Rides We Like: The Longest Day Ride
In theory, the Longest Day Ride had everything falling in place until it all fell apart. Fresh off a spring event campaign, there was firepower in the legs. The fact the summer solstice fell on a weekend this year meant access to a full fifteen hours of riding with the sun up. It was there. All of it. Everything was in place to ride more than an imperial century. How far could I ride in fifteen hours of sunlight? And then everything unraveled.
The Longest Day Ride, an unofficial challenge to ride as far as possible on the sunniest of days in the northern hemisphere, has always eluded me. A quick scan on Strava shows lame attempts at distance for various reasons: weather, work day, or a bevy of excuses. I’ve always wondered just how far I could ride in fifteen hours, especially after covering 135 miles in eight hours with Mike (yes that Mike) back in 2016. By that math, I should be able to crack 250 miles in ideal conditions. Those ideal conditions were there until they weren’t.
Who knows what the malaise was. All I remember is a sudden deflation of motivation after Black Fly Challenge. Basically, I felt awful. Slowly - very slowly - I collected congestion as the summer solstice approached. Did I overtrain while mixing in a head cold? Whatever the cause, I was off the bike for an entire week after Black Fly, and I didn’t care. Even the summer solstice wasn’t enough for me to force the outcome. I was apathetic and static.
Slowly the distance was reigned in. Could I ride two hundred miles in one day? Not any more. The bar was lowered to an imperial century. One hundred miles would bank a lot of distance toward my 2025 mileage goal. That was abandoned. When all was said and done, I aimed for a metric century and hoped for the best. In my stubborn ways, I swore I was able to ride north of Easton, explore Delaware Water Gap State Park, and return with remarkable mileage. Despite my clouded judgment, I really thought this would be the outcome.
I was so convinced I was able to pull this feat off, my opening miles reflected my optimism. The direction was dead reckoning toward points north of Easton; it was my pathetic speed that betrayed me. Not only was my head in a fog, but so was the rest of my body. This was followed by an intense heat up - the day's temperatures were to flirt with ninety-degree (32 C) sunshine. I felt awful, rode awful, and the weather was slowly cooking me. Sooner than usual, I dropped the stubborn curtain and pointed the bike toward the creakybottombracket.com office. So much for titling the ride “century” in some way.
The route collected cheap miles from Riegelsville, PA, to Bulls Island, NJ. With hardly any climbing in those twenty miles. The late afternoon sun was given every chance to fry me, and it took it. As is the norm, the final twelve miles climb up from the Delaware River, adding to the struggle. With zero panache, I rolled into the service course, racked the bike, and collapsed on the couch hoping a dosage of air conditioning would fix everything. (It did not.)
Despite all the frustrations, this year’s Longest Day Ride turned out to be the longest Longest Day. It may not have been as long as I had hoped, but to have come quite close to a metric century when feeling abysmal is a win. One of these Longest Days, I hope to ride from the CBB office and make it to the Catskill Mountains in one go. Maybe that’s why the effort was subpar - the possibility of making it to the Catskills one way was not realistic. That’s what I’ll tell myself until next year.
Until then, the summer sunsets and toasty treks are upon us. Cycling season is officially here, even if the solstice rolled in with weak sauce. It doesn’t have to be a longest day to get longest miles.
