Orny's Cycling Journal

The Mon Valley Century is the most cursed ride in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The first time I rode it (2016), the organizers abbreviated the route at 80 miles due to a landslide on Bunola Road. Despite everyone missing a waterstop that the organizers decided to move at the last minute, I went and actually rode the missing 20-mile segment of Bunola Road solo just fine to finish with 100 miles.

The ride wasn’t even held the next two years due to additional reconstruction of Bunola Road.

In 2019, the event returned, finally avoiding Bunola Road completely, and tacking the missing mileage onto the start of the ride, which cuts across quiet and scenic Pennsylvania farmland. However, in true cursed fashion, the organizers didn’t provide GPS directions, large sections of the route were on milled or loose gravel roads, and one rest stop consisted of two empty cooler jugs and a canister of Gatorade powder dumped on the side of the road, unattended and with no water source in sight. Truly PedalPGH levels of negligence!

So perhaps it’s good that the tiny ham radio club that organizes the event didn’t even bother to announce a ride this year (or its cancellation). Over my five summers in Pittsburgh, they've hosted just 1.8 rides, a sparse 36% success rate.

Presuming they had cancelled it due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I was left to simulate the mid-August event on my own on the indoor trainer, as I’ve done with all my other annual cycling events. On the plus side, at home I can count on getting something to eat and drink at the rest stops!

My process should now be as familiar to you as it is to me. I consulted the Zenturizer to find the Zwift routes that most closely matched the 2019 MVC ride’s 102 miles and 5,925 feet of climbing. Out of several options, I chose to undertake seven laps of the 15-mile “Greater London 8” course, which includes the short 450-foot climb of Box Hill.

Outdoor temps that ranged from 73-82º made riding much easier. After dancing away from a couple wheelsuckers, I spent the first half of the ride testing my defective Wahoo TICKR heart rate monitor, determining that it will only work if I’m sitting upright in the saddle in the “no-hands” riding position. If I was in any normal riding position — on the bar tops, brake hoods, drops, or even standing — it would give me obviously erroneous readings… if it gave any readings at all. Time to return that piece of slag and go back to Garmin.

The highlight of the second half of the ride was randomly coming across Herd team member Simon Keeling, who was doing the similar-but-not-identical century-plus PRL route. We exchanged encouraging messages then vectored off on our own again.

My legs started cramping on the last of my seven laps. This was made worse when I had to make an extra climb up the back side of Box Hill to make up some climbing I’d need to properly approximate last year’s MVC ride.

But I limped home to complete my tenth Zentury of 2020. I only realized after a friend’s comment that I’d logged no less than 96 Strava achievements on that ride, 16 of which were PRs!

In terms of lessons learned...

Doing long rides on a weekday is a big improvement, because you don’t have to worry about neighbors trying to sleep in. But if you don’t start until 10am, even a fast century is still gonna kill an entire day.

If you know you’re gonna have to do some extra climbing somewhere along the line, don’t leave it for the end of the ride, when you’re tired and cramping.

And if you want to keep some fruit on hand to munch on, either freeze it beforehand or keep it cool with some ice, because warm fruit just isn’t as palatable.

And finally… I’m getting tired of Zwift’s courses. That’s not surprising, considering I’ve ridden 4,860 miles on them over the past ten months. Zwift hasn’t implemented that many virtual roads to begin with, and it doesn’t help that only a few of them are adequate substitutes for real-world events.

And that’s not a good thing now that I’m at peak season, with three more events to mimic over the next 4-6 weeks. Plus another round of barf-o-tronic FTP tests.

But before that, a bit of rest, please?

Sunday I was up dark and early for my first Mon Valley Century ride.

Or rather, to check the radar to see if conditions were too ugly to ride. The forecast had called for day-long rain and thunderstorms as a powerful front rolled through, but at 4:20am the radar didn’t look prohibitive, and the NWS forecast language had moderated slightly.

I really don’t like missing major events on my cycling calendar, so I decided to risk it, packed up my backup bike rather than the good one, and drove down to Monongahela.

There were only a handful of riders at the Noble J. Dick Aquatorium, and after taking a picture of the sunrise over the river, I was the first to set out on the 100-mile route.

The first few miles were very fresh chip-seal, which essentially made it a gravel road. But once that section was done, it was clear sailing on empty country roads for the next 90 minutes. The first two riders caught up with me at the first rest stop, 22 miles in. So far, the weather was fine, and one of the volunteers told us that the radar looked like it would stay clear until noontime: very good news.

