24th Annual Bone Ride - Ride Report

[Mshue]

Yesterday, I participated in the 24th annual “Bone Ride” starting just outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the home of Tom Schuler. The group, nearly 200 strong, rides from Milwaukee to Madison and back, 158 miles round trip. As I understand it, the ride dates back to Tom’s 7-11 days and is named in honor of Mark Frise, a friend of Tom’s and a former national bike racer from La Crosse. Frise's nickname was Bonehead.

While this ride was on my cycling bucket list, the distance is daunting and I likely would have talked myself out of it had these guys (some of my riding buddies) not committed to doing it as a group:

group bone ride.jpg

Kelly, Larry, me, Jim and Koby - pre-ride, thus the smiles.

Here’s Tom giving a pre-ride talk:

tom schuler.jpg

Tom organizes this ride every year. This year there were at least four sag vehicles staffed by volunteers (each rider chips in $5 for gas and lunch for the drivers and another $5 for the Wisconsin Bicycle Federation – that’s it).

Here’s a pre-ride picture of the riders just before we left from Tom’s house. We picked up another big group at a bike shop 15 miles out of town.

bone ride big group.jpg
(sorry for the lousy iphone pic)

Naturally, just 10 minutes in, I got hit from behind, which pushed me into Kelly (riding his brand new Indy Fab – ouch). I was ok, but Kelly’s rear wheel was in bad shape. Fortunately, Brent Emery was right nearby. He grabbed a spoke wrench from the sag van and had Kelly’s wheel back in working order in minutes. Then he paced us back to the group in measured fashion instead of the all-out panic pace we would have employed on our own. Very cool.

Brent Emery.jpg

We split into four groups and rode a nice tailwind to Madison in orderly fashion, hitting State Street at around 12:30. We grabbed lunch before congregating in front of Yellow Jersey for our 1:30 departure.

bone ride yellow jersey.jpg
Part of the group in front of Yellow Jersey.

The ride back was into a headwind and splintered pretty quickly. Our little group stopped to reload our water bottles and lost our part of the peloton. I hated to lose the bigger group, but I wouldn’t have made it without the extra water. During yet another water stop about 120 miles in (I believe I drained 13-14 big bottles while riding, plus some more at lunch), we saw a large group pass. We finished filling up the water bottles as fast as we could and spent the next 10 miles working like mad before we finally caught them. We all agreed it was worth the effort to have some help with that headwind.

All in all it was a great day. While riding in such a large group can be stressful, the camaraderie on the ride is fantastic, owing in no small part to the tone Tom sets from the first email announcing the date. I was pleased to finish in eight hours – more than double the longest ride I’ve ever done. Big thanks to the guys in the first picture – I would never have attempted this without having those guys to rely on.

[zank]

Awesome. I wish I had done that ride last year. Mike, congrats on the major miles! D2R2 will be a piece of cake for you.

[kobyson]

Excellent report, Mike, and nice use of your iPhone as well.

You know we'll never see another day of weather like that, right?