52.44 Miles (84.4 kkm) for the day. At around 30 miles (50 km) I was “bonking.” Bonking is a mountain bike racing term for running out of energy and not wanting to continue. I had been making good progress along the Eire Canal Path, but just didn’t have any energy. I haven’t been eating enough and using more energy than I am taking in. I haven’t weighed myself, but the clothes are much looser.
I had some left-over chicken and spaghetti from the night before so I stopped at a small park in Pittsford, NY, right next to the bike path and ate it at a picnic table. Then I pulled out my folding mat and took a nap for a little over an hour. Recovered, I moved on and made it to Palmyra for the evening.
Prior to the nap I had ridden through the section near Rochester, NY. I was looking forward to this section because the map indicated it was paved, it was a big disappointment. It was paved, but it must have suffered the “brother-in-law” effect. That’s where somebody in the local government doing the funding has a brother-in-law that has a friend that knows somebody, etc., etc., etc., that will do the job for cheap. It ends up somebody profits by it, but the end user gets the lowest quality product. In this case it was a riding surface that was like riding on the moon. There were huge, and I mean like six-inch (15 cm) frost heaves that would launch me airborne. Someone had gone through and actually painted bright orange paint on them so there was a chance to slow down before hitting them.
It was bone jarring and made my eyeballs blur. Later in the evening I had a dental cap come off, I can only wonder if the shocks worked it loose?
So far, the unpaved surface has not been too bad and certainly easier to ride on than the paved one through Rochester. Somebody should be called up on this and made to fix it, it is awful.
Just east of Pittsford I ran into Alan. He called out to me as I was going by to ask if I had a bicycle pump. I did, and it even has a pressure gauge. He had exhausted his CO2 canisters trying to put pressure back in his repaired flat bicycle tire. We fiddled with it for a while and finally got some pressure back into it. That was when I noticed that his tire was shredded and almost unusable. He had about three miles to go, I hope he made it. If not, it would take an hour of walking. the CO2 canisters are nice because they’e tiny, but once empty, they’re pretty useless. I’ll stick with the pump.
I finished the day at a Best Western motel, south of town. Unlike most hotels, there were no eating establishments nearby. I pedaled back to Palmyra to a pizza joint and ordered two slices. The slices were massive! I could have easily done with just one, it was the size of a small, six-slice, pizza. It tasted fine, it was just way more than I could handle. If ever in Palmyra, NY and you have a hankering for pizza, Mark’s Pizza will certainly fill you.
I’ll try to eat more and drink more. I suspect the bonk was also do to extreme heat and insufficient liquids. We’ll see.