Orny's Cycling Journal

Last Sunday was the Akron Bike Club’s Absolutely Beautiful Country ride: my second century of the year, my first major organized ride in ten months, and only my second big event since pre-Covid days. And it was pretty stellar…

It was especially rewarding after a disappointing June, which warrants a short summary. I skipped the two-day Escape to the Lake MS ride because I just wasn’t ready for that kind of distance. I hoped to drive to Ohio to ride my first Sunday in June event, but I punted when the forecast gave a 70% chance of rain (which infuriatingly never transpired). Then came the Tour of Mercer County, where the organizers withdrew the 100-mile ride at the last minute due to insufficient riders. On top of all that, I learned that the Mon Valley Century – scheduled for August – had also been cancelled. So by the end of June, I was feeling pretty dispirited.

2022 Akron Bike Club's ABC Century ride

Long shadows in the early morning

Ornoth rides the endless farmland of Ohio

I had hoped to get one more century under my belt before deciding whether to register for this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge as a remote rider, but finally gave in and signed up, just two days before registration closed. So if you want to support my riding – as well as the amazing research and treatment that takes place at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute – please take the time to sponsor my 17th PMC ride!

After all those problems in June, I watched the forecast for the ABC ride like a hawk. But despite my fears, the National Weather Service promised a perfect weekend. So I registered and picked up the Nissan Rogue SUV I had rented, since Inna had taken our car on a two-week road trip to New York and Vermont.

I’ve ridden the ABC three times previously – in 2017, 2018, and 2019 – and have always gotten up early to drive two hours to Akron, complete the ride, then drive home on the same day. That usually works well, but this year I couldn’t sleep, and wound up getting up at 2:45am with less than three hours’ rest. Luckily, that lack of sleep didn’t effect me much over the rest of the day.

At 4am I stuffed my bike and gear into the SUV and headed northwest outta town, only stopping at Sheetz in Cranberry for gas, a glazed donut, OJ, ice, and a sports drink. Rolling into Ohio, the dark sky slowly revealed the black silhouettes of the trees on the horizon, then the rich colors of a dawn sky, and eventually added color to the trees and farm fields.

Once parked at the Copley High School start, I checked into the ride, despite the organizers being unable to find my registration packet. Then I changed into riding kit, sprayed myself with sunblock, and made sure all my ride and post-ride gear was set. It was nice to pull my bike out of the SUV all ready to go; I would normally have to take off my front and rear wheels to fit it into the trunk of our sedan; so reassembling it was one less thing to worry about before setting off. The sky was brilliant, with a few clouds decorating the distant southern horizon, where they would hover all day. As it was a cool 13°C, I donned arm warmers and rolled off minutes before 7am.

Fifteen minutes later I stopped to quickly re-calibrate my new power meter pedals, which has now become standard procedure. Another 15 minutes of riding brought me to the semi-formal Windfall rest stop at Dunkin’ which has become the ride’s highlight since the unfortunate route change away from Dalton removed the popular free ice cream stop there. I quickly thanked the friendly ride volunteers, grabbed half a blueberry donut, and rolled on.

Riders were provided with a spectacular blue sky, no wind whatsoever, and a brilliant sun that quickly warmed me up enough to shed my arm warmers. I rolled along steadily but easily, conserving my strength for the long hours of riding still to come. On the first noticeable hill out of the ominously-named town of River Styx, I found myself unable to put much torque down without my chain skipping and falling off my worn front chainring, a worsening of a longstanding problem I’ve been unable to fix due to pandemic-related supply chain issues.

At 8:35am I pulled into the first rest stop in Seville with 43 km complete, having averaged 151W and 27.3 km/h; it was 16°C. After a pickle and refilling with ice and sports drink, I was back on the road in seven minutes.

Although only a couple hours away, riding in Ohio is immensely different than Pittsburgh’s challenging, lumpy terrain. It’s a wonderful opportunity to ride on mostly flat roads. Ohio features long, straight, sparsely-traveled roads running between endless fields of farmland, their borders marked by lines of trees. The only drawback is that those trees rarely line the roads, meaning there’s almost no shade to protect you from the heat of the sun, which featured in my previous editions of the ABC ride. Hence my liberal application of sunblock at the start.

