Today I embarked on a club ride with the Portland Triathlon
Club. The ride was from Sauvie Island to
the Oregon Coast. The club rented the
largest school bus I’d ever seen; time for a tangent. This bus was huge. It had about 25 seats to hold 50+
people. The thing was monstrous! Anyways, The ride was broken up into two pit
stops, with riders starting at each point.
So a person could do 100, 66, or 33’ish miles; pretty awesome group
ride. So the bulk of us started at the
100 mile (century ride) point. This is
the point where the cosmos made it clear I’ve wronged someone in life,
hard. One mile, ONE MILE! Into my ride I
have a flat. I could feel my bike
handling sluggish and realized that my tire was slowly deflating. I hoped to the other side of the guard rail
and whipped out my gear. One of the club
organizers stopped to make sure I was okay.
I used my tools like I’d never used them before and threw on a new tube
and racked my tire. Away I went with
John, and we were behind everyone. About
two miles down the road… yeah, I’ve logged about three miles at this point…
remember that thing about wronging people?
My rear tube EXPLODES. John was a
good few hundred feet in front of me and turned when he heard it. Thankfully, other than a few scrapes, my tire
was fine. John continued on, I changed
my tube again, and I backtracked to grab the shuttle to the first check point;
there’s no way I could reasonably pick up the time lost from two flats.
Some riders had beaten the shuttle to the first check point
when we arrived. The 66 mile crew (which
now unfortunately included myself) took our bikes out and got ready. I waited for few minutes after a large group
headed out and hit the road. I kept a
pretty solid pace on the leg and keeping some time between myself and the pack
in front of me paid off; they turned down the wrong road and I picked them up
right as they got back on track. The
ride was pretty relaxing, I felt very comfortable on my aero bars. I have settled in to doing most tasks on the
bike like opening food packages and reading a map and directions. The road we were on was pretty rough at times
and we had to slow down to not tank our tires.
I had no idea where I was and it was great. My GPS watch was the only thing letting me
know how far was left.
We slowly trickled into the second check point. Waiting at the check point was a glorious bag
full of food fit for endurance athletes: cookies, candy, yogurt pretzels, fruit. We all gorged and lay in the sun at the
wildlife viewing area. We started
heading out in small packs. I took off
alone to start at a slower pace that I could increase as the next pack caught
up. At this point my rear tire started
to feel sluggish… welcome to flat number three.
The tube could hold air, but not for long. If I changed this tire and continued on I
would be riding more than 30 miles with zero reserve tubes and zero cell
reception. I took my pump out, over
inflated my tube, and booked it back towards the second check point. The bus was already leaving so I flagged it
down. I hopped on the bus with my bike
and took a seat. I was defeated by sheer
luck. We arrived at the final coast stop
where subs and snacks were waiting.
People slowly arrived and grabbed food.
One guy a long way back on the course needed to be picked up due to
extreme cramping. I was glad I didn’t
push on without reserve tubes because the phone communication tree took over an
hour to even get across where this guy was and what was wrong.
We hung out at the coast for several hours. People talked about upcoming events, nutrition,
and goals. I didn’t talk about my events
much other than an occasional “I’ll see you there.” As much as I like to surround myself in the
environment of endurance racing, I think I just like hearing the background
noise of it more than actually being front and center in a conversation.
So remember that monstrous bus? So we loaded 32 bikes onto that bus, while
still needing to fit 32 people as well. I
was involved with the bike loading along with one other guy. It was like playing Tetris with really
expensive blocks. I didn’t care much
about time so I don’t know how long it took to meticulously load 32 bikes, but
I’m sure it took quite a while. The ride
home took about two hours and everyone was glad to be back.
I learned a lot of things from this trip. I became a pro at changing tubes. I observed other bikes and learned about
containers I didn’t know existed. I
learned about sacrificing a water bottle holder to place a cut open bottle that
can hold whatever munchables you want (pretzels, in her case). So I didn’t get in my century ride, but
knowledge is power and I sure learned a lot.
In the end it was a worthwhile day with fun activities and fun people.
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