Riding a Century on a Vintage Three-speed Bicycle
I wanted to use that blog post title, because that is what I searched for when I decided, on a whim last Tuesday, to ride the Santa Fe Century on my 1952 Raleigh Superbe Sports Tourist, "putting," I told a few people on the ride, "the 'sports' back into 'sports tourist'". And to clarify, it was last Tuesday I decided to ride the Century at all. In terms of planned participation in an event, it wasn't. When I did a search for century rides on a three speed bicycle, I came up with nothing. That can't be right. There must be people giving it a shot. Come on Society of Three Speed folks! Now, there will be at least one post out there to serve as inspiration, or a warning, however you wish to take it. I've thrown down the gauntlet. Let's see some more three speed century accounts.
I had been thinking about it because I received my catalogue from Adventure Cycling a few weeks ago, and I always end up looking at the Adventure Cycling routes, and I wonder if I could ride the three speed across the country. The Route 66 Adventure Cycling route goes right through my city, and in my fantasies, I head down the Route 66 route to the Pacific Coast route and end up in Portland for a Three Speed Ride. Wouldn't that be nice! But of course, I have a job - one with four weeks of paid vacation, granted - but that still does not leave quite enough time to ride to California, and then up to Portland, participate in a ride, and head home.
But anyway, I'm always faced by the first question - can I even ride the three speed through the pass through the Chisos Mountains outside Madrid? Usually when I think I cannot do something on a three speed, if I try it, I find that I can. The Santa Fe Century runs along that pass through the Chisos Mountains, so it seemed a good opportunity both to try the climb and to see what a 100 mile day on a three speed feels like, you know, in case I want to do a 1000 mile tour in ten days, or a 3000 mile tour in 30. I'm not likely to, but, hey, it's good to be informed in case the mood and opportunity strikes.
Here I am at the start of the ride. I thought I had positioned myself near the back, but there ended up being many, many riders behind me as well. The canteen is not an intentional fashion statement of any kind. I tried to find one of those strap on water bottle holders at the last minute, (since the Raleigh does not have any sort of mounting points for a water bottle cage), but I couldn't find one, so the canteen from Rivendell had to be my go to. It worked well and did not slip around from back to front too much. I could not, I found, unscrew the top, take a drink, and screw the top back on while riding. Some people may be able to do that, but there are some people who can roll a cigarette with Bull Durham tobacco with one hand. (Or at least there used to be. It's not one of those valued skills these days, so it may have died out.)
My main concern in starting out was to stay within the bounds of the police escort out of the city. My biggest fear, of course, was being so much slower than everyone that I watched everyone vanish in the first three or four miles. That fear turned out to be completely groundless, and I actually made pretty good time out of town.
The ride started at 7:15 a.m. It was 45 degrees outside, and I don't think it really warmed up all that much, though the projected high was in the mid-fifties. The starting temperature was the one note I made in the entire ride for this report. I knew that I didn't really have much leisure time if I wanted to make it back by the time the event closed at 5:30 p.m. I stubbornly wanted to finish the ride, so I could write this post, and of course I wanted the finishers medal as well. That said, I'm not really (usually) competitive, and I'm not a regular rider at events. I probably ride in the Santa Fe Century once every three years or so, just because it is here in the city where I live. It's never occurred to me to travel across the country to ride.
The ride started out on Paseo de Peralta for a short jaunt before hitting the first climb up Old Santa Fe Trail. Then it jogged over to Zia Road before heading out of town on Cerrillos. It's goathead season here in the desert Southwest, and before we even left the confines of the city, I saw numerous riders off on the side of the road repairing flats. My Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, with slimed inner tubes, served me well.
Normally I don't do much with watching my speed or distance, but I dug out my old Garmin Etrex Vista and had it mounted on my handle bars. I now know that in low gear, unless I'm on a steep hill, I usually maintain 7-8 mph. In normal gear, it's more like 12-13 mph, and in high gear, I spin out at just about 21.6 mph. I was worried the lack of a really high gear would impact my overall speed through the day. My first goal was to reach Madrid, the first food stop on the ride at mile 28, by 9:00 a.m. I made it right on the dot. It was a fast, well fastish, ride there. However, that's the most consistently downhill of the entire ride. Here's the elevation profile:
That low point in the first quarter is just before the village of Madrid. That first rise, which goes from about 5500 feet to around 7000 feet is the pass through the Chisos Mountains. I was making good enough time at that point to stop for some food and gatorade. Here's the Raleigh at the Madrid food stop:
From there, I can't lie, the pass through the mountains was a slog. It's a seven mile climb from the bottom of that elevation profile to the first peak. There is a brief dip near the top where I was in normal gear for a while, but for the most part it was low gear all the way, and I was often moving at 3.5 mph on the climb.
Here's my big takeaway about riding a three speed bicycle on a full century. I was going slower than everyone else, but not a lot slower, (ignoring, of course, the Gran Fondo riders who finish the century in four hours). That resulted in watching people slowly approach me in my rearview mirror, and then watching them slowly recede into the distance in front of me. On some stretches of road, I'd be watching the same road rider for an hour or two, before they were far enough away to be obscured by the landscape. Admittedly, that could be a little discouraging, though it was not as discouraging as feeling like I was getting left in the dust. I was struggling my way up through the Chisos, and I asked myself if it was really hard, and the answer I got back was that it felt harder when I was focusing on my not keeping up with the other cyclists who were also slowly climbing through the mountains. If I ignored the other riders, then it was a tolerable climb. I'm not sure I would call any climb enjoyable.
I would say too, that everyone seemed to be pretty jazzed that there was someone riding a three speed in the ride, both other riders and motorists. I had one woman lean out of a truck window in Madrid and say "I like your style!" That was echoed by many bicyclists as they slowly passed me. "Is that really an aluminum canteen?" one rider asked me. I heard him wax nostalgically to his riding companions about his scouting canteen from his childhood as he slowly pulled ahead.
