Long Island Harbors Ride

Now that I conquered the duathlon, it was time to get the legs into bicycling mode. I've cross-trained on the bike, but it has been incredibly boring because all of it has been indoors at the gym. There's only so much depressing news I can possibly watch on television while I'm sitting on the bike. It's a struggle to stay motivated. So, when my husband Rick asked me if I was interested in riding the Long Island Harbors Ride on a tandem, I said yes. He said let's do the 53 miles, but I really wanted to do the 80 miles, just to see if I could push my outer limits. In the end, I'm glad I listened to him.

We arrived in Suffolk Community College and met up with a couple of friends who were also riding. I was pretty excited thinking, I can so absolutely do this! When we first started around 8:30am, it was really fun, except that we were riding on the highway service road. It made me a little uncomfortable to ride with cars driving at 40 mph. One wrong maneuver and you're road kill! Riding a tandem as the stoker, you really have to trust the captain to steer and do everything possible to keep you out of harm's way. If anything, I implicitly trust Rick on the bike. In any case, traffic was light on a Sunday morning, so I wasn't too concerned. We were having a great time, and going pretty fast. At one point we hit 35mph on the service road. It was exhilarating. But then, at mile 2, we heard a strange hissing noise. Oh no!!! Flat tire. We hopped off the bike and our friend who was riding with us helped us replace the flat. We were back on the road after about 15 minutes (technical difficulties with the patch kit). We rode to the first rest area without any other incident. I was feeling pretty good. Legs were still intact and rear wasn't aching too much. I was thinking, this isn't so bad, I can absolutely do this! But then came the hills...and oh my goodness, there were so many hills. Once we got away from the highway and onto the smaller roads, that's when the trouble began. I should have known that when the course map said beware, very steep hill, I should have heeded the warning. The first major hill came on a sharp right turn where we lost all momentum. But, my husband is one who spins up a hill, rather than getting off the bike and pushing it (like the many other riders we saw). I swear, I thought my quads were on fire after making it halfway up the hill. But, Rick taught me a trick to distract myself from thinking that my legs were going to fall off. He told me to look down and just count to ten and then look up, repeat, and in no time, you'd be at the top of the hill. It worked to do that, much the way it worked for me to do Lamaze breathing techniques to distract me from labor pains when I gave birth to our children. During labor, I wanted to scream my lungs out. Riding up the hill, I wanted to scream at him to let me walk. But, in both instances, I didn't have enough breath to scream or even the strength to form words with my mouth. I just panted along and fought through. We finally made it to the top, and what goes up, must come down. We rode down a steep hill (there were a lot of "Caution: Control Your Speed" signs since we were riding in traffic) and I just loved the feeling of how fast we were going. Rick would tell me to level my feet, keep my legs pressed against the tube, and most importantly, close my mouth (unless I wanted to eat bugs).

Up and down was the scenario for the remainder of the trip. I always felt there were more ups than downs, but I guess that's because up lasts a long time. Down lasts just a few seconds. By the final 10 miles of the ride, my legs were cramping to the point I thought they just might never recover. I was beyond the anaerobic burn to just feeling pools of lactic acid build up in my legs. I felt bad for Rick because I know he carried me in the end. There were still hills. Maybe they weren't terribly large, but nevertheless hills. He basically had to tow me and the bike for the last 10 miles. God bless him for being able to do that. He never once complained about how I pedaled lightly or how I wasn't helping him. He was like a machine that just spun along. My butt was also aching from riding for so long and not being used to it. Although, it wasn't as bad as the riding 30 miles on the tandem on a gravel path at Lehigh Valley Gorge. Now that was literally a pain in my ass...maybe because I wasn't too smart and I didn't wear biking shorts.

Once I saw the Suffolk Community College sign, I was so incredibly happy!!! Hooray, the finish line was in sight. I think we actually pedaled a little bit harder knowing that the end was near and that we would get to eat. I was starving, even though I ate at every single rest area. I had a big fat juicy cheeseburger as my reward. Not exactly healthy, but who cares, I just finished 53 miles, and when I looked at the course map and saw that the cumulative elevation was over 3,200 feet, what the heck, I deserve a cheeseburger and maybe next time, a double cheeseburger.

We tried to wait around for another friend who had fallen way behind us, but when he texted that he had just arrived at the fourth rest area and to just go home, we decided to listen to him. He was, at a minimum, still 30 minutes away. Rick and I left to go home to our children, who were excited to see mom and dad, and to listen to our story about the bike ride. Next year, they may want to ride it with us...we'll see.

It's now getting closer and closer to Iowa. Just another 5 days. I'm getting a little worried. Now I know I can handle 53 hilly miles. But that's one day. The million dollar question is, can I handle 60+ miles for multiple consecutive days...