Randonoodler

2010 Solstice Ride Redux

2011-10-31T21:23:00.000-07:00

Last year in honor of the winter solstice a few folks from my Randonneuring club did a 200km all-night ride just for "fun." Documentary film maker, Dan McComb filmed us for possible use in a project he was working on. He did this edit to help promote our 2011 solstice ride. I'm the guy with the Christmas lights in the wheels first seen at 0:36 and then several other spots later on.

There are so many reasons to like commuting by bicycle...

2011-09-15T17:05:00.000-07:00

PBP Ride Report Part IV: Don't Confuse the Bridge with Brest

2011-09-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

Gavin and I pulled into the Carhaix control at 5:20pm where I soon found a slightly frantic Kelly who was sure I had died or worse. We hung out far too long at the control eating and yacking and I slathered some of Kelly's secret formula butt salve on and then we eventually got back on the road. Gavin had decided to hang out at Carhaix and take a shower before continuing on into Brest so I said goodbye and thanked him for the moral support.

Although the weather started getting ugly and some rain started falling not long after leaving Carhaix, I was really feeling pretty good on this stretch. By "good" I mean emotionally. Physically, my butt was killing me. My feet were really hurting too, probably because I was spending a lot more time standing than usual. Still, I was enjoying the scenery and Kelly's company and I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else. Of course, it helps that I was also a little delirious. We had been riding for well over 24 hours without any sleep and I was starting to feel it. I remember at one point cruising along watching the world go by, seeing a traffic sign in French and thinking, "Whoa, that's weird. That sign's not in English." Then I remembered I was in France and it all made a little more sense.

The climb up to Roc'h Trevezel was a long slow grind, but I found it much easier than the stretch before Carhaix since it never got too steep. And the view from the top was inspiring enough to make it well worth the trouble. After the summit I somehow got it into my mind that it would be just a quick downhill ride into the control in Brest. In fact the control was still more than 50 km away. Still I kept expecting to see the suspension bridge leading into Brest around every corner. After an hour and a half of that I started realizing that my mental calculations of how far we had to go were off a bit. Finally a little after dark we saw the Pont de l'Iroise and crossed the Celtic Sea into Brest.

But wait... Once again, I was a bit off on my calculations of how far we had yet to go. I was thinking that we'd cross the bridge and ride a few blocks and we'd be at the control, cold beer in hand. Instead we had to wind our way through another 10 km of roundabouts and rail crossings before finally reaching the control in downtown Brest.

I attribute my miscalculations about the last leg into Brest to being distracted by my backside, which was screaming at me every time it made contact with the saddle. It's hard to think straight with all that screaming.

When we pulled into the Brest control Sarah, Cody, Adam and my friend Dave were there whooping and clapping for us. It was 10:20pm, a little over 29 and a half hours since we had left St. Quentin. Everyday I'm aware of my love for my family on some level, but I don't think I've ever felt it more than I did when I came around the corner to see them there on the wet streets of Brest that evening. Kelly's family was there too all smiles and high-fives.

After getting brevet cards stamped, we sat down at the control with our families for a quick bite and a cold beer (a rarity in France). I told Kelly then that I didn't think I was going continue on from Brest. Between my butt and my feet I had been doing some serious suffering for the past several hours and I was having a hard time imagining enduring another 35 - 40 hours like that. Kelly was disappointed but I had no doubt that he could make it to the finish without me. Just to be sure, I told Kelly that I would get up early the next morning to see if I felt any different after a good night's sleep. But when we met at 4:30am in the hotel lobby the next morning I was even more sure that I had no interest in the suffering that I'd have to endure to continue the ride.

I spent a day in Brest seeing sights with my family and then we rode the TGV back to Paris. The train seats weren't a heck of a lot more comfortable than my bike seat had been, but I never had any doubt that abandoning in Brest was the right choice for me.

Of course, Kelly finished the ride still riding strong with a time of 74 hours 15 minutes. Congratulations, Kelly!

PBP Ride Report Part III: Trouble in Paradise

2011-09-08T20:35:00.000-07:00

Day two and the lonely road

Not long after leaving Fougeres the sun came up to signal the beginning of what I knew would be a very long day of riding. I think it was also somewhere between Fougeres and Tinteniac that I started noticing my deriere feeling a little like I had been sitting on a brick for past 14 hours. My backside rarely feels great after 14 hours in the saddle, but this was far worse than usual. With a full day ahead of me before I'd even get to the halfway point, I decided to do my best to ignore it ride on.

