Foolhardy = Fool + Hardy, or just Fool + Hard

Now that I think about it, I might have guessed that when I had to push my planned ride in the White Mountains back a day because Tropical Storm Hannah (downgraded from a hurricane somewhere between South Carolina and here), I should have known that weather might be an issue. I had been checking the hourly forecast like it was my job for days, watching as the rain moved later, and earlier, later, and earlier like tides. Finally it looked like the forecast had settled on a cloudy morning for Sunday, getting progressively sunnier throughout the day, so I got in my car with my bike and I went up to New Hampshire.

The first flaw in my planning was not thinking that maybe, possibly, with a tropical storm, there's a chance for winds. There is no worse place to be on a windy day than between skyscrapers or between mountains. The second flaw in my little plan was realizing that when one planned to ride 120 miles, that there might be a variety of climates in different places along the rout, especially when one planned to be riding through big, weather-blocking things like mountains.

Or maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind the idea DID occur to me. But I did what I always do and dismissed it. I can handle it, I always assume. "Foolhardy" that's the word you're looking for. But the funny thing is, I always DO handle it; begrudgingly maybe, but I always manage somehow (more on this to come). Hey, I'm not dead yet, am I?

Speaking of which, my mom thinking I'm going to die every time I step out the door is really getting old. She's not scared of the very real dangers of getting hit by a car, or losing control of your bike on a high-speed descent. She thinks that I'm simply going to become so "tired" that I'm going to just keel over on my bike and drop dead. I think she thinks that the "tired" you feel at the end of an endurance event is just like the "tired" you feel when you need a nap, and that my demise will be something akin to falling asleep at the wheel, or handlebars. She knows nothing of bonking (I tried to explain it once and she got alarmed like it was something that one would have to be hospitalized for a week over), or even "soreness" of the variety that is immediate and purposely inflicted.

So last night when I said I was excited for my trip, she asked, "How far will you be riding?"
"A century," I lied. I thought that maybe she wouldn't put the word together with its real distance.
"You're going to ride 100 miles?!" My mom only drives 100 miles once or twice a year.
"Really, mom, it's no big deal. 100 miles really isn't that taxing for me anymore." It's true.
She rolled her eyes like a mother does when her child says something exasperating like, 'It's not my fault that my room's a mess because an elephant just ran through,' or 'If you make me clean my room I'm going to run away to the circus!' "But what if it IS harder? You'll be in the mountains, maybe you'll get more tired than usual..."
"Well, you know, that's kind of the POINT."
Dad snickered signaling that he was on my side and it was the end of the conversation.

But still, I hate it when people (especially Mom) do that! They think it's a crazy idea, and they doubt you, and pretty soon you begin to doubt yourself. Where 2 minutes ago I was totally sure I could do this ride, now I had a little voice in the back of my head saying, 'and what if you can't, stupid?' I knew it would be a tough day, but now I began to wonder how I would get back to my car if I wasn't able to go on?

Great! Now my ride was ruined.

Not a picture I took. If anyone wants to donate a nice digital camera, please e-mail me for mailing address.

I woke up early and was on my bike riding past Loon Mountain and up the Kangamangus Highway ("The Kank" for short, a nickname that evokes all kinds of fun imagery for me) by 8:45. I got the biggest climb out of the way first, climbing over 2,000 feet in the first hour, and when I got to the top the clouds cleared and the sun came out as I blasted down the back side of it.

Left: Riding uphill on the Kank.

There are days for speed records, and then there are days when you have to just knuckle down and get to the finish any way you know how. I'm a confident descender, but the roads were slick and my brakes slippery, and I decided to just enjoy the ride down. Then, around mile 30, I turned north off The Kank and found myself in the face of a stiff, stiff headwind. I had no way of knowing how hard it was blowing, but it definitely felt like over 20 mph, and wouldn't have been surprised if it were over 30. Either way, I was riding through the wake of a tropical storm, so use your imagination.

