FLCC> 80 miles of Hills or Casey's Cookies Ride
Mark Rishniw
mr89 at cornell.edu
Mon May 21 10:22:40 EDT 2007
Ernie,
Obviously, according to Jack's comment, you were smart enough not to
even start out - your IQ must be MENSA level.
At 09:24 AM 5/21/2007, Ernie Bayles wrote:
>Great Report Don, wish I was there. I guess I had just imagined
>that I was on this ride with you guys. My dream was so realistic
>that my legs still hurt.
>
>twe
>
>Donal Fitterer wrote:
>>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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>
>
>--
>Ernie Bayles, Architect
>209 Utica Street
>Ithaca, New York 14850
>
>607-275-3722 (tel and fax)_______________________________________________
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