We got to Tinteniac at around 8:40am and while we were having some breakfast, Ryan Hamilton arrived at the control. I was surprised to see Ryan behind us since he's such a strong rider, but it turns out he had been suffering through some of the same problems I had had early on with cramps probably due to dehydration. Ryan said the cramps had forced him to ride "painfully slow" which explained why he was traveling about the same pace as me and Kelly.

Between Tinteniac and Loudeac we were passed by a big group of maybe 30 riders, mostly Italians. They were moving just a little faster than us so it made sense to hop on and take advantage of their draft (Obviously I was a little too tired at this point to remember my first PBP lesson). We hung with the Italian group for an hour or so, and I have to admit it was highly entertaining if not a bit nerve-racking. The group rode as a constantly churning blob of riders taking up both lanes of the two lane road. Every once in a while a car or semi would come in the opposite direction and there would be a bunch of shouting and bumping of wheels and elbows as the churning blob would squeeze down from two lanes into one just in time to avoid getting a few riders stuck on the grill of the on-coming semi. As soon as the truck was past us, the blob oozed outward to take over the entire road again. As this was going on, I hung off the back of the pack where I could just watch as if it were an Italian sitcom.

At the Loudeac control we saw Ryan again, still traveling painfully slow which also happened to be the same pace Kelly and I were riding (though what Ryan referred to as "painfully slow" we were calling "making good time"). I also ran into Ken Carter who I was very surprised to hear had just abandoned due to a saddle sore. Ken is another extremely strong rider, so I was starting to get a bad feeling between seeing two riders, much stronger than me struggling and with my own backside getting to be more painful by the minute.

After Loudeac the route does a fair amount of climbing, some of it pretty steep. The climbing came during the hottest part of the day so I was taking it slow. Even at my best Kelly is a much stronger climber than I am so he pulled ahead and eventually disappeared over the horizon. While I rode on alone I was overtaken by a guy named Gavin from Pennsylvania. He saw my name on the RUSA tag on my saddle as he approached and said, "Steve Frey! Randonoodler! Hey, I read your blog." Who knew that someone other than my mother reads my blog? So Gavin and I rode together for the next hour or so into Carhaix talking about bikes, raw backsides and the like. Gavin was suffering undercarriage problems not unlike my own and told me that he thought he'd probably abandon in Brest. He talked about abandoning in such an easy care free way and had such a great attitude about the whole ride--how even if he abandoned, he still will have experienced this fantastic ride across France with all the hoopla--that without knowing it, he gave me permission to actually consider abandoning for the first time.

In three years of randonneuring, three SR series, 30-some brevets and permanents, I had never DNF'd a ride (DNF = Did Not Finish). I never even considered the possibility that I would DNF a ride. But right then and there Gavin's great attitude about the whole thing helped me get over myself and realize that it's just a bike ride and the point is to have fun. I didn't decide to abandon there on the road with Gavin, but for the first time in my randonneuring career, I allowed myself to consider it as a possibility.

PBP Ride Report Part II: Riding the River

2011-09-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

Lining up for the 80 hour start

It was hot and humid for the start on Sunday. Or at least it was hot and humid for this Seattle boy who hadn't seen the thermometer go much above 80 degrees all summer. I met my riding partner Kelly at about 2:30. While waiting for the start I ran into some other Seattle Randos (Ken Carter, Ryan Hamilton and Jan Heine) who were also doing the 80 hour start. We were all hanging back so we could stay in the shade for as long as possible. That put us all in the third wave which finally took off at about 4:40pm.

Kelly and friends chilling before the start

I had heard horror stories about sketchy riding and lots of crashes early on in the 80 hour start as everyone is scrambling to stay with the lead group. But back in the third wave it was all calm and civil, although it was a little like being swept away by a fast moving river. The river flowed smoothly through the Paris suburbs and I think I was probably 25 km into the ride before I even noticed I was pedaling. I'm sure it was just adrenaline, but I could have sworn the first hour was all down hill.

After a couple of hours we were out of the 'burbs and into the country and the peloton had started to thin out a bit. I started coming down from my adrenaline high and settled into the task at hand, that being to ride a hell of a long distance. Also about that time I started realizing that with the heat, humidity and excitement of the start, I had let myself get dehydrated. 50 km into a 1200 km ride and I was already getting cramps and feeling nauseous, telltale signs of dehydration. So I told Kelly I needed to back off on speed some and do my best to get caught up on fluids and look forward to the setting of the sun and the cooler temperatures the night would bring.

Kelly and I arrived at the Mortagne-au-Perche food stop, about 140 km in, just after the sun had gone down. I was still feeling pretty crappy at that point, but taking a couple minutes to down a Coke helped a lot. Not long after we left Mortagne-au-Perche I started feeling better.

