200miles in ONE day

that tiny dot @ the top is where we came from

kay and i at the rest stop @ the top of cheaha-mile 114-just over halfway :o


saturday, april 4th, 2009 my buddy kay and i took off at 5am from the colonade in b'ham for our biggest adventure yet. we participated, with 17 other crazy people in the heart of the south 200. a bike ride of 200miles with mt. cheaha (the highest point in alabama) at mile 100! it was dark as we started out, which really added to the adventure of the whole day. it's amazing how it being dark makes even a familiar road, a new experience. we started the day with 5 guys from indianapolis that had even brought their own sag car! kay and i have to work on this for the next adventure, anyone interested?

it got light an hour and half or so later as we were just getting into unfamiliar territory with a bunch of rollers. as expected, we lost our indy friends here (boys on rollers=FAST). it was just after this that it really hit home that we were pretty much out there on our own: 2 oddly dressed women in redneck land= kind of scary!

there were all kinds of ups and downs for me during the day. i've told several people that the hardest part is wrapping your mind around the idea of how many hours you will be moving. at about 10am i was thinking about how i'd been on the bike for 5hrs and that i would be on the bike for 8 or 9 more hours! unfortunately, this occured to me at about mile 75 which is a usual low point. i'm fairly unhappy for about 15miles every time i do a century (100miles). that's part of the strength it takes to do something like this. you just have to keep going and telling yourself it's going to get better!

part of the nerves for the day came from mt cheaha looming at mile 100, elevation 2,400ft in about 14miles. cheaha is at the southern end of the blue ridge mountains. i was relieved to begin climbing cheaha bc i was sure i would be so relieved once this was behind me. the problem with cheaha is, though, there are enormous rollers. you climb a hill and as you're descending down the other side, you can see the next climb looming up ahead of you. the further down you go= the further up you will have to climb on the next. it took what seemed like a ridiculous amount of time to climb cheaha, but once we were there....AMAZING!! we found out, at the top, that one group of indy boys was about 15min ahead and another just moments ahead!

it took all of about 5min to descend what had taken about an hour and 20 to climb. the pic across the lake is at the bottom of cheaha. then there were miles and miles of small rolling terrain. not bad on the legs, but a killer for the behind! the wind we had was no fun either, but we just set our sites on the next rest stop. thank goodness for the two men working those, oj is a must and we stopped at a couple of stores for cokes. one awesome thing is that i never eat candy bars, but felt free to have a couple of snickers that day, mmmmmmmm.

another mood elevator, was finding out that we were not last. there were about 5 bikers behind us. i don't have to be first at these kind of things, but it's very disheartening to be last. at the rest stop in talladega, we were at mile 145 and the miles after that to the familiar intersection of 25 & 43 seemed to take a lifetime!

once we were at the base of coosa mt.(known to us as the long side of 25) i was so relieved. it was 6pm, we'd been going for 13hrs & still had this mt. to climb, but i was soooo happy to be on familiar ground! i felt like a million dollars on that climb (mile 180). helped i'm sure by the coke and snickers i had 3miles before! i usually like to fly down the steep side of 25 (about 42mph) but was afraid to because i thought my exhaustion might make me unsteady. probably one of the few times in my life i've excercised some common sense!

it was just getting dark as we crested the hill on zeigler rd, the last bigger hill of the day! so, we came home like we started, in the dark. on rex lake rd and sicard hollow, i thought my left foot would explode and my right shoulder had quite a zinger in it, but knowing we were almost there made it all ok! we pulled into the parking lot 14hrs & 45min after we left--13hrs & 10min of pedal time (15mph avg). just as we'd hoped! a little anticlimactic with the 2 sag guys and 1 other cheering for us, but awesome to know WE HAD DONE IT!!