Milestone 100

Endurance sports is all about, well building endurance - to go one more mile, to bear the pain a little longer, to not give up. As a wise friend once told me - "there are a thousand reasons to give up, there is just one to carry on". Over the past many weekends I have been trying to simulate what I will face during the BP MS 150 over the two days. I rode fairly long for two consecutive days but could never reach the 100 cumulative mile mark. That was the magical number I needed to cross to be convinced that I am ready for the MS 150.

The week started fairly ok. I got in a couple of days of 5K runs on the treadmill. I was already signed up for a long ride at the 2013 Schlumberger Education Expedition ride for Saturday. And then someone told me that there is the Bluebonnet Express Ride which is beautiful and I should definitely do it. This was probably it. I was already signed up for the 79 miles on the Education Expedition ride. That would mean I just needed a little ride on the Bluebonnet to make it a century. Or that was the plan.

Day 1 - Saturday, 23 March 2013

It was gray and cloudy day. But at least there was no wind. That's what I was praying for. I have a mortal fear for wind. And I had my Direct Energy Team to ride with. So it was overall a good start. We actually blew through the first rest stop and averaged a good 17-18 miles per hour to the second stop. I moved to the longer route from there as the rest of the team was going on the shorter route. The ride to the third stop was not bad either. And then it started to drizzle. Nothing major, just annoying. After a 20 mile stretch with some wind I was on the last stop. With some encouragement from students from the Fort Bend ISD schools the last 10 miles were easy. Overall it is a great ride. Very enthusiastic volunteers from the FBISD schools, great rest stops and overall great support.

Day 2 - Sunday, 24 March 2013

I am not sure if one should look at the weather website before leaving for a ride or just ignore it. Because when I did reach the venue at Waller Stadium, it did not matter. Wind was gusting at 30-35 miles per hour (The Saffir-Simpson scale tells me that 39 mph would be a tropical storm) and it was cold. I saw people just turning around a going back home. For me it was too close to give up. I had one reason to ride - I needed my 100. After completing 79 yesterday, I just needed a little over 20 to get it done. There was a 25 miles option. I had to endure the wind for just a couple of hours, tops. Got on the bike and was immediately greeted by crushing wind and cold. It was relentless reducing me to a crawling heap of muscle and metal. I had read somewhere, to ride long distance, at any point you should be ready to ride 10-12 miles to the next rest stop. Breaking down the total distance into 10-12 mile chunks really helps. The ride to the next stop was grueling. Lots of uphill and headwind. The sight of a first rest stop brought tears to my eyes. Then was the tough decision, do I go 25 or 35 total. Well, depends on how much of a sissy you are - jiminy cricket replied. At the fork, I turned towards 35. And at that point I realized that I was probably one of the few on that route. Well, at least there was only cross wind at this time. Must have gone another 5 miles, when the game makers decided to hand me Cerberus. Just as I was turning at a stop sign, I saw him, this devilish mutt taking a crouching stance and moving in a flanking pattern. Within seconds, I had this maniacal hound chasing me while I struggled on granny gears trying to escape its fangs. Only a few days back I was reading a story on how a biker was seriously injured by a pack of dogs. I remembered something about shouting back at the dog, probably to prove who is the bigger dog here. That seemed to work. I did manage to escape unharmed for the most part. The rest of the ride was relatively uneventful. In just under 3 hours I was done with my 35 miles.

It is a great feeling when you are finally get something that you only imagined in the realms of the impossible... and then probably you look at the next one. Till the next one.

Donate to Sandeep's MS 150 Fundraising efforts

The Plane Great Ride

I dreaded the very thought of hills. After the “hill” section of the “Pedal the Prairie” ride, I was not sure if I was ready for hills. Hills have always been my enemy and therefore I have never tried to get better at them and it’s been a vicious cycle. After a lot of encouragement from my better half, timidly, I signed up for the 47 miles distance for the Plane Great Ride. She kept insisting that I should stop being a sissy and sign up for the 67 but visions of riders zipping past me on an uphill while I struggled with granny gears kept haunting me.

The ride is hosted in the rolling hills and beautiful scenery through the Sam Houston National Forest and farms of Grimes and Montgomery counties. The 70 mile drive from my home helped me convince myself that I will be able to finish this ride even if I had to carry the bike on my shoulder for the last 10 miles.

The ride starts in the Montgomery High School campus and goes through the farms and ranches before hitting the pine forests of Sam Houston National Forest. The scenery is breathtaking and that makes the entire effort worthwhile and now I know why so many people sign up for the ride.

It is also a very well organized ride with more frequent rest stops that help you through some of the tougher climbs. I loved the stop that was actually inside a thicket of pine trees and you could literally smell the pine needles.

The other thing that I realized was “hills are not that bad”. At least they are not as bad as wind. Every time you make the effort of going up a hill, there is a downhill reward. However, the effort fighting the wind is just lost. In fact after finishing the 47 miles in well under 4 hours, I was in fact regretting not having signed up for the 67. Well, you ride and learn and I am a little wiser now.

