4x Nuun Bubble
8 August 2018
Since 2004 I've ridden the Princeton Event Century. In recent years I'd bike to the start and come home with something hovering around 115 miles.
Not having an Event this year spurred Tom to put together a series of routes for the first Saturday of August, the traditional Event day. Tom would lead the 65-mile ride and I would gather the crazies for 100 or 115.
There had been rain in the forecast all week, and the most it had amounted to was the occasional two-minute downpour. As Saturday drew closer the chance of rain went up, but Tom didn't want to cancel until the last minute.
Ricky and Len had signed up to ride from my house with me. At 8:00 p.m. on Friday Tom said that things didn't look good but that he'd wait until 6:00 a.m. to make the final decision.
I'd already prepped everything. I even got to bed early, going over the route in my head until I fell asleep.
At 5:45 a.m. I woke up and checked my email. Nothing. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, pet the cats, and checked again. Nothing. So I slathered on the sunblock, the point of no return. That's when Tom canceled the ride. We moved everything to Sunday and alerted the troops.
It was too early to stay awake. I jumped in the shower to wash all the sunblock away and climbed back into bed. "Canceled," I murmured to Jack as he rolled over.
Next thing I knew it was 8:30 a.m. Jack had overslept too. I had no idea I'd been that tired.
I spent the day doing chores and the things we had planned for Sunday, including our regular trip to Philadelphia where I pay my parents' bills, get yelled at, and then go out to dinner with a friend. Somewhere in there, between the yelling and the appetizer, my stomach started to hurt.
We got home early enough that I was able to get to bed early again, but this time I couldn't fall asleep. My lower guts were churning. I was tossing and turning.
When I woke up at 5:45 the sun was out, and with it high humidity and a heat index somewhere in the 90s. Last night's gut yuck was still with me a little.
Len couldn't make the Sunday ride, but Ricky was at my house at 7:00. Jack H rolled in from home. We tried to convince him that he needed to ride the century with us and get himself 125 miles. "Then we'll have to ride to his house and back to get 125 too," Ricky said. I was up for it.
"What if there are a hundred people in the parking lot," Jack wondered as we made our way along Bakers Basin Road. "Not gonna happen," I said.
Tom did have a group though. Chris was there, and Linda McA, who I hadn't seen since March. Andrew had ridden in from home. Sergei's face looked a little familiar; I remembered him as a Cranbury fastboy.
Linda was on the fence about riding the century. "I don't do well in high heat," she said. "I cramp up." She said she'd decide when we got to New Egypt, where the routes would diverge. Ricky was still working on Jack, who was, surprisingly, not interested in that many miles.
We all felt pretty good for the first leg. We rode through the Asssunpink WMA, then south past Clarksburg. We stopped at the Wawa in Jackson and then headed south again towards Cassville. We swung around the east side of New Egypt and came up to the town center from the south. I had to stop on Brindletown Road for the herd of longhorn cattle:
My lower guts were bothering me again. I had to run to the bathroom twice. After the second time I felt much better.
Linda, Ricky, and I went south, through Fort Dix, past Pemberton Lake, and into the Pinelands. I was in the third-leg doldrums, which I'd come to expect. "The third leg is always the toughest for me," I said to Linda. She agreed.
This time felt different though. I seemed as if I had nothing to pull from, as if what I'd eaten had made no difference at all. I skhooshed a few ShotBlocks into my mouth and hoped for the best. I'm known for keeping a steady cadence. I found myself needing to coast to rest my legs. I stayed behind Ricky and Linda, far behind.
I used the view at the end of Burrs Mill at Pemberton-Browns Mills Road as an excuse to rest a little.
Linda came out of the store laughing. "I went to put one electrolyte tablet in my water and four fell in!" Her bottle was foaming.
She dumped some of it out. We continued north.
"We're gonna stop again in Allentown at 100 miles," I said. We would need water if not more food.
We went up Arney's Mount the easy way, and rolled through the country there on streets whose names were all compounds of the two towns they joined. I never can keep track of which is which and relied on my cue sheet and GPS to tell me where to turn. To the GPS's credit, when my mind went elsewhere the device corrected me.
We were somewhere north of Route 68, at mile 90, when my right quad began to cramp. I've had this happen a few times over the years. One salt tablet knocks it back. I'd already had two tablets with my snacks. I downed a third.
