one and a quarter centuries

So the ride into Colorado Springs! I neglected to write about it last time as I was still winding down from the traumatic, I mean, awesome 125 miles that I pulled off.

The church we stayed at the night before was incredible, getting up at 4am to prepare breakfast for us since we had to get an early start. We had a route meeting the night before, discussing how to avoid the dangers of putting your body through a 125-mile bike ride. (Hydrate, eat, hydrate, eat, repeat!) The "slower riders" (We know who we are :-)) were encouraged to set out early, so that Sweep (Dan Carmody and Ana) would finish the ride before dark.

I set out at 6:15am with three other riders, and we killed the first 30 miles. We were only passed by the 4 fastest guys on the trip, and made it into the first lunch stop early. After that, Suz, Lance and I rode together for most of the day. We weren't in the mood to join a slightly-too-fast paceline but went on our own and were making good time. Then... disaster! Not really, but I got my first two flat tires of Bike & Build! The roads were pretty dirty; the first flat was due to a piece of metal shrapnel, and the other due to a very sharp staple.

Dave caught up to us at a water stop around mile 60, and we all got sandwiches at Subway. Then we continued on to second lunch at mile 90, not too eventful, though my body was starting to register the fact that it did not want to be on my bicycle for too much longer... And then the storm came...

It started to rain and we were riding through mountains, with some lightning in the distance. We were told there was a shelter at mile 97 in case it got too bad. Unfortunately it didn't get too bad until mile 100. At that point, the wind was so awful we were getting blown around on our bikes (for some of the lightweights, they literally got blown off their bikes!) Even with red blinking tail lights, these were very unsafe riding conditions, and as there was nothing in the way of shelter around us, the 4 of us crawled into a ditch.

Now this ditch was muddy. It was cold. No. It was near FREEZING. A few trucks stopped to ask if we would like to sit in their trucks until the storm passed, but it is against Bike & Build policy to hitchhike, and while these may have simply been Good Samaritans, we were slightly nervous about crawling into the back of a stranger's truck. We decided to move even further down into the ditch, to block ourselves from wind. Then two more trucks pulled up, but since they couldn't see us, they apparently were just going to steal our bikes!! Luckily Suz scared them off and moved our bikes further down out of the sight of the road.

So the next hour and ten minutes were some of the most miserable of my life. The lightning was quite literally on top of us, and we were sitting next to a barbed-wire fence. To pass the time, we discussed how they would likely find our charred bodies next to our bikes. Then because we were convinced we were going to get hypothermia, we started playing "I went to the store.." and bought warm things. We huddled for body warmth and my legs and knees froze into a position that would make riding a bike somewhat more difficult. Near the beginning of our adventure in the ditch, we called Angela who was driving the van that day. Since most of the other riders were also caught in the storm elsewhere (some under a bridge, some fashioned a shelter out of tables and chairs, 4 large guys were standing in a port-a-pottie together) we were advised to simply wait it out. I'm pretty sure Lance also just failed to convey how awful our situation was. Had he properly explained that we were sitting in a ditch next to barbed wire with lightning on top of us and very near hypothermia, maybe the van would have picked us up.

Luckily, it did not, so we were victorious and finished our longest day. The storm calmed down and we decided to press on. Unfortunately since my knees and legs were frozen, crawling out of that ditch with my bike while shivering madly was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. That was followed by the coldest, most miserable descent of my life. That was followed by 8 miles of insane hills into Colorado Springs that seemed to come out of nowhere.

We arrived, followed shortly by sweep, at 7:45pm as the sun was setting, 13.5 hours after leaving the morning host site, and after 9 hours, 53 minutes of riding.

Then came the BEST shower and Olive Garden I have ever eaten in my life.