Author: MIT Spokes

Washington D.C. to Linden, VA – 88.6 mi, 4947 ft (5833 ft if you make the wrong turn)

Def SAG (noun): Support And Gear. The minivan holding all the teams’ gear, food, etc.

Def SAG (verb): a.k.a SAG out. To get picked up by the car during a ride, usually to be driven to the end point. 

Before explaining today, I’d like to provide some context on the current state of the team. Two nights ago, the most sleep anyone on the team got was 4 hours. Last night, the team got 2 hours of sleep and then taught at the juvenile detention center for 7 hours. After driving an hour back, cleaning bikes, eating dinner, packing the van, buying groceries, doing laundry, and getting ready for bed, it was 11pm. 

With this in mind, we decided to prioritize recovering our sleep before today’s ~90 mile ride by waking up at 7am instead of the 5am wakeup we had decided to do after finishing teaching. The plan was to leave the house by 8am to drive to DC, arrive at 8:30am, take pictures, and then start biking by 9am. That did not happen. 

At 8am, half the team was still upstairs getting ready and all bags weren’t in the van until 8:30am. We ended up leaving at 8:40am and, because we were now driving into downtown D.C. at peak rush hour, we didn’t get to the Lincoln Memorial until 10am. 

After taking a few pictures, Spokes 2026 was off from D.C. for their first ride of the summer!

The fanfare of departing from the Lincoln Memorial was short lived unfortunately as we immediately ran into a slew of technical difficulties (e.g. red lights for ages, falling walkie talkies, twisting ramps causing the first fall of the summer, making incorrect turns getting out of the city, etc.). After getting out of D.C., we biked together for no more than 2 miles before splitting up into faster and slower groups (despite planning to all bike together for 20 miles). 

Drew, Carmen, and I biked together for a bit before Drew fell behind a little. Carmen and I continued on to the first rest stop at mile 20 where we checked off the first bathroom break a la fresca and then regrouped with Drew. 

Prior to the first rest stop Tatiana and Nunu both called me to let us know that Drew’s drivers license was found in the laundry machine back at the house, and so Tatiana would be driving back to get it and, as a result, wouldn’t be able to meet us at the rest stop. We decided to mess with Drew a little by asking him to show us his ID to make sure “he had the right one in case we get stopped by the police”. I’ve never seen someone so confidently claim they had their ID while already holding all cards in their wallet. (Note from the future: we are currently keeping a count of things Drew has left behind, we’re currently at 4 things in 3 days). 

We then continued biking towards the second rest stop where Tatiana would meet us for lunch. We decided to have Drew and Carmen draft so that we could all stick together (Carmen said she was winded from getting to the first rest stop). This turned out to work very well. We were able to hold a solid 15-17mph pace all the way to the lunch stop and get Drew a new speed PR. 

So far, and up to around mile 40, we rode along the Washington & Old Dominion bike trail, which was super nice: separated from the road, very green, and had occasional tree coverage.

We eventually reached the second rest stop around mile 35 where we waited 5-10 minutes for Tatiana to arrive with Drew’s ID, set up sandwiches for lunch, and started eating. After ~15-20 minutes, the second group (Aarushi, Nunu, Caroline) arrived and joined us for lunch. 

After everyone finished eating, we let the second group go ahead while Drew, Carmen, Tatiana, and I packed up lunch. We then set off towards the second half of the ride.

Eventually we reached the 3rd rest stop around mile 55. Nothing very notable happened yet but at this point we did realize that in 2 days we had eaten two 1kg bags of dried mangos.

The story of a hero starts now. 

It was currently around 5:30pm with 35 miles to go. Our Warmshowers¹ host Jen wanted us at the house before quiet hours at 9pm when she puts her 2 year old baby to bed. As a result, I decided to bike ahead alone (since Drew and Carmen wanted more recovery time) so I could start showering and unpacking (+ because Jen and her husband Jim had very kindly offered to help drive any straggling members to her house to ensure we got there in time – I had 0 intention of letting this happen to me since I wanted to fully finish the ride). 

So I then left the park we had been using as our third rest stop and turned right out of the parking lot back onto the road we had been biking along. Meanwhile, the rest of the team would spend 20-30 minutes more resting before turning left out of the parking lot to retrace our steps and continue along the road actually part of our route. 