The night was a blur. Riding at night is always a blurry affair for me. The darkness becomes a tunnel surrounding me and the patch of road that's illuminated by my trusty B&M IQ Cyo headlight. When there's nothing else around for reference, that illuminated patch of road could be in France, Washington or on the moon (except that I'm pretty sure there are no paved roads on the moon). It all looks the same. But every once in a while we'd roll through a small village looking like it had been in suspended animation for three or four hundred years. No Circle Ks or 24 hour Safeways. Nope, we were definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto. And amazingly, no matter what time it was (2:00am? Sure! 4:00am? Why not!) there would be someone cheering us on from the front door of their house. "Bonne Route!" "Allez, Allez!" they'd say, as if they had nothing better to do. Don't they have late night TV in France?

At 1:26am we arrived at the first control in Villaines-la-Juhel, about 222 km into the ride. I think we were there for about 30 minutes, but as I mentioned before, the night was a very blurry affair for me so I'm really sure. I remember thinking that I was feeling a little more beat up than I normally do after 200 km, but generally all systems were go, so after some food and coffee we pressed on.

It was still dark, but the sky was beginning to blush when we arrived at the Fougeres control around 5:30am and 310 km into the ride. At Fougeres we met Kelly's friend, Dave who had started with the first wave. Dave had tried to stay with the lead group as long as possible which turned out to be for the first two hours before he was spit out like like a wad a gum with all the flavor gone. Dave was in good spirits none-the-less and seemed to be getting his flavor back. Based on the stories Dave told of riding with the lead pack, I would have been dropped before most of the other lead riders had broken a sweat.

PBP Ride Report Part I: Never Follow the Italians

2011-09-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's one way to look at it... I just rode the most amazing 600 kilometer ride of my life. I crossed the French countryside, passing through beautiful little centuries-old villages and quaint farms with French families along the road cheering me along. I rode with a strong and entertaining riding partner and met and rode with a bunch of other great folks along the way. I ate well at the controls and finished the ride in good spirits. Never mind that the ride was supposed to have been 1200 kilometers... a minor technical detail. Anyway, here's part I of my 600k Paris-Brest (I'm going to break this into at least a couple installments since I know I have a tendency to blather on once I get going on these things).

My first PBP lesson was learned the day before the ride. On Saturday I had to get myself and bike from our hotel in Versailles to the start in St. Quentin-en-Yvelines for the mandatory bike safety check and to get my packet with the brevet card, frame number, etc. Out in front of our hotel I met two guys from Milan who were heading to the same place. I had directions and a map printed out to get me to the start, but since the two Italians said they knew how to get there I figured I'd just tag along. It was a beautiful day as we rode together through Versailles and on along the Rue de la Division Leclerc that took us toward St. Quentin.

About 20 minutes into the ride we passed the turn-off that I had marked on my map, but the Italians kept going straight. I asked if they were sure they knew the way and they laughed and said "naturalmente" and kept riding. About 5 kilometers later I was sure we were way past St. Quentin and I shared my thoughts with my two new Italian friends. They were still convinced they knew where they were going so I bid them arrivederci and did a quick U-turn. After back-tracking for a while I found my way back to St. Quentin and eventually to the start. At the start I ran into some Seattle Rando friends and told them about how I hadn't even started PBP yet and already I had gotten myself lost. From two different people I heard the exact same advice. "Never follow the Italians." Okay, lesson one for PBP could be checked off.

Paris-Brest-Paradise

2011-08-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

If you checked the tracking page on the PBP web site, you've already figured out that I abandoned the ride before making my way back to Paris. I developed saddle sores starting around Tinteneac and decide to give it up after I got to Brest. While the last 150 miles or so before Brest were pretty painful, I have to say that overall the ride was nothing less than amazing. I didn't finish PBP, but I was able to ride a bike through nearly 400 miles of the beautiful French countryside and experience much of the indescribable spectacle that is Paris-Brest-Paris.

My backside is now mending as we vacation at a friend's house in Talloires in the French Alps. Talloires is about as close to paradise as one can get on this side of the great divide. We've been having too much fun for me to take the time to sit and write my PBP story. But in a few more days we'll be back home and I'll give a full report. And it will be a challenge. The PBP experience is one of those that can't begin to be captured satisfactorily in words.

Keeping Track

2011-08-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

If you're interested in tracking my progress between Paris, Brest and Paris, the official PBP website will tell you when I checked into each control along the way. Go to the tracking page and enter my frame number (#1501).

