On Saturday, July 17, I completed Ride Across Indiana. This is an event put on annually by the Bloomington Bike Club and does just what the name implies--cross the state of Indiana. The ride starts on the western border just outside Terre Haute and finished on the easter border in Richmond. This year, the official distance was 160 miles.
The route is straightforward. For most of its distance, it follows US Highway 40 west to east. The only exception is going through Indianapolis, they skirt around some of the city by using smaller roads. Since most traffic takes I-70 these days, US 40 is a good road to ride on. It is a 4 lane divided highway. The road surface is well maintained and smooth. Other than the section around Indianapolis, there are not many turns and twists on this ride. Just follow US 40 and keep going.
I made the decision to ride from my hotel in Terre Haute to the start line. Many other riders do the same. My reasoning was this was easier than getting my wife and two year old daughter up at 6:00 AM to drive me to the start. So at 6:15 AM, I started off west to the start line over at the Illinois border. This added 8.1 miles to my total for the day, but oh well.
Even though it was still fairly dark at 6:15 AM, it was hot and muggy. The night before, you could feel the heat radiating up from the asphalt, and not much had dissipated over the night. A bank sign said 73, but the humidity was very high. This would be a sign of how the whole day would be. National weather Service recorded high temps into the 90's throughout Indiana on Saturday. But the killer was that high humidity. Plus, on a road bike, you are out on the pavement all day, so you really feel that heat from the ground come back up at you. A couple miles in, my jersey was soaked with sweat. It would stay that way all day.
The official start time is 7:00 AM. I lined up with 1550 other riders at the state line. Even though they go to great lengths to stress this is
a ride and not a race, it is basically a race from the opening gun. The first few miles are pretty dangerous with people jockeying for position. I actually had another rider bump me while he was passing me in Terre Haute. Really stupid to put everyone's safety at risk like this, but people do it. It seems like you get more than 3 cyclists together and everything has to become a race.
I settled into the B group on the road outside of Terre Haute. The pace was very fast, 24-28 mph most of the time. Smetimes it would drop down to 21 or 22. These were actually the most dangerous times, when someone in the front slowed down for an unknown reason and sent everyone reaching for their brakes. I did not witness any crashes, but you had to be very alert.
We were quickly at the first rest stop at mile 42. On a hot day like this, it is so important to stay hydrated, so I stopped. Almost all of the B group continued. What I discovered is that on RAIN, most people bring personal support vehicles, so they have friends and family standing on the side of the road handing them water and food. Unfortunately, this contributes to too many riders thinking they are in the ProTour and makes this more like a circus/race. But whatever, I am doing my ride, so I did a minimal stop, got gatorade and a banana and continued on. I will say, the rest stops are well organized. They have a lot of food and they do keep all the fluids cold. So important on a hot day like today.
On the road, I was able to quickly come into another group of 4 riders, and then a group of about 20 riders. I guess you would call this the C group. Once again, we made very good time, 24-26 mph for a lot of it, and were sweeping up remnants of the B group I was with earlier. I think some of these folks maybe didn't have support vehicles, but were so swept up in going fast, they decided to skip the first stop. But on a hot day like this day, this was a huge mistake and these riders were now paying the price.
Rest stop 2 was at 65 miles, and once again I stopped while a large part of the group went on. I was really going through the fluids now, and I knew the order of the day was hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. So once again, a minimal stop and back on the road. I got in a group of 15-20 riders, and we kept making good time, though now more at a 20-23 mph. Some of this was due to having less firepower for sure. But also, some fatigue was probably setting in for everyone and more importantly, the heat was starting to take a toll. On this section, it really seemed liek the heat and humidity jumped up at us. Finally, this was a section through the outskirts of Indy, so a lot more turns and stops and such. Still, we were making good time.
Lunch was at mile 91. I didn't really want to eat, but on long rides like this, you must, so I ate a sandwich. I also had 3 tall glasses of lemonade. This was good because I needed the fluids, it was cold, and it was not gatorade. There was only one topic of conversation at lunch, and that was the heat.
Some of the folks I was riding with were staying at lunch waiting for another rider, so I set out from lunch with a different group of about 20 riders. We were making great progress, 22-24 mph so stretches, and then I hit a stretch of bad pavement and my water bottle flew out. I retrieved it, but was now about 30 seconds behind the group. In an event like this, unless you bring your own group, no one is waiting. I didn't think I would catch them, but then crossing some railroad tracks, my water bottle came out again. So now I was not going to catch them for sure. So I just rode my own pace, which was about 20 mph. In some ways it was nice to be out of a group, because all the groups were so nervous and jumpy. Now I could just ride.
The stretch between lunch and rest stop 3 (at mile 132) is very long and probably the hardest. It is not the terrain, as the whole ride is flat. It is just long, and you are out in the heat of the day. I did hook up with two other riders about mile 110 and we worked together to share the load almost the whole way into the rest area. But it was still hard and the heat just would not go down. The last couple miles into rest area 3, I just could not get cooled off. I still had fluids, but they were hot, so while wet, not much relief there. And the sun kept beating own and the humidity would not go away. Plus, you have rode 130+ (in my case 138+) fast miles, and you don't have the same legs you did at the start.
I would say Rest Area 3 came at the right time, but I would have really preferred it getting there about 5 miles sooner. I saw several riders taking extended breaks now. I took a little longer break, probably 15 minutes here. I downed some water and a whole bottle of cold gatorade, plus had a freezie while I was there. That really helped me to cool off and feel normal again. I sat down for about10 minutes. You don't want to sit down too long and have your body start to shut down, but I needed to sit a little so could stop expending energy and let my body recover a little bit. So by the time I left, I was feeling normal again. And of course you feel good because you are on the last stretch, a mere 30 miles to go to the finish.
I rode most of the last 30 miles alone. There were not many people to hook up wth, and everyone is riding their own pace at this point. You go through a couple of interesting small towns as you get close to Richmond. They have some really cool buildings and downtown's which are unfortunately in disrepair as these town's die. US 40 was once the main street of America. But no more. Plus, America is more about cities now and not small town's. So it is a little sad to see these town's formed in the 1820's and 1830's slowly disappear.
The finish was at Earlham College in Richmond, a Quaker college. Beautiful campus, full of trees and old buildings. You come up the main road, make a right turn and in 100 meters you are done. They call out your number to record your time, a photographer takes your picture and the hand you your key chain. A few families and friends are on hand to cheer, but not too many. From here, they have a final rest area set up to get something cold to drink and lots of places under shady trees. And that is it.
I finished at 3:26 PM according to my cell phone. So 8 hours, 26 minutes of ride time. Including my 8.1 miles from the hotel to the start line, I had 165.6 miles on my computer, so the RAIN distance I had was around 157 miles. Not sure who was off three miles. My average speed, including the time from the hotel was 21.0 mph, so I would have been a little faster on the actual course because I did not push it from the hotel. So I met all my goals. I finished, I rode fast and I rode far.
I'll have more to say in the next few days.