Right: Near the top of the Kank; Below, Left: Sign at the summit. One of these days I'm going to go back on a sunny day and ride like a bat out of hell down that road.

And the wind stayed that way for fifty miles. It was stronger in parts, gentler in others. It would let off going up the steep uphills, and then pick up again on the flats and downhills. Have you ever been riding slightly downhill, pedaling hard, and only going 14 mph? That was me yesterday. Every time the road turned, I would hope for some relief, but the road would twist, and the wind would still be there. When I turned a 90º corner into Gorham at around 70 miles I thought for sure that the wind would be over, but somehow it was dead on here too! It felt like I was riding with a 500-pound gorilla on my back. It was like I was dragging a manhole cover behind me. It was like I was pushing a brick wall with my front wheel. "GET OFF ME!" I said out loud. Because when you're alone on the bike no one can hear you. "LAY THE FUCK OFF!" I liked the sound of that last part. "FUCK OFF!"

But the wind did not listen, and I found myself having to dig deep mentally just to keep going. Physically I was feeling fine, but there's something that's just so draining about working that hard and still moving that slowly, especially when you're on hilly terrain full of false flats, and a road that, just when you think it's over, just seems to go up and up and up around every turn. It took me about an hour to get from miles 50 to 60, and I must have looked at my watch 10 times per mile.

If you start feeling sorry for yourself in a situation like that, you're cooked. I knew that. So I just kept yelling at the wind and pushing on, and repeating inane mantras like "Just keep spinning", or singing a single line from My Fair Lady over and over to myself, not because it meant anything, but just because it popped up there. People would be so disappointed if they knew what I REALLY think about when I'm alone on the bike. I passed some really pretty views in this part of the ride, but I was too tired and demoralized to stop and take pictures, so I'll share some of the great photos Google has to offer instead.

I wished I had someone else there to take turns blocking the wind. Originally I hadn't planned to do this ride alone. I'd planned to do a shorter 80-mile version with less climbing so that others could come along. But in the end people bailed because of family commitments, or because they just weren't sure they could hack the distance over the terrain. Because of the conditions, I was kind of glad that people who weren't used to long rides didn't come, not because I didn't want them there (I REALLY could have used the company!), but because I was having such a hard time holding it together myself, I don't know how I would have managed to remain upbeat enough to coax someone else through the experience. It got me thinking...

I had promised Mindy that if she came along, I would make sure she got through the ride. I am a firm believer that, especially biking, people can go way further than they give their bodies credit for. In the end, I think Mindy made the right decision staying home and not push her luck with her injury, but if she had come along there is no doubt in my mind that she would have made it. Same goes for everyone else I invited. But I can't guarantee that they would have had a good time of it. Hell, I certainly wasn't having a good time of it.

Which brings me back to what I was saying before about doubt. Until my mom gave me that look, I had never doubted for a second that I could do this ride. I've ridden farther, and I've ridden similar terrain. But as I sat there pushing into the headwind for the third or fourth hour, I began to doubt myself. What were you thinking, you stupid lunatic! This is horrible. You're going to poop out. You're going to have to quit somewhere north of Mt. Washington and then you're going to have to sit there alone on the side of the road for 3 hours while you wait for someone to come pick your sorry ass up. And then you'll NEVER be able to live it down. This is a fine mess you've gotten us into. Sure, I didn't FEEL pooped, but I was convinced I would... eventually.

It sounds a bit cheezy, but when I started to get a bit nervous, I just reminded myself that this may be one of the hardest rides I’ve ever been on, but I’ve been on hard rides before, and I’d gotten through those alright. And for the moment, I still wasn’t feeling the worst that I’d ever felt on my bike. I decided to try to catalog my five hardest workouts and compare how I was feeling now to how I'd felt then, and also remember the doubts I'd had going into them. In typical latenight fashion, here they are:
5. My solo ride from Barcelona to Girona and back (the first 100 mile ride I ever did).
4. My solo ride in the Adirondacks where I was feeling so sick and tired (the longest ride I’d ever done at the time, and some of the hilliest terrain I'd ever done as well).
3. The marathon I did on almost no training whatsoever.
2. Tres Nacions, when the weather sucked, we climbed the highest peak in the Pyranees and I wasn’t particularly conditioned (still the most climbing I’ve ever done in one day).
1. The 51-mile overnight hike I did in Barcelona (which was the only time I’ve ever actually FOUND my limit). I should have gotten medical attention at the end.

