Fifteen Percent

Saturdays are the big ride days.  We haven't hit the big mileage yet.  This past Saturday was only 35 miles.  No big deal.  We could knock that out in about 2 hours, and be home in plenty of time to run errands.  I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what route to use for the century and decided that Saturday we would test out the terrain in one of the of the possible areas, a hilly, sparsely populated region east of the Main that's known for it's hiking and mountain biking.  There aren't that many villages, so traffic should be light.  The hills would be a challenge, sure, but challenges are good and it's not like there would be anything beyond a category 3.  They call the hills a "mountain range," but that's definitely a bit of an exaggeration to say the least.

We headed out about 8am.  The shot of espresso hadn't kicked in yet, and my eyes were watering like crazy, the way they always do on morning rides.  The route was completely new as soon as we crossed over the river.  There wasn't any moment along the way that we could warm up and ease into it.  People who aren't cyclists don't understand that being on the road requires 100% focus.  You have to watch everything, everything, cracks in the pavement, stones that can send you flying if hit just the wrong way, drainage grates, stuff that's fallen off of cars that can also send you flying, big tire slicing shards of glass, piles of sand that are always randomly spread across turns, tree branches, roadkill, oil slicks, piles of animal waste, mud, children who haven't been taught to look both ways before crossing the street, old people who never learned and have miraculously survived all these years, loose dogs, horses, various types of balls rolling out of playgrounds and driveways, other bikes, skateboards, scooters, wheelchairs....oh, yeah, and the cars.  We have to do a lot of thinking and thinking for everyone else around us.  We have to be three steps ahead.  It's like chess- fast paced, things could get really bad if you make the wrong move kind of chess.   It's not just the physical exertion of cycling that's tough.  Sometimes a quick pedal to the grocery store is more intense than a 4 hour training ride depending on what we encounter along the way.

Saturday's route passed a rather nice castle.
Castles make climbing better.

The first several miles of Saturday's ride was one of those intense, nonstop experiences.  Saturdays are the one day a week people can run errands and they have to start early.  Shops are closed on Sundays and most close before 1pm on Saturdays.  During the week, most close by 6pm.  If you work all week, Saturday morning is your one shot to get what you need.  The first stretch of the route was along a particularly busy main road.  So, we were hauling right off the bat.  Then, we hit a construction zone which closed one side of the road with no traffic signal or worker controlling the flow.  That had us sprinting uphill a good ways to avoid getting creamed by a car coming up over the top from the other direction.  Thankfully, there weren't any cars, but I was close to the red after that.  It took a while to recover.  It wasn't too much later that we were off that highway, but when we left the traffic, we were in the "mountain range."  The climbs weren't that bad, except for the two times I dropped my chain.  There were a couple of cat 4's.  The biggest climb was a steady 2.5 mile, category 3.  It seemed to go on forever, but it wasn't horrific.  None of the climbs were horrific.  Climbing isn't the soul crushing experience it used to be.  It just is what it is.  The longer they are, the more are tackled, the better it gets.  Cycling becomes something else.

Then, in the last 5 miles, I had my soul crushed.  On the profile the last bump was nothing, just a blip.  You can't really tell what a climb is going to be like from a profile, a grade percentage, a distance.  This one started humanely enough.  We shifted down and got into the rhythm.  I shifted down again a few minutes later.  Then again.  Then again.  The grade just kept getting steeper, crazy steep.  I was tired.  This was the fifth climb of the day and I didn't have it anymore.  I started paperboying a little.  My husband was doing the pulling.  I kept wishing he'd go a little faster.  I didn't have the strength to take a pull, but my front tire was millimeters from his rear tire.  I was afraid my weaving was going to take him down.  I couldn't come alongside since the road was too narrow.  For some reason, cars kept coming up behind on this little road to nowhere.  Didn't they have somewhere else to drive?  There's nothing up there but a barn!  I had a stale Haribo frog in my mouth.  I didn't have the energy to chew through it; I was too busy trying to breathe.  The frog was in the way of the breathing.  I tried shifting down again, but I was out of gears.  I pushed the frog into my left cheek and tried to slow down the breathing.  I was in the red, way into the red, and I was out of gears.  One more gear would have been enough.  I was mashing the pedals, my legs were on fire, and we were barely moving anymore.  Then it happened, the same thing that happens on every climb like this.  You think you see the top, only to have the hope ripped away when the top just reveals itself to be a false flat.  This was supposed to be the little climb.  Breathing was becoming an issue.  I wasn't getting the oxygen to keep the legs moving and the heart beating at a bearable rate.  I looked up from my husband's rear hub to his back and called out in a really high pitched, raspy voice, "Need to stop.  I need.  Break."

"Yeah, ok. Yes."  I was relieved to hear what sounded like relief in his voice.  I climbed off and laid my bike down in the grass,  my breathing was what could probably be termed as hyperventilating.  I bent over trying to slow it down.  The frog was gone.  I don't remember eating it.  A car was coming up the hill, flying actually.  I cursed.  I can't just quietly die up here on this hill without some driver flying past staring agape at my physical failings and the drool running in a ladylike manner down my chin.  Seriously, where the heck are these cars going?  I gulped down a ton of water and unzipped my jersey.  It was humid.  I should have worn a lighter-weight jersey.  Or something.

It took a few minutes to get back to feeling somewhat normal again.  We clicked back in and finished the climb.  It was a little longer before I could speak properly again, though.  We got back to the house and after a giant egg burrito and a cold glass of chocolate milk, I looked at the profile again.

Oh, so that's what a quarter mile with a 15% uphill grade feels like.