For my birthday in September Sue and I drove to Little Rock to participate in the Big Dam Bridge 100 bicycle ride. Sue opted for the 50-mile course, and managed an admirable 17 mile-and-hour average speed for the ride. I took on the 100-mile ride and also averaged about 17 MPH, but that is especially unimpressive since I averaged 18.8 last year. My only defense is that this year I avoided drafting for most of the ride. When drafting, one coasts along in a protected envelope created by the rider (or riders) up front. At higher speeds drafting is estimated to lighten the workload by as much as 30%. At the same time one's chances of getting caught up in a crash probably increase by 30%. (Every cyclist has seen the crashes at the TDF where a lead rider goes down and takes out fifteen or twenty riders behind him like a line of falling dominoes.)
For about half of this year's ride I was playing tag with a recumbent cyclist. Sometimes I passed him; sometimes he passed me. One thing I noticed is that when a guy on a "bent" gets in the sweet spot for drafting, he hardly has to peddle at all. And, as he said to me, nobody can get an edge by trying to hook onto his train. Since he was drafting every chance he got, he was always able to maintain the speed of the fastest nearby rider. That said, the poor fellow suffered mightily on the few hills we had, but he more than made up for it on the descents. One time I was going over 30 MPH and he passed me, looking like a graceful greyhound sprinting for a rabbit. Eventually, he pulled away from me for good, and I ground on alone.
A 100-mile bike ride is a suffer-fest. This year I got my first fleeting cramp at about the 50 mile mark. From mile 80 to the end, I had to master the art of spinning just-so! A delicate procedure of turning the peddles, standing, and sitting--all with the idea of staving off each new cramp before it can settle into a rock-hard vise grip.
I was pleased to cross the finish line at all.
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