FLCC> Sunday 7/20 Ride to Marathon

[Brenda Smith]

There was a fairly large group of riders who met at EHP yesterday
morning.  A pleasant surprise, as when I first arrived there at
8:50am, Lewis was the only other rider and we wondered if the forecast
for thunderstorms had kept everyone home.  Within the next 20 minutes,
though, about a dozen or so more people showed up.  I didn't catch
everyone's names, as I just wasn't feeling awake enough to go around
and find out who everyone was, but among those whose names I do know
were John Dennis, Steve Bowman, Lewis (as mentioned before), Gary, Sam
Kolins, Diarmuid Cahalane, Sara Strickland, Eva Tarscai, and Jason.

Just as we started out of the parking lot of EHP, a fine drizzle began
to fall out of the sky.  "Hmmm.......  this is not a good omen," I
said aloud.  About a mile down the road, I heard Eva, Queen of Flat
Tires, yell out, "I have another flat tire!!!"  So Sara and I waited
while she and Jason changed the tube in her rear tire.  After 10
minutes, we were on our way again, and headed down Freese Rd., very
carefully crossing the steel deck bridge which could've become quite
slippery in the rain.

We headed up to Dryden via Lower & Upper Creeks rds, rt 366 through
Freeville, then rt 38.  The drizzle came and went, but because the air
was fairly warm and humid, it was not an entirely unpleasant
experience.  By the time we reached Dryden and turned up Lake St., the
rain began to taper off, and the roads looked much drier.  We stopped
at the corner of Lake St. and Lake Rd., a bit confused about which way
to go.  But a woman driving by was kind enough to stop and point us in
the direction of our next turn onto Southworth Rd.  We turned onto
Lake rd. to get to Daisy Hollow and passed by Dryden Lake, nestled
down in the valley to our right.  At the corner of Daisy Hollow and
Willow Crossing, I finally recognized where we were.  We pressed on
down rt 221 to Marathon, where we actually caught the rest of the
group, just as they were leaving the convenience store.  We didn't
think they'd still be there!!

We stopped for 20 minutes or so and refueled with food, water, and
Gatorade, or rather, Gatorade-like drinks.  The four of us concurred
that Gatorade is nasty stuff and makes us sick to our stomachs.  Eva
and I were both trying out a powdered drink mix from PowerBar that
we'd found at Price Chopper and Tops, respectively.  I was not
impressed with it and thought it tasted like chalk.  I'm heading back
to EMS this week to pick up some more Camelbak Elixer, which I find to
be quite pleasing, even though it's a little pricey.  Sara decided to
go with an offshoot of Gatorade called G2, which wasn't as sickeningly
sweet as the regular stuff, and that seemed to to work pretty well for
her.

The 12-mile stretch from Marathon to Virgil seemed to take forever.
It had a decent bit of climbing on it, and the cashews I'd eaten in
Marathon were not giving me any energy yet.  Every crank of the pedal
seemed to take an obscene amount of willpower.  It didn't seem like
Eva or Sara were feeling any more energetic than I, however, and we
plodded onward with Jason riding circles around us.  :)  It had
finally stopped drizzling when we'd reached Marathon, and it didn't
rain again for the rest of our ride, so were able to dry out!  A Clif
ShotBlok which was akin to a big gummy bear and pretty good in terms
of energy food, a packet of Gu which almost gagged me (seriously,
these things are supposed to make you feel better???), and 20 or 30
minutes later, we finally started feeling more energetic, and we were
able to kick up the pace somewhat when we left Virgil.

Upon reaching Daisy Hill, we found ourselves climbing a pretty decent
hill for about 13 minutes straight.  When we reached the top, we
wondered to each other, "Wow, if this hill wasn't worth mentioning on
the cue sheet, what the heck is this Schutt Rd. going to be like???"
I had some idea, as I've ridden up and down those roads with Mike
Ludgate's mountain biking group in the spring before the trails at
Hammond Hill were in good enough shape to ride.  I didn't think the
climb would be any worse than what we'd just done up Daisy Hollow, but
seeing how that was a few months ago, and I wasn't sure how well I
remembered it, I didn't want to say anything aloud.  We didn't rest
too long, as it smelled like something literally died in the area.
There was a fantastic long descent on the other side, though, and that
gave our hearts and lungs plenty of time to recover from the climb.

We soon reached the dreaded Schutt Rd. and started up.  True to my
memory, it really did not seem any worse than the Daisy Hollow climb,
and once we reached the top, our ride on Harford Rd. was pretty much
downhill and relatively fast until we reached Slaterville Springs.  We
stopped one last time, as we were all out of liquids by this point,
and continued on to EHP.  After a gentle climb up Thomas Rd. and a bit
up Ellis Hollow Rd., we were home free and coasting down the hill back
to our cars.  I looked to the sky as we reached the crest of the hill
just before Game Farm Rd. and saw a wall of huge, black thunderclouds
coming down Cayuga Lake.  I yelled to Sara, "It looks like we got back
just in time!!!"   Just as we reached our cars, the wind really picked
up and started gusting!!  I had close to 67 miles on my odometer (800
total since June!) with a 13.3mph average, and overall, I felt a lot
better than I did when I had finished the 68 mile Halsey Valley ride
about a month or so earlier.

My goal is to actually do the century this year, either turning the
Cayuga lake ride into 100 miles and/or doing the Keuka century, even
though from the length of time it took me to do this 67-mile ride,
it's going to take me like 8 hours to do the century!!  I may just end
up leaving earlier for those two rides than the planned start time.

Ride on,
Brenda