Sea Gull Century
October 11th, 2007 by matt
This past Saturday was the Sea Gull Century. You know, that thing for which I’ve been training and raising money. Long story short, I had five flat tires and was very sore for two days afterwards. Short story long, keep reading.
Marci and I left work around noon on Friday in order to drive to Salisbury, MD, where the ride was being held. From Fairfax it’s about a three-hour drive, and the weekend traffic ensured that it wouldn’t take any shorter time than that. We were able to cross the Bay Bridge, a major source of congestion, early enough that our trip wasn’t delayed.
We got to the hotel, a Comfort Inn, around 3:30. After checking in and hauling my bike and all the associated paraphernalia up to the room, we walked over to Target, which was conveniently located about 200 yards behind the hotel. I picked up some water so I wouldn’t have to fill up at the starting line the next morning, and Marci found a bunch of clothes on clearance that she liked. That’s a rarity, because she hates clothes shopping.
While we were in Target, I got a call from Lindsay, the coordinator of our Team In Training group. She called to let me know that I could pick up my registration packet at Salisbury University that afternoon. Most people who registered for the ride got their packet in the mail. Unfortunately, something happened that caused everyone who was with TnT to get the wrong packet (it was addressed to someone else) or to not get a packet at all, like myself. I figured this would be no big deal and I’d be able to grab the packet without any problems.
So Marci and I finish up at Target and head down to the university. It was about a five mile drive, but it was during rush hour and it took us about 20 minutes to get there. Once there, I went to the office that dealt with the TnT registrations and asked for my packet. They couldn’t find it. Vanished into the ether, apparently. So they gave me a new packet and a new ride number. That was kind of a harbinger of how the rest of the ride would go.
Then we had a pasta dinner at 6:00, which wasn’t all that great. How hard is it to make pasta? Apparently too hard for the Ramada Inn in Salisbury. There was also a short program and talk by people involved in TnT, either in an administrative sense or someone who has or had leukemia or lymphoma. For example, a mother got up with her two daughters to talk about how her middle daughter was diagnosed with a treatable form of lymphoma when she was 11 years old and needed a bone marrow transplant immediately. It turned out that her youngest daughter, who was 6 at the time, was a perfect match. So they extracted bone marrow from a six-year old girl in order to give it to an eleven-year old girl in order to fight off a horrible disease. And my understanding of the process for extracting bone marrow is that it hurts a lot, so imagine a six-year old going through that. Stories like that making riding 100 miles on a bike no big deal.
After dinner it was back to the hotel to get ready for the next morning. I had a lot of equipment to prep, so it was best to do it the night before in order to minimize rushing around the next morning. Speaking of the next morning, breakfast was at 5:30 and we were heading out at 6:15 in order to be ready for the start of the ride at 7:00. I got up, grabbed a muffin and a bagel for Marci, and went back to my room in order to change into my riding gear and to pump up my tires.
Enter Flat #1. I was pumping up my back tire, which only needed a little air, and the tube sprung a leak. This was at 6:00am, and we were supposed to leave in 15 minutes. And did I mention I’ve never changed a flat tire before? Let’s just say that I was very awake and alert at that point, with all that adrenaline flowing. I starting taking off the back tire, which is a real PITA due to the gears, and I sent Marci down to the lobby to ask for help.
Help did arrive in a few minutes, by which time I actually had the old tube out of the tire and was putting some air into the new tube. I was reattaching the tire to the bike when the tube popped. Hello, Flat #2! I must have had the tube pinched somewhere between the rim and the tire and that caused the tube to pop when I inflated it. This was around 6:10.
Marc, the guy who Marci fetched to help me, took over and used my second and final backup tube to get my bike ready. I don’t know what I would have done without Marc (I bought him a beer at the party that night).
So now it was after 6:15 and we were hustling out the door to try to catch up to the group. We drove as quickly as we could to the parking lot and managed to not be too late. The group walked from the parking lot to the starting line and did some last-minute stretching and possibly praying before the official start time. Here’s a picture of me at the start:
Then the ride started! The century was set up so there was a SAG stop approximately every 20 miles. In order to get to the first stop, you had to ride down a gravel road for about a mile. Gravel roads and racing bikes generally don’t mix, so our team decided to have its own SAG stop shortly after the turn for the gravel road. One of the coaches’ wives was going to set up the stop and have food and water available to our team.
She wasn’t there when the group of riders I was pacing myself with went past that location. So we were forced to ride until the 40 mile SAG stop. Well, not exactly forced, since you can stop whenever you want or need, but it was early in the ride and it was foggy and misty and there was no real need to stop (you just have to ignore that need to urinate for 10 miles or so). But that 40 mile stop was a godsend, if for nothing else than the port-a-potties. I could also get some energy boost gels out of my camelback, which would come in handy in the later miles of the ride.
We spent about 5 minutes at the 40 mile SAG stop and hopped back on the bikes. Our group was doing some small pace lines and drafting techniques, which I never really did before and wasn’t fully comfortable with during the first 40 miles. But I decided to give it a try after the 40 mile stop and I think I did OK. it is a bit unnerving to follow within 12 inches of someone else’s back tire, but you get used to it.