I think about those days all the time as points of reference. I figure that if I could get through those days, I could get through anything. I guess that’s the thought that’s in the back of my mind when I set out from my car on days like today all by myself. I plan out the rout purposely so that when I want to quit I’ll be far from my car. That way I’ll have no choice but to finish. Because if I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

Left: I purposely set out the rout so that I would pass the only shortcut before I got tired.

And because I still had a long way to ride, I began to think about a concept that I heard about on this podcast (Edit: No!  Stop, wait.  I mean it was THIS episode!) They were saying that for everything you do, you relate it to experiences that you’ve already had. For example, if you’ve tried to run a 24-minute 5K in the past and you never quite made it, then every time you go to try to achieve that goal, then something in you tells you that you'll never be able to do it. You fail, because you believe that you're going to fail. On the other hand, if you try something and are successful – let’s say that you run a seven- or eight- or nine- or ten-minute mile for the first time – then you can build upon that experience. You can begin a whole chain of success based on past experiences. Sure it hurt to run that first fast mile, sure it was tough, but you did it and you survived. Now you are more likely to run that pace in the future, and continue to build on it because you know that you can. Alright, I'm paraphrasing it all wrong. Just listen to the podcast, alright?

Right: Does anyone know why my photos keep getting cut off like that?

I’m not sure that I was any better trained for that ride than anyone else that I invited along. I simply don’t do these superlong rides often enough to make major physiological adaptations to that kind of riding (pro riders ride several rides of that length a week). Probably the only difference was that I do this stupid shit to myself all the time, and I have that confidence that I can fall back on knowing that I’ve survived my own stupidity before, so I can survive again. This mentality has gotten me through some pretty tough weekends this summer, and whatever hasn’t killed me has made me stronger. Well, mentally anyway.

Still, you wouldn't want to be sitting next to me on those days. I'm crabby and snappish. Grunt and groan and scream and blame others for my discomfort. I want to go through my day doing exactly what will make life easier for ME, and god help you if you get in my way. Maybe it's better to find those mental barriers alone...

Once I finally popped out of the wind somewhere around mile 90, I was feeling pretty happy again. I was loving riding my bike again and was pretty sad that my day was drawing to a close. Okay, not that sad. The last stretch was a 10-mile bike trail through the woods in Fraconia Notch. It was twisty and filled with little tunnels and bridges. The woods looked like something out of a fairy tale or a ghost story. After a short, steep climb the trail shot me down, down, down around thrilling corners, through tunnels, and over wooden bridges. It was great! I just coasted and hung onto my brakes in case there were clueless hikers around the corner. Finally the trail spit me out next to the lake at the bottom of Cannon mountain where the Old Man in the Mountain used to be before one day he just slipped away… literally.

By the time I got back to my car after 118 miles, 7 hours and 11 minutes (I think), and between 6 and 8,000 feet of climbing (depending on whether you trust the Garmin or Zone 5/SportTracks software), I was even thinking about continuing to ride. Maybe I’d just ride back to the top of The Kank before going home... Well, I didn’t think about it too seriously. The point is, I was pretty sure I could have gone further.

Anyway, I want to go back. Viable biking days through the mountains are limited this time of year, so it's gotta be soon. There's talk of trying to arrange a ride up Mt. Washington (only about 7 miles – straight up – and then catch a ride or a funicular or something back down), maybe in 2 weeks? Just google images of the Mt. Washington Auto Road and TRY and tell me it doesn't look thrilling! And anyone who wants to ride 50-100 miles or more with me through those mountains any time in the next couple of months, e-mail me. Seriously. I'm going with or without you.