Post Tour Ohio...

Thursday, September 12, 2013

It has been over three weeks since my last posting, and these are my sins…

I won’t try to go day by day into Tour Ohio in an effort to catch up with all that has happened since I began riding on Friday, August 23^rd.  I did keep a diary of each day’s events throughout Tour Ohio and I hope to write that all into a short story someday, but for now and over the next several days, I’ll do some summarizing.  By the way, if you’re a person using facebook and would like to see a pictorial story of the trip along with several postings I made, visit and like ‘Tour Ohio’.

I began the cycling leg with great trepidation.  I had concerns about riding so many miles in such a short time and how my health issues would impact the ability to complete that leg of the journey.  I fully expected it to take two weeks after which I was planning to move directly into the hike and then return for a weekend kayak of the Grand River some time in September.  Things didn’t quite go that way.

I rode two hundred miles over the first two days, but finished the second day struggling to find a suitable campsite and missing dinner and the hydration that should accompany it.  I began the third day in 90-degree heat and high humidity on the most difficult, hilly portion of the course and by noon was suffering from the early stages of heat exhaustion and severe muscle cramping.  I pushed through this in the early afternoon, but without success and found myself in a hotel bed shortly after trying to cool my core and re-hydrate my body.  After consulting with my brain and my Nilesh, I concluded that I needed lots more salt and made a concerted effort to replace what I’d been sweating out.  Remember, I was on the bike seven hours a day and losing about 3 pounds of fluid per hour.  This is s formula for disaster, and I had one.  Once I took fluid and salt replacements more seriously, I never again had such issues.

I completed the bike ride in a little over ten days and so found myself with time enough to do a two-day run of the Grand River with my nephew, Nathan Duer.  We completed the 44-mile distance in about 12 hours on the water and from that I returned home and began packing for the hike.  My pack came in around 35 pounds; less than I’ve carried into the Adirondacks on numerous occasions so, in my head, no big deal.  Wrong.

After walking about 8 miles, my hips began to ache and I could feel the blisters forming on the balls of my feet.  It went down hill from there.  I managed 18 painful miles that day, but left myself wondering where it was going.  I tried the next day, but completed only six miles before throwing in the towel and calling John to come and pick me up.

In retrospect, I did things very wrong with the biggest being ignoring the need to train specific to the activity.

Walking with a pack is working against gravity with my entire body weight plus 35 pounds.  To do so for an hour would not have been such a big deal, but to expect to be able to do it for six hours a day for five straight days was very poor planning.  I had done little hiking in the time leading up to Tour Ohio and then for two solid weeks had only done exercise that supported my body weight as I went – kayaking and cycling.  The muscles of the lower body designed to carry the load of locomotion had been detraining from their previously poorly prepared condition.  Things got worse quickly and I paid the price.

So…I’m recovering now.  The blisters on my feet cleared up quickly after lancing, but the pain in my hips remained severe over the next two days.  Finally, I hiked about 25 minutes and followed that with a 2-hour bike ride.  I did have some discomfort in my left hip over the final thirty minutes of the ride.

Future endeavors of this nature will begin with the hiking phase.  Weight bearing exercise is always the most difficult on the body and the conditioning necessary for its successful completion is nothing to take lightly.  I’ve known this from years of running and backpacking and the preparation I always put into it.  I ignored it this time fooling myself into believing that the conditioning I’d receive from over 1,000 miles of cycling would carry me through 100 miles of hiking.  I knew better.