Day 4: Travel Day
The unique nature of this experience is the changing times at which teams rotate and ride. Each ride shifts ahead by 6 hours. Since our last ride concluded at 12am...our 24 hour 'break' takes up the whole of day 4 prior to our midnight to 6am ride. We are not actually riding 'today'. The time goes by fast though. Finishing a midnight ride means we don't actually go to sleep until 3am as we need to pack up after transition in the dark, travel, and look for food in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Not the simplest task.
After a bit of rest, we then need to drive ahead to a location that is estimated to be near our nex transition, eat again, and try to sleep for a few hours before we ride at midnight.
Our Wellspring Warrior, Will, continues to provide is with inspiration each day on the importance of what we are doing through notes and messages to our Team:
Day 5: Our full night ride
Night rides are awesome. There is very little traffic, which is great for cycling. It is also a surreal experience. We are talking about riding in the dark. There are no city lights...the only lights are those from our bike lights and follow vehicle. We are not able to see much ahead....which makes doing hills up or down, a completely different task. When you can't tell what is coming up or how long the hill is....the mental component of preparing for what is ahead does not exist.
We cycled 122kms from Dunlap, Tennessee, through the north west tip of Georgia, concluding in near the state line in Alabama. That's right...in one night, we rode our bikes in 3 separate states. I am so still amazed at how far a distance a simple bicycle with pedals and 2 wheels can take us. Take a look at the blue dot when we were at the point of intersection between the 3 states:
We also got to chat with a state trooper who hunted us down after someone reported seeing our motorhome stopped on the side of the road as one of our rest stops. Always interesting to explain what we are doing riding our bikes in the middle of the night.
Day 6: Congregating as a full team
We stayed in Jackson, Alabama prior to our next ride. Met some new friends, Mickie and Rose, at the front desk of the hotel. They were so excited to hear about our event and cause, they contacted the local media who came out at 430am to get some more interview and take some photos of the transition and our team starting our ride. Will need to hunt down the article at some point.
A family living across the road from one of our rest stops dropped by to learn more about what we were doing:
The plan for day 6 was to was all the teams congregate into Long Beach, Mississippi. Mileage was adjusted so that the last team rides in by 6pm. Our team biked 86kms from Jackson, Alabama to just south of the Mississippi state line.
Here's Team 5 arriving at Long Beach at exactly 5:59pm one minute ahead of schedule after a very tough ride in 40 degree Celsius temps:
Our Wellspring Lego guy also made it safely:
Day 7:
Our entire group woke up this morning to torrential downpours, thunder, lightning, and strong wind gusts. Looking outside...the 135kms we planned to ride looked to be pretty challenging (I'm pretty sure this is candy coating the situation actually...). Wow did we have our work cut out for us. Good thing everyone has been 'training' for the past 6 days! Here was our route:
And here was the final inspiration from Will:
We were going to get this DONE. And we made the decision to do it together. A full team of 20 riders supported by the full ensemble of follow vehicle and motorhome drivers. It's difficult to describe how significant and meaningful it was to ride as a full group...to work together to overcome all the elements. If we rode this same route as 5 separate teams, it would have been extremely difficult and we would have all arrived late. Instead...we did it in less than 6 hours. While there was a continuos head wind, the skies also cleared up closer to the finish line. It was picture perfect. Family, friends, and our Wellspring warriors cheered. An awesome New Orleans style street band played as we crossed the finish. Beads were flying. Champagne was flowing. And over $350,000 has been raised to support the free cancer programs provided by Wellspring.
So....another successful year of the ride has concluded. I'm so honoured to have all the support...and honoured to be connected to all the fantastic people involved with this event. It will be difficult NOT to come back again to help this organization for a fifth year in 2015.
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