The Longest Ride for FlaxJacks
A week before this ride was to take place I was asked to
join. I had my reservations as it had
never ridden longer than 104 miles in one day before and the ride at hand was
to cover between 140 and 145 miles. Well
since my friends had done this ride before and were familiar with the route AND
I wasn’t going to have to do any leading, I thought YES I will do it. To me this ride was going to be another
challenge in life that I wasn’t going to let pass me by, I gladly accepted this
challenge and opportunity to add this to my “bucket list” if you will.
Saturday November 19th
was to be a cool day in Northern California, 48 degrees at 7am, and never to
hit 60 degrees. The day was to be spent
riding with 2 friends from Sunnyvale to Tres Pinos, and was estimated to take
about 12 hours including lunch and pit stops.
We started in Sunnyvale, CA and rode through Santa Clara, Cupertino, Saratoga,
Los Gatos, Campbell, San Jose, Morgan Hill, San Martin, Gilroy, Hollister, and
finally into Tres Pinos then reversed the route to come home.
I started the day by loading up my car at 5:45am under the
bright fall moon and crisp damp air. My
car was covered in dew so it took several minutes to warm her up and clear off
the windows so I could safely see out. I
made my way to the starting location and was eating my wonderfully prepared hot
oatmeal compliments of Kimber by 6:30am.
Upon finishing the delicious meal we promptly put on our cold weather
gear trying to figure out what would be appropriate to wear. I chose to wear a thin long sleeve base layer,
jersey with arm warmers, and wind jacket with removable sleeves. In addition I wore my bib shorts with full
leg warmers, wool socks, and shoe covers, then my winter gloves and thin skully
hat under my helmet. Even with all these layers the air was still
crisp and bit at my nose a little on our first few miles, but out we headed out
for our 140 mile event, official start time 7am.
Our first several miles were slow as the cold temps made it
difficult to get our heavy legs to turn the pedals at more than a 60 rpm cadence. Over the first several miles we crossed both
Hwy 85 and a set of railroad tracks about 4 times even though we were headed
south, the route had to meander back and forth so as to avoid high traffic areas. Finally
we are out of the city and out of the suburbs and onto McKean rd. were we had few
stops and were able to get into a comfortable steady pace. At this time the sun was just finally up and
we were enjoying the beautiful colors of the cool fall morning most people were
sleeping through. A few miles down the
road we come upon two women fixing a flat on the side of the road, as always I
slowed to see if they had everything they needed, and the response was “we need
help please”, so stop we did. Come to find
out this was their first flat fix, so John promptly got on helping them while I
waited for Kimber to come up the road gave her the ok to cross the road and she
stop with us. While listening to John
describe the process of tube changing Kimber mentioned something about pressure
and at the same time she reached to touch her rear tire only to find it was
flat. “Well now I know why I’m falling
behind”, as she begins to start the process of changing her tube.
Only after a short time we were all set to resume our trek
to our first rest stop, Starbucks in Morgan Hill. I was really looking forward to holding that
nice hot cup of coffee in my cold hands, and feeling the heat warm me from the
inside with every sip I took. Ah we
arrived at our first stop. We enjoyed our hot coffee and a quick reloading of
food before our next 35 miles till our lunch stop. Off we go, but first I decided to take off my
hat, gloves, and sleeves on the jacket.
Not a bad choice at this time as we all lost a layer due to the
wonderful clear skies and sun beaming down on us even though it was maybe 60 if
we were lucky it still felt warm.
On the way between Hollister and Tres Pinos, we were on
Hwy25, a very long, straight, flat, windy, open road. We passed under a few gliders enjoying the
perfect weather to keep them afloat, ground squirrels galore watching us as we
rolled by, and a few locals looking at us with confused looks. We had a nice tail wind taking us our last
few miles into Tres Pinos, and along the way every town sign was a sprint
point. I kept missing the signs and
would miss the start of the sprint. But
I prepared for this last sprint on our outbound trip. It was a slight uphill sprint, and I knew I
had an advantage on the hill. So when I
saw the hill coming and John took off I decided it’s time to go for one…off we
go, up goes my speed, pass by John hit the sign first, whew I think that was
the highest my heart rate hit so far that day.
The best part of the sprint was that the lunch stop, FlapJacks
restaurant was right there.
During the lunch break I had the FlaxJacks (gluten free),
ham and hash browns with a Mexican hot chocolate (hot coco with cinnamon). After finishing up I look a seat on the ground
in the sun trying to soak up some heat before we got back on the bikes and had
the blast of the cold wind on our bodies again.
Heading out for the first 10 miles was tough as we just got
up from sitting for an hour so our legs were cold and felt like bricks. But to add insult to injury we had a stiff
headwind to deal with. So to battle back
and keep up our great timing we pacelined through the wind for several miles. At first I had trouble keeping the pace as I
need more time to warm up so we slowed our nice 25mph pace down to a meager 18
to 19 mph till I was warmed up and able to help with the pace.
Finally we made it back to our rest stop in Morgan Hill, I was
still feeling full from lunch but knew I needed to keep eating and
drinking. Come to find out I was in major
need of salt as I downed a full Gatorade in seconds and craved another. No Gatorade around so I had 2 nuun tabs in my
water bottle instead, ah that was what I needed. Before heading out for our last 35 miles it
was getting dark and cold so on go all the layers again and also back on go the
lights. We successfully made it back to
Camden before it got completely dark and I was so relieved for that since there
are no lights on McKean and there is also no bike lane either.
Now that we are back in the suburbs our pace slows due to
the lights and traffic, but it’s nice at this point to have more opportunities to
get our butts off the saddle. Back over
85 and several railroad track crossing before we hit our final stop before
getting home. Now we are 4 miles away
from the end, its dark, COLD, and it starts raining. That’s ok we press on and finish in such
great timing. Total elapsed time was
about 12 hours; rolling time was 8 hours and 40 minutes.
I timed the final 112 miles to see about how long it will
take to do the bike leg of my Ironman event next year. I was pleasantly
surprised to see it took us 6 hours and 40 minutes to do the last 112; I am
excited to know I won’t have to run the entire marathon when the time comes.
Home I go to shower and defrost from a long day in the cold. I grab my foam roller, toss my dinner together (a nice huge green salad was all I needed), then on the couch to watch a quick movie before going to bed. Before this day I would have said I will never ride more than 100 miles in a day it is just crazy, well I will take that back now and have an itch to see what it would take to do a double century, 200 miles in one day. Hmm goals for next year?
