a bike ride.  So when my husband pointed out, on December 31st, that Paris-Brest-Paris is coming up this August, I somewhat brashly announced that I intend to go.
 
P-B-P is the original organized ride.  First ridden in 1891, it is a 1200 kilometer randonnee, which basically means a self-supported long ride.  You carry all of your own stuff, and ride from Paris out to Brest, on the Atlantic coast, and back again.  There is also a time limit.  It’s not a race, because there are no prizes, but if you don’t get to the finish line within 90 hours, you don’t get your medal.  Incidentally, you also don’t get your name put into the big book of anciens in Paris. For whatever reason, the whole picture appeals to me—the camaraderie of thousands of cyclists flowing over the French countryside, the zen of solitary pedaling through sunsets, sunrises, forests, fields, the pull of an old (and very French) tradition.  Plus you get to eat anything you can get your hands on, you get a medal at the end, and it means ten days in Europe without my children.  Count me in.
 
So I spent New Year’s Day on the Internet, reading accounts of past P-B-Ps, as well as other really long rides (there’s are North American versions, such as Boston-Montreal-Boston, which is held in non-P-B-P years—talk to me in September!).  I called my mother-in-law to see if she’d go with me—if I’m going to do a borderline-suicidal sporting event in a foreign country, I want someone I know to be there when I collapse.  I sent checks to all the organizations I’d have to join to be allowed to enter.  And I emailed my coach.  I use an online triathlon coaching service, and it was about time for them to send me my new quarterly plan.  I think they think I’ve lost my mind, but to their credit, they scrambled and wrote me out a plan that, so far, seems to be working.
 
The second weekend in January I rode 3 hours on Saturday and 2 ½ on Sunday and, just for a moment, wondered what I’d gotten myself into.  I’m guessing that thought will cross my mind again at some point, but since that first back-to-back weekend, I’ve developed a lot of mental strategies for keeping the doubts at bay.  I’ve also developed endurance and strength that amaze me.  All things are relative, of course.  Realistically, I’m kind of slow and plodding.  But weekend before last I rode about 50 miles on Saturday, then turned around and rode my first century on Sunday.  Given that the first time I got on this bicycle I fell off before I even started pedaling, a hundred miles in one day really made me smile.

A wonderful friend of mine, a triathlete who works with my husband, has promised to do all the long rides with me, even the qualifiers, even though he doesn’t want to do P-B-P for fear of disrupting his Ironman training.  And he’s as good as his word—in the last three months, we’ve put a lot of miles on our bikes. We’re taking it kind of easy this week, because I’m running my first marathon next Sunday.  But we’ll start cranking the miles back up by the end of March.  I’ll keep you posted.

My friend James and I were out for a ride one Sunday, oh, a couple of years ago now.  We were just heading out, on the Cary Parkway.  Admittedly, we were riding next to each other, which we shouldn’t have been.  But it was Sunday morning; there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic, and it’s a four-lane road.  This guy in an SUV comes roaring around us, and pulls into a parking lot , facing us.  As we ride by, he rolls down his window and screams at us.  ”Stupid, stupid, stupid!”  And some other tidbits that probably wouldn’t make it through your spam filter.  I got over it; if you ride enough, you get used to the occasional ear-splitting horn blast, or unmentionable expletive.  It’s a standard joke at my house now.

But today I was really stupid, stupid, stupid.  I did something I’ve never really done before:  I bonked.  It wasn’t a big bonk; just a tiny one, but I don’t care to repeat the experience.  I rode the 50 mile loop of the Tour de Moore, in Moore County, NC.  It’s a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser, and a great ride.  Info is at http://www.sandhillscyclingclub.org.  Moore County is horse country, and I got to see where my friend Amelia’s daughter rides in a Thanksgiving Day hunt, as well as stables and riding schools and horse farms galore.  Later, we wound around through golf country, which is entertaining in a different sort of way.  I had a long, lovely chat with Amelia, whom I don’t get to see often enough, since she lives in that area (it’s about an hour from where I live in Cary).  She’s deep into her Ironman training right now, and is considerably stronger than I am on the bike, especially on the rolling hills down there.  Her husband very gallantly pulled me up some hills, and I got to meet a number of their riding buddies from Rainbow Cycles, but I was having so much fun, and riding so far past my comfort zone, that I got totally distracted and didn’t eat or drink nearly enough.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I’m constantly preaching to Amelia about getting enough calories to go the distance.  Apparently, I need to heed my own advice.

Around 40 miles I really started to feel bad–shaky and nauseated and pedalling through molasses.  It was also INCREDIBLY humid and muggy.  My head started drooping down; I know this because I remember watching the sweat drip onto my top tube, and thinking randomly that there was nothing I could do about it.  I ate a gel, and just felt sicker.  Finally we got to the last rest stop, at 42 miles.  The rest of the folks I was with were feeling feisty, smelling lunch, but I had to stop.  Phil, a very kind soul, offered to hang back and pull me up to the group if I was going to be quick at the stop, but I couldn’t face trying to keep up at that point.  They rolled on.  I ate a fig newton, and half a banana, and chatted with the volunteers for a few minutes, and then got back on the road.

After 8 or 10 minutes, the calories kicked in, and I felt much better heading into the last few miles.  I also backed off a bit on the speed, and enjoyed the run into Southern Pines.  All in all, I had a great time, but there was definitely a lesson to be learned.  Five hours after the finish, I’m still feeling icky, and I have a terrible headache to boot.  Apparently, 400 calories just won’t cut it for a 50 mile ride.  Not for me, anyway.