Day Five... DONE!

I'm writing today's entries at breaks throughout the day so I can publish it right after the ride...

7.00 -- on the bus and about to leave on the 90+ minute ride to Latrun, our starting point outside (and way below!) Jerusalem. We are going to be joined by like 400 one-day riders, and I'm curious to see if they are fast and energetic because they are fresh, or sloppy and slower because they haven't been building up to it. I was nervous that it might actually be dangerous because we sort of have a flow for passing and moving around in our giant pack on the trails. But there's a rumor that they keep each group separate until the end. Hope so. There have been too many broken and dislocated shoulders, concussions and bad gashes. :-). Don't need more today. 

Achilles feeling less painful, but hopefully not an issue with my new tried as true pedaling style. Still going to pop three Advils in an hour. 

[7 hours pass]

Okay, turns out I didn't have time to update this throughout the day. We just rode and rode and rode. So here we are at the hospital at the end. It was simply uphill all day everywhere, and pretty dramatic when we joined the onroad group and all of the riders together, about 500, took the last two very long and steep ascents together. 

Dena and the boys were here waiting for me at the finish line, which was really the only way I could've imagined ending the ride. Dena has been watching and mapping and commenting and encouraging me all the way through, and I really felt like she was on the ride with me. The first thing out of my mouth was "we did it".  She is taking pictures now and I will add an epilogue post later on tonight.

After parking our bikes, there was a courtyard with kids being treated in the hospital giving metals to all of us as we came by; it was very special to see a couple of dozen of the kids that we've been doing this for right there to share the excitement with us. 

Some of you may know that I have a bit of an aging hang up, and one of the nice things about this ride is that the average age was somewhere between 40 and 50 with dozens and dozens of people in their 50s and 60s riding along just as well as anybody else. Give me a pretty good outlook for the future. :-). So I'm I going to do it next year? They alternate between the north and the south, and I've heard that the ride through the Negev desert is not quite as picturesque or exciting as riding through the hills of the north. And the weather down there is often very hot or very cold. So....? Today, probably isn't the time to ask me. Having trouble imaging getting up out of this chair to walk over to the closing ceremony.  :-)

Day...Four!?!

Our penultimate day started out with some solid uphill rides. For a change. The pain in my Achilles *hadn't* gotten much better and I was truly concerned for the first time that I wasn't going to make it till the end of the ride...

I talked to two physiotherapists here who both said that as long as it hadn't gotten worse over the course of yesterday, the chances are that I wasn't straining it on an ongoing basis -- but there was little chance  the pain would get any better. I asked how I would know when I should really just stop to prevent serious damage, and both said "oh don't worry, you'll know. Your feet will kind of stop being able to flex at all and the jeep will need to come get you." 

With that, I took off riding uphill and then, oddly, I was saved. I discovered that if I ride with my *heel* on the pedal, as opposed to the ball of my foot (the way you are really supposed to ride to transfer the most power), the pain actually vanished. Like, completely. It only took a few minutes to get used to riding like that and I was home free. 

So much so that in the middle of the day, before lunch, we had an option to ride three different 'single' routes at the top of Mt Gilboa and I actually took the intermediate one. It was 4 or 5 km through a fairly rocky narrow trail and then a long and steady 3 km rise to return to where we were eating lunch. 

The ridiculous thing was that the minute I got off the bike and had to walk on flat ground, I was in pain again. But I can live with that now, having made it through four out of the five days. I'm still have no problem with muscles or endurance... actually enjoying tackling the hills, valleys and everything else they throw at us.  I'm usually at the front third of the pack, which is not what I expected. 

Here's a quick panorama pic of lunch, with everyone trying to get their strength back. 

Tomorrow's ride into Jerusalem for the closing ceremony at the hospital is long and steep but I've done parts of it and I think I know what to expect. And again, riding uphill actually puts my feet into the best position to prevent straining my Achilles. So I think I'm good to go.

The only problem? Rain. It's scheduled to rain tomorrow afternoon and Jerusalem. Today it rained for the last 15 minutes of a ride, but it was fairly light and after we gotten off of the forest trails and onto asphalt. Should be interesting :-)

Now they're bussing us back across the country for some reason, to a hotel in Netanya, for a Gala dinner to celebrate having made it this far. 

[okay, dinner is over. Biggest highlight was awarding special riding jackets to people have have done this either 5 or 10  years. I can't even fathom that. Hats off to them.]

Day Three

So. The first day you Mountain Bike all day long over all kinds of crazy terrain, your body perks up and says "Hey, um, what THAT!? That was three times the ride I'm used to". The second day, it goes 'WHAAAA? You're actually doing this again? I hope you're not making this into a habit. Nobody invited me to that meeting." By the third day, I think your body says "OK Psycho, I'm not a machine you can just turn on, so let me show you a couple of things you got to worry about. Like, some pain. Time for that." And so...

