Steve's Excellent Swedish Adventure
Ride Day
WE MADE IT! After 189 miles, 15 hours, countless food, pee, and coffee breaks, Team Fat Tire completed the VätternRundan bicycle ride. The crowd rejoiced as most of the team crossed the finish line together. Steve, the slowpoke, received his teammates accolades as he crossed some 20 minutes later.
The biking Gods were smiling on us as we left our accomodations at 3:30 in the morning, the weather was perfect, sunny, only a slight breeze. "We can never do it again", Tommy says, "the weather can not get any better than this".
At 4:06 we left the starting line, the 244th group of 60 riders each that left every two minutes. Escorted through town by a motorcycle, it had the feel of an International biking competition.
After 90 minutes of exercising our pace line changes in order, we hit the first rest stop, time for one of the many coffee breaks on this trip. Here we experience one of the big differences in a cycling event from what I'm used to. In all the Colorado rides I've done, the rest stops are stocked with bananas, apples, oranges, cookies, nutrition bars of some brand or another. On this ride we get to choose from rolls with a two raisins inside, salty pickles, and warm blueberry soup. The Europeans have a different concept of athletic nutrition.
Because of the long distance though, we do get two meals on the ride. At Jonkoping we're treated to hot dogs and mashed potatoes. I love the ketchup and mustard dispensers, big bags suspended from above with large squeeze tubes underneath. Gives you the sensation of milking a cow. The first bananas also make an appearance.
At Jonkoping, on the southern most tip of the lake, we make the northward turn and actually get a little tailwind. This is good as we begin to encounter a few hills. They may not have any mountains on this ride, but I guarantee there are hills. At this point I realize my riding pace is slower than the rest of the team. From now on I only see them at the rest stops, such as at Karlsborg, home of a fortress protecting inner Sweden from some real or imagined enemy long ago.
As the ride progresses, the riders get strung out all along the route. Each rider has a number which indicates when they started. I pass riders with numbers in the low thousands, knowing they have to be more tired than I, as they started four to five hours before I did. There are some residents of Motala, the starting point, who have done this ride each of the 34 years it has been held. I pass one old guy with a number in the teens, riding a bike that looks like it has done them all and only comes out once a year, wearing jeans and sandals.
With only a couple more rest stops to go, Lance and Lori are physically tired, but still high in enthusiasm. Just past the 40km left sign, Tommy's boss, visiting with his family, provides his own rest stop stocked with something the other stops don't have, beer. This was definitely the best stop of them all.
By the end my legs are weak, my knees are hurting, and all I want are flat roads to the finish line. Instead I get probably the worst hills of the ride. I crack, breakdown, and give in...I shift to the smallest chainring. Whatever it takes to finish, just keep pumping those legs. Finally, Motola comes into view again. The pain goes away, the legs strengthen, I push to the end, cross the finish line at 7:05, accept my medal. It's over. I did it! Hooray!
We head back to our accomodations, where we're greeted warmly by Sylve, son-in-law of Birit Nilsson who graciously turned over her apartment, which was just 300 meters from the starting line, to us for a couple of evenings.
Sylve barbeques some kind of dead meat, of which our legs could qualify, and we hit the sack. Tommy wastes no time, and is snoring loudly before most of us have gotten in our sleeping bags. He bothers us not at all.