100km Ride: Very First Metric Century

Joy here...On Sunday, August 28th, 2011 I successfully rode my very first metric century; this means that I rode 100kms straight.  It's quite a milestone for a pretty novice cyclist like myself.  Now generally century rides are the 100mile ones, and there are resources out there for people looking to ride that kind of distance, like these blog tips that someone helpfully posted, or Wikipedia's ever-helpful entry on the matter.  But 100kms (62.1miles) makes up a metric century ride, a category all its own, and a category none too shabby, if I do say so myself!

Now you might be wondering why the heck I would wake up on a Sunday morning at the end of August and hop on my bike for hours and hours of cycling to ride 100kms.  Well, I'll tell you about it:

You see, back in July 2009, five cyclists were out for a ride, using the clearly marked bike lane in one of the suburbs of Ottawa.  They were training; they were wearing helmets; they were riding single file; they knew what they were doing.  But none of that matters if a mini-van driven by someone not paying attention (drunk???) veers into their lane and ploughs over all five of them.  When a collision happens between a bike and a car, the bike always loses.  The cyclists suffered all kinds of injuries, but miraculously they all survived, and the media dubbed them the "Kanata 5" after the area where they were hit.

Fast forward two years:  The Trainer has become friends with two of these five survivors, a couple whose story of love, resilience, and recovery is the stuff of hollywood movies writ large across real people's lives.  Through her, I've been able to meet these inspiring folks, and when three out of the five cyclists signed up for the local Share the Road 100km ride to raise awareness of the need for cars and bikes to respect each other on roadways, I decided to join them.  The Share the Road events were launched after the founder (a strong woman named Eleanor McMahon) lost her husband in 2006 when he was killed in a cycling accident.  She's been working tirelessly since then to advocate for change to Ontario's laws, and "Greg's Law" (named after her husband) was passed in 2009, which has tougher penalties for careless drivers.  Eleanor was quoted as saying:  “Driving is a privilege, and not a right. Our hope is that holding unlicensed drivers to account by impounding their vehicles will be a powerful deterrent.”

My Share the Road jersey.

So a whole group of us - including The Trainer and The Professor - got up on a windy Sunday morning while hurricane Irene battered the east coast and flooded New York City and loaded up our bikes to head out to the meeting point in order to ride 100kms in honour of the important message behind the Share the Road coalition (the name says it all, doesn't it?).  Some of the cyclists doing this ride in our group are friends of the "Kanata 5," and some are spinning instructors at the Trainer's gym, but no matter what drew this group of 12 together on a day that was borrowed from autumn and chilly beyond comfort, we soon clicked.

What a great group!

We rolled out of the parking lot in two rows of six, with a couple of the stronger riders on the front to set the pace.  Our legs were fresh; our bellies were full of breakfast; and we had the camaraderie of the hundreds of other riders out there under a clouded sky that hung ominously over our heads and sent gusts of wind to play with our balance.

Then, about 25kms into the ride one of the spinning instructors started powering up one of the hills, and I could hear the Trainer in my ear shouting at me to chase her down, so I just started turning those pedals as fast as my little feet could turn them so that I could blow past this powerful woman up ahead of me, whose strong legs pumped like pistons, up and down up and down up and down.

And just as I felt myself pass her and reach the zenith of the hill...disaster struck!  She blew a flat tire!  I was still riding along ahead, pedalling slowly and waiting for everyone to catch up, when some of the other riders who were part of the Share the Road ride, rode past me shouting "Go back, they've got a flat!"  So I turned around in the road and joined our crew at the curb.

As the more experienced bike tube changers struggled at the side of the road, the rest of us took the opportunity to snack a bit and move around to prevent goosebumps.  Then once the old tube was taken out and the tire back in place, it was time to pump it up.  They used a CO2 cartridge to quickly push air in to inflate it, when we heard a loud BANG like a gunshot!  We all jumped, with our hands to our hearts before we realized that the CO2 cartridge blew the replacement tube...so they had to start the process of changing the tire all over again...taking around 30 minutes in total.

Once the tire was finally replaced, we rolled out, now at the very end of the hundreds of Share the Road riders.  But at least that meant that by the time we made it to the first pit stop for a potty break (about 3kms down the road from the tire changing spot), there wasn't a big line up.

After that, we were off again, riding solidly in formation with two people on the front and rows behind them.  For most of the ride I stayed in the first four riders, doing my share of leading as well, but I also held back a bit and chatted with some of the others in our group.  I rode with two of the other riders who had been hit back on that fateful July day, but I didn't want to talk to them about the past or about the accident.  I didn't want to fetishize them as "victims" or "survivors" but just chat to them in the "here and now" while out on a chilly Sunday ride, my first ever metric century.

And they were lovely...everyone out there on the ride was really just lovely.  It was a great group of folks getting battered by the wind howling across the country fields, but still managing to smile and crack jokes.  It was a group of people who didn't all know each other at the start, but who felt like they knew each other by the end.

After the 50km turnaround point (and 2 hours of riding, not counting the 30minute tire pop break), it was a much tougher ride.  The wind was stronger, colder, and angrier.  The clouds hung light grey over our heads, never really threatening rain, but making the day feel somehow closed in, despite the openness of the landscape.  And at each turn when we would think, "finally, maybe we'll get a tail wind," it seemed like the wind just whipped around and started battering us from the front or the side again!

Bike computer evidence of 102.77kms!

What do you do when you're 70kms into a 100km ride and the edges of a hurricane storm system are battering you around the road?  Well, you just put your head down, turn your pedals and JUST KEEP GOING!  You know what?  That's a great mantra for life too...just keep going; just keep going; just keep going.

And so we just kept on...and at the final hill near the parking lot at the end, I was following a couple of riders, and I figured that I might as well power right past them to the top of the hill and then turn into the parking lot, and I was surprised to know that I had more than enough gas in my legs for that last push.  As I rolled into the finishing area, I saw The Man off to the side on his bike.  He rode out to meet me at the end (and had to wait because of our unforeseen delay with the tire), and was there to support me at the end of my first ever metric century!  (Which meant that his Sunday ride was a total of 130kms that day, but this entry is about me, not him!).

After hugs, smiles, pats on the back, and promises to become lifelong Facebook friends, we loaded our bikes up and headed home for a much-needed hot shower and some relaxation as the day wanes.

The pink sunset to close out a windy Sunday ride for a cause!

And let me tell you, I earned that glass of wine that I enjoyed after dinner!  I earned every sweet drop of it by successfully completing my very first metric century ride!

Over and out,
Joy