Long Ride Deserves a Long Posting

The training was complete.  There was no more carbo-loading, no more sleep, no more talkin’.  There was just 322 kilometres.  Sunday was the 35th riding of the Hairshirt and your’s truly was there.  I felt well prepared both physically and mentally.  I had trained hard and formulated my strategy; so long as I stuck with it I was confident of success.  It being my first time riding this monstrous event, I had no personal experience to draw upon to help set my goals.  I figured simply surviving this tortuous penance was a pretty good goal to start with.  From there, I decided the longest I’d be happy with was twelve hours but I wanted to get as close to ten and a half hours as possible.  Job number one, however, was to conserve, conserve, conserve.

Up at 3:45am Sunday morning, my house-mate MaryAnne and I were on the road for the Square One shopping centre in Mississauga, Ontario at 5am.  Right on schedule.  Once we arrived, I soon spied a few people in kit and a couple of vehicles I identified as “cyclist’s cars.”  Quickly getting ready, I was soon chatting with the rest of the Hairshirt hardcore as they arrived by bike and by car, solo and with loved ones. Knowing that Peter’s back was giving him trouble and would thus not be attending this year’s event, you can imagine my surprise when all of a sudden his little white Honda Civic pulled up with Peter at the wheel in cycling kit!  He just couldn’t stay away.  What a junkie.

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Peter soon introduced me to a few people he knew including the two guys I needed to stick with; Kevin and Jeremy, two obviously strong cyclists.  While details of the route and a detour near Binbrook was being announced, Peter disappeared, apparently to the wash-room at the nearby Tim Horton’s coffee shop.  By the time we were on our way with a casual “okay, have fun” at 6:17am, Peter had not yet returned.

My strategy for the beginning was simply to stay with the lead group that would invariably head out hot and fast.  This I did, but the group was small, only about a dozen riders.  The rest of the 51 starters were content to ease into that long, long day on the saddle. That larger group included Michael and the other Lapdogs; friends and  fellow riders I would not see again for the rest of the day.

The lead group was headed by Kevin and Jeremy with several others working to keep us at about 35-40kph.  As planned, I was part of that group but not working, letting those riders burn themselves out.  It was going to be a long day, one that would not be won in the opening miles.  The first climb came at about the 32km mark along Highway 5 as we rode towards Waterdown.  Being mindful of my plan, I made my way near the front, staying on the wheel of those same two leaders, Kevin and Jeremy.  Behind us, it was the beginnings of the carnage.  As we’d been riding, I’d been scoping out the competition, sizing up the riders based on their bikes, kit, position/form and legs.  Yup, that guy in the yellow jersey who’s upper body bobbed as he rode on the flats, he blew up on that climb, shot out the back along with others who just couldn’t hold on.  By the top of that climb and after just 35kms, our group of twelve was now just six.  The war of attrition was taking casualties early but I was on task.

Beyond Waterdown, we turned off Highway 5 heading south on Route # 52 before turning left onto Jerseyville Road.  This took us through Ancaster and past the finish of the Paris to Ancaster race I’d done in April.  Though the familiar roads were comforting, the pace was still strong as Kevin was intent on breaking the 9:33 Hairshirt record set in 2010.  South on Fiddler’s Green Road and riding past the Hamilton International Airport on open roads among the farmer’s fields, we blew past the stop-sign where we turned left onto Carluke Road.  If the climb into Waterdown was the first test, this was the first bit of excitement for the day; the six of us were being pulled over by a cop with lights flashing.

As I pulled up to the cruiser and the constable got out, I took off my glasses and began to engage him.  “I know you guys are having a great day, but you have to stop at all the stop-signs.”  “That’s fair,” I replied.  “Okay, so off you go, but please stop at the stop-signs.”  “Yessir, thank you sir.”  We were riding after just a minute’s delay.

“Well, that certainly could have gone a lot worse” I said to Kevin.  “Never should have happened at all” was his retort, displeased at having been pulled over.  I didn’t push the point, but we did get away with one, even if we were on otherwise deserted farming roads at 7:30am on a Sunday.

Within a few minutes, we’d lost another rider, succumbing to the pace and falling back on a short but steep climb.  A fellow rookie who had introduced himself as we left Square One, I was afraid he’d totally blown up.  Looking at the results afterwards, I’m happy to see that he did still finish the day.  I knew there would be others like him and, that if I did not conserve my energy, I would be one of those.

Until that point, I’d been doing as I had planned; riding with the lead group but not working too hard, going to the front to pull only every few rotations.  However, before we hit the detour for construction through Binbrook, we were down to just four riders and I could no longer hide-out in the pack.  With just four of us leading the charge, we each had to do our part, pulling equally to maintain that 40kph pace.  Though we’d shed several riders, we were flying!

After not quite three hours, the four of us–Kevin, Jeremy and Adam, who was riding after a crash broke both his wrists six weeks earlier–arrived in Wellandport, the first stop for those looking to set records.  We’d ridden 120kms in under three hours, averaging 40kph while cruising at 40-45kph.  We all took on water and had a quick stretch.  I gave Kevin some of the duct-tape I keep in my camelback so he could fix his shoes and Adam commented that he was feeling a bit dehydrated; a comment that did not bode well for him if he intended on keeping that high pace.  I mentioned to the group that the pace was a bit high for me–about 2-3kph and about 5-10bpm–particularly since I had no intention of attempting to break the record but simply wanted to finish and finish strong.

