I'm proud to share that yesterday I reached a pinnacle of my journey on 2 wheels :)
201.5 km/ 125.23 miles in one sitting.
This particular journey began Saturday morning 8:13am as Ralph and I set out on the "Double Metric Madness" ride. I was pleased to start that morning with temperatures hovering at about 65 degrees. Days prior to the ride, we had been experiencing a heat wave, so I was very thankful for the drop in temperature. Fuel for the adventure; one energy bar, one pack of hammer blocks, one bottle Spiz, 2 bottles of frozen Gatorade ( against my best judgement of liquids choices although it is the best to maintain electrolytes on such a challenging ride) Off we go. We traveled north up the New York, Connecticut border thru the Taconic State Park and up into Massachusetts where I once again attempted to make the climb up and into Mt. Washington State Forest. This time I'm pleased to say that I conquered it without demounting my 2 wheeled adventure machine. Although a struggle I did make it. By the time I reached the top my head was pounding from my body heat. The climb was only a mile long and honestly although hard if challenged again with it I would not be as fearful of it. That was just about the mid point of the ride and all was well. We moved forward and enjoyed the descent through the forest, hitting some dirt roads and so much natural beauty. Although I wanted to stop frequently I didn't as I knew the length of this ride did not account for extra stops along the way. We only officially stopped twice to refill our bottles ( although there was an extra stop at the end - about 7 miles to the end - but I'll talk about that later).
At about 90 miles I unfortunately started getting a stomach cramp. I had not had them on a ride in a very long time. I later realized it was probably the gatorade that was making me feel badly. I normally will do one gatorade to one water, but because of the length here I thought I would be best to do 100% gatorade.. Wrong move... The cramp stayed with me for the balance of the ride and if your a rider you understand climbs alone are challenging enough without having the pain of the cramp.
Anyway, around the 106 mile mark is about where I hit the wall. But I still had 20 miles to go and a number of hills. My knees started to ache, you could see my veins clearly as they push the blood thru my legs.. hahaha..... I realized at that point also that I had been raising my shoulders the whole ride as they started to burn!!! And although Ralph had warned me a number of times.... move hands around... don't keep them in one place... Well, I thought I was doing that, but apparently not as the palms of my hands started to have a sense of rawness to them... about 13 miles to end.. As I continue to repeat " I really don't want to do this anymore Ralph..." He smiles and says, "Let's stop and I'll buy you a ice cream cone".. I replied.... "I want to get to the finish line"... thinking back I probably should have stopped. Instant sugar fuel.. Ralph is very knowledgeable about everything having to do with long distance riding. He knew a cone would give me the little jolt I needed and we were close enough to the end that when I crashed we would hopefully be back. I would have, but at that point I started to feel nauseous, in a very bad way. I needed to get water in me and fast... so about 4 miles down we found a deli and stopped, as I pored the gatorade out I caught a whiff of it and nearly lost my cookies... ugh!!! Okay, got some water in me and back on the bike I went. Only that of the weight of my legs were turning the pedals. Not really, but it felt like that!!! As we approached each hill, I would repeat "I'm not going to make it up Ralph!!!", "we'll see"he says and you know what I actually did make it up every time, not without pain or exhaustion, but I made it. One thing though with these hills, as I normally would say I set a point in front of me on a hill, not far but just enough to get me there without being overwhelming. this time though, I only looked directly in front of me, almost at the top of my wheel. Perhaps from the lack of being able to lift my head or the fear of not being able to even make that point. Just looking right in front of me worked. Sometimes life gets completely unbearable, just take it minute by minute that's all you need to do... minute by minute.. Doesn't have to be day by day... but instead minute by minute.. and you'll make it through.
7:00 pm, almost exactly 11 hours later ( including stops) .... I make it back in one piece, hard to walk, completely physically exhausted, crawled into a warm bath applied ben gay... hehe... an aspirin, some pasta, a small glass of red wine and off I went to slumber for 10 hours. Next morning surveyed the damage:
2 blisters on my hand, one on the palm, one between my thumb and pointer finger.
Still a bit sore on my neck
Muscles in my legs still recovering slowly
A bit light headed
But overall a HUGE SUCCESS..
Although Ralph said I need to find my next goal... hummmmm not quite sure I'm ready to set that one, but probably in time!!!
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