it's just like mitchell lane

well, i did it. rode 212 miles in two days on my track bike. in some ways it was not as hard as i thought it would be, whereas in other ways it was really really hard. let me tell you what i remember about it...

saturday i started out early, just a little after 7:00 a.m., which is when they “officially” open the course. certainly one of the guilty pleasures in riding a fixed gear in an organized ride is passing roadies, but i sort of cheated myself out of that with my early start; i didn’t see hardly any other bikes. i passed a few casual riders, and then was passed by a guy who had the full aero bar setup and flames on his jersey (he was also going downhill). i kept telling myself not to chase him, but he did not gain all that much. at the first rest stop, which was only just getting set up, i needed some gatorade so i stopped and refilled and this other guy kept going and disappeared, which was cool because i could just keep what seemed like a more relaxed but still insistent pace. of course i didn’t see anyone else, either. i rode by what must have been the second stop; there was a bank of portable toilets but no people in sight. when i turned to head west i was suddenly behind flame jersey again. i didn’t try to chase him this time either, and he didn’t really gain that much on me. we pulled into the third stop at the same time and chatted a little. while we were standing there, another guy rode by without stopping. flame jersey left soon afterward and i gave him a minute; eventually i lost track of him altogether.

all three of us were at the “lunch stop” at 10:00 a.m., and they were just getting set up as well; this was after i skipped the fourth stop because they weren’t set up at all. did i really leave that early? were we really going that fast, ahead of everybody? through a series of grunts and murmurs i learned that they were both intending to take the century loop, as was i. they left (separately) while i was still pushing a pb&j into my mouth. i did not see them on the century loop, but when i got to the century rest stop they told me i was the third person to get there, which was i think my major bragging right of the weekend. third rider to the century stop! excellent!

i continued to see exactly zero other riders until i got to where the century loop rejoined the main route, another rest stop, which i needed because my knees were bothering me. the usual soreness in my left knee (inside and outside) had actually come and gone, but my right knee had something different going on, something sharper. rest seemed to help, however, as did the knowledge that i was just 16 miles from the end. i had already gone 90 miles! it didn’t seem that far. so i got a few ego-boosting comments from riders at the stop (and, fading into the distance, from ones i passed) and basically finished after about 6:10 - i had been keeping loose track of my stopping times, about 40 minutes, so i figured i rode the 106 in 5:30. i thought that was pretty good. at the finish i saw i guy i knew from the track who said he was the second person to finish, a little after noon, but he had just done the 75 miles because he raced the night before.

at the finish area things fell apart. me right knee totally gave out, my luggage and all my clothes were wet (there had been some heavy rains back east, which delayed a lot of riders), and my cell phone was on the fritz. i located the clothes dryer in my dorm and found a pay phone to call home and started gobbling ibuprofen, so things got better. i cleaned up my bike some (i mean, it is white after all), to remove the pieces of insects and other crap that gets thrown up when you ride in the rain - there was a little light rain on the beginning of the century loop, just enough to get everything soaking wet but not of pelting intensity. grit in drive train and headset will take some more serious maintenance this week before i take the bike back to the velodrome on saturday (am i really going back to the velodrome on saturday? geez-o-pete...). after dinner i actually got back on my bike and rode around east lansing a little, just to see how it felt (it felt okay). but i was in bed by nine, trying to pretend the dorm room wasn’t hotter than fuck and that my knee didn’t hurt.

i ate a huge dormitory cafeteria breakfast the next morning (i watched this woman picking through the fruit bowl who had one piece of french toast on her plate and thought “exactly how far are you planning to ride today?”) and was on the road before 7:00. lots of others started early; i must have passed 40 riders on the way to the first stop, which was where the century loop split off. i thought, well, i’m feeling fine, so here goes. i was chugging a little bit and heard the noises of a paceline coming up behind me, and the lead guy was all enthusiastic about fixed gears, saying “hey look at this guy he’s a total animal” which gave me a boost. i hung with them, at what must have easily been 25 mph, to the rest stop. the one guy was telling me he had a fixed gear and had gone on some long rides but didn’t quite feel up to 100 miles yet. it was nice to have some company, and the drafting thing was good too. one of the guys they had picked up along the way turned out to be flame jersey from yesterday. at the stop, he wanted to get going sooner than they did, so the two of us paced each other for a while, and eventually the pack caught up, and i hung as best as i could, but it started to get a little difficult, and it was impinging on my enjoyment a little - working too hard, not seeing anything but the next guy’s wheel. so they didn’t want to stop where the loop rejoined the main route, so it was see you later. i did talk to flame jersey again at the finish; he said it never got any slower, and that it was tough to take his turn at the front.

as the day wore on it got hotter and my pains came and went. one thing i found was that, after stopping, even for just a few minutes, it took me a little time to kind of spin up again (like a hydrodynamic circulation model, i was thinking). after maybe 15 minutes or so, however, i would just kind of suddenly get loose and pick up a bunch of speed, which i could then maintain for a while. in the last 15 miles there were two rather major climbs (for this part of the world, anyway, moraines not mountains) that were kind of brutal in the heat but i prevailed, somehow, and finished after about 6:40 total time, maybe just under six hours of riding time. my knee wasn’t as bad as it was saturday, but it was tender and swollen, and it still is today. an informal examination by two neighbors who are doctors comfirms that there is nothing the matter with my kneecap, thankfully (one guy kept doing all these motions and proddings, saying “does this bother you?” and it never did, which i took to be a good sign). i think i got a little dehydrated because i have some of that thick-headed, hung-over feeling this morning.

but it was all good. i may even do it again next year (he he - i certainly wasn’t thinking that yesterday). i was glad i had listened to the remastered whatever and ever amen on the way in, because i had songs like “mitchell lane” and “air” running through my head most of time, which was peaceful.

thanks for reading.