Kyle DeMilner - Ride The Lobster Qualifying Ride Report - Day 1 - March 15, 2008
Start Time: 9:00 AM
I arrived at Valley Forge National Historic Park a little before 9:00am, did some stretching and double checked the map for the connecting path to the Schuylkill River Trail. Before I headed for the connecting trail, I had to find the nearest bathroom. Valley Forge is full of nice rolling hills so it was a good warm up to the bathroom and back. After the little warm up ride, I checked my gps to add a waypoint and found it to be completely useless, despite the new set of batteries. If I did manage to turn it on, it wouldn’t stay on long enough to enter a point. Most of the time it just showed flashing vertical lines. I was a little frustrated by it, but I couldn’t fight with electronics all day, I had to get riding.
I headed down the hill and crossed the street to the connecting path. This was a very narrow walking bridge over the Schuylkill River along the very busy route 422. I come out to the trail head of the Schuylkill River Trail to some smiles and stares from fellow morning trail runners. The path was nice and wide, smooth pavement through a nice cool wooded area. The trail was fairly busy which kept me motivated to keep moving. Some cyclists would ride next to me and make a comment or ask a few questions. I was encouraged by the feel of the pavement and found it very pleasant to ride on. I was thus surprised to find the trail changed to rough packed gravel once I hit Oaks. At first I thought I had taken a wrong turn but kept on moving forward and soon saw adequate signage for the Perkiomen Trail. The gravel was certainly tougher to ride on, but it was still fun. I took fairly frequent breaks to swig some Gatorade and munch on a cliff bar.
After a good 3 hours of riding I hit Spring Mountain. The ascent wasn’t quite that bad, but my legs were already starting to fatigue a little. I filled the quiet woods with squeals from my brake as I managed a nice controlled decent down the 12% grade. I continued my progress, battling some head winds, some soreness in the saddle, and some muscle fatigue, but I made it to the Crusher Road trail head in Perkiomenville at around 1:00pm. Thanks to the trail map I had and the frequent signage along the trail, I figured I had ridden about 30 km. My new iphone proved very valuable as I was able to enter some estimate numbers into the ride calculator to see if I had ridden far enough.
I took a little lunch break, called my brother Max for some encouragement and headed back. This time, Spring Mountain proved a lot tougher. I didn’t start my braking soon enough on the descent and had gained too much speed to start braking controllably. The trail was paved for the descent and I decided to ride it out, pedaling very fast to keep up with the momentum of the wheel. I had just reached the bottom where the trail levels out into a covered foot bridge where I started to relax a little too quickly and went flying over the front of my unicycle. My left hand and my right shoulder took the brunt of the impact, my shoulder taking on the duties of slowing me to a stop as I skidded along the grooved concrete. After inspecting my wounds and getting over the anger at my own stupidity, I pressed on, with a noticeable pain in my left knee.
After the crash, the ride home was a lot tougher and certainly more painful. I wasn’t sure I could make it out riding again for day 2, but I knew my wife, the veterinary nurse, would take good care of me if I just acted like a wounded animal. When I got back across the river to the Valley Forge Park, I questioned my decision to park where I did since there were nothing but hills between the connecting trail and the parking lot. I made it to my car, bruised, bloody, but proud and accomplished for finishing my 1st half of my qualifying ride. The wife started up a hot bath for my arrival and I headed home at about 5:25pm
Total distance: 71.178 km
Ascended: 588m
Descended: 588m
Gravel: 49 km
Wind: 13 km
Final score: 181
Carryover: 32.75
