4.5km S of Lincoln, MT to Swede Gulch, MT
Mileage: 183.7 km (114 mi)
Riding Time: 17h 58m
Standing: 15th place
 |
| Day 5 Map |
Up at around 4:15am for another day! Nice night. It was starting to take a while to warm up in
the mornings. I made sure I stuck with
my mantra of just keep moving forward.
It doesn’t matter how slow, just move.
Went up and over a pass with a lot of walking. The map calls it Crossing Divide #1. It was pretty steep with a lot of loose
rock. With the single speed it was
unrideable…for me at least.
 |
| Somewhere outside of Lincoln |
The Achilles were still bothering me, but the pain would
come and go. My right ankle was developing some pain in the top of the ankle
too. All part of the race I told myself. I thought that night I would move my cleats
and see if that would take care of things.
My hub was holding up. It didn’t
sound the same and the clicking while I coasted would come and go. I was concerned, but what else could I do but
keep riding. Hold on until Helena!
Coming down over the pass opened up into some nice farm
land. I saw cowboys moving some cows
around in the field. I think it’s called herding. Can you tell I’m not a
herdsman or whatever they call themselves? It started to rain a bit and I
decided to put on some rain gear. Later
on I regretted taking the time to stop.
The rain stopped and it started to get warm so I had to take everything
off again soon after. I stopped to use
the facilities (facilities being a tree in the woods). I met up with Luke and we rode for a
bit. This is the first we spoke. We leapfrogged each other on the way into
Helena. Up and over another pass and I
was happy to see the long paved downhill into the big city. I was feeling a bit
tired and my ankles were pretty sore. On
the descent, all I could do was coast.
Can’t gear up with a single speed.
That’s really nice, but being tired I started to nod off on the bike
going down the hill. It’s a bit
disconcerting feeling that disconnected feeling going 40km/hr on a busy
highway.
Luke caught up right as we rode into town and he stopped at
a gas station. I was making a bee line
for the bike store to get my hub looked at.
Before the race, I put the bike stores as waypoints in my Etrex30 along
with writing the hours of operation on my map.
The little flag on the GPS was a godsend. I made it to the bike store and the guys at
the Garage were great! I left the bike
at the store and walked up the street to Pita Pit. I got a big pita and a smoothie and walked
back to the store. The mechanic opened
up the hub and found some bits had broken off.
I know how to fix a lot on a mountain bike, but I don’t know much about
the inner workings of a hub. I was glad
he was able to fix it. Brake pads were
replaced and I was ready to go. Jose
came in for some repairs as well.
Once I was ready to go a huge rainstorm rolled in. It looked like one of those familiar
downpours that are temporary so I decided to dawdle a bit until the rain
passed. The rain stopped after a little
while so I was happy with my decision.
The mechanic told me about a store to resupply at so I started looking
for it. I started following the route
out of town and ran into Luke again. I
didn’t see the store and reached the edge of town. I needed some food so I left Luke and turned
back to find this store. I had a lot of
trouble finding it and this neighborhood was full of steep little hills. It was frustrating having to turn around and
I knew I was wasting time riding around in circles and up and down these little
hills. Eventually I found it and was on
my way. Helena has some cool old
structures on the way out. I like to see
these old decrepit structures and imagine how they were used in their
prime.
Once out of the town site, sleepiness started to set
in. The scenery was not that
interesting and I started to nod off on the bike as I ground the pedals
along. I was starting to discover that
big meals did not work well for me. I
would always feel this wave of fatigue for a few hours after. I kept slowly pedalling up and down these
boring rolling gravel hills, swerving back and forth in a half asleep
stupor. I didn’t feel too happy and was thinking,
“this is definitely a low point in the race”.
All of a sudden Pavel rode up beside me.
Here was the guy I helped on day one.
It was nice to snap out of my little sleepy funk with someone to talk
to. I was a bit worried he would be
angry that I didn’t get out my pump and rode away, but he seemed thankful for
the help I gave him. The other guy
helped him out. After a bit of a chat,
he rode away up the hill. I felt I was
going so slow again while I watched him ride gradually away up the hill, but
just continued to tell myself, “just keep moving”.
I wondered where I was in the race. I was surprised that I was this far up in the
pack so I was trying my best to figure out how to make my riding the most
efficient as possible. The gravel roads
climbed and climbed until I was upon the Lava Mountain Trail. There were a lot of corners to take and the
trail split off all over the place. I
did my best in following the pink line on the GPS and
looked for tire tracks in the mud.
Seeing other tire tracks was reassuring to know I was on the right
track. The trail deteriorated into an
unrideable, steep, rutty, muddy mess.
Hike-a-bike all the way up. I
hesitate to say “mess” because I really liked this part too. I think I am a glutton for punishment or
something. The hardest parts are the
ones I really enjoy.
 |
| Hike-a-bike up Lava Mountain |
I kept eating and pushing for what seemed like forever. I was hoping I would catch up to Pavel, Jose
or Luke, but the only other riders I saw were a couple of Northbounders. We had a chat and they kept saying how crazy
they thought single speed was. I can’t
relate. I love my single speed. So simple and fun. We talked a bit about the
Basin and they said, “If the wind is at your back, don’t stop!” These words
with their southern drawls would echo in my mind for the rest of the race. Nice guys.
It was great talking to them.
After summiting the Lava Mountain trail, it was some tricky rocky single
track down. Fun!
The trail spat me out near Basin. I didn’t stop and continued to ride along the
busy highway on the parallel gravel road.
It was starting to get dark and I started to think where I would
camp. I saw a rider in the distance and
noticed I was slowly creeping up on him.
I had to stop since I was running low on water. There was a nice spot to stop and filter some
and I liked to camp with a full bladder.
After filling up, I continued to ride on. There were a couple of informal camping sites
where I saw some RVS. I kept riding into
the dark and saw some lights ahead of me right at a day-use campsite. It was Pavel who stopped and was putting on
his leg warmers. He said he was going to
push on to “Butt-eh”. I decided to stop
and sleep in the outhouse at the day use area.
I was happy to be in a concrete structure, but a bit paranoid of someone
knocking on the door for some reason. It
was great to have a place I could sleep on top of my bivy and air out the
sleeping bag a bit.
 |
| Cozy and warm |
I took advantage of the shelter to move my cleats. My ankles were still bothering me and I was
hoping this would fix things. After some
fiddling with the cleats, reading my Bible, and eating a couple of gas station
sandwiches by the stink hole, I was off to sleep like a baby. A sore, sweaty, smelly baby. I think I smelled worse than the stink hole
(which really didn’t smell that bad).
No comments:
Post a Comment