55 Miles in the Rain

No worries about gas prices when running on human power!

For several years I've been hoping to go for an epic bike ride from my house in Lowell to my parents' house in Ann Arbor, a distance of roughly 120 miles. With my recovering hamstring preventing me from planning any running races, I thought that maybe this year I could squeeze in an all-day bike ride.

However, "real life" gets in the way as it often does and I wasn't able to put in enough training to prepare. Sure I could've pulled it off, but I figure that to do something like riding my bike across an entire state ought to be done right. For example, a decent road bike would help compared to my 6-year-old "comfort bike".

Yeah, that's what my Giant Cypress DX is called and it's since been "tricked out" with a new seat (twice), bar-end hand grips, new pedals and second-hand pedal clips, bottle rack, speedometer, rear rack, and a cheap bike computer. It has served me well over the years on the roads, mountain bike trails, and even in adventure races. But it's not a fast bike.

A few years ago I bought a 25-year-old Peugot road bike for $65 just to see what a road bike feels like. Despite being an old 10-speed I easily averaged a full 1 mph faster on my standard routes. That bike is now in need of repair so the Cypress is all I have, meaning that a 120-mile ride would take 10-12 hours including food stops whereas a nice road bike could shave a few hours off of that time.

Ready to ride despite the rain.

Instead I planned a ride that traveled 55 miles, starting near Lansing and finishing at my parents' house. Last Sunday Amanda dropped me off near Webbersville at the I-96 exit in a heavy, steady rain! I was standing in a two-inch deep puddle as I unloaded my bike from the car and got ready to go. Due to the weather I had to keep all of my gear in a dry-bag bungeed to the rack on my bike and I wore a rain jacket to stay warm. You can see what the weather was like in Amanda's video:

The first 15 miles of my ride were solo as I pedaled my way to Stockbridge where I would meet Dad. It took me about an hour despite a strong WNW crosswind on my southbound road and the steady rain blurring up my sunglasses. Believe it or not I found the glasses to be of help because they kept splashes and road grit out of my eyes, but also being polarized it really cut down the glare from the wet road.

No frogs here, yet...

Worse than the wind and the rain were the frogs - dead ones. The shoulder of the road was littered with hundreds of dead frogs! I don't know why so many were trying to cross and getting hit and why they ended up on the shoulder but I was constantly weaving my tires among the slimy amphibian bodies, not wanting to get a taste of frog leg sushi kicked up into my mouth!

Finally I made it to Stockbridge and rendez-voused with my parents. Dad's raincoat was rather heavy - it's meant for field work, not cycling - so Mom offered him the $1 "emergency poncho" that she keeps in her car. He was quite pleased although the poncho went down to his knees and he just about fell over trying to hop on his bike when the plastic caught on his seat! Mom had to trim off a foot or so of plastic and after the obligatory photo, we were on our way.

Dad and I are "waterproofed" prior to hitting the Lakelands Trail

Our route took advantage of the Lakelands Trail, a linear state park created as a Rails to Trails project. The first several miles of the trail were packed dirt that was rather rough in some areas due to horse traffic. We'd had several days of rain here in Michigan and the ground was wet but not soft. The bumpiness was pretty rough on me as Dad kept looking back wondering why I was lagging behind. I think his fresh legs had a bit more pep that mine after having ridden for an hour just to meet him!

Soon after starting down the trail the rain stopped and since the temperature was already 70 degrees even in the rain, we were plenty comfortable. It was actually splendid weather for a ride with overcast skies, a now NW breeze and warm air temps.

When my water bottle ran dry we stopped in Pinckney at a gas station to refill and we also chomped on some food: a Power Bar for Dad and some Clif Bloks for me. When planning the ride we talked about stopping here for food but we both were feeling very good and decided to just continue to our "dessert stop", a Dairy Queen in Hamburg.

For quite a while I was telling stories about the interesting politics I've been getting involved with in Lowell, only to be occasionally interrupted when Dad would point out one of "his" many projects in the area - a water tower, a subdivision, a boardwalk, and more - he's a land development civil engineer with lots of handiwork in Livingston County.

Suddenly Dad said "Oops!" It turns out he completely missed the turn for Dairy Queen! We'd been distracted by the conversation and since I've never been on the trail before, I was relying on his navigation. We only went about half a mile out of our way so it wasn't too bad, and when Dairy Queen is the destination you don't lose any motivation to get there.

At the DQ Dad got a large chocolate shake and I ordered a Blizzard with M&Ms, but asked if they could use chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla. The guy at the counter suggested their "Chocolate Extreme" flavor - chocolate ice cream with hot fudge syrup, fudge brownie chunks, and pieces of hard chocolate mixed in. Awesome! Yes, I love chocolate, but I also learned that even I have limits - a large Blizzard more than filled me up, but it was worth it.

Sitting at the outdoor table at DQ my dad whipped out his Blackberry and showed off some coolness, like how he can pull up a weather radar image. Days before our ride he had mentioned this and I teased him, saying "How would that help us on the ride? Are we going to see imminent rain and decide to pedal faster?"

We'd been riding precipitation-free for hours but looking at his Blackberry the radar image showed that a ton of rain was right upon us despite the bright but overcast skies. Wouldn't you know it... five minutes later as we pulled out of the DQ parking lot some big, fat drops of water started to fall! We could only laugh at the irony and besides, we'd been soaking wet since Stockbridge.

Soon we were at the end of Lakelands Trail and heading south on back roads near US-23 on our way home. The skies never did manage to open up - occasionally it would sprinkle a bit but then stop. Since the rain was coming from the NW and we were riding south I think we were keeping ahead of the weather.

Recharged with chocolate I was feeling pretty good but Dad was starting to tire out and we took a couple of extended water breaks on the side of the road to rest the legs. With about five miles to go our quads began to cramp up - both of us at the same time! Yet fortunately a couple miles later our legs relented and allowed us to finish our ride in comfort.

All smiles after dozens of miles.

But not in style - the first thing Mom said when we pulled into the driveway was "Wow, you're muddy!" Actually I didn't think it was that bad, but Mom insisted on a "rear-end view" photo nonetheless. Dad explained how only a two mile stretch of Warren Road was to blame - the rest of the entire route was paved or puddle-less dirt.

If Mom thinks this is "muddy", wait until we go mountain biking!

Dad and I also discovered that one or both of our bike computers isn't calibrated correctly - mine had logged a couple more miles than Dad's over the same course! I used MapMyRun to determine that my Webberville-to-Stockbridge solo ride was 15.2 "mapped" miles compared to 15.4 "computed" miles so it seems mine is a bit off. However, it's hard to say for sure about the rest of the ride since our double-back for missing Hamburg can only be guessed for distance.

All told my computer showed 55.3 miles, so assuming that it's off by 0.2 every 15.4, my total distance would be 54.6 - not a major error. I'll just call it 55 miles and be content.

Soon after getting home the "Blackberry rain" arrived and it began to pour cats and dogs. Two of the dogs were mine - Haven and Beacon arrived with Amanda and her parents, as did Ryan and Megan. We all (except the dogs) went to dinner at Red Robin where it rained even harder and the restaurant even lost power for a couple seconds before the backup kicked in! Perhaps it was a good day to not be riding 120 miles after all!

Overall the ride was a total blast and surprisingly "easy" if 50+ miles can ever be deemed easy. The route was pancake flat except for a few short hills between Hamburg and Ann Arbor and traffic on the non-trail roads was never a problem. My legs were sore for the next couple days but I never felt bonky or worn out. I'm already thinking about doing this again! But not this weekend. :)