[For the next month, I will be posting dispatches from my weekly training rides with Team In Training (TNT), as I prepare for the 100-mile “America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride”  (AMBBR) in Tahoe on June 1 — all to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  If you’d like to donate towards my ride, you can do so here.]

I was climbing up a hill during last week’s training ride, in and around Half Moon Bay, when I suddenly felt like a machine that was overheating and out of fuel — which, I guess, is what I was.  I’d missed two full weeks of training and working out, but the early part of this ride had seemed to go okay.  Now, though, I was on this difficult ascent, and suddenly it wasn’t just difficult — it was kind of hallucinogenic.  So I did something I hadn’t done before, in (now) three years of endurance training with TNT: I got off my bike during a climb.

My body felt clammy now, and my legs were shaky.  I took a long drink from one of my water bottles (to which I’d added a “hydration mix” called Skratch), then wolfed down an entire package of super-sweet gummy Shot Bloks.  Possibly I was just on the edge of bonking, the dreaded affliction that comes upon all endurance cyclists at some point (I’m told): basically, your body runs out of fuel, and shuts down.  People have told me of crying uncontrollably by the side of the road and other yucky post-bonk manifestations; it sounds horrible, and usually you can’t recover from a bonk in time to finish your ride.

I was probably fortunate that the heatwave that attacked the Bay Area during the previous week had given way to a lovely coolness: had the temperatures been higher, perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to recover.  But the moments’ rest, along with the hydration and sugar rush, revived me enough to get back on my bike and finish that hill.

But then there were still many more miles — and climbs — left to go!  And what happened was, I reconnected with my speed-group teammates (I’d briefly gotten separated from them during my near-bonk experience), and I got a second wind (or something), and I mostly felt stronger and stronger for the rest of the 69-mile ride (you can click on this map to see more details):

Afterwards, I reflected on how there are two big, bad things you can feel on a tough ride:  One is pain — and that seems to be unavoidable, and even can become something you kind of enjoy (in a masochistic sort of way), especially after the fact.  But the other — the bonk — is a sudden negation of self, and it’s terrifying and sad and empty.  I didn’t go there last weekend, but I got closer than I’d like.

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My previous training ride, two weeks earlier (see map below), was a tough one as well.  Starting and ending at lovely Stafford Lake in Novato, we did a bunch of climbing — including the notorious Marshall Wall.  The Marshall Wall goes straight up, into infinity.  Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but only a mild one.

Lots of aches and pains during this ride, but — thankfully — no hint of bonking.  And when it was over, I could eat anything I wanted to, guilt-free — which is a big part of the sport’s appeal to me (another part being the celebratory, post-ride Epsom-salt bath).