How to wear the skin off your butt in 2 days

I woke up at 5:15 in the morning still on the couch where I'd fallen asleep watching CSI the night before (I am NOT happy with the way that CSI is deciding to commit suicide this season, by the way). My lower back was killing me and I had that generalized pain and fatigue all over that usually means that I worked hard enough the day before to take the day off (this happens very, very seldomly). But I wasn't going to take the day off today, I had a century to ride. I tried to put the thoughts of what the hell am I thinking out of my head, but Iron Matron's words, "I'm actually scared for you. If I actually had any kind of faith I'd pray for you!" kept coming back to me. What if this really is the time that I go too far? I wondered. What if I really can't finish this time? What if this is the time I finally do some real damage? I worried. In situations like this normally I say, "Fuck you, just WATCH me!" but come on, I'm not stupid. I know this is kind of crazy. But no, I missed races last year and never felt so rotten in my life. I was going to finish what I'd started. And if it didn't kill me, it would only make me stronger.

I had my usual breakfast of champions, plus a cupcake for good measure and went back out to the car. At least I didn't have to unpack my car last night or re-pack the car this morning. And no, I never DID wipe the blood off my saddle. Yep, I'm a total slob. Get over it, I have.

This ride had cost me $20, compared to the $225 that the half ironman the day before had cost me, and pulling into the parking lot there was already a marked difference in attitude. People were smiling and looked relaxed. Nobody was stealing crosswise glances at other people's bikes, and there were all kinds of bikes represented: nice bikes, shitty bikes, tri bikes, road bikes, hybrids, bikes with fenders and paniers (spelling?), even a single speed or two. There were fat people, old people, oodles of women, people with long hair, people with a lot of body hair, all things you wouldn't see at a competitive triathlon. I busted out my camelbak without so much as a look around to see who might be watching me and went to registration where they did not ask for a photo ID, they did not write anything on my body that I wouldn't be able to get off for a week, and they informed me that they were very sorry, but they were out of cue sheets. It was so laid back that the ride started while I was still in line for the portapotties, but it didn't really matter, hardly anyone left right away anyway.



I rode for a few miles in a group with an older couple, each of whom had Mdot tattoos on their ankles, but they didn't seem too interested in talking about their accomplishments and they were going pretty slow anyway, so I bridged up to a different group. Finally I found myself in a paceline that was going a comfortable pace and stuck around. I saw one chick in the group, and decided that if she could stay with this group, then I could too. And in the same pack I kept hearing this other woman's voice, but I would look around and couldn't see any chicks. Finally, after several miles I realized that the guy in the black and white race kit, bandana tied around his head under the helmet, and enormous reach out to the handlebars that made him look like he was throwing his bike in a final sprint – the guy who kept riding up and down the pace line on the outside and couldn't seem to pick a spot in the pack – I realized that he was a she. She was one of those middle-aged butch women who thinks she's an alpha male (if you hang out a lot with lesbians, you know the type), and kept alternating between either giving hollow encouragement that wasn't really necessary or narrating what was happening in the pack (also not necessary). Her kit was by some brand called Pro Bike Kit, which to me kind of seemed redundant like wearing a running singlet that said "Running Singlet" on the back, or a swimsuit that said "For Swimming" on the butt or something.

At one point I found myself near the front of the pack and being waved ahead. Now, I usually ride with all guys, and one of two things always happens when I take a pull: A) people realize that I'm not much to draft off of and send someone bigger and faster to the front, or B) I pull ahead feeling strong and look back after a few hundred yards to realize that no one followed me. Who wants to let a girl pull? So when I got waved to the front of this pack I figured that this was probably where I would either drop the group and move up to another pack, or ware myself out all alone off the front and then have to drop back in shame. To my surprise, when we reached a hill, people started pulling around me right away. I had pulled the group, and the group had stayed with me! Crazy. The alpha male rode up next to me, "Nice pull, kiddo," she said.
"Thanks," I said. "People don't usually let me pull since I don't give much of a draft."
"It's not about drafting, it's about being part of the group and sharing the work," she explained. What? I know that. I'm not saying I don't like to pull, I'm saying they don't let me pull. Now I looked like an asshole.

