About 3 weeks ago my team finally met and it was discovered that one of our team members did not train over the summer. Because of certain feed zone cutoff times (meaning you're out of the race if you don't make it to a given feed zone by a given time) I volunteered to take one for the team and ride the first two legs. These two legs equalled about 80 miles, starting in Logan, riding through Preston, ID (go Napoleon) eventually going over Strawberry Canyon, and finishing in the small town of Montpelier, ID. Up to that time I hadn't actually ridden 80 miles but I figured I had it in my legs (or at least in my brains) to do it.
So. 7:40am my group rides out with a police escort to 1000 west in Logan... then it's on our own. Being that it was a little chilly out and me lacking any sort of knee warmers, my muscles start to get a little thick during the first part of the ride. Once the sun came up it was great riding and I was starting to feel good.
About 16 miles into the ride I pass a young rider who is struggling a bit so I decide to give him a hand and to get on my wheel for a while to pull him along. After all, I was making pretty good time and didn't feel the need to push myself. So, away we went. We came to mile 17 (halfway to Preston) and we came to a stop sign. LOTOJA rules state that you must stop at every stop sign. So I slow and check to see if there is traffic. My young rider, however, somehow missed the fact that I was slowing and plowed his front wheel into my back wheel successfully snapping 8 of my spokes.
I make it to the other side of the intersection and flip my bike over trying to pull out spokes to see if there was any way possible I could still keep going. Because, if I couldn't, the rest of my team was hosed... they wouldn't get a chance to race. So here I am, with a very apologetic young man, a broken wheel that had accidentally thrown a spoke through my right index finger while checking how jacked it was, and thinking the race was over.
Eventually, neutral support (God bless those people) shows up to bandage my bloody finger and wrap a blanket around me to help me to stop going into shock. A few minutes later another neutral support vehicle shows up. Miraculously, this neutral support vehicle happens to have the exact wheel I need to keep going in the race. I grabbed the wheel, count the gears on the cassette, pump it up, throw it on my bike, hand them my bashed wheel, and take off toward Preston.
And I'm am cranking. By the time I got to Preston I had 15 minutes before the cutoff time passed. Phew! My team was still in the race. Now all that stands between me and my next goal is about 45 miles of mountain climbing.
It was a challenging go. I probably cramped the worst I'd ever cramped on a bike in my history of riding. But there were so many miracles along the way. So many people along the road cheering me on. Kids standing in the road just to get a high five from me. It was inspiring, enduring, hard, and worth every bead of sweat, drop of blood, cramped leg, and tear.
A little more history on the miracle of the wheel... so the reason why the neutral support guy had the wheel I needed started at in Logan, where another person, forgot to bring his front wheel to the start line. Some other generous person lent his wheelset to this guy... who only took the front wheel... the back wheel ended up in the neutral support guy's trunk. Wow. Crazy. I think it was divine intervention through a series of unfortunate events... kinda crazy how it works like that somehow.
I had just passed a dude too so that was cool. I had never been so happy to see the Laura.
Making the turn... without cramping!
Hot hot pink.
I ate tots as a tribute to Napoleon Dynamite. I could barely chew in this picture I was so tired.
Oh yeah, then I worked a 16 hour day the next day. No big deal.
5 comments:
Great story. I thought you were done for when the kid hit you. Great race, pretty jersey.
Jason, you're my idol. Way to go.
Wow, nice. When will you have a helmet cam so I can ride along with you? And PS are you asleep at the sound board, or just praying?
Holy crow. You are hard core. Hey, I recognized that big bear in Montpelier!! We went through there on our way to Bear Lake to pick up food storage stuff (go Walton Foods!). We never did figure out what was up with all the bears. It wasn't that close to Bear Lake, was it? Anyway, way to endure to the end!!
Thanks for posting this story dude. I totally forgot to ask you how LotoJa went. Now I know. :)
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