All Downhill From Here

Yesterday I rode in my 4th MS City to Shore fundraising ride. It's 78 miles from Cherry Hill to Ocean City, NJ. This one was different because I was not really trained for it, but I made it anyway and here are my memories of it.

Rules for riding bikes in groups same as for regular traffic, just more chaotic, and the idea is the same. As with driving, the idea is to get from point A to point B without bumping into anything. The big difference is that in a car, most of the time you bump into another car it will cost you money. If you bump into another bicycle it will cost you skin.

The stops and starts are particularly crazy. Unlike a lane or two of cars, you've got an unruly clump of 50-100 or more bicycles, and as we all know the hardest, wobbliest part of riding a bike is starting up. This is particularly true if you're using something known as clipless pedals. Clipless pedal is a careless bit of nomenclature, because they refer to their lack of old-fashioned pedal clips, which are those little cages you can put your feet into.

With so called clipless pedals, you wear a special shoe with a cleat, which clips onto something where you'd expect the pedal to be (the whole assembly isn't called pedals, it's called a crank, because you get cranky when the chain falls off it). So the shoe is attached to the crank. This is terrific when you're moving, because being attached connects you to the gears securely and you don't waste any energy. If you're stopped, however, it's no better than trying to stay on a motionless bike without your feet touching the ground. You topple. It's kind of cartoon-like actually. Everyone does it at least once. So to avoid doing that when you stop you unclip and put that foot down. This makes for a pleasant mass-clicking noise as a group stops and starts as you, yes, clip back on to the clipless pedal. This is hopelessly confusing linguistically, but really the problem is that when you start back up, if you miss getting the shoe right into the cleat, your foot slips off because there's no pedal and you stop and stopping means falling. This happens to at least one person at many of these mass stops and if you're lucky it doesn't happen right in front of you.

When you lose your water bottle, suddenly all you can think about is how thirsty you are. This was miles 55-64 for me.

Biking is a zero sum game. Most rides you take begin and end in the same spot, so the net change in elevation is zero. Every uphill is balanced with a downhill or vice versa. If you ride one way, there are more options. On this particular ride, the change in elevation is from 67 feet above sea level in Cherry Hill, to the finish by the beach in Ocean City, which I didn't look up but since you can see the ocean we can call it sea level. So net elevation of -67 feet over 78 miles. That's an average grade of -.86 feet per mile, or a grade of -.016%. Let's just say that they don't make road signs warning of this kind of downward plummet. The ride is flat for the first 73 miles, and then you turn the corner and the bridges loom before you.

There are two tall bridges that connect the mainland to Ocean City. They are tall so they don't have to be drawbridges, which are fun to look at but annoying to get stuck near. These bridges are situated at right angles to each other. I'm not sure why it's done that way, but the effect for cyclists is that the good news is you never have the wind in your face for both of them, but the bad news is you almost always have the wind in your face for one of them. A couple of years ago the first bridge was so windy that you had to pedal pretty hard if you wanted to get downhill. This year, the wind was on the second bridge, but not terribly bad. Because I wasn't in shape, I was concerned about the bridges, but I've always been a reasonably strong climber and I had enough muscle memory to get over.

After you're over the bridges it's a couple of miles through Ocean City to the finish, where they (always) feed you hot dogs and pirogies and ice cream in little cups and give you t-shirts and medals. Then if you're not staying over for the ride back, it's off to the bus. The bus takes you back to the start and a truck takes your bicycle.

Everybody figures that your butt is what's most sore after 5 hours or so of riding, but that's usually not the case. My hands are always a bit sore and the shoes aren't very comfortable so your feet can be sore too. And how about your legs? To save time at the start, I don't park in the main lot but in an auxiliary starting lot 1/4 mile away. So I get on my bike, start pedaling, and think, "Wow, this isn't too bad." And then I get to the little train bridge and it's like someone lit my thighs on fire. Back to the car and then drive home. I raised $700 and may get more still. Nice way to spend a Saturday.