Events: The 2019 Rapha Festive 500 Day Five and Six

Ride Distance: 69 Miles over two days/ 98 Miles Remain

Cover photo is lifted from rapha.cc. We do not own the rights to it.

(2019) Off season riding is also about olfactory experiences. In the past two days of riding fall and spring have made visits to the winter excursion of the Rapha Festive 500, a self-propelled event challenging cyclists across the world to ride 500 kilometers between December 24 and 31. Riding around Bucks County in the darker parts of winter provides multiple ragged smells not normal any other time of year. Actually, the olfactory smells are a bit out of place in the winter, too.

The Festive 500 is taking its toll on yours truly. Stairs are much bigger than they were a week ago. Opening miles of rides are more of a joint warmup than a social affair. The slow-and-steady approach has yielded a bit more than what appears on paper. So far my Festive 500 has sent me over twelve thousand feet of climbing. The aggregate speed of all five rides is reflective in urgency. If there was a two-hour window to ride, it was jam-packed with hard efforts and efforts in the upper echelon of the zone of proximal development. There are no easy Festive days around here when obligations melt into one another.

If a rider were to average fifteen miles-per-hour, the Festive 500 would take twenty hours. That is nearly a whole day during the eight-day stretch. In that time there is a lot to think about, specifically if the ride is a solo effort. While there is thinking, there is also experiencing. 

Over the past two days, I have caught whiffs of scents seemingly only found in winter. In these parts it is deer hunting season. This area just saw a pathetic ice storm that collapsed weak branches. So the continuous essence of venison can be easily passed off as taxidermists processing deer, though it is doubtful the wafting would dominate so early into the deer processing season. Just today there was the heavy smells of tallow. The rendering of animal fat into items such as soap and shaving products could be a cottage industry, but the prevalence of its fragrance was noted in the valleys. I doubt there are many tallow producers around to dominate the olfactory landscape. 

Then there was the medium dosage of ice on limbs a week ago. Soft woods such as white pine struggled to bear the load of ice and limbs snapped. This is one of the reasons behind the relaxing smells of pine as people sawed succumbed limbs. Gone too were weaker deciduous limbs chainsawed with aggression. The wet smell of sawdust in the field welcomed me as I rode past. 

Our Festive 500 has set out to locate places General George Washington slept during the campaign of 1776. We located his third stop. Today we looked for the second stop, the William Keath House south of Jericho Mountain. A couple of researched photos online had us thinking we found the place, but Jericho Mountain is a berg of a climb. As we dealt with the steep pitches of the road, a sideways glance revealed a house matching the online photos. I’ll be damned to stop and snap a photo during such a struggle. There was no sign out front to alert passersby of the historical implication. This had me doubting the location of the Keath House. Nonetheless, I could not shake the wintry smell of melting plastic that seems to join me during many offseason rides. Meanwhile the perplexing yet enticing scent of Dr Pepper has us thinking of post-ride nutrition.

To round off the George Washington experience, multiple houses had their woodstove fed to warm the historical structures. The welcoming scent of burning wood lulled rides into a relaxing feeling when the pace should have increased. Early sunsets require more firewood. To descend into a valley covered by a blanket of blue haze meant things would be difficult for a few miles. Has anyone ever knocked on a door and asked to sit by a fire lately?

There were more smells. Exhaust is potent in colder weather. So too are the smell of burgers being cooked in cold air. The latter makes riding past burger joints especially difficult when the route spent the better part paralleling a river and trapped cold air. Yes a burger and thick beer would be perfect but so would returning home to shuck off the layers of lycra and fleece. 

The final scents over the past two days included decomposing leaves and earth. Yesterday’s outing was unseasonably warm and felt as if a Spring Classic would buzz past. Today felt as if people were not sure what day it was or what they should be doing. The grayness of it all obscured up from down, left from right, and winter from any other season. The burning leaf piles hinted it could have been a fall day. Rain drops began to fall in the final miles.

There are two days remaining to negate the balance of 310 miles in eight days. Tomorrow does not look favorable and the allure of the Festive comes into play: All is not guaranteed even when rides are completed at a daily average. I hope I am incorrect in my anxiety in those few shorter rides. Doing maths on each ride is taxing along with the unrelenting hills. The 500 kilometer finish line is so close. Perhaps the wafting smell of a burger on the last day will revive all the early excitement of the event.