Due to that heat, the asphalt roads melt into a smooth, featureless patina that lacks potholes and is a delight to ride on. Just when you are ready to pronounce Ohio a cycling paradise, you turn onto one of the innumerable secondary roads that isn’t surfaced with asphalt, but with “tar and chips”. In brief, a truck comes through and pours petroleum by-products onto the ground, and then dumps loose, coarse gravel on top of it. It’s not even tamped down; they rely on the hot summer sun and passing cars to eventually smush that slurry down into a “passable” road surface. But for cyclists, it’s a hellacious, dirty, dangerous, slow, and strength-sapping moonscape that will make you want to commit suicide right there.

In contrast to the open fields, this year’s route spent about 16 km on Overton Road, which is an atypically winding corridor paralleling Killbuck Creek. It provided a nice, scenic, tree-lined respite from the sun, but also a bit of a puzzle. The “creek” appeared to be made up of consecutive big, square farm fields that had been given over to swamp or open water rather than a crop. It was as if someone was playing a grid-based farm game, where they decided to develop one square as corn, another as soybeans, and then devoted a few consecutive plots to hold water. It was kinda surreal.

From there, we entered the picturesque downtown of Wooster (not Worcester), and the Ride On bike shop that was our halfway rest stop. I arrived at 10:35am with 92 km done, having averaged 136W on that segment; the temp had climbed to 22°. Over the course of a 20-minute stop, I downed a ham-and-gouda sandwich and filled my bidon with cola and ice for the challenging next leg.

I was still enjoying riding on such a nice day, but it was getting hotter, there were more hills and a bit of a headwind, and my stamina was starting to flag. The kilometers were ticking over more slowly than they had before, and I was riding almost exclusively alone. After being steady all day, my heart rate drifted higher, a sure indicator of fatigue. In the midday heat, the second half of the ride wasn’t going to be as easy as the first.

After a long trudge, I pulled into the final rest stop in Marshallville at 12:27pm. My bike computer reported 127 km done, a temp of 24°, and that my power had dropped to 125W on that segment. While recharging with cola and ice, my bike, which I’d rested against a picnic table, fell over onto the ground, but I didn’t pay much attention. Through the brain-fog of being late in a long ride, I realized I was really close to completing a seven-hour century, which is a solid accomplishment for me. I was suffering, but the final segment was a good time to use up what stamina I had left, in pursuit of a decent finishing time.

However, leaving the rest stop, my attention was sidetracked by the lack of power data coming from my new pedals. Repeated attempts to reconnect to them from my bike computer failed, and I eventually gave up. They could have been permanently broken when the bike fell over; they might have gone into some kind of “safe mode” due to their internal “incident detection” mechanism which would necessitate a reset; or the coin-cell batteries could have just gone dead. But I’d have to wait until after the ride to fix them.

Although I felt strong after that 10-minute rest, it didn’t last, and the final segment was slow and tough. My feet and knees were complaining, but I’d completed most of the climbing, I was keeping pace with the riders ahead of me, and the end was in sight.

I finally pulled into the high school parking lot at 2:03pm, exceeding that 7-hour century by about six minutes. 162 km done at an average speed of 25.4 km/h, with 1,264m of climbing; it was now a warm 28°C. I downed a quick lemonade at the finishing tent before changing back into street clothes and driving to the local Sheetz for postride drinks and snacks.

Then it was a two-hour drive home, a welcome from a persistent cat, a quick shower, and going to pick up four meals’ worth of Thai food.

Looking back, I have only two minor disappointments. One is not having power data for the last quarter of the ride. Fortunately, my power meter pedals recovered after I gave them a hard reset and fresh batteries. My other regret is that the nearly all of my photos are of the same undecorated blue sky, brilliant sun, and farmland; but that’s representative of summer in Ohio and the Absolutely Beautiful Country ride in particular.

Other than those nitpicks, I’m delighted. I’m pleased with my finishing time and stamina level, and happy with how the bike performed. I’m glad I made the drive, glad I could do the century route and complete my second 100-mile ride of the year, and delighted by the spectacular weather. And most importantly, I’m pleased at finally getting back to – and completing – another normal major event like the ABC ride.

