The Harbor to the Bay Ride

This is how your charity ride starts: you wake up at 4:11 in the morning.  Your alarm is set for 4:30, but your cat has decided that 4:11 is a more suitable time, and honestly, you're excited and don't need much persuasion.  After a flurry of last-minute text messages, your friends arrive a little after 5, and by 5:40 you're signing in in the dark outside Trinity Church at Copley Plaza.  You eat breakfast (oatmeal--it'll digest easily); put on socks, bike shoes, hat, gloves, helmet; affix your rider number (282) to your jersey, your bike, and the backpack containing a change of clothes that will go on the luggage truck.  You half-listen to the opening speeches; you try to be respectful but it's Time to Go.

I thought I could do well on this ride.  I'm in peak shape, had rested for the two days previous, and having learned important lessons over the summer about not dieting the night before a major event, I had consumed a huge plate of Pad Thai before going to bed early.  I was close to my fundraising goal and excited about that.  And when they finally sent us off I felt strong and solid, like I could ride for days.

I rode with Jerry, a guy from my team who proudly wore his Positive Pedalers bike jersey on this AIDS benefit ride.  He and I were reasonably well matched and drifted in and out of other groups.  Charity rides are not really about speed, except that sometimes they sort of are, and I was pleased to be in a large group of guys and going fast.  The idea when you're riding is to stay out of the wind as much as possible by keeping other people in front of you.  In a group like the one I had, it often doesn't make much sense for me to "pull" (or take the lead) because I can't go as fast as a guy in good shape and because I'm short enough that they can't really get a good draft off of me anyway.  So for the first thirty miles I got sucked along, averaging between 18 and 19, before we stopped at Pit Two and I got my picture taken with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence:

Then my heros started to drop off.  They got tired.  I did not.  Jerry and I took turns on the front until we got to the "lunch stop" (at 10 in the morning) at Mile 60--the Sagamore Bridge--averaging 18.3.   There I rested:

After lunch we walked across the bridge to begin the second half of our ride:

This is where the fun began in earnest, as we began to pick off other riders--slower folks, who were just doing 60 miles and had started at the bridge, and others who had started with us but were now starting to feel the distance.  We passed everyone we saw.  No one passed us.  I felt like a rock star.

Our next stop was the Mile 90 pit.  One of my favorite things about his ride is the pit stops.  On most rides, the organizers take direct responsibility for staffing the pits and providing supplies.  On Harbor to the Bay, though, each pit is sponsored by a different AIDS-related organization, and they're encouraged to personalize.  The Mile 90 Pit is one of my favorite places out of all the rides I do.  It's run by the Seacoast Gay Men, and they have managed to encapsulate every positive gay-male stereotype into a single pit stop.  They all wear grass skirts and hand out leis. Sometimes, though not this year, they play show tunes.  They offer a wide range of baked goods--regular and gluten-free--along with fresh fruit, and the drag queens who come out to support the ride congregate there.

I ate two brownies--a volunteer tried to sell me on a hummus wrap but all I wanted was sugar--and hopped back on the bike.  We did twelve miles on the Cape Cod Rail Trail and then got onto Route 6.

Things got hillier.  And windier.  I had taken the lead and, after pulling for a while, pulled to the left and gestured for Jerry to pass me so I could rest behind him for a while.  Nothing happened.  So I looked back and saw nothing but empty road.  At some point I had dropped Jerry and was on my own, riding into a headwind, fifteen miles from the finish.

Undaunted, I pressed on, passing still more riders, climbing a series of wedding-cake-shaped hills in Truro with an energy born of a surfeit of sugar in my system (I'd also been eating Oreos all day).   And finally, there it was, up ahead:  a crowd of people in orange "pit crew" t-shirts, waving flags and ringing cowbells and cheering.  The finish line.  Victory!  With an average of 17.8 MPH and a ride time of 6 hours and 42 minutes, I was the first woman to cross, and can therefore claim that I WON THE CHARITY RIDE.

This was a fantastic day (we even avoided all the rain) that raised over $450,000 for AIDS foundations (you can still donate; click here) and pushed people to previously unimagined heights.  One woman cried as she crossed the finish line.  One man crossed, tried to get off his bike, and tipped over sideways.  A bunch of volunteers rushed over and I could hear him, sitting on the ground, saying, "I'm just a little tired; that's all.  I'm just a little tired."

Some people rested.  I got up the next day and rode another 82 miles--still on a high.  I'm just a little tired myself.  But it was an awesome experience and I feel great.