I started today feeling all kinds of interesting new butt bruises and pains that I could *swear* weren't there yesterday. I also had some light pain in my right knee that came out of the blue. It didn't hurt all the time -- just when I pedaled. Kidding. Well, not really. But that one I took care of easily - I found that if I turn my knee in a little bit while I pedaled, the pain vanished. So I trained myself to do that over the first couple of hours and eliminated the problem. Next, to save my butt some  serious rock bouncing, I think I stood on the pedals a bit longer than I'm used to, especially on long, violently rocky downhills. My Achilles tendons apparently both took a lot more of a beating than I had imagined, and in an hour they both felt sore. It got steadily worse throughout the day and I'm hoping that some ibuprofen, muscle rub cream, and a good night's sleep will get them a little happier. It didn't keep me from riding at more or less the same pace I have been, but it just, well, hurt. Technically, unlike running, regular bike riding doesn't really use the Achilles so much, so I'm hoping for the best.

Today's route: We spent the first two hours of the day riding fairly steadily uphill over rocks, dirt, asphalt and more rocks, and then across vast flat space. The only challenge was that we were riding right into the wind. Strong wind. Hot wind. So it slowed us down and dehydrated everyone more than usual. On top of that, the first pitstop was 25 km and and I think we all could have used it much earlier. Anyway, that was actually just a warm-up because to reach lunch we had to rise about twice that height (like 300 m) in a fairly short distance. That's not the kind of math ratio you want to hear. In the end it was actually a nice, long steady uphill but not as scary as it looked on the elevation charts. The cooler part was that once we reached the highest point, we had a 20 minute downhill ride (dropping down almost the same distance that we had just ridden up, but on the other side of the mountain) to get to lunch. It was very aggressive and very long but felt great not to have to pedal even once for over 20 minutes. The last part of the day was riding due east across the heartland, across about 30 km of open fields. I guess everything is just been planted because it was all pretty much dirt. But hell, it was a lot of dirt. It was 100% flat, which meant the challenge was just plowing through it while keeping hydrated.

We've pulled into a fairly well appointed youth hostel, where due to some logistical fluke it appears that I have a five bed room all to myself. Not complaining :-)

Day Two (photo edition!)

Another day:

Today was frustrating. Not because the first two hours of the day were straight uphill towards the Carmel Forest region, but because we once we got up there, I really wished that I had a helmetcam that I could've used to take pictures and video all along. I did stop periodically to take pictures and shoot a couple videos because the 20+ km ride downhill along roads through the forest was absolutely stunning. Massive mountsides, endless vistas, dense forest...

Oh, and I wish I had taken a picture, but at one point we came across a cow on this mountain road. No clue what it was doing there. He, uh she,  started crossing the path just as I got there. Luckily I zoomed by just in time.  I could have reached out and petted her.  Not sure what the people behind me did :-)

One of the highlights of the morning was riding through a Druze town (Arabs with Israeli citizenship who serve in the army and are full supporters of the State) where the kids at a school had set up a band to cheer us on. I'm not sure you can see them on the left, but here's the shot of everyone stopped there. 

Anyway, here are the stats of the ride. Burning 3000 calories is a little sick. 

We got back to our base at around 4 (we are staying at the Dor Beach guest house for two nights... Sunset pic:

... And many of us dragged ourselves to the sea to stretch muscles and cool down. 

It's not even 8 pm and I'm already getting ready for bed :-).  

Day One

I have three words: Gonna sleep great. 

The first day was pretty wild. I sailed through the first two thirds, including a Challenge section, a tricky 'single' path through the forest billed as 'for experienced technical [the term for riding over large rocks, steep slippery slopes and generally dangerous routes] riders.' Glad to say my training was right on and it was smooth. Then the last third of the day was long and hard... Flat, but dozens of kilometers along the rough rocky, sandy, gouged paths along the perimeters of a lot of sprawling fields and orchards. And while it's definitely not a race (which is nice because everyone is really mellow and patient... When someone gets a flat or has mechanical problems, a couple of people usually pull over to help. Really nice to see.) you really find yourself pushing hard to keep up the pace. Maintaining 15 km/h for over an hour is tougher than you'd think. 

(oh, in the group picture below I'm right there in the front in the middle. :-))

And the weather couldn't be better. It was about 80° and sunny but never too hot. That's the forecast for the rest of the week. It could've been much hotter, or like last year from what I hear, it was really really windy and it made it really tough because the wind inevitably went the wrong way.

Oh yeah: I'm dictating all of these posts with Siri so forgive any of her silly blunders. :-)

Oddly, I seem to be the only one with the gel seat on my bike. I'm not quite sure why, but I'm happy I have it. Of course, I'd be lying if I said my butt didn't hurt, but I can imagine how it would be on a hard seat. Oh, and one of the people running the show told me that he got a real kick out of my video but he's glad that I upgraded my yellow bike to the one that I have now because it's not quite up to the level that I need for this ride. Whew! 

Finally, tonight they gave us a presentation by some of the people from the hospital, discussing the work that they do and the miracles they perform for some of these kids who a few years ago would've been written off and left him in ICU for life, as long as that would be. They really save them, adapt the latest technologies to give them a long life and the quality of life that is unbelievable.  Makes me feel better than ever about helping them do the job with this terrific group of contributors.

Good night! Zzzzzzzzz....

Here we go...

This is a one-week blog (maybe an annual thing?) to share the experiences of the ALYN ride with my family, friends, and most importantly, sponsors... I'll try not to bore you with minute-by-minute details -- I'll just toss in quick anecdotes about the ups and downs (literal and emotion) of this 5-day ride, and some fun pictures, to boot. I'm almost hoping to have this as a record to share with first-timers next year who want to know what it was like...