Ride Report: Karie's Ride, May 16 2009

This year, Team McAllen started a new ride: Karie's Ride, which is a ride established in memory of Karie Sheridan, daughter of a Team McAllen cyclist, who passed away due to complications resulting from colon cancer. The proceeds of the ride benefit the Colon Cancer Alliance.  I chose to to ride the long route, which was 67 miles.  I started the ride thinking that this would be an easy spin through Edinburg and south Texas farmland.  I was wrong.

It was 15 miles from my house to the ride start, and as much as I wanted to ride there and reach the century mark, I decided to drive to the start to save time.  When I arrived registration had started, but the line was short.  The rider in the Italian colors (or Mexico?) was on a custom Serotta, and rode most of the 67 mile route with my group.

From 090516 Karie's Ride

I had prepaid, so I quickly picked up my ride packet.  I usually don't pay attention to bib numbers, but if you're into numerology, you'll love my bib number.  It's composed of two VERY lucky numbers:  21 and 7.  Too bad they didn't help me on the ride.

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I saw Dutchman's bike leaning against a post, then saw that he was in line to register.  I leaned my bike against the same post, and snapped a photo.  I wish I had his bike...

From 090516 Karie's Ride

After he finished registering, Dutchman, Speedo, Chris and I lined up at the front of the group, as the 67 mile riders were to be the first to start.  While we waited, I snapped a couple of photos of my ride buddies.  The first is Dutch, then the 2nd is of Speedo and Chris.  Lastly, I turned the camera around and got a terrible upwardly angled self-portrait.  Even worse, some dude casually photobombed me!

From 090516 Karie's Ride

From 090516 Karie's Ride

From 090516 Karie's Ride

After a short speech from Team McAllen leaders, acknowledging the cause and thanking the sponsors, we rolled out with a full police escort.  Edinburg police shut down all the intersections and we rolled at 18-20 mph until we reached the city limits.  Our group was about 20 riders strong, but I only knew a few of them, and Dutch, Speedo, Chris and I were the only strong riders I recognized.  We still had SAG, but from there we were on our own.

Speedo and Chris had pulled us out of town, and Dutchman and I took the next pull.  We started maintaining 20 mph, and before too long Speedo rode up from the back of the paceline and asked us to slow down to 18 or so.  The group was starting to struggle already.  Dutch and I slowed down the group, but we started talking about how this would be a LONG day if we had to hold 18 mph within 10 miles of the ride start.  Even worse, we had the wind at our back.  If we couldn't hold a good 20+ pace with a 10 mph tailwind, we were really in trouble.

We rolled up to the 1st rest stop, barely 15 miles into the ride.  Since it was a hot and humid day, and we obviously had some riders that needed the stops, we all pulled over and refueled.  You never know what you'll see on a ride, and what I saw demanded to be photographed.  A frame house being moved, with a guy riding on the roof peak.  Dangerous...yes.  Photogenic...absolutely.

From 090516 Karie's Ride

After the quick stop, we continued on, with Dutch, Speedo, Chris and I taking most of the pulls.  It was intentional, because when we weren't pulling, our speed suffered.  In hindsight, taking these long pulls into the wind set me up for pain, but more on that later.  As we cruised along, the scenery changed from urban to countryside.  We reached the next rest stop faster than I expected, and Dutch and I were pulling the group as we rolled in to the stop.  As we did, I looked back and realized the group had fragmented.  A few minutes later, Speedo pulled a struggling rider into the stop.  I snapped his photo, capturing the wide open cornfields in the area.  If the corn was replaced with sunflowers and there were some slight rollers, it might be confused with France.

From 090516 Karie's Ride

At the rest stop, we were warned that it was the last stop until Hargill.  I knew Hargill wasn't far, but I refilled my bottles anyway and grabbed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  After a quick group discussion, we decided to break into a fast group and a "not so fast" group.  Dutch and I would lead out the fast group, with Chris along as ride leader and our official connection to the ride organizers.  Speedo volunteered to ride with the slower group...bless his heart!

Again, Dutch and I led out the group.  And again, in hindsight, all of this pulling really set me up for what was to happen later in the ride.  Within a mile, we turned from a headwind to a tailwind, and we started pushing a 23-25 mph pace.  Our group was about 10 riders, and we all seemed to be feeling good and taking good pulls.

5 miles later, we realized we had dropped a few riders.  They could easily fall back and ride with Speedo's group.  No problem for them, but it was a problem for us, as that left less cyclists to pull.  We hammered onwards toward Hargill, but when we reached Hargill, nobody wanted to stop at the tiny country store.  We decided to continue on, and turned towards the south.  A steady 15 mph wind hit us in the face.  We had been riding with tailwind and crosswind pushing us for so long, we had forgotten all about the wind.  Our speed dropped, and we all began to suffer through the pulls.

About 8 miles later, and close to 20 miles from the last rest stop, Dutch and I were both almost out of water.  The extra rations of pace line pulling had worn me down, and I let Dutch know that I was hurting.  He gave me a Hammer gel, and I slammed it, then chased it with my last bit of water.  A few minutes later, I felt a bit better, but was very happy when we reached the next rest stop.  I filled the bottles, drank and refilled, and also drank a can of Coke.  I'm not sure if it was the Coke or what, but I felt like I had an anvil in my stomach.

We left the stop, again pushing into the wind.  I really wasn't feeling well.  My stomach was too full, my legs felt rubbery, and I just wasn't having much fun.  We continued on, but at about mile 62 I experienced something that I have NEVER experienced on the bike:  hamstring cramps.  I've had minor calf cramps when sprinting at the end of a long ride, but never hamstring cramps like these.  I know they're not rare in cycling, but it was a first for me.

The cramps hurt so bad that I could barely pedal, and when I did, it felt like I was spinning a square, not a circle.  I stood up, locked my knees, and bent forward, stretching them the best I could.  We caught a signal light, and that helped, but a mile or so later I was cramping even worse.  The SAG vehicle saw this, and handed me a pint bottle of Gatorade.  I slammed it, and between that and just not wanting to stop, I fought through it and made up the 50 yards I had lost.  The group rolled in together, and Victoria and the kids were waiting for me, waving red pom-poms and yelling for me.  It was a great ending to the ride.

In retrospect, the extra pulling combined with running out of fluids and fuel was a bad combination.  Since summer in Texas is brutal for cycling, I pay extra attention to fluids, but on this ride, in 86F temps and with a 15 mph headwind over about 25% of the course, I made a critical mistake and allowed myself to run out of both fluids and fuel.  Lesson learned.  Even so, it was a fun ride for a great cause, was extremely well-organized, and I had a great time.

STATISTICS

Like me, I know a lot of you like to see the data.  The summary data shows that we averaged 19 mph, although the average was brought down drastically by the speeds before the group split.  Additionally, you can see that I was pushing pretty hard, with an average heart rate of 154 bpm.  Garmin thinks this is Zone 4.3 for me, but it's probably more like Zone 3.5.  The software is setting my max heart rate too low.

From 090516 Karie's Ride

The most interesting plot to me is the speed plot.  You can see the first 10 miles, where we pushed 20+ at times when we had a police escort.  After that, the speed slowed to a very controlled but slow pace.  When we hit the rest stop at mile 28 or so, the group split, and the speed went up.  The higher variability in the post-28 mile section is because when we had the wind, we busted it.  When we didn't, we rode as hard as we could, but significantly slower.  Hence the scatter in the data.

From 090516 Karie's Ride