To be honest I had not been on the bike for more than a few little jaunts around the neighborhood with the kids since El Tour. Still, I tend to think I can ride sixty-five miles without too much thought. I'm not a "racer" or anything. I take it easy. I wasn't fast when I was a kid, there's no point in pretending now. Since John had never ridden that far before in his life I figured I didn't have too much to worry about.
And then came the weather.
A few days before the ride they began predicting a freak winter storm that would rush in and out but pretty much dump buckets of rain and cold all over the course during the exact hours of the ride. I was not looking forward to riding in the cold and the rain. Sure, I've done it before, sometimes on purpose, but it can be pretty uncomfortable when you're not in the best shape to start with. Joan told me to just blow it off and not go but I couldn't see how that was an option.
The morning of the ride I got up at 4:00 a.m. after about four hours of very restless and fitful sleep. I was a wreck, but I was on my way. I thought I was being blessed--the skies were clear and it didn't seem all that cold. I left the house at 5:25 and I made good time and arrived in Sahuarita at 6:15 in the inbetween light of early dawn. The organizers were still setting up so I sat in the car and tried not to think about feeling nauseous and too tired. When that didn't work I got out and took my bike from the rack and made sure everything was ready to go. I wandered off to the event tents and grabbed a cup of coffee in hopes the caffeine would set me right. Not being a coffee drinker, I should have known better. I visited the portable bathrooms three times while waiting for John to show up.
John arrived about fifteen minutes before the start and I found him at the start line along with a lot fewer people than I had expected. This was by far the lowest attendance of any charity ride or walk or run I've ever participated in. I don't know if this event is generally this small or if people had been scared off by the weather forecast. I for one was ready to believe we had lucked out and were in for a day of decent weather. At least most of the way anyway.
It didn't take long to find out that this ride was going to be anything but easy with or without rain. An out and back ride, the ride out was almost entirely uphill with a serious climb waiting at the end.Top that with a steady, heavy wind with gusts in the thirty-five mph range and it was tough. Not having any sleep didn't help either. Ten miles in and I was feeling about what I would have expected to feel near the end of the ride, not right at the beginning. I tried a bite to eat at the first stop, a quarter of a PBJ and regretted it nearly immediately. It wanted to come up. Later in the morning the same would happen with half of a banana. Clearly my gut didn't want to be there.
There were parts of the ride where we were struggling to go five miles an hour. It was crazy. At one point John got ahead of me only to end up walking his bike up a hill. I made it to the top but was more than willing to stop and wait for him. I was spent. The next time this happened I figured I'd walk with him. He was three quarters of the way up the hill and I stopped beside him and dismounted. Whoa! Wobbly legs! I had rubber band legs and was really surprised. I knew I was tired, but I didn't realize I was that tired. It made me light headed, too. This wasn't good--we weren't even twenty miles into the ride and the halfway point was more than ten miles ahead.
Just before mile twenty-two we both agreed we didn't have the juice nor the mental reserves to fight the wind any longer. We turned back. I think it was the right decision. I've never done that before, give up and turn back before a ride is finished. Oh well. I honestly can't say I would have made it back if I had fought my way to the turnaround. Even though the wind was mostly with us on the way back to the start we still had to struggle on the few hills that we came to. Then, just when we though we were home free, we made the last turn and hit a wall of wind as strong as any we'd encountered on the way out. Top that with the heavy bank of clouds filling the horizon and we wondered if we could make it back before the rain hit after all.
In the end we made it back with forty miles under our belts and just a few misty patches of rain arriving behind us. As with any really tough ride, now that it was over we were both very glad we had done it and were already planning to sign up for the Tour of the Tucson Mountains at the end of April. Hopefully we'll be smart enough and dedicated enough to at least train for it--it's a seventy plus mile ride (and usually has its own share of wind, too!).