Unbeknownst to me, my bike computer had quickly rerouted when I made this right turn. Our bike computers have graphs of the upcoming elevation along the route and show stretches of steep elevation gain in colors ranging from green (flat) to yellow to red (steep). When I looked down at my bike computer, I saw shades of red that I had never seen before on that bike computer. 

I chugged up a 1 mile, 500 ft elevation gain hill, before coming up upon a 4-lane highway with cars going 60mph that my GPS was telling me to cross and continue biking on. The highway had a generous shoulder so I waited for a break in the cars to cross and start biking uphill along the highway with cars and 18-wheelers zooming by. My elevation graph was showing deep red and purple(I didn’t even know that was an option), so I decided that I should warn the rest of the team that things were about to get pretty tough. 

Luckily, the stretch along the highway only lasted ~5 minutes before I had to cross back over to the other side straight into a 1000ft climb. This would become my new highest climb (beating the 500ft one I had just finished), but after around 30 minutes of chugging up the hill at 5mph I reached the “flatter” section at the top and continued along the rest of the road. 

After riding along the road for a bit, I got a call from Drew that no one wants to hear: that I was off route. My first reaction was that HE was the one off route, but after pulling off the road and checking the original route I confirmed that I was on a parallel road heading slightly more north. Turns out the whole team was confused when the horrible climbs and highways I had prophesied would arrive, since the route they were on was very reasonable. 

At this point I considered my options: retracing to get back on route, which would be ~8 miles back and require me doing 43 miles in 2 hours i.e. not feasible; continuing on the current route which, after checking Google Maps street view, I found required biking on a four lane highway with no shoulder for bikes i.e. incredibly unsafe; or the tragic third choice of being the first person to SAG and get moved back onto the route. 

With little other choice, I called Tatiana to ask her to come pick me up where the road I was on met the highway and have her transport me ~6 miles along the highway to get back on route. 

Luckily the distance I biked along the road was around the same distance as the other road but with an additional 1000 feet of elevation gain so I still had grounds to stand on that I finished the ride. But at this point Drew and Carmen were ~5 miles ahead and I needed to complete the last 20 miles in the next hour to avoid getting actually SAG’d out. It’s worth noting that one of the reasons Jen and Jim offered to help SAG us was because they didn’t want us going up and down the exact mountain I did  

Anyways, as soon as I got dropped off the route and my bike was off the car bike rack I booked it along the route (making sure I was headed the right direction this time) at ~170-180 bpm, huffing and puffing with my legs burning the whole way. 

After 11 miles I passed Carmen and, shortly after, I passed Drew (😜). 

Around this time, Aarushi, Nunu, and Caroline had all been SAG’d out at 76 miles, by Jen’s husband Jim since they were too far behind to make it to the house in time. Side tangent but to be SAG’d out they were told to look for Jim’s red pickup truck. At some point they saw one parked near the meetup point and approached it, only to see a sign reading “No trespassers. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.” They quickly left the area and were safely picked up by Jim later. 

After passing Carmen and Drew, I pushed the last 9 miles with my legs burning, painfully climbed the gravel mountain to Jen & Jim’s house, and rolled up to the house as a champion. 

But did we really win? In the end Carmen and Drew also made it without being SAG’d out since the time it would take to SAG them out would’ve been longer than just letting them finish the ride. Additionally, the route for the next day was a 60 mile 8000 ft elevation ride notorious among the Spokes teams every year. Finally, because we arrived so late Jen and Jim ended up putting their baby down to bed an hour late. 

After arriving, we quickly ran a shower line, ate the ground beef tacos Jen had kindly cooked for us, unpacked, ran laundry, had a team meeting to plan the next morning, and did some blog writing. It was over dinner that Jen warned us about our ride the next day being a dangerous route due to its sharp, low visibility turns. After this rough day 1 ride no one was eager to do the dangerous + painfully steep ride, so in the end we swapped our route to a 30 mile 2000 ft elevation ride that got us to a different camp ground and got the job done. Jen also told us we had done the longest day 1 Spokes ride she had ever seen 😁.

I guess I won after all?

– Nate

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¹ Warmshowers is a platform where touring bicyclists can open up their homes to other touring bicyclists to stay with them while out on multi-day bike rides. MIT Spokes has utilized Warmshowers heavily throughout the past 12 years to get housing across the US. Many hosts have hosted multiple generations of Spokes teams – for example, Jen has hosted the MIT Spokes teams four times (and the team is very grateful!).