The plan is to sleep in Brest, then again in Fougeres on the return trip, so don't be surprised if it looks like I'm stuck in either of those places for a long time. Here's a graphical representation of the plan:

Of course plans and Randonneuring go together about as well as Champagne and Cheetos.

Packing for Paris-Brest-Paris

2011-08-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, first off I should point out that if you found this post by googling “packing for paris-brest-paris” and you’re looking for some helpful advice, you may not find it here. I’m sort of stumbling through this. You see, I’ve never taken a bike on a plane before and I’ve never done a randonneuring event outside my home state. I’m used to waiting until the night before the ride to finalize my packing list, when I have a reliable weather forecast in hand. That way I can bring the absolute minimum of clothing necessary to avoid hypothermia. I’m tempted to bring all the bicycling clothes, tools and other gear I own so I can make the final call the night before in France, but if I did that I’d need one of those Victorian steamer trunks to pack into. I’m thinking the airline my charge a bit extra for that.

The bike is already packed up, and it wasn’t too much of an ordeal. I ended up buying myself a fancy bike travel case. It wasn’t cheap, but I’m hoping this won’t be the last time my bike and I travel together by air. And if it turns out I don’t need it again, I can always sell it and get some of my money back. Fitting the bike in the case was a little like trying to put the parts of an Ikea bookcase back in the original box after you’ve assembled it. Eventually it all got in there and I’m able to close the lid and latch it, but it took a few tries. Reassembly in the hotel room in France should be fairly easy as long as I didn’t accidentally leave any parts out and I remember to bring all the right tools along. I’m thinking a bottle of French wine will help the process too.

The weather in France over the past few weeks has been pretty consistent and Seattle-like. So, I’m going to assume that’s what I’ll be riding in and pack my bike clothes accordingly. Basically I’m figuring I need to have just enough clothing with me on the bike to comfortably survive nighttime temperatures down to about 50 Fahrenheit. That doesn’t take a lot, though I have noticed that later in a long ride when I’m really wrung out it’s a little bit harder to keep myself warm. Here’s what I’m planning on wearing/carrying on the bike:

Wool shorts/Poly Shorts (depending on weather)
Leg warmers
Poly base layer
Poly Jersey/Wool jersey (depending on weather)
Arm warmers
Rain jacket
Reflective vest
Cycling cap
Bike gloves
Wool gloves
Socks
Reflective ankle bands
Sun glasses
Helmet with headlight
Bike shoes

For tools and other supplies I tend to bring the same things whether I’m going out for 200k or 1200k, so I didn’t have to put too much thought into this list. This is what I’ll have in my handlebar bag, on my bike or in my pockets:

Tool kit (multi-tool, chain tool, tire irons, tire patches, tire boots, fibre spoke, knife)
2 tubes
pump
2 water bottles
Sunscreen
Lip stuff
Clear glasses
Space blanket
Chamois goo
Phone
Camera
Passport
Money
Cue sheet
Spare taillight
Spare headlight
Nuun tablets
Enduralytes
Ibuprofen

For food, I'm used to mostly foraging in convenience stores along the route. In France I'm not expecting to find convenience stores or if I do find them, I doubt they'll have the kind of food I'm used to eating, so I'll be carrying more food than usual. Well, not food exactly. Call it fuel. But mostly I'm planning to subsist on whatever they have available at the controls and the occasional sandwich jambon from bars along the route. In my bag I'll start with:

8 Packages of Shot Bloks
Enough Sustained Energy for 4 bottles
4 Clif Bars

Sarah will bring a bag to Brest with a change of socks, shorts, jersey, gloves and replacements for the Shot Bloks and Sustained Energy. I'll also put a couple spare tubes, tools and few other odd bike parts in there just in case, but I'm hoping I won't need any of that.

That's it. I'm sure I'm forgetting something important, but no doubt it will come to me about 50 miles outside of St. Quentin.

Dreams of Paris-Brest-Paris

2011-08-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

The other night I had a doozy of an anxiety dream that just might have had something to do with my upcoming Paris-Brest-Paris experience. It reminded me of dreams I had around finals time in college, you know the ones in which you realize you have a final exam in 15 minutes for a class that you never actually attended. And then as you’re running across campus to the exam you suddenly realize you’re naked…

So in this dream I’m riding on a bus—like a big tour bus—packed full of men in their 40s, 50s and 60s, most sporting gray beards and all wearing full-on randonneuring gear. And it’s not summertime gear they’re wearing; it’s long-sleeve wool jerseys, Showers Pass rain jackets, wool tights or rain pants and neoprene shoe covers as far as the eye can see. Everyone has big warm gloves. They all have helmets on too, with rear-view mirrors clipped on the side and tail lights blinking from the back. Some of them blind me with their helmet headlights when they look my way. I notice that everyone is dripping wet and the air in the bus is thick with the smell of wet wool, sweat and Gatorade. The windows of the bus are completely steamed up.

