Linda and I rode the Solvang spring double century on March 26, 2011. We went against our better judgment, believing that the forecasts for rain were exaggerated. Watching the local news from our hotel room on Friday night confirmed it. The local weather guy, don't know if he was out of SLO or Santa Maria, said that the storm would stay to the north and "just brush" the area. We probably wouldn't see any rain at all or, if we did, it would be very light and quick to pass by.
Pffft. . . .
We chose to ride Solvang because we had waived Death Valley in February due to inclement weather (turned out that time that it didn't rain all that much but they did have terrific headwinds). I rode Solvang last year, liked it well enough, but the ride lacks the vibe of the club-run centuries and double centuries. And, boy, the gal from Planet Ultra, the ride promoter, that was checking riders out in the morning, and then back in the evening, she was a cranky ol' thing. Sure, it was a long day. Sure, it was probably for very little reward. But geez, she couldn't have been more dour and ill-tempered if she tried. I don't know who she is, I don't know her name, I don't know her story. All I do know is that her collective experience that day must have worn on her from the start.
Linda took off from the lovely Buellton Days Inn at about 5 am. I guess this Days Inn is famous, or something:
http://www.daysinn.com/DaysInn/control/Booking/property_info?propertyId=11567
I was a little too cold and waited until 6:30. Looking at the sky, there was some overcast but rain was nowhere near imminent. So far, so good.
I'm a little odd in that I expect to ride doubles alone. I don't want to draft anybody, and I don't invite anyone to draft off of me. I figure it's my 200 miles to ride and I'm going to ride all of them. It's hard sometimes to see a big group go powering by and letting it go. Particularly when it contains a few people that you passed earlier. So it was with some folks that I happened to leave the hotel with about the same time. They were going just fast enough where getting in front of them would have been faster than I wanted to go (they'd have seen it as a challenge), but they were going just slow enough where I didn't like following. I finally got to get around them when we hit a short hill just going into Solvang. They slowed way down and I slipped by them. A few minutes later they, and about 20 others, came motoring by behind a tandem.
I was feeling pretty good. I was worrying about my knee because it had been giving me problems since I whacked it against the corner bedpost of our bed back on February 16th. The Doc classified it as a "periosteal bruise", a bond bruise, of my knee cap. It's the stupidest thing. It doesn't hurt when I walk, it's almost like it disappears when I'm not on the bike. The last few weeks it would hibernate for the first 2-3 hours of a ride and then rear its head with a vengeance. I was listening closely for any sense of discomfort in that knee. Actually, did pretty well. Three hours came and went and all was good. I didn't experience any pain sufficient enough to even slow me down, although I could tell that it was irritated. After the ride, though, hoo-boy. There was a great deal of pain. I drove from Buellton to Jerry's house in Cayucos and it hurt my knee just to pivot my foot on my heel to switch from the gas pedal to the brake pedal and back. I was very nervous, thinking that I'd really screwed it up. It acted up the same way while driving home Sunday and actually felt like a real knee injury for a while there. . . it hurt even when I wasn't on the bike. By Monday, though, it was almost as if nothing had happened. It's the stupidest thing.
The sky never really looked all that bad all morning. I passed the first rest stop and it was looking pretty good. We almost made it all the way to the 2nd stop at around mile 86 when the first drops arrived. It was obvious looking north towards Morro Bay that it was going to be wet for a while. I though that maybe it'd rain while we headed north and then quit sometime after the turn back towards Buellton. Nothing doing. It rained the entire time (with few breaks) theraefter.
It was relentless. And it was strange how much a toll it took by the end of the day. When it first started it filled my shoes immediately with water. I could deal with that. Wet's wet, I figured, and once wet, you can't get any wetter, right?
It's a good thing the temps were relatively mild as I didn't have full finger gloves or anything on my legs (just shorts). The long fingered gloves probably would have been just as bad, or even worse, unless they were waterproof gloves. Even so, later in the ride I was having trouble squeezing my water bottles or using my hands at all. I could barely operate the shifters. I don't know how much the poor shifting performance I was experiencing was due to my hands, and how much was due to the impact of the water and grit build up. Even today, April 6th, I still note some weakness in my grip of my right hand.
Except for my hands, though, I really didn't feel all that bad. The legs were good, for the most part. My arms, back, neck, etc., were all good.
It's amazing what the rain and grit did to the bike though. There was so much sand and crud being thrown up on the bike and clothes and everywhere. On top of that, the ag fields close by the roads had mud tracks from trucks/tractors/etc. entering and exiting the fields. The roads, particularly around Guadalupe, were a filthy mess. Throw on top of that the poor road surface, the rain, just everything made it a mess to deal with.
You'd apply the brakes and wince as you heard the rims being sanded away by the grit build up on the brake pads and on the braking surface of the wheels. I figure there was a good 6-7 hours of hard rain and sopping wet conditions. Water got into every place imaginable on the bike. My front brake pads were worn to nubs, my rear pads weren't much better.
And, oh, man the flat tires!! I didn't have any, but a lot of other people did. I never saw so many people pulled over to the side of the road repairing flats. I was amazed, and nervous waiting for my turn. For whatever reason I was spared.
I had some muscle issues in my left thigh that disappeared quickly after finishing. My right knee left me pretty well alone. It never felt badly, and never raised cause for concern or gave me thoughts of needing to stop. After the ride, though, it hurt like hell. It was worrisome because it was hurting AFTER I'd quit riding. Every other time before now, it would hurt while riding, then stop when I stopped riding. This time it stayed. I drove to Cayucos after the ride and drove the trip home to El Dorado. Pivoting my right foot on my heel to operate the gas/brake in the car caused a great deal of pain. I thought I'd blown it for good and I'd be out of riding for months. After we got home Sunday night, I iced it. Iced it as much as I could Monday. By Monday night, it was slightly tender to the touch, but that was it. It almost, very nearly felt normal. Bizarre.
So. . . very wet. Screwed up the bike big time. Cold hands, but everything else was working pretty well. Dirty roads. Rough roads. Wet. Mud. Grit. Wet. Rusty, dry chain. It was messy, but not quite epic. My ride last year in France doing the Marmotte route. . . THAT was epic.
Linda had her own story. She had to bag it at the last rest stop with about 25 miles to go because of a broken cable restricting her to just 1 or 2 gears. She wasn't sure what was ahead and people were telling her the climbing was hellacious, so she bagged it. Which was too bad because 1) the climbs weren't bad, and 2) she was SO close. God bless her.
No comments:
Post a Comment