Riding With MoC

On Sunday morning, October 24th, after an unnecessarily long opening ceremony, the 235 yellow-clad riders of the Alyn Hospital Wheels of Love Bike Tour finally hit the road.

Although we started out together, about half the riders were going off road and the other half, including me, were staying on road. I was concerned about the actual start because it's easy to crash when there are so many riders leaving at once. I watched my 'mentor' from Chicago move to the front and followed him. There is a much better chance of avoiding a pileup at the front. The start turned out to be smooth and uneventful.

We all rode together for a couple of miles when we hit a junction. The roadies made a left and the off roadies went straight. We wouldn't see them again until Monday at lunch since we were staying in different places on Sunday night.

The first few miles were very flat. There was a nice tailwind so the ride was very comfortable. What a mechayah. I was riding at a leisurely pace, talking to various riders who where riding at a similar pace. I would end up spending most of the next four days riding with the same ten or fifteen riders most of the time.

Of the 235 riders, about 115 were from Israel, overwhelmingly olim from America (some from thirty years ago, others much more recent). 83 came from the US, 20 from Canada and 8 from the UK, a couple of Frogs and one from Australia. One of the fun things about the ride was finding out the backgrounds of the various riders, both during the ride and in the evenings.

The leisurely part of the ride came to an abrupt end when we climbed this nasty hill. It was much longer and steeper than anything I had done in the US and was harder than Friday's climb to Yad Kennedy. I was happy to have had the Yad Kennedy experience because I was better prepared to handle the hill. I went into my 'granny' gear and handled the hill slowly but without much difficulty. My heart rate stayed well within my aerobic zone.

After the climb the road remained flat until just before the lunch break. One had to 'earn' lunch by climbing another enormous hill, even longer than the first one. We were rewarded with a delicious lunch of pasta and hot soup (which I gobbled up even though the temperature was at least 90 degrees). We were also rewarded with a magnificent view of Kadesh Barnea, where Bnei Yisrael encamped for a very large portion of it's 40 year stay in the desert.

After lunch we had a very fun descent and then a relatively flat remainder of the day. We rode north for about 40 kilometers along a tiny road literally at the Israel - Egypt border. Not one single car passed us the entire time. The Egyptian border guards were waiving to us as we passed which was pretty cool.

Finally, we made a right turn and rode into Nitzana Village where we would be staying the first night. Since I had been riding pretty hard all day, I actually reached the village early, by 2:30 p.m. At that point I was able to assess my relative strength and I was pleased that it appeared that I was in the top 15 to 20% of the roadies.

I quickly found my room, picked the best bed (again), showered, washed my jersey and bib shorts and rested on the grass outside the room. I had gotten only 5 hours of sleep and had ridden 62 miles in pretty nasty heat. The remaining riders came in over the next two hours with a few of them having to be picked up by the sag van.

I found out later that a couple of people dehydrated on the first day and one actually had to be hospitalized overnight (and had to withdraw from the ride). Another two withdrew because they felt they hadn't prepared properly.

BH, I felt tired but great. I felt that all my preparations had paid off. I didn't feel the least bit sore and I was ready for another hard day of riding on Monday. We had gone places that I had never seen in all my many visits to israel and I was looking forward to what the next day would bring. I was sleeping by 9:30 p.m.