The alpha male was starting to annoy me, and it was pretty clear that she didn't think much of me either, since she would talk to everyone in the group but me. Maybe I hadn't come off as enough of a roadie, I don't know. Maybe I just looked like a "dumb kid" who didn't know what she was doing. Anyway, as I said, the alpha male was moving up and down the line on the left side. Every time she moved into the pace line she would let all this daylight in, and the entire line behind her would start to lose the front half of the pack. It was really annoying me, so I moved up. She was already out there to the left of the pack, so I just pulled up on the right and tried to close the gap. But then suddenly the front pack started moving left. I didn't see until the last minute that we were passing another cyclist, so I had to move left too, forcing her out into the road. It all happened in a matter of seconds and then we were back in formation. "Don't box me out, kiddo," she scolded me.
Who the hell are you calling "kiddo"?! I thought. You're the asshole who's riding unpredictably? Shouldn't someone with a kit like yours who portends to be such a great roadie know how to ride in a pace line, you old hag? I may be young, but I'd ridden in packs before, and she was no stronger of a cyclist than I was. "Sorry, I didn't see him coming," I said, lamely. And how dare you call me "kiddo"! I added to myself. I call myself kiddo in my head when I'm trying to talk myself through something difficult. No one else is allowed to call me kiddo. I resolved to stay near the front of the pack till the first aid station, whatever it took.

I was actually feeling pretty good. The terrain was rolling, but standing up and powering up the hills felt good on my lower back and gave my butt a break. Yeah, I felt way tired, but it wasn't really getting any worse as the ride went on. At one point we climbed a longer hill and I managed to get to the top with the front of the group. "Good job," said the real lady in the group. "That was a long hill." I wished that the Alpha Male could have heard her say that, but she had fallen back on the climb.

When we hit the first aid station around mile 50, everyone laid down their bikes and it looked like they were going to be here for awhile. I filled up my camelbak, ate some pretzels and a banana and sat down on a rock. My feet felt sore now that I was off the bike, and elevating them wasn't helping much. The alpha male and the real lady were standing in the porta-pottie line 15 people deep. I weighed the benefits of a pack against the risks of being around the alpha male when I started to get cranky and decided that it was best to move on by myself.

Shortly before leaving the aid station I met Mike and wound up riding with him for awhile. When he saw the number on still stuck on my top tube and I saw the aero bars on his bike, we started talking triathlon. At one point he said, "You know, I'm just happy I'm holding an average of 17.4 mph. That's good, for me." The way he emphasized it, it was like it was meant to be. Mike was a kindred spirit as far as endurance goals go. "I hold the record for the Hyannis sprint distance swim. I swam 200 yards in 24 minutes!" he told me. "I have 4 goals for every race: 1) not to be the last person out of the swim, 2) not to come in dead last in my age group, 3) not to hold on to anything in the swim (like kayaks), and 4) have fun doing the best that I can do."

Mike is training for Ironman Lake Placid this year. "You're crazy," I said.
"What makes you say that. You don't even know what I can do. I've done 19 marathons, you know," he said. He wasn't bragging, it wasn't annoying at all.
"I say that because I was up there a couple of weeks ago, and those hills made me cry before I got back to my car. You're a brave man."

We talked about marathons, and triathlons, and ironmans, and ultramarathons, and cycling, and how to make sure that you keep having fun through the whole thing. I was enjoying our conversation so much I almost ran Mike off the side of the road trying to ride next to him. Mike was the only one I was comfortable telling about what I'd done the day before. I was afraid someone else would try to tell me what to do, or moreover what NOT to do, and why what I was doing was wrong. I didn't need to hear that. He was impressed, but didn't once tell me that I was going to get hurt or that I should stop. "Is THIS how you're riding your recovery ride?!" he asked at a stop light after I'd pulled ahead a few times.
"Hells no!" I said. "I'm trying to get 'er done as fast as possible so I can get off this damn bike seat!" My butt was really starting to get pretty tender. Eventually I had to leave Mike behind and ride off on my own. The pain in my ass just wasn't worth the company, so I rode off alone into the wind.

The wind had picked up steadily all day, and coming back we had a pretty fierce headwind. You're never going to believe this, but it didn't bother me. I was all alone, riding into a 15+ mph headwind and just thinking about how beautiful the scenery was. What was wrong with me? After 70 miles I was thinking about how I would have to come back and do this ride AGAIN. I sincerely wasn't cranky. Something must be terribly wrong.

Around mile 75 I found the last aid station, tucked away about 200 yards up an unpaved road. I think we were back in Massachusetts at this point. Mike rode up while I was waiting for the bathroom and we caught up some more. Walking over to my bike he said, "You're walking pretty slowly... are you getting tired?"
"It's the shoes, Mike," I said. "It's just the shoes." I asked if he would be continuing on with me, and he told me he would if he could keep up. We rode together for a little while, but I was still feeling good, and with less than 25 miles to go, I just wanted to get it over with. My butt was getting a bit uncomfortable in all positions except off the seat.

