FIRST EVER CENTURY RIDE! Mission : SUCCESS!
7:00 AM - Rain stopped and it was cloudy with a bit of sun. Roads were still wet but I went out there and did it. My mom and Harry were supposed to meet me for lunch, but stupid mapquest directions they got lost. They finally found me when I was at mile 83. Thankfully because I was out of liquids and out of money! :( But I refueled and tackled the mountain of doom into Massachusetts. It was pretty windy today. Only downer was that at mile 50ish a car of high school hooligans drove by and yelled and I almost fell off my bike. I hate jerks. Funny thing. I had to tack on like 3 miles at the end of the ride to make the full century distance. So I go onto a side street by Emma's house and I go to pull out and theres a little girl on a bike with crazy curly hair so I go out in front of her and speed away.. 1.5 miles later I turn around and come back, and the girl is there again. Only this time I see it's Emmy!! She met me at mile 99 and road the last mile with me :). She is such a cutie! She even gave my sweaty face a kiss! I'm on cloud nine! More details to come later after I have a chance to recover. We're going to go out for ice cream now!
Total Distance: 100.5 miles Total Time: 6:31:00 Average Speed: 15.4 mph
BENN'S FIRST CENTURY RIDE
EXPANDED NOTES:
So I woke up and the roads were wet with rain from the previous night. Jonn had SATs so he was up too and he was nice enough to snap a photo of me before I embarked on the century ride. The plan was for my mom and Harry to go in the van and meet me about halfway or slightly after for lunch. The ride was basically on three main roads: Route 29, Route 372 and Route 22. I was a little unnerved at the amount of traffic on the roads so early in the morning, but I decided to take it in stride (or pedal stroke?) and just kept plugging away. There was a slight west wind at 10-12 mph and it was in the low 40s at the start. I was glad to have my long sleeve shirt on underneath my jersey!
MILES 1-20: Riding on the back roads of Galway, Milton and Saratoga. Road to Spa Park and detoured to go into the park to use the restroom. Climbed the hill back out of there and back onto Lake Ave/Rte 29 going east towards Vermont.
MILES 21-40: After biking past the Saratoga National Monument I got a stunning view of the Green Mountains to the east by Bennington area and merged to Rte 372. Rolling hills through Greenwich and Argyle.
MILES 41-60: Biked through Cambridge and turned south onto Route 22. Felt like hitting a bit of a wall because the westward wind went from a tailwind to a cross wind. I think cross winds are almost as hard if not worse than headwinds! Somewhere in here I had a group of teenagers speed past and yell at me. Shook me from my trance and I bobbled on the bike and ran into the sandy shoulder on the side of the road but managed to keep the bike upright and kept plugging away. At mile 57 I stopped at a Stewarts because I was completely out of liquids in Hoosick Falls. I felt good but needed to refuel. Called Mom and they were lost. They had somehow kept going on 29 to Rte 346 following the MapMyRide.com directions and ended up in Vermont! Oopsies! I grabbed a water, Gatorade and bought a cinnamon chip muffin which I quickly downed and was back on the road in about four or five minutes.
MILES 61-80: Still biking south, through Stillham, Petersburg, and Berlin. Had a low point about mile 75 where I started to doubt if I would make it. Maybe I was just cranky about not having lunch yet. My trail mix/GORP was running low and I was starting to feel the effects of fatigue. Plus it didn’t help that I kept having all those cars and trucks speeding past me. Little hills started to grow into monstrosities before my eyes. I reverted back to my long distance runs and broke the larger goal of finishing the century into smaller more manageable ones. “Just get to that light or telephone pole” I’d tell myself. Then, once there, I’d say “just to that next road”. It helped.
MILES 81-90: At mile 83 there was a gas station and Dunkin’ Donuts. I was now about 5-6 miles from New Lebanon where my dad used to work and also where I would turn east and go over the Berkshire Mountains. By now the wind was starting to cool me off a bit too much. The sun was actually not out much after the initial hour or so. I pulled off at mile 83.5 with a cumulative time of I think about 5hr17m. I took out my phone and was talking to my mom when she saw me! They were only a minute or so behind me. So finally I had my support crew, albeit after I had expected them. Mom bought me a coffee and I shared part of a bagel and used the restroom before suiting back up and heading out. I won’t lie. Seeing them drive into view was a welcoming sight. It is so hard when you do endurance rides to be out there by yourself because even though you know you can do it, you start to doubt yourself and your mood can change instantly like a lightswitch from optimist to pessimist. I felt reinvigorated and full of energy again and the next few hills weren’t all that bad, knowing that in twenty minutes or so I’d come up to them again.
