FLCC> 80 miles of Hills or Casey's Cookies Ride

[Donal Fitterer]

At 0830 today 16 souls set off to ride the Terrible Hills Century. We had
the Hawaii kid (Glenn, a little less tan because of all the time in the bike
shop), twe, Ano "CR1" Garcia, Abe "Better living through chemicals" Struuck,
Dr Dave "Painless" Heck, Mad Dog, Rhino, ByLynn Braves, the Mighty Casey,
Twinkie, the Prez, Cracker Jack, Mike the "Artist" (he's a well known
painter), Stevie Moto, Peter "I crush your legs!" Blenkiron and yours truly.
Bibian had too much fun the night before and did not join us.

Right from the beginning we knew that many of us, if not all would not be
completing the full century. My personal goal was to at least ride all the
hills through Bruce Hill Rd and return to East Hill Plaza. This would
include the following:

Baker Hill Rd
Yellow Barn
Birish Settlement
Buffalo Rd
Brove School Rd to Bald Hill Rd
Besemer Hill Rd
Burns Rd to Bing Rd
Bostwick Rd
Blakesly Rd
Bruce Hill Rd
Burns Rd back to Rt 79

The other requirement I forced upon myself was to ride with a 12-23 cassette
and normal cranks. This decision was based upon a good friend's opinion that
he would start riding a 23 so he would gain strength while hill climbing. He
showed up on todays ride with  50 - 34 front rings and a 12 - 34 rear
cassette!
We left the parking lot within 10 minutes of the posted start time and
headed out towards Rt 366 with everyone wearing arm warmers, leg warmers and
vests. Once up Baker Hill Rd and past the observatory I was down to just leg
warmers. Mad Dog was our first casualty as he could not get his cleats out
of the pedals and ended up doing a great dismount by holding on to me and
slowly sliding his butt to the ground. Turns out that Matt had new Northwave
custom made shoes and the cleats kept sliding on the smooth carbon surface
of the bottom of the shoe. We stuffed some dried cow pattie material between
the cleat and the shoe to act as a shim and that solved the problem.

We climbed Yellow Barn at a nice pace and then had an exciting descent to
our right turn on Ferguson. The excitement reached a very high adrenalin
level when  Bill didn't realize that we were turning. Luckily , he was able
to bounce off of  Matt and make the  turn.  Many of the folks were
disappointed that Beam Hill Rd was not on the cue sheet. We will try to work
it in to future versions. We made it all the way to Buffalo without any more
mishaps and the climb to the top was reasonable.  We had a wonderful descent
to Old 76 and then on to Brove Hill Rd that gave us a wicked dirt descent
down Bald Hill Rd. Stevie Moto decided not to ride his road bike on the dirt
and so was our first loss. Matt's day got even better as he had our only
flat of the day on Central Chapel. That was quickly repaired and we were off
for Besemer Rd. Matt made up for his bad luck by winning the next two town
line sprints up Besemer!

Thirty miles and 20% grade were enough for many of the group and we lost Dr
Dave, Twinkie, Peter, Abe, Ano, and Bill. The rest of us descended through
the neighborhood to Park Lane and Rt 79. The Prez climbed up Burns to
Coddington and then turned off. We continued climbing up Bing Rd and crossed
96B and then descended Stone Quarry Rd. Glenn took the town line on Stone
Quarry. Matt and Glenn decided to do repeats on Cascadilla St while the rest
of us made our way over to Casey's house. Casey had to call home first to
make sure Judy wasn't traipsing through the house au natural.

We refueled on some awesome Gingersnap cookies and loaded up the water
bottles for the last 3 climbs. Bostwick/Culver/Bostwick wasn't too bad a
climb but I could tell that my legs were getting toasted. I was starting to
re-think my goal of climbing Bruce. We had another awesome descent down to
Rt 327 and again a great high speed drop down to Treman and Rt 13. We made
it through the 96/13 interchange and on to Blakslee. Man, did it look steep
on the approach. I have to admit that I did the news paper boy wobble back
and forth across the road to get up the steepest parts. Mike and Casey rode
up like the hill was nothing! Once we reached the top Casey did say that we
were at the top of the ridge and "What's the point in going back down and
climbing up again?" I told Ernie that we were rethinking our route to Bruce
Rd. Ernie said, "Don, what is the point of this ride if we don't do Bruce?
The worst that is going to happen is that we will have to walk!" Ernie won
the argument and so off we went to Bruce. Again, we had a fantastic descent
on Station Rd and then turned right onto Brown Rd. Brown is one of the most
beautiful roads in the county but it ends too quickly at Bruce. Luckily for
me Mike's right crank arm came completely off his bike and he needed my
tri-allen key to fix it. I left the tool with him and headed up Bruce. It
was worse than I remembered with loose gravel and rocks the size of
baseballs in the road right at the steepest part of the climb, which is also
a switchback! The only way I made it up without having to walk was to
balance on the top stroke pedal, keep my weight back and then pull myself
and the pedal down using my arms and shoulder muscles. I did this at least
10 times through the switchback. My arms got all tingly and my vision shrank
to a small tunnel directly ahead of my front wheel. The gradient eased up
for just a moment and I was able to sit for 3 pedal strokes and then I had
to stand again. The gravel was so slippery that all my weight had to be over
the rear wheel. I passed Jack and then caught up to LiLynn. I could not pass
her because of the loose gravel so again I had to track stand at the top of
my pedal stroke and wait for her to move forward enough so that when I took
a stroke I wouldn't run into her. I am way anaerobic when I finally get by
her and  then it is  just shear  willpower to the top,  counting each stroke
and lying to myself, just 5 more and then I can stop.

At the top of the climb we all regroup and wait for Casey and Mike. After
about 5 minutes Casey shows up and says that Mike can't put the crank back
on. Just then a woman with 2 dogs in crates in her car stops and asks if we
need help. She offers to go down and get Mike and his bike but says there is
no way she will drive into Ithaca. We told her if she can just get him to
the top of the hill we can push him to town. The woman drives off and we
started imagining what was going to happen. Is she going to drive by with
Mike stuck in the crate and the dog sitting in the front seat and we will
never see him again and then read in the newspaper about the Artist that
became Alpo? Not too much longer we see Mike riding up the road having fixed
his cranked and escaping the crate.

Onward back to East Hill Plaza finishing at 4pm and  80 miles of training in
the tank. Next time we will tackle the remaining hills in Newfield and I
will be using a 27 tooth cassette!

Cheers,

Don
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