Never eat a barbeque pork sandwich with beans and potato
salad after you’ve biked 34 miles and have another 15 to go. You won’t find
that in the writings of Confucius or Ann Landers. Why? I don’t know, because in
retrospect it seems pretty important. I kept it down. I’m just mentioning that
for those of you letting your imaginations run off the leash. Nothing so awful
as heaving on the side of the trail knee deep in field grass and gnats, but it
did sit like cement in my stomach. And when you’re struggling to break 50 miles
at an average speed of better than 12mph, which at my age and level of fitness is
the equivalent of the sound barrier, a stomach anchor isn’t an afternoon
delight.
If you’re just tuning in, I am training for the Ride to Conquer Cancer this September
13-14th. The challenge is a hundred and fifty miles in two days. I’m
asking folks to pledge their hard earned dollars, so I feel it is just and good
that I keep you appraised on what I’m doing.
I’m an author. I’m not an athlete. Want to get that out in
front to avoid any misunderstandings. Authors spend most of their days sitting
on soft cushy seats that swivel and rock. We drink lattes in coffee shops, and
if we’re feeling ambitious, walk around a bookstore or library breathing in
through our nose and out through our mouths. And we look out the window for
inspiration, not as a prelude to anything crazy, such as investigating what the
deal is with that bright light in the sky.
I’ve never tried doing a marathon, a 6K, or even a power
walk. I’m not an invalid. I can run a mile in about 12 minutes. If you’re under
thirty, I hear you’re able to run a mile in 7-9 minutes, so since I’m nearly
53, I think that’s a decent display of physical prowess. And once upon a time, I
rode my bicycle forty miles in single day. Come this September I’m going to
have to ride one hundred and fifty miles in two days—seventy-five miles a day,
back to back.
I obviously need to train. I started a little over a week
ago. Last Saturday my wife, Robin, and I rode thirty miles. Then just to see
the extent of the damage we rode another 35 the next day. We took it slow,
about 10 mph, but we did it. We both have hybrid bikes, which is to say they
are a cross between a sleek racing street bike and a rugged tank-styled
mountain bike. How they got these things to breed I have no idea, but I thought
we had nice bikes until we tried to ride 35 miles on it. Now I see that what we
own are heavy, iron-wrought behemoths from some age when men had thighs the size
of oak logs. When two days later we tried to up our speed, Robin, who lagged
behind me, decided to put her ironclad out to pasture and get a sexy street
machine. A street bike is one of those low-slung handlebar bikes with tires
thin enough to shave with and so light you double the weight by adding a water
bottle. At least that’s the way it looks to me from my perch atop my WWII
battleship of gunmetal gray.
Our next ride was on this past Friday, and we rode for a
record 46 miles. Using her new sporty ride, Robin became “Zippy Girl” flying
into a dot on my horizon and having to wait for me to catch up. When at last I
did, puffing, sweat covered and grimacing, she sat with one leg over the bar
and a guilty grin on her lips.
“Maybe I should get one of those, too,” I said.
Horror and shock replaced the grin. “No!”
“Why not?”
“This way we’re even,” she told me.
Even my ass, Zippy
Girl.
She looked at me with big Sherik-styled Puss-in-boot eyes.
“Fine.” I climbed back aboard and resumed peddling like Bart
Simpson with a light generator pressing against his bike wheel. That’s how I
remember it, anyway.
After a day of rest, we went out on Sunday. The weather was
good and we pushed out on the trail to the tune of twenty-five miles. This was
the farthest we’d ever gone, and the trip home would make it a clean 50 miles,
a new record.
Along the trail is a rustic pit-barbeque restaurant that
caters to trial riders. People come from
600 miles for their authentic North Carolina cuisine, and on the way up the
trail I was captured by the siren song of barbeque smoke wafting across the
path from a giant black kettle drum. Bright red umbrellas shaded picnic tables
and the place was circled in bicycles and packed with riders. I had loaded up
on tuna salad carbs and beans before the ride so I was still good, but I
promised myself we’d stop there on the way back. I deserved to sit under those
festive umbrellas and eat that authentic pork with those exquisite plastic
utensils and Styrofoam plates. The farther up the trail I went the more I began
to dream of that dinner as a kind of heaven. Everyone there would be friendly,
and beautiful. Old Jimmy Buffet songs would be playing from some outside
speaker, and I would definitely have beans and potato salad for my two sides.
My steel horse was running out of gas by the time we made
the round trip to the restaurant and I knew I wouldn’t make it home the last 15
miles without food. Oddly, by the time I got my food I wasn’t all that hungry.
Exhaustion was setting in and maybe a bit of dehydration stole my appetite. I
ate anyway. I had to.
The Zippy Girl, being on a diet, trotted off to a nearby
organic café and came back with something in a bag, something that crunched
when she ate it.
I cleaned my plate and wished I hadn’t. The sitting and the
weighty food left me lethargic. I felt so heavy that I think my bike grunted
when I sat on it. “It’ll be okay. We’ll make it, girl.” I patted the Trek’s
crossbar, as Zippy Girl shot off, a spandex clad arrow vanishing toward the
horizon.
Burping isn’t fun while exercising. Ruins the breathing
rhythm, and beans never taste as good the second time. On the way up I had enjoyed
the forests and fields. After leaving the restaurant I only saw the streak of
pavement blurring beneath the all-too-wide tires. Maybe there were moments of
downhill. Robin said most of it was. It all felt uphill to me. One steep
grueling climb where I never had the chance to coast, to breathe, to hear what
was playing on my playlist that I spent an hour the day before making—Music to
Fly By—I had envisioned. As I burped and breathed my way up that non-stop hill,
I’d become deaf.
There’s no way I can
do this. And I only went 50 miles! I have to ride 75, sleep in a tent and then
get up and ride another 75! I’m way to old for this. I was too old for this
when I was twenty-four. Zippy Girl is
probably rocking out to tunes in the air-conditioned car back in the trail
parking lot by now. Easy for her, she’s a whole nine months younger—younger and
she has that miserable bike—that magic Pegasus. So unfair. I’m not going to
vomit. That’s something. Feeling a little better actually. Oh look, a bunny on
the side of the trail. Hey bunny! Wonder if the Nationals won against Atlanta
today…
Then I lifted my head and I was back. I could see the
parking lot and the car. Zippy Girl wasn’t there. She was behind me. I’d passed
her when she paused for a short rest. Bending over the racing bike hurts her
back and she needs to take breaks.
We’d done it. We’d broken the 50 mile barrier. Checking the
cycling app it turned out we’d averaged over 12mph. A new distance and speed record all in one day!
Today I’m dead. I should lift some weights, maybe jog, but
I’m just blown out. I need to rest and rebuild. But we did it, that much at
least. And we still have another two months. Maybe we can do it after all. Maybe
if we just keep trying. Maybe the impossible is possible. I’m a published
author, I suppose I should have learned that lesson already.
Tax-deductible donations to sponsor my ride can be made
from this link.