MILES 91-100.5: As I pulled into New Lebanon I made out the form of the Chevy Express LT van my mom and Harry were in. I put my head down and pushed to meet them. My left quad was starting to cramp, so I felt my right leg trying to compensate and take some of the pressure off of it. My mom asked, “Do you need anything? Do you want to stop?”. I shook my head no and turned left on Old Route 20 and began “The Ascension”. Ascension to what I did not know. I’d driven this road countless hundreds of times to Emma’s house. I knew how long it was (somewhere between 2.75 and 3.0 miles), but I had never tried biking up it before. Sure I’d biked in the Green Mountains and the White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire in 2005 but I was about thirty pounds lighter then and the most I did in a day was maybe half the distance I was covering today. I won’t lie. After biking 89.5 miles, a little dip in the road seems like a hill; now imagine having to scale a mountain range! It was do or die time. I’d gone this far. In a way I felt like Forrest Gump. I thought to myself, “Well, Benn.. you’re here. You’ve biked 5.5 hours and 90 miles. You can taste the century. Emma is waiting on the other side of the mountain. You can’t go under it. Can’t go around it. Have to go OVER it!”
So we all know I’m not Lance or Daniel Rasmussen. Yet when I turned onto Route 20 and began the climb, I felt like a Tour rider. I put the bike in the lowest gear on the second chain ring. (I rarely if ever switch out of the 2nd chain ring), and put my head down. “Slow and steady. Get to the top.” Is what I kept repeating to myself. Slow and steady. Get to the top. My mom and Harry drove ahead and kept pulling over every .5 miles or so, expecting me to stop. But I didn’t. Maybe I secretly knew that if I stopped I risked not being able to get back on the bike and finish this thing. Maybe it was my pride and that I thought I’d be a failure if I stopped. Maybe it was my hotheaded determination to scale this beast of a hill as fast as possible. In any event I plugged away. I rounded corners as cars sped past me, hearing their engines switch over to super drive and knowing I didn’t have such luck. I was scaling the Berkshire Mountains on sheer grit, guts, and manpower.
Cresting the top of the hill, I began my favorite part of any climb, the descending. I got down in the tuck position, said a prayer, and started pedaling. Ten… Twenty… Thirty miles an hour. I looked over to my Garmin watch and saw 36mph before it got too hard to look at my watch. I am pretty sure I passed 40 mph. My aerodynamic position made me probably look like a speeding bullet.. a white lightning rocketing down the mountain. I saw the van at the bottom of the hill pulled over at Hancock Shaker village. I rocketed past, and even when Mom and Harry pulled out and pulled ahead of me, I kept even with them for .25 or .3 miles. I was doing 26 mph on the flat. I had found a new gear and could taste the finish!
I crested the few little hills riding into Emma’s house, but saw I was going to be short by a couple miles. I turned onto a side street and started heading back towards the Shaker village. As I turned off a side street back onto Rte. 20 I saw a little girl with flowing curly hair and a blue helmet coming up the sidewalk on a bike. I decided to show her how a real biker biked and sped off. I climbed the hills I had just biked down, glancing at my watch. 97 miles…. 97.4 miles… 98 miles.. Almost there!
At mile 99 I turned around and started to bike back towards Emma’s street. There was the girl in her blue helmet with jeans rolled up like capris and flip flops on. As I got closer I realized it wasn’t just a girl… IT WAS EMMY! Mom and Harry had driven up Essex St. and told her I was right there almost to the house and to go ride ride ride and catch me! I guess she’d been trailing me since mile 97 and even yelled , “Hey dummy stop!!” haha. Oops! I guess I was so high on my cycling high that I didn’t hear her! Anyways she road the last mile with me, and holy cow she is fast on a bike! She wasn’t even wearing biking gear and was actually pulling away from me! I finally got to Essex Street and turned left and stared up the mountain. Emma’s street is a very steep hill and the last .5 miles of my century were going to be up it.
I got out of the saddle and put on my working cap. Do or die time. Everything else I’d gone through in the last six plus hours was worthless if I didn’t get up this hill and to Emmy’s house. Pedal stroke by pedal stroke I struggled. Every pedal stroke my left quad got a little tighter. I think I can. I think I can. I hope I can I hope I can… After what seemed like forever, I finally saw it, Emma’s house. I got to her front yard, nearly fell off my bike and sprawled out in the lawn. I had done it. I had actually done it! I had ridden through two states, scaled a mountain range, and had ridden straight to Emmy’s house!
AFTER THE RIDE I walked back down the hill after a few minutes and thanked Harry, Mom and Emmy for everything. We took some pictures and then I just wanted to get a shower. Afterwards we drove to Northhampton, Mass. We checked out a possible wedding location, though we weren’t that impressed with it. Then we went into town and had a great time walking around to all the shops and went out to eat at Fitzwilly’s Restaurant. Mom and Dad had said I could have a beer. I’d earned it! We ended up getting icecream on Sunday the day after because we were too tired and full after Northhampton. I saw Emmy’s mom before she headed off to California to see Emma’s brother and sisterinlaw. Thinking back on the ride now, after driving home on Sunday night, I realized I’d ridden a bike 30 miles MORE than the distance I drove home. Wow.
And now… as any endurance athlete wonders… what is my next goal?!
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