The Tour de Yonkers

October 4, 2015 by peggyzing 2 Comments

I have been preparing for the Tour de Yonkers 27 mile ride by going on increasingly longer & more difficult rides. I discovered I’ve built up a good deal of stamina for long rides but I still have a hard time with the steep hills. Thus, my trepidation for the Tour de Yonkers – as Yonkers is the city of hills.

On a beautiful fall day, we began with about 100 other bikers. The ride was long and hard, the hills just as described. But I was pleasantly surprised to find my stamina held all the way to mile 22. That’s when the fatigue in my thighs became an entire lower body ache. This is something I’ve experienced in the last year on very difficult workouts. There comes a point when my FM says, "What the hell are you doing? You’ve done enough already. Time to quit."

My body wanted to agree but I couldn’t let it. I had bring out the willpower. Unfortunately, I still had to climb McLean Ave. from east to west. This is a long, brutal hill that gets slightly steeper about half way up. Ed refers to it as "the widow maker" because it comes so near the end and you feel like you’re running on empty.

At the base of the hill, Ed and I stopped for a few minutes to drink some water and let the legs recover from the short but steep street we just turned off of. Doubts of being able to do this began to dance in my head. Ed must have seen them play across my face because he looked me in the eye and said with absolute conviction, "You can do this."

The steel in his voice cut right through the doubt. We got back on the bikes and rode up that hill. Maybe I was slow, not much faster than a walk but I managed to save one gear change for that moment when the incline increased.

Cresting that hill was the only time I cried, just 2 short sobs of relief and triumph.

There were a few more hills after that but none as physically and mentally challenging as that. There was actually one more tough hill that Ed was afraid to warn me about ahead of time because he knew how burnt out I was. But in my mind I had already done the hardest part so the next hill was not worth stressing about.

We recently drove over the hill in our car and I was shocked to see how long it was. My memory of it was much shorter. It’s amazing to see the power of the mind. This is something I must use to my advantage on my Black Belt test.

Ed thinks I’m ready for a 50 mile ride. What do you think?