2007 Bike Trip Complete
A few days ago I mentioned that I was going on a bike trip. That’s done now.
The trip was much easier this year, what with me making some better equipment choices. The only trouble was the rain. It hit with about 15 miles go to on the way left to Big Rapids on Saturday and rained almost the entire time on the return trip Sunday.
I now understand the phrase “cotton kills.” While it was still 60-65 degrees in temperature I became rather chilled 3 hours, or about halfway, into our trip, as I was soaked to the bone. With less than 10 miles to go in the trip the cold really started to get to me. My face became numb, almost non-responsive, and my hands started to cramp up.
While a situation that I’ve experienced hundreds of time in various foot races it felt a lot like one specific incident in particular which started to scared the shit out of me.
In that incident I was burning about 3,000 calories per day while on a 100-300 calorie per day diet for nearly a week. It resulted in me laying on a locker room floor unable to speak properly with my hands, arms, and God knows what else all cramped up. The transition went fast too. One minute I appeared to be dog tired and the next I’m a puddle on the floor. Thankfully there were people around me that to get me all sorted out. That involved pouring water into my mouth and putting food into my semi-functional hands.
I consumed 4 pounds of food and water over the next 30 minutes.
Today I doubted I was dehydrated, as I had just urinated 15 minutes prior, albeit on my own hand, being unable to properly grab my own member, and I hadn’t been sweating at all. However, the biking alone should have drained 8,000 calories from my body. On top of that I had expended an unknown amount of energy generating body heat. At 5′9″ and 140lbs I don’t exactly have a whole lot of natural insulation.
I knew I was cruising right for that invalid situation all over again, but this time there’d be nobody to help me out.
So, I pulled over, poured some peanuts I had with me into a hand that I couldn’t flatten out, and shoved them into the ‘ole mouth. I dropped a fair number of them. A few minutes later I felt like I was doing OK, remounted, and carried on for a couple more miles. I then realized I was still in serious trouble as I was having trouble breathing, unable to keep my lips from climbing around my teeth and constricting my airways.
Shit.
I found a bridge to sit under for a while, finally realizing that my body was leeching an insane amount of energy just trying to stay warm. Whipped off my wet cotton shirt, ate every bit of food I had in my pack, quaffed the rest of my water, set the bottle under a stream of water coming from the bridge above, drank some of that, pulled out a dry shirt, and rested for about 20 minutes to let my digestive system take hold of the recent influx.
Yes, I was worried enough about my health that sucking down water running off a road seemed, and still does, like the best thing I could have done.
At that point I phoned the girlfriend, who was waiting just 4 miles away, to come pick me up. I still had to bike just shy of another half mile or so to find an actual road, and could have probably finished the whole trip up, but I didn’t see much point in making her wait any longer, and I didn’t want to risk getting into trouble again as I was completely out of food.
Still, it was a good time.
Aside from the whole “wet t-shirt lesson” I learned something else on this trip: Check your brakes constantly! Due to the rain my bike was picking up dirt that my tires were kicking up. With 13 miles to go I stopped after hearing my back tire skid while “coasting” to make sure my tires were still rotating properly. They weren’t. I had gotten a few bits of dirt in my rear brakes which meant for an untold number of miles I had been dragging my back tire with about 50% of the brakes applied. Had that not happened, or if I caught it sooner, I would have probably never ended up in the predicament I was in.