Calamus Half Century

For the past couple years since I moved back to Grand Island, I've listened to everyone talk about this ride and how much fun it is and the monster cookies at the sag stops.  Last year, I skipped this ride as touring just doesn't make sense to me: pay to ride, and have to drive 80 miles to get there?  If I have to drive to ride, I'd rather go mountainbiking in Omaha...  Well this year I gave in to peer pressure and did this ride.  Pretty much everone from GI does this ride, in total there were 8 of us from GI at least of the people I know that ride from GI.

OK, so it was a lot of fun and it turned out to be an awesome day of training!  Mark and I drove up Friday after work and got a nice 20 mile ride in.  Added bonus of being in the Nebraska Sandhills so we got in some climbing efforts through the rolling hills.  Longest hill was about a mile with 235 ft of elevation gain.  Not bad for Nebraska...  That night, Burwell opens up the high school gym, so we had showers and an indoor smooth surface to camp on.  Unfortunately I slept terrible in the gym, despite the cool breeze I was just too hot.

Next morning the ride started at 8:00am.  After everyone regathered up at the first sag stop, we headed off again.  This is where the games began.  Mark squared off with Mike from Kearney and as they casually talked the pace accelerated to 24+ and battle was on.  I recognized this situation forming immediately and knew to grab a wheel and try to hang on because this was going to be fun.  Troy did the same and the four of us were off.  Thank goodness I've been losing weight!  I don't think I would have been able to make it through the rolling hills otherwise.  Troy ended up getting shelled off on a steep climb, and although I was near redline (LT heartrate), I managed to stay on.  Just when I thought, I was about to blow up the course changed direction and they relaxed the pace.  Although the pace was now around 22mph, I was in the yellow, but figured I could manage for awhile longer (drafting only - no way I could push that kind of speed).  I am pretty sure I just stared at Marks wheel for the next 20 miles and finally on the last 12 miles I was nearing the end of my endurance, but I wasn't giving up.  A gel shot later, I had some energy restored, but it was minimal.  I'm pretty sure I was crying in pain on one of the last rolling climbs, maybe even a tear or two, maybe it was just the wind, but either way I was still hanging on and fianally we were there.  I made it. 
Next we turned around and rode back a few miles to regroup with everyone else.  Final miles for the day was around 55.  Besides the awesome monster cookie they provide at the stops, there is free pizza dinner a the Pizza Palace in Burwell, even if I hadn't been starving it was awesome pizza!  Drive home wasn't bad and then I turned into a vegatable for the rest of day as I was shelled out!  Looking forward to next year already, I guess sometimes there are things more fun than mountain biking and I get to tell stories for the rest of the year about this ride.