D2R2 2017: The Redemption of Shad, Part IV: The Finish

Everyone who rides the 160K consoles him or herself with the popular notion that "it's all downhill after East Rd." This isn't exactly true but it helps to believe it. 

Dubstoevsky on the 160K

The fact is that much of the last twenty five miles of the 160K is rolling terrain, some downhill, some uphill, nothing exactly worthy of fear and loathing. This is why the last stretch is perceived as benign, because there's nothing in it that promises to break you. However, after 75 miles, after personal struggles with the audacity of East Rd., you are tired and vulnerable and any incline, even something that on a normal 30 mile ride would seem insignificant, becomes something not insignificant at all, becomes a grinding impediment between you and the next downhill, between you and un-cramping legs, between you and coasting.

After lunch, I focused a lot on coasting. I seized every opportunity to not pedal. I rocketed down the occasionally paved downhill stretch tucked and tight like an arrow of Jah, grateful for every tenth of a mile ticked off without pedaling. I watched Nut continue to crank while speeding down ahead of me and I felt smug in my energy-saving-regimen. 

However, true to form with Team Shad, inevitably something rent the fabric of unity, if only slightly and if only for a half dozen miles or so.

At one point late in the ride, around mile 85, Wing Nut and I came to a trio of riders who we'd leapfrogged periodically since lunch. Wing Nut, being the Assassin, could not help himself. He rode away from me, up to their wheels, moved to their left and went swiftly passed them. I was unable to keep his wheel and follow through.

I saw Nut look back once after he passed the trio as if to ask, "Where's Dubstoevsky?" The obvious answer was "he's stuck behind the three guys you just passed and doesn't have the power to follow you" but that didn't make much impression on him. More than likely his glance back was simply to make sure I was still in sight of the trio so that I wouldn't be alone when he rode off ahead. He was Wing Nut. He had to demonstrate his remorseless power.

Wing Nut, quiet assassin, at the end of the 160K

So this small drama played out for several late ride miles, my legs churning and coming to life again like a re-kindled fire. In the stretch run down to the Big Top and the finishing line, a half dozen or more riders came up from behind, sprinting toward the finish as if this were a race. That triggered a pang of competitiveness in me, especially seeing that Nut got ahead and into the group of hard pedaling closers; I was stuck (again) behind a cadre of meanderers, until I too could launch out from behind them and rush to the finish line, as if that last minute gesture meant anything. It seemed like just something you were supposed to do to show that you still had something left in the tank, but I did it anyway. 

And yeah, amazing as it seemed to me at the time, I actually did have something left in the tank.

D2R2 2017: Part I