Having cut across country, we turned north and followed the Monongahela north, back toward the start. We all missed an intermediate water stop the organizers had moved, but a bunch of us regrouped at 10am at the lunch stop: mile 53 and first loop complete, as we were only a couple miles away from our original start line.

The next hour and a half was spent circling out on a different loop out to the rest stop at mile 72. As I got back on the road, an intermittent sprinkle began to fall, but it wasn’t enough to make things messy. I returned to the start/finish line at 12:30pm with 83 miles done.

Technically, that was the end of the ride, because the organizers had arbitrarily lopped ten miles off the start and end of the route because Bunola River Road was presumably closed.

Knowing better, and wanting to complete a legit century, I decided to ride up Bunola Road to the old start/finish in Elizabeth and back, which would complete the full 100-mile course. While I did that, I endured one good, soaking shower, which passed but left the roads very wet. While I did hear some thunder, it wasn’t the hellfire and brimstone that the forecast had called for, and for the most part it was acceptably refreshing. Nonetheless, I was glad I rode the beater bike instead of my good one.

I completed the full course—my sixth century of the year—at 1:45pm. A seven-and-a-quarter hour century ain’t terrible, especially with 5,000 feet of climbing. I hadn’t pushed myself very hard, and it had been an overall pretty pleasant day out.

Thankfully, it turned out that I’d over-prepared for the weather we got. Although maybe I was just quick enough to escape it. Later that afternoon, a storm dumped over three inches of rain, prompting very real flash flood warnings in several of the towns I’d ridden through. So I’m actually okay with the idea of having over-prepared.

Going through those precautions gives me the opportunity to share some of the ways I prepare for riding in the rain. Hopefully this list will be useful to others—as well as my future self—when facing such conditions.

Let’s start with the most basic truth: NOTHING is going to keep you dry. NOTHING. You ARE going to get SOAKED. Are we clear on that? Okay.

One of my hard-won cycling lessons is that it only takes a cyclist a couple minutes to get soaked to the bone, and once that’s done, you can’t get any more wetter (sic). The damage is already done, so you might as well just keep pedaling and enjoy it!

Having said that, here’s how I prepare for a long, wet, ride in the rain:

• Don’t use your good bike if you can avoid it; instead, ride a beater bike.
• Don’t bother with a rain jacket. Lots of sports apparel companies make incredibly expensive rain jackets specifically for cyclists. The few that actually protect you from the rain also make you sweat so much—and trap it inside the garment—that you would be better off going without. Try to dress for the temperature instead.
• If you expect rain and wet roads, a clip-on fender is great. It’ll prevent the rooster-tail from your rear tire from being flung up into following riders’ faces, and also from being flung up your anus and backside. If you expect sprinkles, an Ass Saver should be sufficient.
• Wear a cycling cap with a brim. That’ll help keep the rain (and spray from other riders) out of your face.
• Another thing that helps with spray is clear lenses for your sunglasses. You absolutely need eye protection under these conditions, but dark lenses impair your visibility. Clear safety glasses can be cheap and effective, but they’re prone to fogging up due to lack of ventilation.
• Certain things must be kept waterproof: your wallet, your phone, and any food you’re carrying. For these, one or two layers of Ziploc bag is ideal. Make sure your cyclocomputer is water-resistant, too.
• Inside that Ziploc, keep a handkerchief too. It’ll be useful for wiping off wet glasses, screens, hands, and so forth.
• If you drove to the ride, keep a full-size bath towel in the car. You can use it to dry off, and to protect the seat on the drive home.
• If you have the opportunity to change, obviously bring a dry set of clothes, and a bag to stuff your wet kit into.
• Give your chain some wet lube, rather than dry lube, before setting out. It won’t perform miracles, but will stick longer. To be honest, you need to worry more about cleanup after the ride than lubing the chain before. After a wet ride, your bike is going to need a major cleaning.
• Lower your tire pressure in the wet by a few PSI. This will enhance your grip on slippery surfaces. Also expect your braking distances to double.
• Bear in mind that drivers have drastically limited visibility in the rain, so carry rear blinky lights, extra batteries (inside that Ziploc), and possibly a (lighted) safety vest. Take responsibility for being seen on the road.
• I almost always wear cycling sandals, and they’re surprisingly effective in the rain. Water flows through them, unlike regular cycling shoes and socks, which absorb water, become heavy, and stay sodden for days.

While riding in the rain isn’t the best experience in the world, hopefully some of those ideas will be helpful.