Livestrong Challenge, 2010
The Livestrong Challenge is a series of events organized by the Livestrong Foundation, Lance Armstrong’s fund-raising organization that supports cancer survivors. There are four major Livestrong events in 2010 and Bryan Morgan of Dynamic Health and Fitness in Liverpool had done it before so he organized a team of people, most of whom used this training facility. Todd had done it a few years ago too. Chris Arnold was the bridge between the DHF group and the Finger Lakes Ride for Missing and Exploited Children riders.
There were 40+ members of the DHF team, some walkers/runners and some riders. The walkers/runners did their event on Saturday. The ride was Sunday. The weather was hot and sticky Saturday. It rained on Sunday.
Because of my summer travels, I had not participated in many group training rides so while I had ridden with many members of the team at least once, many I had not ridden with more than that. There were one or two riders I had never ridden with before. I had ridden the most with Mike Reagan, Todd Conover, Chris Arnold, Mike Nortman (all of whom also do the ride for missing children) and Sue Bertrand. I rode down and back with Mike Reagan and shared a room with Todd. Not surprisingly, we ended up riding the whole route together.
The Livestrong Challenge benefits from national exposure and there were evidence of huge corporate sponsorship including Nissan, Radio Shack (Lance’s new team), Michelob Ultra and others. The Livestrong “Village” was on the campus of a local community college and there were dozens of team and sponsor tents. We left about 8:30 Saturday morning to arrive before the 2:00 registration window closed and when we arrived, we collected goodies bags and strolled the vendors.
We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out w/team members at the hotel and having dinner as a group of 40+. We also obsessed over the weather; the forecast had been deteriorating as the week went on and by Saturday night, we were certain we would get wet.
We got up at 5:00 to make sure we could get ready and surprisingly, we needed to do most of our prep without support at the village. It is possible there was a food tent but we didn’t see it. We brought out own water and I mixed my own electrolyte drink.
Around 7:00 we lined up in chutes designating ride distance and we managed to get a spot near the front. Unfortunately, this also meant being near the loudspeakers and the announcer, probably a local radio personality, was pretty loud. Lance showed up and gave a short and not very motivational speech and we were off at 7:30.
Like the PMC, a mass start is slow and dangerous. They said there were about 3000 riders of the total 5700 participants. There were five routes ranging from 10-100 miles. We had to calm Sue, delightfully enthusiastic, doing her first group century. We spent the first miles trying to stay together and while we had team jerseys, it was still difficult to do. The first stop was only nine miles and while we planned to skip it, a few of us had to pee so we arranged to meet at the second stop.
The second stop was about 20 miles in. Todd, Mike and I pushed to catch up but tried to keep in mind that we needed to pace ourselves too. We also knew that some of the riders who had passed the first stop were slower riders. So we were surprised when we pulled in and didn’t see any of our team members there. We continued on and as it turned out, we just didn’t see them. So at this point we were ahead of the rest of the team. This was fortuitous because the ride organizers later turned the 100-mile riders away at a check- point and re-directed them to take the 70-mile route because the weather was so bad.
The route was challenging. We knew it was going to be hilly, about 4000’ elevation climb but it seemed like there were many more hills than that. The joke during the ride was that if there was a sign ahead indicating a turn, that meant there was a hill right after making the turn. This was not far from the truth.
But for every hill climbed there ought to be an equal downhill and there were many long and often steep descents down narrow two-lane country roads. Unfortunately, the descents often ended in stops so we could not take advantage of the stored kinetic energy.
Somewhere around mile 41 there was a series of tight turns on a steep downhill run. The ride organizers posted a number of caution signs. By this time the roads were wet as it had been raining steadily since the start. I was the first in our group of three to take the descent. In the middle of a sharp right turn, I realized I was going too fast and while my brakes were working, I still had too much momentum. I crossed the yellow lines to buy some more real estate to slow down but couldn’t stop from approaching the guardrail. I locked my brakes and the bike skidded out from under me. I hit the pavement hard and skidded under the guardrail. Mike saw the whole sequence. I got up and saw Mike and a couple other riders stop a few yards down the road on the inside of the turn. Then I heard the sound of skidding and Todd lost control and went over the rail a few yards above me. I was sitting on the rail assessing the damage when Mike came over and insisted that we move. When the road cleared, we crossed to the inside of the turn and while we were putting ourselves back together, a couple more riders crashed. I watched one particularly spectacular crash of a rider who hit the guardrail with his bike and went airborne. He popped up and insisted he was OK. This was an excellent example of the body’s response to trauma; while we weren’t in shock, we were definitely dazed and because Mike had not crashed, he had the presence of mind to get us out of harm’s way.
We knew we had some bumps and road rash. Later, some of these spots got scabby and the hip where I got the raspberry later developed a nice purple ring around raw spot. I’ve posted some of these on my facebook page in case you need a good reason to ride carefully.
After the crash, the rest of the ride was relatively uneventful for us. We did a lot of climbing. We did some descents, much more slowly. We rode in torrential rain. At times it rained so hard, that I had to stop to not only clear my sunglasses but also to get my contacts back in place when the rain got under the frame and knocked them off center. When we did the last ten miles back into town, we had to plow through measurable water running down the gutters. The tents in the village had standing water.
I rode the entire 100 miles with Todd and Mike and appreciated the comraderie. For the second half of the ride, we were joined by Joe Lauko and Kara Johnston. We finished as a group of six with Mike Nortman joining us.
Here we are, wet and weary. Note that we're standing in puddles!
Unfortunately, there were other crashes to report, most much more serious than mine. The most serious was Sue Bertrand who, nearly a week after the event, is still in the hospital. I’ll not discuss the details of her injuries here but suffice it to say they were serious and potentially life-threatening. Patty ? also had serious injuries. Patty apparently went over her handlebars and broke both wrists and forearms. Of a group of 16 riders, that makes 25% sustaining injuries. I stopped at every med tent whenever we stopped to get my sopping dressings changed and at the village, the medics told me that another team had even more accidents than we did.
Some mechanical notes. I replaced a 12-25 cassette with an 11-28 and was able to use it on one training ride prior to the event. I also replaced the chain. I found that having this new drivetrain it to be VERY helpful. While I did have to stand to make it up some hills near the end of the ride, there were many hills earlier in the ride where it was possible to spin up because of the new gearing. Obviously there were other variables that might account for this but the difference was noticeable and rather than pretend that I have become a stronger rider, I prefer to attribute this outcome to new equipment better suited to this route. It will also help on training rides in New Hampshire and Vermont. It won’t be necessary on the Seagull Century where the biggest hill is a bridge crossing one of the highways.
I bought the components from a small shop on Westcott Street called Melo Velo. It’s run by a young guy and his girlfriend. He has at least one other look-alike guy who works in the shop too but it’s a very small operation compared with the other shops in town, Meltzer’s and Advanced. It was nice to give him the business. He checked over my bike after the ride to make sure there were no cracks in the frame and saw no problems. On a carbon frame, a crack could mean a catastrophic failure. While my vegetarianism means that, according to my mother, I eat vegetables, I’m not interested in becoming one.