After you crest the pass, it's a nice fun run into the village of Golden and another stop for liquids at the base of Heartbreak Hill. I've climbed Heartbreak Hill on a Ryan Recumbent tandem with my wife, and I have climbed it on my 1984 Trek 520. I knew I would be walking it on the Raleigh. This is supposed to be a photograph of the hill, but I had somehow switched from camera to movie camera on my phone, so there's some slight motion in the next few photos. (I don't know if it translates as a movie onto the blog):
I just about lingered there too long, because the weather took an ugly turn. You can see how the clouds are starting to close in in the background of that photo, and some of the streamers of run beginning to fall. When I turned left onto NM41 at mile 65, I found I didn't have a tailwind at all. It was a particularly vicious side wind. My wife, who likes to check windy.com for wind speed and direction, said the wind was supposed to be 27 mph, but it felt, near the edge of the storm, but be blowing much harder than that. There was a big - and I mean BIG - American flag at one of the ranches that was whipping around in the wind. In front of me, I could see a few storm cells pouring rain, but off to the left, it was just an ominous wall of cloud all the way to the ground, and that was the direction I would be heading as I made my way back to town. A few drops of rain started hitting me, and then a few more. I pulled over and grabbed my Carradice rain cape out of my saddlebag. The wind was trying to whip the rain cape around, making it difficult to put on. At that point, it started to hail as well.
I believe that may well be the lowest part of the trip. My eyeglasses were slipping down, and it's hard to push them back into place while your hands are stuck under a rain cape. the cape itself was flapping around in the wind, and with the green waxed cotton cape, and the old three speed, I felt like I really didn't look like I should be riding along through a storm on a 106 mile ride. I thought about taking photos of the storm, but I didn't. I didn't want to stop to do anything, and all I could think about was the upcoming left turn toward Stanley, which would put me directly into the wind, and would have me heading right into the wall of the biggest storm I had seen in a while. We have storms that come through Santa Fe that blow up into tornadoes when they get out into the plains and move over the eastern part of New Mexico and on into Texas and Oklahoma, (where they allegedly don't have hills). I heard the next morning about tornadoes in Oklahoma that probably came out of this storm. At this point, I thought my chances of making it in by 5:30 were pretty much gone.
But the hail stopped and the rain stopped. The wind dropped a little bit. I pulled into the Stanley food stop and talked briefly with my old friend Stuart, who was helping with the food stop. I had not seen him in a few years, so I feel I was a little rude, and I thought I might be sliding into incoherence - "Good to see you, how's your son. That's good. That's good. Can't stop. Old three speed. No really high gear. No really low gear. You know. Gotta get in by 5:30."
I had forgotten how much climbing there is to get out of Stanley. That was a little disheartening, but it was offset by my delight at seeing the storm move off to the east. At this point too, I began to see lots of vehicles loaded with bicycles heading back into town. There were other people who were throwing in the towel at that point. I feel like I recognized some of the people who were at the Stanley food stop, and some of them looked at me as if I was a ghost, and I wondered if they thought I must be a ghost, because no sane person would have ridden a bike that old, that far, through hail and wind, and still keep going. I think those were the riders who were now being driven past me as I continued on.
I was thinking of skipping the Galisteo food stop, but I realized I really needed to use the bathroom, and I should not pass up the opportunity to have some more fluid and another banana. Plus, the climb out of Stanley culminated in a lovely downhill run, and I passed the only cyclist I was to pass in the latter 3/4's of the ride, which put me in a little more confident mood. I was, at that point, becoming a little unfocused. I kept wandering around trying to find a spot where I could prop my bicycle on its kickstand, but everyplace I tried was too tilted. I tried to put the nose of my saddle over the bar of the racks set up for bicycles, but the weight of my saddlebag and the internal hub just caused it to tilt over and slide off backwards.
I ran into my boss at that rest stop, who had passed me twice earlier. (He was spending more time at the food stops.) His wife had a contact torn out by the wind, and then she had trouble with her glasses, so he had sent her home on a sag vehicle, I believe. "Good on you, Paul," he told me, before heading out. One of the volunteers took a picture of me and the Raleigh, and then I was on my way.
The thing is, the rest of the way, about 23 miles at that point, is largely uphill until the last ten miles. I really didn't know if I would make it. I kept wondering if my legs would just give out from climbing in the Raleigh low gear rather than a true granny gear and big sprocket low. I kept watching the time, and watching my speed. The guy who I gave my patch kit to passed me climbing up through Eldorado and thanked me again. My ass hurt, and I had to keep shifting it around in the saddle. I felt like I was growing slower and the distances longer. I skipped the Cafe Fina food stop. I had ten miles to go and about 45 minutes left, but those ten miles included some glorious downhill runs. I rolled past the finish line right at 5:15 p.m. and collected my finishers medal from my wife, who was there waiting for me. The crowds I had begun the ride with where mostly gone, which made it easy to get a table at Second Street and order an Imperial pint of Sloppy Sloth IPA
Would I do it again? I have to say that the half century is a lot more fun on the Raleigh. The pace of the half century riders is much closer to a three speeds, and you don't end up feeling like you are battling the clock. I ride a three speed for fun after all. Am I glad I did it. Most definitely. Don't let anyone tell you that it's not possible to ride a century on a three speed bicycle. It proved to be a reliable, convivial companion, and I hopped right back on it the next day, though, admittedly, in hindsight that might have been a mistake, and today, I'm working form home.
(This post has not been proofread at all. How much time do you all think I have? I'll probably tweak this and that over several days as I reread it and see how many embarrassing mistakes there are.)
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