Pedestrian Adventures

64.2 mi, 2494 ft An alarm twanged somewhere in the thistle field at 5 am, despite the ride being not scheduled to start for a further two hours.  The flood lights relit, appearing as a glimmer of dawn under canvas.  Struggling into cold fresh lycra in the semi-dark, bundling extra layers of coats and hats on top.  Stepping gingerly through thistles in search of coffeeeee. Following sunrise and a satisfying breakfast burrito, the team chafingly remounted bicycles with a collective groan and set off for Day 2.  The route soon bifurcated into 60 miles versus 40 miles, and reluctantly the realisation of once again taking the longer.  Chafe chafe chafe. Soon, we were a group of five riders of similar speed, travelling companionably together.  This fortuitously prevented my getting lost as the route suddenly veered left on a narrow alley at the bottom of a steep hill, down which we were passing at some speed.  We made our way uneventfully to the lunch...

103.3 mi, 6092 ft The Day of Reckoning dawns.  This is the Saturday in which the chronically unsporty asthmatic kid bursts free from her pre-ordained life trajectory of sofa-sitting and grocery home deliveries to stock up on crisps.  This is the Saturday to do something different, maybe heroic, that only seventy-eight percent of the Bay Area populace has already accomplished per extrapolation from rigourous conversational sampling. This is the Saturday of the century ride.  One hundred miles. The alarm clock shrieked at 4.45 am.  Car pooling team mate acquired, the Honda Civic conveyed us effortlessly to the start line in Brisbane (naturally mis-pronounced Brizz-baayyyyne) Marina, in South San Francisco.  Incredibly, despite ungodly porta-loo queues, the team rallied timely and well-equipped, achieving a cohesive 7.06 am departure.  The ride commenced well. The team captain efficiently marshalled his ducklings into formation up until the first rest s...

74.3 mi, 4506 ft Riding the rim of Lake Tahoe is my final training ride before the main event, the make-or-break before heading into the century brimming with either confidence or terror.  Billed on a website on the internet as "America's Most Beautiful Ride", the Lake Tahoe circumference combines the heady trinity of distance, climbing and altitude. Seven of the team bravely set out into the brisk South Lake Tahoe morning.  With quite a large group, over quite a lot of hours, statistics dictates that something was bound to go wrong I excitedly noted.  But what would it be? The GPS first routed us along a bike path, and shortly thereafter onto a main road wherein a steep ascent quickly loomed.  The team fell silent, huffing, puffing and chest clutching in the thin air, climbing up over Emerald Bay, fortunately without attrition.  Marvellous vistas of the lake and surrounding forests rewarded the collective asthma attack, followed by a terrific hurtle down...

83.4 mi, 2614 ft This ride was lovingly planned with mileage in mind.  Lots and lots of miles, to bridge the distance gap from my previous lengthiest ride (72 mi) to the Bike MS century.  In fact this ride was planned to be precisely 80 miles, but a combination of my slightly poor Google mapping, and somewhat egregious navigation from a team mate, added a little extra treat. With the aggressive heat wave of the prior three days firmly in the rear view, three of the team set off from Santa Clara on this overcast morn, braced for excessive heat which did not materialise.  We wended our way through increasingly froo froo neighbourhoods of San Jose, southbound.  After approximately 10 minutes a fierce headwind arose.  It is well known that the wind direction in the South Bay switches in the afternoon.  Inwardly and outwardly I sighed, confident we would be contending with headwinds the entire day. Leaving San Jose, we rolled through some slight hills up ...