Astoundingly, I was still in a good mood. I couldn't believe it. I was riding alone into a headwind, I was phenomenally fatigued, and still all I could think about was how happy I was to be out here, how beautiful and... What the fuck was that?! In a split second something small and round and fuzzy dashed out from the brush at the side of the road right under my wheel. It happened so fast I didn't have time to even see what it was, only that it was between the size of a baseball and a softball, and fuzzy, and the color that they call pardo in Spanish which means grey-brown. I felt my front wheel rumble, and then my back wheel as I went squarely over it. I froze for a second, gripping my handlebars, staring straight ahead, and not knowing what to do. Whatever it was, I'd probably broken its back or its neck. Whatever it was, it was probably a baby something, and it was probably cute, and it was probably suffering and on its way to dead, and there was nothing I could do about it. I decided to just keep riding. If I saw some adorable baby woodland creature gasping its last breath and fluttering its eyelids for the last time and it was all my fault I would definitely never get to the end of this ride in one piece. Instead I kept riding, and somehow managed to convince myself that it was probably a paper bag (although it didn't crackle), or a balled up sock (although why would a balled up sock run out of a bush?) or something. This is what happens when I'm happy and thinking that all is well in the world: cute, furry things die.

I kept riding, now fueled by the feeling that I'd done something wrong and had to get out of there as fast as possible. I was stiff and sore, but I really didn't feel that weak. I kept reaching down to touch my leg and see if my muscles were bulging like a professional cyclist's (they were still pudgy, damn). In the last 10 miles it started to get really windy and the clouds rolled in. Luckily, I picked up a buddy to trade off pulls with for that last half hour or so. We didn't talk much, but it was one of those experiences where you feel like you've had a conversation from all the waving, signaling, pointing, passing and pulling you've done. It wasn't till I hit 100 miles on my Garmin and said, "That's it, it's time for me to quit," that we actually exchanged a full sentence. It was then that I found out that his name was Taz (Taz, really, no shit, that goes almos TOO well with his handlebar mustache), and that he was only finishing up the metric century.
"What's your time?" he asked. It was somewhere in the high 5:30's or low 5:40's. "Wow, that's fast. That's really fast." I was flattered and it gave me the energy to go the last 2 miles to the finish without getting cranky about having to go the extra distance. It's a good thing Taz was there too, or I would have ridden the wrong way up a freeway exit ramp. Only I could get lost on a rout that was so well arrowed.

After 50 miles is when I was by myself.

Total distance: 102.24 miles
Total time: 5:45:45
Average speed: 17.74 mph
Total elevation gain/loss: Dunno.
I even felt like I could have gone harder, which was encouraging.

At the finish I chatted with a few people while waiting for Mike to come in. One guy bragged about having ridden 50 miles the day before and I congratulated him. I was too tired to find a tactful way to brag about what I'd done the day before and make him feel like less of a man. Another guy was standing alone, staring transfixed at the people putting their sweaty hands into the bowls of raisins and M&Ms. "It's like they're the only ones here, like no one else is going to have to eat those," he said, disgusted. I wanted to tell him to lighten up, instead I made some lame joke about replenishing electrolytes by eating sweat. He didn't think it was very funny. Admittedly, it wasn't, and I was kind of revolted when I saw Mike eating from the bowls later.

After about 10 minutes Mike rolled in. "You made it!" I said.
"Was there ever a doubt?" he asked.
"I'm glad to see you," I said. We wished each other luck on our respective seasons and I went back to pack up the car. Imagine my surprise when the next day he'd left a message of support on my AIDS LifeCycle page!

Driving back I managed to miss every single turn back to the highway. Stopped at a red light a pack of cyclists rode by. I was immensely satisfied to see that it was the pack led by the Alpha Male, just now reaching 100 miles. Who were you calling kiddo, you pokey old hag? I thought, and drove home to eat some Thai food.

In other news: I can't believe it, some of the pictures from the Hairy Man came out pretty well!

A very chilly Claire in her brand new wetsuit.
Still look like a douche in all my bike pictures. If you look closely you can see I'm taking my shoes off. They couldn't get an action shot, or wait till my camera-side leg was STRAIGHT? Ugh! This makes me look fat!
A Claire who is VERY happy and relieved to be finishing.