Last weekend
was TOSRV (Tour of the Scioto Rover Valley) which is a very well know ride in
the Ohio cycling community. The ride is always held Mother’s Day weekend and
goes 104 miles from Columbus to Portsmouth on Saturday and then returns the 104
miles to Columbus on Sunday. This is high mileage back to back especially this
early in the cycling season.
People often ask “Have you done TOSRV?” and what
they are really asking is “Are you a casual enthusiast or a committed fanatic?”
I have never done this ride before although I have heard many tales of the
tortuous mileage and extreme weather conditions. I decided this would be a
great year to cross the line of "committed fanatic" and get TOSRV under my belt because the mileage would be great
practice and I have so many miles in already this season. I asked Karen Z to
drive my car with the bike rack on and meet me at the rest stops as my own
personal support team.
Saturday
dawned bright and beautiful and Karen dropped my off in downtown Columbus. The next 104 miles were
relatively uneventful. There were a few challenging inclines and I was grateful
that I had enough strength and technique that I didn’t have to walk up any of the
hills. When I met Karen in Portsmouth I felt like I had paced myself well and
had plenty of “leg” left to complete Sunday’s ride.
Sunday
morning, we awoke to POURING rain. There was a solid band of rain stretching
from Portsmouth to Columbus and the radar showed that it was going to be with
us for the entire day. Yikes!
I told Karen
that I was committed to completing the ride and I would meet her 30 miles later
at the first rest stop in Waverly. Just
six miles later, I pulled off the side of the road and started calling her to
come pick me up. We finally connected 12 miles into the ride and I accepted my
first ever SAG to bail from a ride. I was cold, I was completely soaked, and I
was sobbing. “How can I ride my bike across America if I can’t even ride to
Columbus in the rain?” I wailed to Karen.
“It will be
different then,” she replied. “Let’s go to the Tim Horton’s in Waverly, you go
into the bathroom and change into dry clothes, then we’ll get coffee through
the drive-thru and all will be well.”
There were
hundreds of cyclists in Waverly and I was glad we were not stopping long
because the Tim Horton’s was full of soggy cyclists and I felt like a wimp for
bailing. When I walked back out to the car after changing my clothes, I noticed
there were now two bikes on my bike rack. We had picked up another soul who was
calling it a day.
Our new
friend’s name is Michele and her entrance into the story at this point is
another sure sign of the hand of God. Michele started to share her story with
us as we began the hour long drive back to Columbus. Turns out, she went with America by Bike from Maine to Florida 20 years ago
and still keeps in contact with the people she met on that ride. She helped me
to see that I have been thinking of the trip like it’s the Tour de France and
forgetting that it’s a bicycling vacation. She taught me that there’s no shame
in getting SAGed in (cycling term for rescued) if conditions aren’t safe or if
it’s just not your day.
Michele
said, “America by Bike will take great care of you. You’ll ride what you can,
walk what you can’t, and at the end of the day if you’re not back to the hotel
in time they’ll come pick you up. You will have so much fun and meet amazing people.”
What a great
perspective! Once again, I am guilty of over-thinking the situation and making
everything too important.
A wise
priest once told me, “When you are up to your neck in alligators, it’s easy to
forget that you came here to drain the swamp.” I have been so busy trying to
manage every minute detail of this trip and my training process that I forgot
that the purpose of the trip is to have fun.
There were
6,000 riders on TOSRV and Michele knocked on my car window and brought with her
the exact words of encouragement and wisdom of perspective that I needed at
that precise moment.
Wow. What are the odds of that!?!