If my luck holds out, over the next month I’ll be able to report out on my participation in the PMTCC’s 3-State Century, followed by the WPW’s Rough Diamond Century, which will constitute Day 1 of my remote ride for my 2022 Pan-Mass Challenge, a charity ride that I hope you’ll choose to sponsor me in.

I wasn’t planning on repeating last year’s Akron Bike Club “Absolutely Beautiful Country” century. It was a really nice ride, but it’s a two-hour drive from Pittsburgh, which makes for a lot of driving on top of a 100-mile bike ride.

Selfies on the River Styx

Level crossing delay

Sunburned hands

However, having spent much of the first half of this year away from home, I was really under-trained and in desperate need of fitness before all the big summer rides. And with Inna still out of town, there was no one to inconvenience.

But the biggest reason to go was the weather. A week-long heat wave broke on Friday, leaving us with a delightfully temperate weekend. Sunny and less humid, with little wind, it was perfect weather for a long ride, so…

I got up at 3:45am Sunday “morning” and was on the road by 4:30, headed back to the city that gave us the Kent State massacre, Devo, and Chrissie Hynde.

During the drive, I noticed that almost all of Ohio’s roads are straight north-south or straight east-west, with very little variance. It made me wonder why they didn’t just name their cities by map coordinates. So if Cincinnati was called “A12” and Columbus was called “F5”, then you’d know that to get from one to the other you’d have to drive 5 units east and 7 units north. Seems like it would be a lot more efficient in a place like Ohio, since—with no diagonals—that’s just the way the roads work anyways.

Kitting up in the Copley High School parking lot, I discovered a packing mistake: the pair of cycling glove’s I’d brought were both right hands. The guy parked next to me offered to loan me a pair, but I demurred. Going bare-handed wouldn’t be any major discomfort, I thought. No big deal… If anything, it might hide or even out some of my characteristic cyclist’s tan lines.

At ten-to-seven I was in the saddle, dropping lots of riders in a desire to work up some body heat to ward off the morning coolth. Eighteen miles later, I stopped to get a selfie in front of the sign for the village of River Styx. It’s probably not an auspicious thing, crossing the River Styx with 82 miles still to ride…

Speaking of stopping, about 35 miles in I caught up with a couple riders who were stopped at a level crossing while a big freight train rolled by. Fortunately, the end (of the train) was near, and I was only delayed about three minutes.

About one-third done, I was already experiencing some physical difficulties. I was obviously undertrained and not ready for the distance, even on a flattish course like this, and by the end of the day my legs were cramping up. My knees were complaining loudly, thanks to inflammation picked up while on my recent meditation retreat. I was also having difficulty swallowing due to an undiagnosed throat irritation. The day eventually heated up, and on the last, 15-mile segment, I was so blown that I had to stop for a brief roadside rest before finishing.

This was countered by the excellent work done by the organizers at the rest stops. Twelve miles in, riders were offered donuts. At the halfway point, small sandwiches piled high with cold cuts and cheese. At Mile 70, the Dalton Dari-ette offered free ice cream! And all the stops had ice, which for me is always key.

I finally rolled back into the high school at 2:15pm. I had enjoyed the Ohio countryside and the beautiful day, but I was glad the suffering was finally over, and happily looking forward to getting into an air conditioned car for the drive back to Pittsburgh.

Pulling the bike out of the car trunk at home, I noticed that the plastic mounting tab for my Di2 electronic shifting junction box had broken. That’s an annoyance, since I’d just purchased and installed a new mounting bracket for it.

But more troublesome—though less costly—were the implications of spending seven hours in the July sun without gloves. The rest of my body has long-since adapted to sun exposure, such that I didn’t suffer any ill effects of going completely without sunblock; however, my hands have always been shielded by gloves, and the sensitive skin on the back of them isn’t seasoned to strong sunlight and got thoroughly sunburned. Lesson learned!

Nonetheless, I’m glad I went, and (mostly) had a good time. There aren’t many century rides to choose from here in Pittsburgh, and I’m happy to participate in and support those few that remain.

But whether I’m ready and willing to undertake another century happening weekend… We’ll see how well I recover!