Click here to help Sandeep's MS150 fundraising effort

What? You pulled a Hincapie?

After I signed up for the BP MS 150 ride in December 2012, the next step was to start preparing for it. As I have told you earlier, before this I had never even owned a road bike. But how hard could it be? The bike machines in the gym are way easier than the treadmills, aren't they?

So I enlisted a good friend who had already done the BP MS 150 before to help me buy a bike. And that was when it started to sink in. This is a completely different game compared to running. And the bike and the equipment are the least of your worries because usually your budget will restrain you to the kind of bike that you will end up with. Keep additional funds for all the gear - clothing, helmet, shoes, pedals, spares, tools etc.

As I was going through the process of acquiring these things I started to realize that everything is different in this world compared to the running world that I was taking a break from for a while.

The first obvious one were the brands - for some reason, there was no sight of the familiar brands of Nike, Saucony, Asics and Brooks. I was having to decide between Giro, Louis Garneau, Canari, Specialized, Trek, Cannondale and Hincapie.

Then came the terminology, people, routes, training plans, quirks – things I was expecting would be different.

What took me by surprise was how different the effort itself was because in my mind it was just another endurance sport. It took the first long ride for me to realize that the definition of “long” in bicycling was different than that in running. The first long ride was 4 hours. And after that I just sat in front of the fridge the rest of the day. I was hungry and no amount of food would satiate it.

Then it was the pain. During my initial days of pavement pounding, after a long run I would have sore legs. Getting used to the saddle for 6 hours at a stretch is another ball game. And of course there was that clip pedal that I had to get used to. I was told I will fall a few times before I learn to unclip. What I did not realize was how clumsy I was and how bad a fall can be. I won’t go into the gory details but it will suffice to say that after a helmet that has an end to end horizontal crack, I have learned to unclip. But I keep consoling myself that I am not killing my knees any more.

The fact that bicycling allows you to cover a long distance at a slow pace, has allowed me to appreciate a lot of things that I usually zip through – rice fields, pine forests, beautiful ranch houses, longhorns. It has also made me realize that Texas is not all that flat and it can be really windy in the wide open spaces. I have a new appreciation for gas stations and how some of them serve more as watering holes for riders than actually selling gas to trucks.

I think it is a great sport to get into even if you have not done it before. If you go in with a spirit to explore it will be a lot of fun.

Click here to help Sandeep's MS150 fundraising effort

Why am I doing this?

I have been a runner for some time now but never ventured towards bicycling even though working in Houston and that too for BP; for the last 9 years, I have witnessed the annual pedaling frenzy that surrounds the BPMS 150 event. Two things happened in 2012.Firstly, after long deliberation we finally decided to move to Houston and bid goodbye to Marriott rewards and free air miles which in the new equation now looks like a pittance and I really want to kick myself for not taking this decision earlier. Secondly, on a whim I made a New Year resolution to teach my son how to ride without training wheels. By April of that year, the kid already had his first Triathlon under his belt. And slowly we started to venture into riding longer, riding trails and it started to be fun.

I was still not ready to commit riding the BP MS 150. After all, it sounded insane to ride 150 miles over two days. And if someone tells you that you actually ride from Houston to Austin, it sounds even more ridiculous. We usually drive to another city, not ride a bicycle. Then I started to read about the ride, the cause it supports and the Bike MS movement. I have always believed that sports should contribute to the greater good of society. And every little bit we can do in our capability, we should. I have always admired the work being done by the likes of Susan G. Komen, JDRF and Livestrong. They have crowd sourced charity from passions people follow and channeled them into causes that make this world a better place to live.

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, unpredictable disease of the central nervous system (the brain, optic nerves, and spinal cord). It is thought to be an autoimmune disorder. MS can cause blurred vision, loss of balance, poor coordination, slurred speech, tremors, numbness, extreme fatigue, problems with memory and concentration, paralysis, and blindness and more. MS is not considered a fatal disease as the vast majority of people with it live a normal life-span. But they may struggle to live as productively as they desire, often facing increasing limitations. Approximately 400,000 Americans have MS, and every week about 200 people are diagnosed. World-wide, MS affects about 2.5 million people. And there is no cure yet.

And that is what finally helped me commit. It would be challenging, I had never been on my bicycle for more than 5 miles. I actually never owned a road bike. I could run a Half Marathon in around 2 hours. But BP MS 150 is two days of being on the saddle for at least 6 hours every day – well, at my speed it is definitely 6 hours. I will have to learn the sport from scratch. But then people who live with MS are facing challenges much larger than this. So I took the plunge. I registered for the race and will be riding with the Direct Energy Team. I am fundraising for the National MS Society and I would request you to kindly donate to this great cause at my Fundraising Page. Every small donation counts and I thank you for helping me with this great cause.

I have decided to tell the story of my journey through this blog, things that I will learn which might help others wanting to take on the challenge. Keep visiting this blog for updates, pictures of my training and stories and memories, as I collect them.