Humberto is a blowhard

Friday, September 14
Last night as I was trying to adjust Kenny's bike, I discovered that the lower bearing race on the steering tube had not been installed properly, and so I couldn't tighten the headset up properly. So I took the whole thing apart and hauled the offending fork/steerer tube down to the shop to be repaired. I had just finished putting his bike back together when The Beast arrived from Atlanta to pick me up for our trip to Huntsville for the Century tomorrow. Who would have thought that you could fit two bicycles, and two passengers with attendant bedding and clothes and all the gear you have to haul for a bike ride into a Volvo S40? We even had room left over.

We stopped at Surin West for a dinner of Sushi and assorted high carb Thai dishes, and then hit the road. We were on our own because Kenny and his friend Chris were staying behind in Birmingham to go to their respective school's football games (it was the big Spain Park vs Hoover HS (of Two-A-Days fame). Chris' dad would drive them up the next morning, leaving Bham at 4 am to get them to the start in time.

We stopped at Calogipi's brother's house for the night, where we were too late to see the kids. I was told that my niece had cried because she had to go to bed before she got to see me. The boys apparently, couldn't care less. They're boys after all.

September 15, 2007 4:30 am
It's one of those mornings where you keep having that dream that you're waking up, getting dressed and about to eat breakfast, when suddenly you realize that you're dreaming and go back to dream about something else, only to have a repeat of this previous dream (more realistic this time) a few moments later. This process is repeated until you actually physically move from the bed.

I hate mornings like that.

5:30 am
I decide that it's time to finally wake up and get moving, though my alarm isn't set to sound for another 15 minutes. I grabbed my new iPhone and text-messaged my son (K) to find out where they were. When it took him 40 minutes to respond I became worried that he might have missed his alarm and be snuggled all warm and cozy in his bedroom back in Birmingham.

We arrived at Madison County High School where the ride start and finish was located. Kenny and Chris got their things put together and took off an hour ahead of the scheduled start. Neither of them had ridden 100 miles before, so they wanted to give themselves plenty of time.

8:00 am
As the ride start was just minutes away, we rode up to the front of the group and when things got underway, The Beast and I were at the front. The wind was blowing 15-20 mph dead into our faces and so I decided that I'd just go ahead and let each of the others take their pulls now. After all, we have 50 miles of Tropical Storm Humberto's headwind ahead of us. There'd be plenty of time to pull later. It was cold, but sunny and except for the wind, you couldn't have picked a better day for this ride. The forecast high was 79 degrees. But as I found out later, you can still get a nasty sunburn, even when it's cool.

For the most part, people were content to let things go easy for a mile or two, but gradually the pace started increasing until a large group (perhaps 100 strong) were rolling along at 24-25 mph. Having not ridden much at all since Cherohala, and certainly very little speedwork, this effort was taking a lot out of me. At 13 miles into the ride, I felt the first twinges of a cramp in my left calf. Purely an "effort cramp" as the weather was still very cool. We made a turn to the west which brought us broadside to the wind and we broke into echelons across the road while the pace ramped up to 29-30 across some sizable rollers. After 3 miles of this crosswind leg, we turned back into the wind and immediately started another sizable roller. Being nowhere near the front, I saw The Beast make the turn in the first 5 riders and kick the pace up another notch. As he tells it, a second after that, a professional triathlete on a Scott Plasma when to the front and dialed it up to 33...climbing the hill. I don't dispute that account, because when I finally got to the corner and made the turn, I had to sprint as hard as I could at 35-36 (because of the "accordian effect" of being at the back of a group) to catch the back of the riders ahead of me. But by the time I got back on, I couldn't say. I was deep, at 188 bpm of heart rate and I knew I was cooked, with 80 miles still to go.

So I settled in with the other dozen riders who had been dropped and we began working together to get through it with some help. The Beast eventually noticed that I wasn't there anymore and dropped back to find me. I was a couple of hundred yards back. So he hooked in with my group and promptly strung it out to the point that there was no chance to work together anymore.

So I made him pull. He did it willingly. He'd spent the past 4 years living in Plano, TX and Tulsa, OK. This wind was nothing to him, and it was beating me to death so I sat on his wheel and stayed there until the first big climb at mile 38 (following the downhill where my friend Katie crashed out last year).

When I arrived at the feed stop, Kenny and Chris where there, having just arrived 2 minutes ahead of me. After reloading fluids, we left together and descended into The Valley That Time Forgot, where you find the toughest climb on this ride, the road leading up to the ridge called Mars Hill. I remembered that it was steep, but it took The Beast, Kenny and Chris by surprise. Kenny flew, and I mean FLEW!, up that hill! We finished the loop through the valley which brought us back to the feed station we had just left. Kenny and Chris were behind us a few minutes so we decided to make it a relaxed stop and get some food. Now, as food goes, most commonly you'll find bananas, and grapes, fig newtons, raisins, and trail mix along with water and gatorade, at these stops. But this stop went even further. They had all of these, plus, watermelon, hot dogs, coolers full of Go-Gurts (surprisingly tasty during a ride), coolers of V-8, Mountain Dew, Sprite, Coke, and bottled water. And the best of all, a barbeque grill churning out bite sized pieces of bacon-wrapped filet mignon as fast as you could eat them! We ate our fill without gorging ourselves and a couple of minutes after the boys arrived and announced their intention to rest a while, we took off again.

A mile or two later my left knee started to pop as I came around on my pedalling stroke. As the miles went by it got worse. When we arrived at the rest stop at mile 75, I told The Beast that I was going to have to get some ibuprofen and ice it down for 15 minutes. After that was done, we left again, but it really didn't feel a whole lot better. I was reduced to shifting into my small ring on any medium or larger roller and spinning up without loading my leg. Thanks to liberal portioning of Endurolytes, the cramping problems I worried about early in the ride weren't bothering me though. So that was a positive note.

At mile 88, The Beast announced that he had a flat tire, so we stopped to fix that. When I could see that he was in good shape I started off again, knowing that he would catch me. He did and we began a two man time trial to the end. We were flying along pretty well and even though I could only spin up the final steep hill, we finished the ride together in 5:42:20 for 102 miles.

Last year, I did this same ride in 5:18, but I had put in many more miles last year than I did this year, so I'm proud of that 5:42. Kenny and Chris finished a while later, their time being 7 hours, 15 mintues. Pretty good for their first 100 miler. Fact is, I'm prouder of them for finishing than anything else. Kenny is light (hence his ability to fly up a hill), and the 50 miles into Humberto beat the living daylights out of him.

But they (and we) finished. And that's what it's all about.