Days of Old (Installment #2)

This is my second of my installment series. Not sure where "Installment" came from. From now on, it'll be "Days of Old."

Lately, I've been thinking of doing a brevet and thus, thinking of long rides, specificially long rides I did in the past. I have many memorable ones of 80 or so miles. Today, I'll tell you about what my memory is telling me is my longest day in the saddle, which is longer than the 200k I'm aiming to do early next year.

It was 1993. I rode a lot with Brian Dyer. We did lots of mountain biking and long road rides, of the 60-80 mile range. A natural thing for us was to do an organized century. We started talking about it and Kevin Ptasienski and Scott Stiener said they would like to join us. The ride was the "Flat as a Pancake Century," which was around Lake Cralisle, Illinois and while there was lots of flat as a pancake, there was also some good rolling hills too. Bryan drove us all over. When we went to get Scott, he was still sleeping! Turns out, he was drinking all night and only got home at 3am, it was now 5 or so. We were going to leave him, but he insisted on coming, so we let him. Then, he pulled out his mountain bike, with slicks. We looked at eachother. We were shooting to average 20mph and do rotating shifts in a paceline and now we had a mountain bike in our presence. Something told me this would be an epic ride.

We started off and quickly realized Scott wasn't going to take any pulls at the front and we were going to be dragging him around central Illinois all day. Towards the northern tip of the route, were the hills. Scott blew chuncks all over the place, had a map and said he'd see us back at the lake for lunch. The lake was the 65 mile point, with a provided lunch for the riders. Not bad either. Skinless, barbequed chicken and lots of snacks. Amazingly enough, we were making good time. We all ate "just enough" and figured if we hammered the rest, there would likely be plenty more food for us at the finish. Then, Scott rolled in. We wanted to leave him, but he said after he ate he'd feel much better. So, he ate and I rode around the lake, so I wouldn't cool off and cramp. After he ate, we set off again and all was good.

Brian and I were doing most of the pulls, nice long ones, with Kevin lending an hand on his turns and didn't skip many. Scott was tagging along at the rear. And then, Scott threw up again and told us to leave him. We gave him all the food we had and set off. Brian said with around 20 miles left, he wanted to hammer and do a solo time trial. He took off and didn't even say good bye!!! I started riding hard too, but noticed that Kevin was falling off, so, I stayed with him. Then, we entered the town of Carslile. The town of Carslile? Whoops, we missed a turn somewhere. I saw the tower at the lake in the distance, and we just set off towards it. When we finally got in, with the added around the lake riding I did and the trip into town, my computer had over 140 miles on it. Kevin and I got so far off course, within 5 minutes of our finish, Scott rolled in and fell off his bike. He was really in a state and took his clothes off and was standing buck naked in a huge group of people, cyclists and lake goers. We quickly got him dressed and apologized to families with children and explained the situation to them. All was good.

That was as I said, likely the longest day I spent on a bike. Overall, including stopping for lunch, rest areas and going slow, I still think I averaged somewhere around 18 mph overall. Scott, by the way, slept the whole ride back to St. Louis.