The bus stops and everyone stands up in the aisle waiting to get off. I’m one of the last in line to get off the bus. When I get off, I see that the bus is parked in a gravel parking lot in front of a very small and plain-looking convenience store. There’s no 7-Eleven or Circle K signage on the front, it’s just a white box looking more like a 1960s Russian grocery store than a modern U.S. convenience store. Inside the store, Randonneurs from the bus are milling around, looking for something to buy and some are already beginning to form a long line at the cash register. I walk up and down the two narrow aisles of the tiny store looking for something to buy, though I’m not hungry at all. There’s almost nothing at all on the dirty metal shelves. I finally grab one of two remaining Reese’s peanut butter cups and get in line. Once in line I notice that everyone around me is speaking a language that I don’t recognize at all and they are all handling some sort of money that I’ve never seen before. I have some of the money too. It has no numbers on it.

Next thing I know I’m outside sitting on the ground near the bus with a large three-ring binder in my lap. The binder is filled with forms that need to be filled out and it’s divided into numerous sections, presumably with one section for each control. The forms are long and tedious and require that I look up information on other forms in the back of the binder, and sometimes I have to find stickers on other pages in the binder and affix them to the correct places on the forms like the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes entry forms that Ed McMahon and Dick Clark used to send to my house when I was a kid. Then I realize that some of the forms need to be signed by the clerk in the convenience store. I can’t bear the thought of going back in the store and revealing the fact that I’m the only person on the bus who doesn’t speak whatever language it is that the convenience store clerk and everyone else speak.

Now, I’m back on the bus and the bus is bouncing along down the road and it’s dark out. I’m still filling out the forms from the last control when the bus driver announces that we’ve arrived at the next control. Everyone is up again standing in the aisle waiting to head into the next convenience store. It’s then that I remember that my bike is still back at the last control and that I won’t get credit if my bike isn’t on the bus when I cross the finish line…

PBP: Kind of Like the Tour de France for Old Slow Guys from Seattle

2011-07-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

If you're riding in Paris-Brest-Paris and you haven't found your way to the PBP Wiki yet, you should definitely go take a look. It has some great information and tools that can help with your planning.

One section I found to be particularly interesting is the statistics on who from the U.S. is registered. They have a complete list of all U.S. riders along with a bit of demographic information about them. You can go there and see all the details for yourself, but I thought I'd pull out some of the highlights here just for fun. (Yes, I'm one of those nerds who think statistics are big fun. Woohoo!)

In total, 438 U.S. riders have registered for PBP. Not surprisingly, the vast majority are men.

Ages of the riders cover a wide range from 21 to 70. The average age is 50, and a sizable majority (about two thirds) fall between the ages of 45 and 60, clearly supporting the stereotype of randonneurs as a bunch of grumpy old men.

Notice the large anomalous spike in the chart at age 49? I wonder how many of those are people trying desperately to do something meaningful as they cross the half-century mark and begin the long decline into senior discounts and vacations on cruise ships. I suppose you could put me in that camp.

One of the things I've agonized over and still stress about is the choice of a start time. I'm now locked into the 80 hour start, so I might as well get used to it. Here's how the other U.S. riders are lined up for start times.

U.S. PBP riders will be coming from all over the country, but clearly a disproportionate number are from the west coast. California has the largest number of riders with a fifth of the total. Not too surprising since it's the most populous state and much of it has an excellent climate for cycling. But how about this? Washington State is a fairly close second with 12%. Almost every one of those Washington riders is a member of my club, Seattle International Randonneurs. Since the California riders are divided among several clubs, SIR has the largest number of riders by a landslide (64). The next closest club is San Francisco Randonneurs with 43 riders.

I was curious how disproportionate Washington's number of randonneurs is compared to other states, so I compared the number of registered riders in each state with the state's total population. Washington state has 9.37 randonneurs per 1,000,000 of total population (call it "Rando parts per million" or RPPM). That's the highest rate in the country by far. Next is DC (the other Washington) with a RPPM of 4.99. Impressively Alaska ranks third with 4.22 RPPM (but since that's based on only 3 riders total, I'm not sure it means much). Colorado, Montana, California, Oregon and Minnesota all have RPPMs of 2 or more. In the rest of the states, a PBP rider is literally one in a million or less. Ten states had no riders registered for PBP (Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming).