It didn't work. Between mile 90 and 100 I must have stopped at least four times. "I can't go at your pace," I told Linda and Ricky. "If you want, go ahead without me."
"No," they said, because they're good little Slugs. Amicitia quam celeritate.
We were three miles from our Allentown rest stop when my entire leg -- calf, quad, and hamstring -- seized in unison. Linda suggested some massaging to get the knots out and started squeezing my leg. It hurt all right, which we took as a good sign, and I was able to ride, in lower gear than my usual grind, to Pete's Deli on 524, the one with indoor seating.
Ricky bought a gallon of water and filled all of our bottles. Linda insisted on paying for my orange juice. I was in no shape to protest; I'd collapsed on a bench and wasn't keen on moving. I didn't even have to pee. I hadn't since New Egypt. Ricky confessed to being beat too. We considered, for a fleeting moment, calling for a Lyft. Instead we sat inside for a while, eating bananas. Linda was feeling fine.
She gave me a pack of Gu. I've never had Gu. "What do I do with this?" I asked.
"Tear it open and shoot it into your mouth."
I gagged as it went down. It felt like those gel fluoride treatments we used to get at the dentist's back in the day.
I felt a little dizzy when I stepped outside again. We'd already gone off the cue sheet to get to the deli. I decided to stay off it and take 524 through Robbinsville. "There might be traffic," I warned. They were okay with that. It wasn't too bad for a Sunday afternoon.
As long as I kept my cadence to a moderate spin and didn't put too high a gear on, I was able to pedal without pain. I had no energy though, and every time we reached a slight rise my leg would start to cramp again unless I geared down.
At this point, Linda had decided that there was no way I was going to ride home from the park. She was going to drive me even though both of our bikes might not fit in her car. As we turned onto Edinburg Road she had a eureka moment. "Put your bike in my car and drive my car to your house. I'll ride back with Ricky."
"Are you OK to ride home?" I asked Ricky. He said he was, and I said, "If you do than I will."
"No," he said, and I knew he was right. I was finished, with 108.96 miles out of the 117 I'd hoped for.
I saw Ricky and Linda in the rear-view mirror as I turned onto Old Trenton Road. The drive back to my house would take about 20 minutes. Going by bike would take 30, which is why I never drive to the park.
On Bakers Basin Road my leg seized again. With my foot on the gas pedal there wasn't anything I could do about it short of wiggle it around a little.
"This next level," I thought as it happened for a second time.
When I got home I put Kermit inside, lamented to Jack, washed my hands, drank a glass of milk, got a couple mugs of water chilling, and dumped most of a jar of pickles into a bowl.
The three of us stood in the living room with Jack, eating pickles, drinking water, and talking about cats until the pickles were gone.
I record my weight every morning. Out of curiosity I weighed myself again before I got into the shower. I was down three pounds even after having drunk a pound of water.
I drank some more. I drank again after. I drank more still at Nomad, where I could have eaten an entire pizza but didn't because I really wanted some ice cream. I drank more after the ice cream. It took all of that and until 8:30 before I finally had to pee.
One would think that, after 54 centuries, I'd know how to prepare for #55. I'd apparently started at a hydration deficit from whatever was going on in my intestines; I probably hadn't drunk enough with dinner the night before; and this was one of the more humid centuries I've done (there have been worse). I wrote to the Slugs to tell them that, from now on, I will be scheduling my centuries for days that are 70 degrees with the threat of rain. #54 was one of those.
We got chatting over email. Both Tom and Ricky had come close to cramping. Jack H called it quits half a mile shy of 100 because he was on the verge too. Jack's verdict, after careful consideration, was that we are all "fucking nuts."
There are as many hydration techniques as there are bike riders. After talking to my trainer at the gym on Tuesday -- he's a state-ranked triathlete who keeps track of hydration ounces when he's training -- he confirmed what we'd all been discussing: our tolerance decreases as we get older. He advised me that losing anything more than 3% of my body weight would put me in danger of cramping, and that I needed to drink at least that much to balance loss to sweat. "You'll do better on your next century," he said.
Cautiously, I rode my bike into work on Tuesday morning. There was a little tailwind to boost my confidence. Although my speed was down, my legs held up.
Despite all of that, I did have fun on Sunday. That's all that really matters.
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