Throwing a leg over the top-tube, we soon resumed the ride, rotating quickly and keeping that 40+ kph pace.  After about 5-10kms, I called it quits.  I knew that while I could stay with the group and ride at that pace for another 100kms or so, there would still be another 100kms to ride thereafter.  That fact sobered me up quickly. [conserve, conserve, conserve] I told them I would pull back a bit and let them do their thing.  For the next 45mins or so they remained within my long-range sights but continued to pull away.  I was content with my decision as it was in keeping with my number one goal; to finish!  This decision did, however, place me in a no-man’s land between those three and the rest of the Hairshirt peleton.  I had no idea how far behind me they were, no idea if a second small group was gaining on me or for how long I would ride alone.  As it turned out, it would be a very long time.

And with that,  I let go of the lead 3

Welland, ON, kilometre 148.  Nooot too much to say about Welland.[I’m trying to be polite.]  Going through the Main St Tunnel was pretty cool, however.  As I climbed up and out the other side, a roar came from behind me the likes of which I’d never heard before.  It was as if Harley Davidson had built a locomotive and it was crossing the canal behind me.  That or a giant ocean-going ship.  Rather it was the acoustic affect of that tunnel on a regular two-wheeled chromed-out custom chopper motor-bike that was so deafening. Apart from this little moment of terror, I was feeling good, taking on plenty of fluids while riding steadily.

Main St Tunnel, Welland

Approaching Niagara from the south, I made the left from Lyons Creek Road at Cummington Square and continued over the bridge.  With the cue notes for the race directing me to then turn left onto the Niagara Parkway, I was a little confused when I saw the Parkway go off the the right.  I quickly confirmed with a pub-goer the error, turned onto the Parkway and rode past Kingsbridge Park.

It had been many years since I’d seen the Falls at Niagara, possibly not since I was a child on vacation with my parents and visiting grandpa from England.  Watching the water, then the mist and then the falls themselves appear before me, I hopped a curb, pulled alongside the guard-rail-topped-stone-wall to snap a few pics.  Stopping for just a moment, I was back on the bike heading for the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Niagara Falls

Niagara-on-the-Lake is a quaint, pretty little town; ideal for grand-parents, newly-weds and wine-lovers.  My time there was to comprise little more than a left onto King and a right onto Mary. I would then join Lakeshore which, in my mind, represented the beginning of the return trip.  The ride home would have to wait a little longer however; I missed the right onto Mary.  In fact, I ended up riding about two kilometres before I was sure I’d missed it.  Turning around, I retraced my steps, found Mary and was soon on the Lakeshore looking forward to my refuelling stop.  I was nearing the 200km mark but riding steady.

So far I’d done well to keep my stops to a minimum.  We got stopped by the cop for a minute or two and there were a couple of lights early on we had to wait out.  In Wellandport we stopped for about ten or twelve minutes and in Niagara I was off the bike for just a couple.  In Port Dalhousie, I stopped to purchase water, apply more chamois-cream and re-distribute my food for the next–and final–100km leg.  Fifteen minutes in the pits.

Fly Road is reached after climbing the Escarpment and about 235kms invested in the Hairshirt.  It is here that the suffering is often the greatest and for many where the Hairshirt really begins.  It is desolate, flat, largely exposed and when the sun is at its hottest, the ashphalt can melt your tires.  By this point it was overcast but windy.  In fact, for those twenty-two kilometres, the wind blew in my face.  I thought about touring, about riding against the wind in Scotland; head down, turn the pedals.  I stopped once to pop a few ibuprofen as I was starting to feel a bit nausious, my head was starting to hurt and the pain in my left patella was unrelenting.

Along that stretch I passed a guy on a super-low, carbon framed, disc-wheeled recumbent.  I’d seen him at the beginning of the day in Mississauga but not since.  We yo-yoed for a while until I left him for the last time at the Burlington lift-bridge.  Watching the passenger in his support van pass him a water bottle at 35kph was  wild!

Descending the Escarpment and into Hamilton I was finally on the home-stretch.  Just 45 kilometres to ride and I was done.  Living in Burlington, it felt strange to continue on rather than just turn up Brant St and head home.  Rather, I continued east along Lakeshore before a series of lefts and rights got me through Oakville and onto Burnhamthorpe Road just 14kms from the finish.  For those next fourteen k’s, I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder, watching for fellow Hairshirt riders who had caught me.  It would have been rather anticlimactic to have ridden all those miles alone just to get swallowed by the group metres from the end.  Fortunately, that was not to be the case.

Pushing a harder gear, charged with the finish fast approaching, I was suddenly turned off course by a cop redirecting traffic at the scene of an auto collision at Erin Mills.  “What the &%$# do I do now, I don’t know Mississauga” is said out loud.  Adapt; that’s what you do.   Ducking into a residential area, I was able to negotiate myself back onto Burnhamthorpe just beyond the road-block.

Avoiding a collision with the first really bad driver I’d encountered all day, I was within sight of the finish.  I waited at a red light then rolled passed a waiting and video-recording MaryAnne.  I applauded myself and pumped my fists.  It was over, I had done it.  I had completed the Hairshirt, riding about 200kms by myself. Rolling around the parking lot I was overwhelmed, tears welled up and fell upon my cheeks.  My body was exhausted; it had pushed harder than ever before.  My mind was elated; it was relieved like rarely before.

Still straddling my bike, helmet still on, the next two finishers rolled up.  Lawrence and Tobias finished together just six minutes behind me.  Since my Garmin GPS cycle-computer was giving me wonky numbers, I confirmed the distance with them; 325 and 326kms.  Add my extra four in Niagara-on-the-Lake and we’ll call it 330kms, besting my previous single day longest ride by 55kms.

After ten hours and forty-nine minutes; after six bottles of electrolyte infused water and another five litres of water from the camelback; after three squeeze-bottles of performance gel, five protein bars, one banana, a handful of mixed nuts and a little bag of wine gums, it was over.  I had suffered through the Hairshirt and am already looking forward to next year. [oh ya, Kevin didn’t get the record, but the three guys did finish together at a time of ten hours even]