So what's going on in Seattle that makes randonneuring so popular compared to other parts of the country? I sit here in the middle of the Seattle Rando scene and honestly I have no idea. I mean, the club is fantastic. We have great leadership, volunteers and members. But why here in Seattle where it rains 367 days of the year? I have no theories...

PBP: Rain or Shine

2011-07-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

As with all Randonneuring events, Paris-Brest-Paris is a rain or shine proposition. Past PBPs have experienced a wide range of weather. The last PBP in 2007 was probably one of the coldest and wettest on record with near constant rain and night time temperatures in the 40s. The 2003 event on the other hand was warm and dry with temperatures in the 60s to 80s.

Since the weather can be such a huge factor in randonneuring, I've started keeping an eye on what it's doing along the route. Of course, when it comes to weather you never really know what you're going to get until you're in the middle of it, but if Brittany is experiencing a particularly warmer/dryer or cooler/wetter weather pattern than usual over the next month, it may be a somewhat reliable predictor of what we'll encounter during PBP.

To that end, thanks to Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com), below you'll find "Weather Stickers" for each of the PBP contrôle towns. Click on one to go to a more detailed weather report and forecast. But don't blame me if you get rained on in France.

Yakima Heat Camp 400k: "Heat" is a Relative Term

2011-07-13T17:06:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I would be riding a completely gratuitous 400k night start brevet. I say "completely gratuitous" because I've already ridden all of my necessary qualifying rides for PBP. This one was purely for the fun and educational value that comes with riding all night over mountain passes.

This ride was part of the Seattle Randonneur's "Heat Camp" which is a collection of rides all starting from a hotel in lovely Yakima. It's usually pretty warm in Eastern Washington this time of year, so the idea was to spend some time getting acclimated to riding in the heat. Nice idea, but as I descended from Blewett Pass at 3:30 am Saturday morning, shivering uncontrollably in the 37 degree wind, all I could think was, "h-h-h-heat c-c-camp my a-a-ass."

Twenty-some people showed up for heat camp, but only four of us chose to ride the 400k. On my drive into Yakima Friday afternoon, I followed the brevet route from Ellensburg to Yakima just to get familiar with it. It was a bit disconcerting since the wind was howling the whole way and I found that for about half the distance between Ellensburg and Yakima the road had just been covered with a brand new coat of chipseal. With fresh gravel a couple inches deep in places, riding the Yakima Canyon road would be about as much fun as riding your typical logging road.

The four of us (Me, Jeff, Dan and Matt) set off into the windy gravelly night at 10:00pm and rode together to take turns hiding from the wind. The trip from Yakima to Ellensburg turned out to be not nearly as bad as I had feared. The wind had died down a bit with the setting of the sun and the chipseal's bark was worse than its bite. We pulled into the first control in Ellensburg at about 12:30.

As we headed out of Ellensburg for Blewett pass, the wind picked up a bit and we were faced with a long slow slog uphill into a cold headwind. The moon had set and we were far from any artificial lights, so all I could see was the rectangle of road lit up by my head light, and about 10 gazillion stars overhead. With the darkness and the headwind, I couldn't really tell how steep it was, or if I was even going uphill at all. I only knew I was in a very low gear moving very slowly and that none of that seemed to change for a very long time. I didn't bother turning on my helmet light to check my speed or the time. I knew it would only depress me.

During the endless climb toward Blewett Pass I slowly pulled away from the other three riders. I slowed to wait for them at one point but I was getting so cold that I decided to keep moving for warmth. I wouldn't see any of them again until I was back in Yakima many hours later.

Eventually the wind started to die down and not long after I found myself on the summit of Blewett Pass. I flipped on my helmet light for a minute to note the time (3:29am), answer the "info control" question on the brevet card (Q: "What's the elevation of Blewett Pass?" A: 4102') and put on my wool gloves. Then I was off for 20 miles of downhill toward Leavenworth. If not for my violent shivering making it difficult to control the bike this section of the ride might have been a lot of fun.

As I approached Leavenworth with visions of a hot breakfast dancing in my head, the sky was beginning to show signs of life.

After a slow cruise through L-worth I had to temporarily give up on my hopes for a hot breakfast. Nothing was open. What kind of town doesn't have a 24 hour convenience store?? A Bavarian theme town, that's what kind. So, I pressed on knowing that there was a gas station another miles up the road at Cole's Corner that would be open by the time I got there.

The trip up Highway 2 toward Stevens pass was beautiful with the sun starting to light up the peaks around me. It was still early enough that the traffic was nearly non-existent.

At Cole's Corner, still a long, slow twenty miles away from Stevens Pass, I stopped for that overdue breakfast and to refill my water bottles. Now, I'm not that picky about what I eat when I'm randonneuring. I mean, even a foil wrapped sausage muffin sandwich from under the heatlamp is a very adequate breakfast as far as I'm concerned, still the Cole's Corner Shell station was a big disappointment.

With some "food" and hot beverage in my belly I pressed on for Stevens Pass, feeling quite good and happy to have survived the night.

The climb to Stevens Pass from the east isn't terribly steep but it does run on a bit. The day was in full swing and the Highway 2 traffic was starting to pick up by the time I finally made the summit, about 8:30. It was cold, but not nearly as bad as Blewett had been the night before. This was the turn-around point and halfway to the end of the ride, though I kept my celebrations pretty low-key since halfway still meant over 125 miles and another 4,000 ft. mountain pass.

The trip back down to Leavenworth was fast and fun, though I'm not terribly fond of Highway 2's lack of shoulder. Cars come flying by at 60 - 70 mph, not willing to give an inch to some crazy guy on a bike trying to find a safe haven between the crumbled shoulder and the speeding traffic.

After an honest-to-goodness sit down lunch in Leavenworth at the Subway with a tankard of their finest Mountain Dew it was time for Old Blewett Pass, the last big climb of the ride. The sun was finally above the hills and the day was starting to feel like July in Eastern Washington.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I've been looking forward to riding Old Blewett Pass for a while. It didn't disappoint me one bit. The road is barely wide enough for two cars and it winds around ridges and gullys as it climbs at a fairly consistent 5% - 6% through the trees. I was passed by maybe two or three cars the entire time I was on old road.

Paul and Noel, two SiR volunteers had set up a nice little rest stop at the top of the pass and offered me water (which I needed desperately), a bite to eat and a few minutes to sit without having to turn the cranks. But I didn't sit around for long. I knew from Old Blewett Pass the rest of the route was almost all downhill and I was anxious to get on to it.

After a long gentle downhill run, there's a little ridge that the highway climbs over before you get some more downhill into Leavenworth. The climb only lasts three miles, but it seems like a lot more after 200 miles and three mountain passes. And just to rub it in a bit, about halfway up, the Washington Dept. of Transportation remind you that you still have a good chunk of riding ahead before you'll be back in Yakima with a cold beer in hand.

On top of the ridge outside Ellensburg is one of those enormous wind farms that seem to be popping up like dandelions across eastern Washington. Of course, they put the wind mills there for a reason. As I topped the ridge, I was blasted by a warm wind. Luckily the road and the wind were both heading for Ellensburg so I was able to ride like a pro for the next 15 miles, easily averaging 30+ mph all the way into town.

After the penultimate control stop in Ellensburg, the wind continued to push me on through the freshly chipsealed Canyon Rd nearly all the way back to Yakima. I rolled into the finish at the Clarion Hotel at 5:49pm feeling darn fine all things considered.

Over the last few miles I thought a lot about my upcoming trip to France. This 400k was a good test of what the first part of PBP might be like. I rode through the night just like I'm planning to do in France on the first night. I maintained a pace of about 5 hours per 100k, which is what I'm shooting for in France. I finished feeling like I could probably maintain the same pace for another 200k if I had to, which I'll need to do to get to Brest. So, I think it bodes well for my PBP plans.

Thanks to Maggie and Eric for hosting the Yakima Heat (snicker, snicker) Camp! I had a fantastic time. And Thanks Paul and Noel for feeding and watering me on a mountain top in the middle of nowhere!

Looking Forward to a Bumpy 400k

2011-06-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

The past month, since I rode the Tahuya Hills 600k, has felt like a vast empty Randonneuring desert. This time of year is generally pretty densely packed with brevets. Just as I'm beginning to feel recovered from one brevet I'm usually gearing up for the next. But for the past three and a half weeks I've been staying close to home and doing just enough riding to keep myself from getting fat.

