My longest ride yet

September 25, 2010 Sungwoo 2 Comments

Saturday, September 25 at 8:15am (I was 15 minutes late haha) I met up with Rich, Micah, and Jamie to go for a nice long ride planned to be roughly 110km there and back.  With about 4 hours of sleep and half a granola bar later, I was ready to roll.


We went on our way and damn was it windy.  We got maybe around 5km in and I wanted to turn back, go back home and cuddle up nice and warm, get some decent sleep, y'know?  I was told the wind would die down once we got to the path we wanted to take, little did I know, that path wasn't super close by either haha.  The headwind was crazy tough for me, and whenever there was a lot of it, I fell behind real fast.

Rich let me use him has a windblocker and gave me a couple tips on distance riding along the way.  Even then, with the wind it was crazy tough for me.  It was way more forgiving to climb up hills with no wind, than to ride flat with lots of wind.

My quads were burning up like crazyyyyy as I couldn't really get into any sort of aerodynamic position to cut through the wind.

ANYWAYS, once we got within 10km of the midpoint, where we would be turning back and riding with tailwind, I got excited knowing that a couple minutes rest and tailwind would be amazing.  I distracted myself from my pain by talking with Rich along the way and using him as my wind barrier, I was definitely holding him back a bit, but I felt I was doing alright for someone who doesn't do any sorts of long distance riding at all.

By distracting myself from the pain, I guess I ended up pushing myself a little too far.  My left knee starting getting little shots of sharp pain around the side, so I let the guys go on a bit and decided to catch up a little later.  Next hill I approached would be the end of my ride for the day.  I started climbing the hill and with each pedal rotation, my knee started hurting more and more until I couldn't bare it much longer, so I got off my bike and walked up the rest of the hill and told the guys that my knee's hurting a lot.  By now we were within a km or two from the park, so I told them I'd meet them there.  Descending down the hill, I decided to jump back on my bike, and with my foot strapped in and being forced to bend, it felt like a nail was being hammered into the backside of my knee.  I took my feet out and ted shredded down the hill and walked up the next hill to get to the park.

It was evident that I wouldn't last another minute riding on a bike, so from there I decided to catch the train back home.  I limped up north about a km to the station which just so happened to be there, and ended up missing a train by literally not even a minute.  So I waited an hour and jumped on the next one and slept my way through it, luckily no one stole my bike haha :D

Basically, I don't do distance riding.  I also haven't ridden around much in the past several months other than to school and back or for trick sessions.  All of which don't require me to push myself at all.  This ride, was at a pace that was beyond my capabilities for the time being, and in turn I ended up broken.

Here's a map of the ride: MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.  I ended up riding out just over 65km (40.5mi) from my place, I'm very impressed with myself still haha.

So the rest of the guys ended up riding BACK all that as well, and I really feel as if I would've survived the ride if it wasn't for so much headwind on the way there.. Either way, it was a good experience, and definitely put me in my place haha.

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2 comments :

  1. it was rad of you to join us dude. Hope you'll give distance riding a shot again in the future, on a less windy day 60km would be easily doable for you, and from there you just work your way up the distance.

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  2. Haha we'll see, we'll see. The wind was definitely a killer, and as of right now I'm afraid of rushing into another ride like that again. Muscle soreness is doable, but the sharp pains in the knee joint was not cool at all!

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