JuJu: Good For A Hundred Miles!

Today I decided I had better get out there and see if I could ride a hundred miles these days. El Tour is coming up pretty quickly. To make the test as good a test as I could, I took my touring bike with a bunch of unnecessary stuff in the rear packs along with about an extra gallon of liquid. Yeah. It was heavy. I decided to follow a route that incorporated some big chunks of the El Tour route but that wouldn't take me too far east—just in case I keeled over and someone had to come out and scrape me off the road.

We live right off of the El Tour route so I started on that course. Twenty-two miles into the ride, wouldn't you know it, is Stephy's house! I just had to stop off to see Julian—what kind of grandfather would I be if I didn't? Plus, I knew if I got me some JuJu I'd be good to go. Of course, Stephanie had some delusion that I was sweaty and stinky and gross or some other such silliness. This wasn't the case, obviously, but she's hormonally challenged or something. Either way, she wouldn't let me hold my own grandson. It's almost grandparent abuse if you ask me. Still, I managed to sneak in a few touches and pats.

The good thing is it only takes a little JuJu to get you charged for the long haul. I'm pretty sure if it hadn't been for my Julian fix I'd have been D.O.A. mid-ride.

I decided to come up Swan so that I wasn't any further east than that. Holy crap was it windy! I don't know how windy it was but when I stopped off at Starbucks—there's a whole other rant coming on that one!—the tops of the palm trees were blowing sideways and the wind was coming directly south. I was heading north. Plus it was all uphill. Fortunately, I had my JuJu working for me!

Going up Swan wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. I've never ridden up it before, only down. Coming down it certainly seems steep. However, it has a number of slight "flats" going up that break up the monotony of the climb. Plus, I was expecting a steep little climb right at the end, but that was actually a slight descent. Excellent! I was good and tired by now and the mostly downhill course of Sunrise was a welcome relief. Right up until Oracle that is. Oracle was tough. By this time the wind was steady and stiff. Almost the whole way north I was crawling somewhere between six and eight miles per hour. Sure there were a few short faster runs, but not many. The best of them is a descent I routinely hit about 35 mph on; today I topped out at 18!

Rancho Vistoso was my math stop. I knew I would have to keep going out Oracle in order to make my century, but I wasn't sure how far. Figuring the El Tour route from Rancho Vistoso to the turn off to my house to be just shy of eight miles, I still needed eighteen miles to make a hundred. That meant an extra nine miles out, which, luck would have it, was almost exactly the distance to Florence Junction. (It turned out to be a little beyond it, but not too much.) Well, wouldn't you know it. Just before I got to Saddlebrooke my bike felt a little bouncy. Weird. I looked down and, sure enough, I had a flat. I had been dreading flats on the touring bike, especially on the rear (and, of course, you know that's where the flat was). The rear end with packs, even lightly loaded packs, is a bear to lift up and maneuver. And, I soon found out that having a fender doesn't help much either! I pulled my frame pump off and attached it to the tire, hoping to pump it up on the off chance it would hold air long enough to get me home. Instead, the pump fell apart! There on the ground were two plastic pieces, a broken circular piece, and the spring. What was I supposed to do now? I chose to stand there and look stupid for a bit. Then I rummaged through all of my packed materials to see if I had placed my CO2 pump in there. I've never used it but know I just did something with it. Maybe it's on the other bike, but it is definitely not on the touring bike. My only two choices were to either figure out how to make the pump work or declare defeat and call for rescue. I fit the pieces of the pump together and managed to get enough air in the tire to be ridable. For a few hundred yards, that is. I ended up going onto the immaculately groomed (and wet to the touch) lawn of the Saddlebrooke entrance. I managed to pull the wheel off, change the tube, and replace the wheel. It wasn't easy. I'm actually surprised it went as quickly as it did, though. And I managed to get the pump to give me enough air to finish out my ride, too!

The ride back to Rancho Vistoso was great! The wind was at my back for most of the way and I was able to rest on the aerobar for a good distance. Unfortunately, the closer I got to Rancho Vistoso the more the wind began to shift. I started getting some crazy cross winds that made it too dangerous to use the aerobar.

Nothing says "Wake up!" like being buffeted sideways on a bicycle. With only one other stop to take off my sunglasses and turn on all of my blinking taillights and my headlight, the rest of the ride was uneventful (the way we like it). I ended up with 100.5 miles—pretty good figurin' there, huh? Here's the ride profile for those who are still with me:

Now, if I can figure out how to get a little bit more JuJu for the actual El Tour event, life should be pretty good. I was out on the road a long time today (ten hours!), though actual bike time was considerably less. I'll be riding my road bike with minimal gear for El Tour, so I should be hauling at least 15-20 pounds less for that trip. That will be nice. Unfortunately, aerobars are banned for El Tour so I can't use them. I can certainly see why they don't want people using them—they make your bike handling a little twitchy and the brakes aren't quickly accessible; however, they sure are good for easy the aches and pains and for cutting wind resistance.

Here I am getting a little JuJu the other night: