Friday night, I got a text message from one of the cali girls, Ashlee - the one I had done the 35km Eastlink ride with last year.
'Hey buddy, wanna ride the Lilydale-Warburton trail tomorrow?'
My first thought? No f*cking way. This weekend is the first weekend in a while that both me and Dave had no plans. Our only plan was to sleep in, enjoy each other's company. The Lily-Warby trail is 40km one way, mostly hills (both down and up!), gravel.
My next thought? Maybe I should. Last weekend Dave worked and I sat on my fat butt all weekend. I did get stuff done (unpicking for calisthenics), but I sat on the couch for 48 hours. I've signed up for 12WBT again, and the season starts Nov 19. I should probably get myself organised and start making exercise a priority. Also, I ate like crap on Friday (almost 2000 calories over my allowance!) so the ride should negate SOME of that.
I messaged back. I was in.
I looked up some of the bike websites, and found out the info. In my head, we were going from Lilydale to Wandin (about 20km return). There was no way we'd make it all the way to Warby and back.
The time came (2pm) and we were at Maccas getting our bikes ready. Something in my mind just clicked. We were going to do the whole thing.
I've been receiving emails from a motivational speaker guy - every morning I read about how I should be changing my mindset, my thought patterns. Changing my perspective on things to a more positive outlook. I started the ride with positive thoughts.
These quickly became harder and harder to keep positive, though I refused to let myself think that I wasn't going to make it. All of the 'flat' parts felt uphill. The distance didn't pass anywhere near as quickly as we'd planned. Because we started out at 2pm, we had about 5 hours of sunlight to travel the 75ish km. After an hour, we'd only gone just over 10. This wasn't going to happen. Ash and I kept pedalling. We got to the 20km point, Wandin, and Ash mentioned that we could turn around at any time. I'd been thinking that maybe we should turn around, but in that split second when the words left her mouth, I thought 'No. We're doing this!' Ash is pretty motivational towards me - she's got an amazing body, amazing dedication to cali, and a great personality. She knows when I'm struggling and gives a little pep talk just at the moment that I'm trying to sum up the courage to tell her I'm giving up. I told her we were going to push a bit harder, and get to Warburton. I had decided in my mind that we would ride until 4:30, then turn around. It was about 3:30, with about 10km to go. We got there at about 4:20. Woohoo!!
We found a pub, got a coke, and went to the loo. Sitting there, on the deck, Ash and I looked at each other and both said 'how the f*ck are we going to get home?'. I suggested we call a cab, one would stay with the bikes, the other would get the cab back to the car and drive up to get the other. Ash suggested paying one of the guys in the pub with a ute to drive us back to Lilydale. Instead, we got our wobbly legs back on the bikes and started riding home. The sun was going down, and we would be running out of light shortly.
Ash has a little computer on her bike that tells current speed, and we aimed for 20km/h on the way home. We averaged about 15 on the way up, so wanted to push harder. Ashlee had been given some advice regarding gears and hills, and we really tried to put this into practice, especially on the way home. We were really pushing hard, keeping in low gear and keeping the pedal rate (it's called cadence, we have since found out) high. We were travelling well, until we hit the massive hill that had seemed so lovely on the way there.
It was a killer. Ash is quite a bit fitter than me, so I let her go ahead at her own speed (she stopped every so often to let me catch up!) and concentrated on pedalling, breathing, and keeping my thoughts positive. I didn't look ahead, I looked down just past my handlebars. I changed down gears so that I could keep my breathing in line with my pedalling, and took a really deep breath every few breaths to avoid hyperventilating. That hill almost beat me. We got to Mt Evelyn (about 10kms to go) and I was struggling. I felt like I was about to vomit, and at the pedestrian crossing where we had to stop to wait for the lights to change, my legs starting shaking uncontrollably and I felt like I was going to pass out.
We'd bought lots of water with us - I had mine in a backpack with a tube so could suck away whenever I wanted. We also had some jelly snakes and muesli bars which we'd eaten half of while we stopped at the pub. At Mt Evelyn, we'd been riding for about 4.5 hours. My body was giving out on me because I had not fuelled it properly.
We crossed the road, and stopped on the other side. I ate some more snakes, had a big drink, and a rest for a few minutes. The sugar kicked in and I felt right to keep going. The last 10km flew. It had looked flat on the way there, but it seemed that it was actually slightly uphill, because we hardly put in any effort to get home from there. Gears were changed all the way up, and we were flying with very little effort. It was getting dark (that big hill had taken a LOT of time) and neither of us have lights so we really needed to get back to the cars.
We got back at 7:45pm, and had logged 5:12 riding. We had stopped at the pub for about half an hour, although it felt like about 10 minutes.
Next time, we'll leave a little earlier so that the pub time can be extended - not to drink, but to rest and refuel. We also decided that next time we'll stop at least twice in the way up and twice on the way back for lollies and drinks, to avoid the body-shutdown situation. I really didn't feel well, and don't want to feel like that again!!
I truly believe that I would have given up if I had let my mind wander to the places it usually does when I'm challenging myself. Usually, my mind gives up long before my body, and my thoughts turn negative very quickly. 'I can't do this'. 'It's too hard'. 'Next time. Give up now and come back another time'. 'I can't'.
The thoughts this time were 'I can'. 'I will'. 'This is hard, but I'm not dying'. 'Keep pedalling'. 'Keep your breathing calm'. And the big one, that I'm not quite sure I believe... 'Ash will never make you do this again if you go all the way this time'......
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