Three of us got the bright idea of doing Rim Of The World - "one of the most scenic and most challenging rides in the area," yesterday morning. J and I meant to do it last weekend actually, but the weather looked shady and I wanted to watch that crucial second time trial of the Tour de France in the morning, so we let it go. We set our sights on this weekend instead, knowing that with the dog days setting in, we'd have to be out the door by 8ish, in order to be back at or before noon. That was the plan. M, another member of the club, was in town for the weekend and wanted to come along too. Good to have him. We're all strong and fit enough on the bike and up for a challenge, but none of us had done this ride before, or any ride this long. Who knows how we'd handle it?



We handled it. But what did I have in common with this starchy package of trans-fats by the end of the ride? Like a seven-layer enchi-gordi-bean and beef and chicken crunchwrap, I was burnt crispy on the outside, melty, cheesy and disgusting on the inside. And a bit shaken up, too, but that's another story.

The tale of the (cyclocomputer) tape: 64.15 miles @ an average of a little over 17 mph, taking 3 hrs and 43 mins. Avg. cadence of 80 (someone do the math and tell me how many pedalstrokes that works out to over the whole time) and a top speed of a smidge under 45.

That's the numbers, but I like impressions, and there were plenty. It is certainly a beautiful and scenic ride into parts of the area I've only driven through a couple times, and parts that I've never been. Even the bike path - the flat, undramatic many-times-ridden warm-up before really getting into farm and coal-village country is serene and lovely in the Saturday morning mists.

We rode. Past the signs pointing towards, then the site of, the Millfield mine disaster - one of those little pointers to local history that I find awfully fascinating (though I didn't stop to read the sign or amble around the site). Past hissing snakes in the weeds, sheep and goats traipsing across the road in front of us, and cantankerous hounds in the shallow front yards. Appalachian hills and houses. Lots of abandoned things; abandoned farms, abandoned stores, abandoned land. Climbing up a gentle slope, we went alongside an Amish farmer tending to his field with horse and plow, then shortly after, accelerating past an Amish horse and buggy - the first time I've ever done that. Over a stretch of about ten miles after Ringgold, our auto-to-buggies-seen score was 2:1.

Look at the altitude profile of the ride at the link I posted yesterday, and you'd think the worst of it is all right in the middle.



It's clear to me now that I misread this, because I thought we got through the worst of the ride pretty quickly and painlessly. How very wrong that was, and it was a bit dispiriting to think you've made it like I did, only to run into a hot, nasty wall, like we did. There really is no respite from the hills out there. You just have to keep going over them, and you're miles from home. By hour three the sun was downright brutal, haze or not. Here is where I started a little more seriously thinking about heatstroke.

So many of the roads in the region are chip-sealed; grayish-blue, grainy-looking and rough-riding. They're teeth-chatterers. Now and then, you see a stretch of jet-black, newly-laid pavement, perhaps only a couple hundred yards, and think "finally, good road!" No, no more - I'm now smarter than that. The black tar sucks. Get it hot, and it's like glue. Glue that radiates heat. Put it on a steep climb, surrounded by wind-blocking trees, and it destroys your spirit. Well, at least it's smooth-riding, you say. Except for the parts that have had a tractor roll over them once or twice. Which is just about every inch of the roads out there. I'm a chip-seal convert as of yesterday.

I have some endurance, but after Amesville, I just couldn't stubbornly egg-beater my way up the hills like I had done through the first half of the ride. Tired and overheated, I started making mistakes, like slipping off the edge of broken-pavement on a climb, onto the sandy shoulder. I unclipped and shuffled back onto the road rather than making a hilariously slow fall, glad that no one saw that little embarrassing moment.

Moments after that I got my real scare. J and M had flown out of sight over the top of the hill (as I flew out of their sight atop other hills) and I was descending at 30 mph or so, less interested in catching up with them than in letting my legs rest and getting to the finish line as easily as possible.

I let up. I don't know what I hit then - a little pothole, I guess - but it jerked my front wheel hard to the left, my right arm thrown across the aerobars and my chest into the stem. How far does a wheel have to turn to throw you over the handlebars, or send you slamming and skidding across the road? It didn't turn that far, but it came close.

It all took a moment. I grabbed the bars, straightened out somehow and moved back to the shoulder. Under control, as quickly as that. But it scared the living shit out of me, and the last 5 miles or so were just a long, hot, slow and steady warm-down.

I've never had a hard crash on a bike, and all admonitions about "if you ride, it's only a matter of time before you go down" aside, I don't plan on ever having one. Lesson learned. I'm trying not to play the "what-if" game - what if I reacted just a fraction slower, what if my wheel had turned another degree, what if there was a car coming at just that moment? It's past, nothing happened, and there's absolutely nothing to be gained by playing that mental crash movie in my head again. I've seen it enough times already. Lesson learned.

A soak in a very cold bath afterwards. Gorge on a loaded Boboli, as if my apartment really needed to be any hotter. Try to nap, and sweat puddles just laying there. Whatever I did, it seems to have worked, since I'm feeling all right today (and unbelievably, not sunburnt), but with the weather all drizzly and too much else to do, I haven't planned on anything besides recovering.

Labels: cursed heat, long ride, rim of the world