On one turn around 45 miles or so, we made a left turn onto some back road. The left turn had a lot of gravel on the road. I actually felt my bike start to skid out from beneath me and I took my left foot out of my toe-clip and planted it on the ground to prevent myself from falling. All without stopping. Looking back as I write this, I have no idea how I managed to stay upright. It was a completely subconscious movement. I guess the body’s sense of self-preservation is a powerful force.
Around the 52 mile mark, I found myself lagging behind the group a bit. I was traveling around 24MPH, and I just couldn’t make up any ground. It turns out that my back tire started losing air around that time. Around the 55 mile mark, my back tire was completely flat. This is bad because I had already used my two backup tubes back in the hotel. I brought one of the old tubes with me in case I had an emergency and needed to attempt to patch a tube. Thanks to Flat #3, just such an emergency occurred.
Patching a tire is not easy, and it’s doubly hard when you’re out on a ride and don’t have a large set of tools to choose from. Alas, I was not able to patch my tube. At some point I had run over a piece of glass and it punctured my back tire and my tube. The puncture was just too big to patch. So I pulled out my first tube and tried to patch that. It held up for about 100 feet, then completely flattened out. Welcome to Flat #4.
Luckily, another member of my team stopped to help me and gave me another tube (I bought him a beer later, too). While we were changing my tire yet again, a third member of my group stopped by to see if he could help, and he also gave me a tube to serve as a backup in case my fourth tube didn’t hold. Have I mentioned that the people on my team are extremely nice?
Tire patched, for the time being, I continued to the 60 mile SAG stop. I decided to buy a new back tire since the piece of glass I ran over put a large slit in the tire. The idea was to prevent any other flats for the final 40 miles. It was a good thought.
Riding from the 60 mile stop to the 80 mile stop was tough. I just didn’t have a ton of energy and I was really fighting myself and the bike to get any kind of speed. The sun had finally come out and it was getting rather hot, probably somewhere in the 80’s. Warm temperatures obviously don’t help with endurance. I was averaging around 15MPH instead of the 22MPH I was averaging before all the flat tires. I guess that drop-off is to be expected from a casual rider like myself, but the competitive jock in me really wanted to keep going as fast as before. But hey, no flat tires for that section!
The 80 mile SAG stop featured pie and ice cream. Why pie and ice cream? Tradition, apparently. I decided that ice cream would be a bad idea and stuck with a small piece of apple pie. I didn’t stay too long at this stop either, as I like to keep going so my muscles won’t get cold and, let’s face it, the less time I stop the quicker the ride will be over and I can get off the bike permanently.
After the 80 mile stop, which was really around 82 miles, there was actually only 18 miles left. Eight miles into that section, guess what happened? Another flat! Flat #5! This one was a real puzzler, considering that I had a new tube and a new tire and the tube was still holding some air when I removed it from the tire. It was the strangest thing. If I put the tube on the rim and pumped it up, it wouldn’t stay inflated. But if I took it off the rim and inflated it, the air stayed in the tube without issue. With only 10 miles left, I wasn’t going to bother with a cursed tube, especially when I had another backup. So I changed my tire for the umpteenth time that day. I was quite the expert by this time.
While I was changing my tube yet again, another member of my team stopped and offered help. She gave me an extra tube, because at this point I could have 20 tubes and still not feel like I had enough, and she helped me get the tire back on the bike. There is no way I ever could have finished this ride without the generosity of my teammates.
Amazingly, I didn’t have any incidents on the last 10 miles. No more flats, no gravel-induced near wipe-outs, no cows in the road, no rednecks in pickup trucks brandishing firearms, no alien encounters. Just my dead legs and me and the heat, trying to gut out 10 more miles on what felt like the most uncomfortable saddle in the world at that point. But I did it. Here’s a shot of me turning the corner right before the finish line:
As I rounded the final turn, the members of the team who already finished (and with all my tire changes, it was just about all of them) cheered me on for the final 100 feet. Honestly, that felt awesome. It might of well have been a chorus of angels. But they didn’t do that just for me, they did it for every member of TnT that rode past. Still, it was nice to hear.
And that’s it! I finished the 100 miles without too much trouble, five flats aside. I started at 7:00am and I think I finished around 2:30pm. Considering all the tire changes and the extra time at the SAG stops, I don’t think that’s too bad of a time. I don’t know if I’ll do it again or not, and I definitely don’t want to get on a bike until spring or so, but it was definitely worth doing.
One final picture: Me after checking in at the finish line and getting my pin that certifies me as a 100-mile rider:
Michelle wrote on 10/11/07 at 12:16 pm :
congrats on finishing! I’m amazed at your bad luck with tires. I’m also amazed that you never had a flat before the race, with all the training you did!
Prisco wrote on 10/11/07 at 4:38 pm :
Wolfe! Dammit! Why didn’t you send out the “friendly reminder” emails like the mafia? I haven’t done any extra work, so my contribution on that part would have been nil, but I still would have given money.
Anyway, you are a warhorse, and I’m sick proud of you. Good job! I know what it means to do something physically daunting for a good cause. And I’ve got that chafed thighs to prove it.
Angie Courduff wrote on 11/28/07 at 7:46 pm :
Hey Matt! Your mom was kind enough to send me this about your amazing ride! Congrats! That’s so awesome you did 100 miles! I think you should definitely look to do another one in the spring– there’s no way you could possibly have as bad of luck the second time around