Leg Three: 57.8 miles (162.0 total)

I roll out of town up a long straight paved road (like which roads in Kansas aren’t long and straight, am I right?) the pavement ends and it’s a long gradual uphill. I’m not even 20 miles out of town when I feel a rumbling in my stomach. I’ll spare you all the details, but that was the one contingency I didn’t plan for. Luckily there was a bridge in which to take care of matters, but please believe me when I tell you prairie grass is not your friend. (Pro tip: always sacrifice your socks first. Trust me.)

I’ll just leave that there.

Stay in that groove!

There is a group of 5 or six of us on top of this hill, not the very tip top luckily, as the road was cut down slightly, where there was an embankment on either side, just higher than head height. We weren’t completely exposed on the point of the hill, but we were the closest thing to it.

Not going to lie, these lightning strikes were seriously uncool

Entire sky goes white. Intense heat flash for a split seconds and it lingers on my left index finger, as it’s touching the shift lever. Just ever so slightly, like a firework burning, or a CRT television being turned off. White ball of fuckery, arcing right there on my finger. Holy hell. Luckily I couldn’t feel it, well I did, it hurt like hell, and then it didn’t. Weird.

Lightning Crashes. Why the hell is my finger numb, what the fuck???

One guy to my left says “We… all just felt that, right?”

Guy screams out “My uncle got struck by lightning and he died, we gotta get off this hill!!” Yeah, thanks dude, that really makes this a helluva lot better. Let’s not panic, let’s just ride as a group, we’re safe in a group, but no, chaos ensues, and we bomb down the descent of this hill, and it’s starting to rain. There is somewhat of a pack mentality on the downhill, but as soon as we hit the flats, it’s every man for himself as the rain starts to come down. Seriously, dude on a fat bike, starts hauling ass, rain starts coming down harder, and we catch some people, some people drop back, till it’s just one person in front of me. “Please, just let me have one person, just let me hold this wheel, probably not safe to be alone out here, no not safe at all. Don’t take the full brunt of another hit, that probably wouldn’t end well, no not at all, probably be ground out from my tire and pop a sidewall. Shit, my day would be done then. Protect the tires. There are spares in the car, but that’s at checkpoint 3, and that is literally hours away. Hours.”

That’s how the train of thought went, with a few more swear words thrown in for good measure.

Brutal Kansas wind and rain

So the rain continues, the wind blows from right to left, and I try to get it captured on the GoPro, but my main focus is not getting too far away from the person in front of me. Of course I did get a pretty sweet shot of the lightning flashing around us, which was cool. I’ve never gotten more aero on a bike than I did while that storm was raging and thunder and lightning were crashing all around.

Holy shit this is a long leg of this beast. I ask myself many times throughout this one, “Why? Why in the hell is it so long? Can’t we swap the first and the third, I could really use a short segment right about now.

Slowly the rain starts to let up. It’s not quite as dark, not raining as hard, I haven’t heard thunder for a while, seen lightning for even longer, and pretty soon I’m just rolling along in the cool of the air, slightly darker than it should be for the afternoon because of the clouds and it felt quite pleasant.

I hate to see someone’s DK end this way

It begins to hit me here that I haven’t had anything to eat for a while, and that I’m just now coming back around to feeling like eating something. I also discover that the bacon I thought I had lost at some point was actually in my pocket, but I had somehow overlooked it in the three different times I’d tried to find it. Kanza can be weird like that.

Speaking of losing things, Clif Bloks are apparently the worst food to carry on DK. They are packaged in single rows of gummies, too tall to angle across a jersey pocket, so they slide in vertically. They’re also heavy enough to be easily ejected while going over the rough terrain. I swear I could have survived the race on scavenged water bottles and Clif Bloks.

I also discovered that during this leg, that I could no longer stomach my beloved Skratch in Matcha and Green Tea. The one drink I love in all conditions was now being rejected by both my gut and my taste buds. No more Skratch for me. I would have given anything for a drink of something else other than Skratch.