A Note from Fatty: I met Jenni and Pat at the Philadelphia LiveStrong Challenge last year, and they are both incredibly fantastic, positive people. Jenni’s got their race report over at Jenni’s blog. The report begins with this photo:
A Note from Fatty: You gotta read this one.
We are both deployed with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the USS NASSAU. I’m a Harrier pilot by trade and John is an Aviation Ordnance Officer. In other words, he makes the bombs and slaps them on the planes, and I deliver them with care.
I’ll admit it, when I had heard about the first “100 Miles to Nowhere” I thought it was a horrible idea. I admired the “bullheaded” nature of the effort, but who in their right mind rides 100 miles on a trainer or around their cul-de-sac?
Fast forward 2 years and here I am, 111 days into a deployment at sea on an amphibious carrier. That’s 111 days without a single stop in port. The only option to keep bike fitness from withering away is to ride the spinners in the ship’s gym.
Thankfully, I have a friend and co-worker out here with me who shares my love of cycling (probably even more than I do) and keeps me motivated to get on the trainers.
We are both fans of the Fatty blog, and when the 100 Miles to Nowhere was announced this year, we thought what better place to do it, than stuck on a hunk of steel floating in the Gulf of Aden?
With a flight schedule to contend with and the unreliability of mail out here, we figured the chances of receiving our kit on time and having the 8th as a free day were pretty slim. However, the moons aligned and our kits arrived with a few days to spare and the ship even scheduled a rare “day off” to celebrate our half-way point on the deployment.
You have to understand that our ship, the USS NASSAU is over 30 years old, and I doubt the spinners in the gym are much younger than that. We are Marines, so we are used to making due with less than perfect equipment. Adapt and overcome, right?
It took a little maintenance and TLC to get the spinner up to speed for the ride, including gerry-rigging a cyclocomputer on the bike and sewing some homemade straps for the toe clips. My wife even mailed me my saddle and some of my cycling gear from home to make the ride a little more enjoyable.
John came through with the “support” equipment too. In order to keep our heads in the game and break up the monotony, we plugged his laptop into the TV in the gym so we could watch some cycling races. The 2009 Paris-Roubaix took us all the way to the 75-mile mark or so and we finished up with the Col de Tourmalet stage of the 2001 Tour de France.
We even sprinted with Boonen in the velodrome and got out of the saddle a few times on the Tourmalet. It made the ride a lot more fun and enjoyable.
We knew we would get a lot of questions from our shipmates as they used the gym, so I made a couple signs to spread the gospel of Fatty.
We had a great deal of support from our friends and co-workers during the ride, including manning the feed zone and taking pictures. We even had our own domestique who brought us ice-filled water bottles and even rode the last 40 miles with us.
We completed the ride in 4:50, with only a few “comfort breaks”.
Including our breaks, our total time was under 5:10. All things considered, the ride went by much faster than we had expected and I dare say it was even fun.
Our only regret from the day was having to do it all inside. We had grand plans to ride the last hour on the flight deck or one of the catwalks on the ship. Due to some logistical issues, we couldn’t make that happen. All in all it was a huge success though.
Seeing as there is zero opportunity to ride a bike out here, it was the closest either of us had to a real day of cycling (we even busted out legit cycling kit, despite the opinion of lycra among most Marines). So we would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to “escape” for a day.
We’d also like to thank your sponsors for making this happen too – especially Clif for the nutrition, and DZ Nuts for the tingle down below. It was an honor and a pleasure to be a part of this year’s ride. Keep up the great work Fatty!
– Captain Jason R (snot rocketeer) and Chief Warrant Officer 2 John M (bykjunkie)
OK. We did it. Neither of us have ever done a century. I came close 23 years ago, but haven’t done anything close to that since. It took us just over 8 hours of riding, with a peppering of breaks in between. We rode the flattest, least windy place we could think of in San Diego: the jogging path around Lake Miramar.
The path is almost 5 miles around, so we did twenty laps starting at 5:45 in the morning. After a couple of laps, however, Randy’s GPS told us that the loop was not, in fact, 5 miles, but approximately 4.85 miles around so, on our last lap, we threw in some loops-de-loops and a little back-tracking so that we could finish the ride at the end of a lap.
Lake Miramar is noted for the waterfowl that think they own the place and large number of exercisers that use the lake on weekends.
From 5:45am to 8:30 or so, the ride was quite pleasant: cool and quiet. From 9am to 11am, the riding was hazardous. Runners think they own the road and run right in the middle, or even cut the corners. Bicyclists go way too fast. In-line skaters zigzag back and forth all over the place. Of course, the little kids on their bikes haven’t learned the rules of the road and wander unpredictably all over. We saw a fellow biker crash and probably break his collarbone around 11am. Fire rescue showed up to haul him away.
After lunch, the crowds dissipated but the wind picked up. We also had the pleasure of watching an amphibious car drive into the Lake, tool around for awhile, then drive right out.
That was pretty cool.
The last couple of laps were pretty hard on both of us. We ached everywhere despite the large dosed of Motrin that we both took as preventive medicine. Randy’s legs were bothering him. My wrists were killing me. My wife and son came out to welcome us across the finish line. They also rode a few laps with us. One of my neighbors came out and rode a few laps earlier in the day. At the end of the race, we toasted the event with Gatorade (Joe on left; Randy on right).
I got home around 5pm and collapsed right on the living room floor. It took everything I had to crawl into the shower before dinner. Yes, we will be doing this again next year! I should take the 50+ lycra category hands down.
– Joe F
A Note from Fatty: I have been loving reading all these 100 Miles of Nowhere race reports — it feels like I’m at a really awesome family reunion. Today there’ll be more reports, with the blog updating pretty much every hour.
You know what else these reports have done for me? Get me totally energized about ramping up my fundraising efforts for the fight against cancer. You people inspire me. Thank you.
I’m a 100 pounds overweight true fat cyclist, and yesterday I did something I never did before: I raced 100 km. The longest I ever cycled before was 76 km. Once. I’m proud.
And I won the Snailwatching-women-in-Munich-Division of the 100 Miles of Nowhere.
My race was so boring that my adventure of the day was the following:
RIP grapevine snail.
By the last round it was only a spot on the road, and nothing really happend in between. And I managed not to die of boredom.
Can’t wait to hear more interesting stories!
– Biene
I’m happy to report I am the repeat winner of the “my neighborhood” 100 MoN. The course was a 1.6 mile loop, which is pretty flat, and potentially fast, but the wind and my focus on not overtraining took care of the speed.
My daughter joined me for 30 miles of the ride, as shown in the attached photo – her longest ride to date.
Oddly, no neighbors asked what was going on.
We did run into our Pastor on Friday night, however, and when my wife explained what I was going to do he became very excited – he had apparently been looking for a sermon illustration relating to people who work very hard but never get anywhere because they lack direction.
Overall, more fun than this should be – thanks for organizing the event.
– Jim T., sometimes posting as BamaJim
PS: That’s it for today. Check back tomorrow for hourly updates from 100 Miles of Nowhere racers! — FC
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