Jan 2, 2012

The day I hit the wall on my bike during the 100-10

Scouting, as you may already know, has been a major part of my life. From the time I spent in Scouting as a youth with Brother Ray Hansen and Brothers Phil Barney and Trooper Hooper (both of the last two were Utah State Highway Patrolmen), to the time I now spend as an Eagle Scout Councilor. I have had many years of good experiences of which many of them will be told through out this book of stories.

The ones I will relate today go together since they are just two years of the participation in the same event.

After I had attended WoodBadge in 1986 I returned to me district to work as part of the Varsity Roundtable committee. A short three months later the other two members of the committee moved and I became the Chairman and recruited 7 other men in the district to help me. We wanted to find a high adventure activity that the Varsity members of the district could participate in that would also spark interest in a merit badge that they could earn as part of the participation in the event. It was decided that the cycling merit badge would be fun to earn and that an event where we would ride 100 miles in 10 hours would also be a lot of fun for them. So we planned the 100-10 Bike trip which we wanted to have as an annual event. I participated in it for the first two years and then due to employment and other changes was not able to participate in it again.

The first year was quite memorable because I trained for it by riding to and from Signetics in Orem each night and morning. Steve Claybrook and I were both on the committee and we both worked at Signetics so in March we started to ride to work together on our bikes to and from work. It almost killed me the first night since I knew it was cold outside to I wore a lot of protection and thus after the 14 mile ride my bodies core temperature had risen pretty high since it couldn’t get rid of the heat through all of that clothing. My face turned beet red and it took quite a while to cool down once I was at work. We were faithful though and rode every night that the weather would allow until the event in June. That year though as Steve and two of his sons rode to the starting point on the north end of Springville one of his sons was hit by a truck and so Steve ended up at the hospital with him instead. They rode together the next year however. My assistant was Orin Bawden in the Scout troop in our ward where I now served as the Scoutmaster. We had planned the event so that the younger scouts could also participate and thus we would have a lot more youth able to be a part of it in the district. He rode along in his van to help any who might struggle or who might need to have repairs made to the bike. He ended up picking up one young mad about 50 miles into the trip who just flat out couldn’t go another mile. I rode with the rest of the troop and of course helped mark the path around Utah lake that ended up being exactly 100 miles by the time we got back to Springville. That year was fairly uneventful after the wreck before it started. I remember that Ben and Jeff and I rode it in about 9.5 hours. It was a lot of fun and turned out to be a great idea.

The second year however became a nightmare for me almost. Steve and I again trained by riding to work but not nearly as faithfully as we had the year before. It had been an almost relaxing ride for me and actually for Steve as well as he came later and did it just for the experience of it after he had taken his son to the hospital and then brought him home again after they found he was OK.

 I again rode with my troop but not right with them this time. Now that Ben and Jeff had been on it once they wanted to see how fast they could do it and set a goal to make it in less than 6 hours. They were both robust young men in their mid to late teens and thus felt that was a good challenge. Well I didn’t try to stop them and in fact choose to ride with the last young man in our troop in stead to be able to give encouragement and help along the way. However inside of me is that competitive spirit that just doesn’t give up and after about tem moles into the ride somewhere in Provo I just could not take riding so slow so again I turned the job over to Orin since he had been right there behind us the whole time anyway and decided to catch up with my sons besides they couldn’t be very far ahead of me and I should be able to catch up in a couple of miles. I rode like the wind as fast as I could and yet for the next 45 miles I didn’t catch up because well the wind was going a lot slower by then. But after having passed up a lot of scouts and finding that at each checkpoint that they were actually getting less and less far ahead of me I kept pushing my body to go as fast as it could and finally 55 to 60  miles into the trip I spotted them ahead of me. I caught up more or less and Jeff seemed to take pity on me and dropped back a little just to ride near me.  Then just a few miles before the spot where we would stop for lunch I hit the wall. It was just five more miles to get to Eureka and I could stop but my body said to stop now. Well I didn’t because I knew in part what it felt like to hit the wall in long distant running that I had done in High School so I knew I could continue but it still was pretty hard to peddle just one more time around to keep the bike going. I rode that way for a mile or so and then finally got back to where I was able to make it on into the resting place and get under some trees to cool off and get some food into me. After about 20 minutes we started again even though I wanted to wait another ten or so I knew that I couldn’t hold Ben and Jeff and the others back any longer. The rest of the trip though was great and I did complete it in about 6.5 hours. Ben got there a lot sooner than I but I still made it. I even took time to stop and look at the blow snake that was crossing the road on the backside of West Mountain.

Those were two good years and two memorable bike rides along with the other 10 t0 15 mile rides we took as a troop to Salem in preparation for it and I shall never forget them especially that spot on the backside of Utah lake where I literally hit the wall physically and had to work so very hard to continue the journey.