So, it feels good to finally have another brevet on the horizon. On Friday, July 8 at 10pm I'll be starting a 400k over in Yakima (aka, "Yaki Vegas"). Yes, the ride starts at 10pm. At night. I guess the idea is to get some practice with a night start since most of us bound for PBP this summer will be starting in the late afternoon or evening. I've done a couple long rides that started at night and thoroughly enjoyed them both. Of course, I mean "enjoyed" in the Rando sense of the word, which is to say I finished the rides alive and didn’t suffer too horribly. I usually have enough adrenaline pumping during the first few hours of a ride to keep me from getting sleepy, and by the time that wears off the sun should be up. Also there is something magical about riding on remote roads in that space between when the last drunk has finally made it home (or at least has passed out in the back seat somewhere), and when the darkness loses its grip on the night to the sound of birds and the eastern glow. Many of my fondest Randonneuring memories come from times like that.

Yakima 400k Route

This definitely won’t be an easy 400k course. It’ll start in Yakima and head north through the Yakima Canyon to Ellensburg. I’ve ridden the Yakima Canyon before and it’s a beautiful road along the river, deep in the canyon, that climbs ever so gently as you head north. This should put me in Ellensburg around midnight when hopefully most of the drunk drivers are still safely in bars (or behind bars). From Ellensburg the route climbs up and over Blewett Pass to Leavenworth. I’m really looking forward to the run down the north side of Blewett in the wee hours with no cars on the road. If all goes well, the eastern sky should just be beginning to blush as I roll into Leavenworth. From Leavenworth it’s on up Highway 2 to the summit of Stevens Pass, definitely not my favorite cycling road with semis and motorhomes blasting by every few seconds. At Stevens Pass summit we’ll turn around and head back to Yakima basically doing the same route in reverse, except that we’ll use the Old Blewett Pass highway on the return trip. The old highway is a little shorter, but also a bit steeper and windier. I’ve never ridden the Old Blewett Pass highway and I’ve wanted to for a while, so that’s the other part of this ride I’m really looking forward to. I should be pretty wrung out by then, but at least from the summit the remaining 65 miles into Yakima are nearly all downhill.

Ride Profile

I’ll consider any finish in less than 27 hours (that’s the limit) to be a win for this ride. With three big climbs (over 12,000 feet total) I definitely won’t be trying to do a time or keep up with any fast groups. This will be an at-my-own-damn-pace ride.

PBP: Registered!

2011-06-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

I did it! Yep, just moments ago I submitted my registration for PBP 2011. A few mouse clicks, a little typing, a 110 euro charge on the old Visa card and it's done. The PBP organizing board immediately sent me an email confirming my registration, saying something about being allotted a "frame badge" (whatever that is) and wishing me, "a good training, and a safe and enjoyable PBP!" Wow, those guys must have been just sitting there at their computer waiting for my registration!

After lots of agonizing and discussion with fellow randonneurs, I decided to register for the 80 hour start. I also talked my friend Kelly--who I rode most of the Cascade 1200 with last summer--into doing the 80 hour start with me. Why on earth choose an 80 hour start when you can wait a couple of hours and have an extra 10 hours to complete the ride? Well, for all of the reasons I discussed in my previous post about start times. I still think a night start will work best for me. We shall see.

The ride plan at the moment is to ride straight through from Paris to Brest without a sleep stop. Assuming nothing catastrophic happens, we should make it to Brest in the late evening, a good time to sleep. We'll eat, sleep for a few hours, then set out early the next morning, probably before sunrise for the return trip. Again, barring disasters or horrendous headwinds, we should have enough time for another generous sleep stop somewhere on the return trip.

It wasn't long ago that I was seriously worried about my ability to finish the qualifying rides, but they're all done now and there's nothing left between me and PBP but 65 jours 18 hours 26 minutes 15 seconds. But then who's counting?

Tahuya Hills 600k: There's Always Plan B

2011-06-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

First the good news: This weekend I finished the Tahuya Hills 600k brevet. This 600k completes a Super Randonneur series for me, but far more importantly it means I’m now fully qualified to ride in PBP 2011 (good thing since we’ve already paid for plane tickets). Ironically, I rolled into the final control exactly three months (give or take an hour) after the FOOSH on the beach that nearly derailed my PBP plans.

As I mentioned last week, I was planning to ride with the Charly Miller team on this ride. The team had a detailed schedule worked out that included riding through the night and got us through the 600 kilometers in about 25 – 26 hours. With lot’s of rolling hills similar to the PBP route, this would be a great test of what the group was capable of.

The ride started in downtown Seattle near Safeco Field at 6:00 AM. The sun was already up and there was nothing but blue sky from horizon to horizon. After a few quick twists, turns and a drive-by of the people already lined up to get into that night’s U2 concert at the stadium (and people think randonneurs are crazy) we were on our way across the I-90 bridge. Early on everyone was bunched up and riding fast, so the team got scattered and wasn’t able to work together. But by the time we were into May Valley, about an hour into the ride things had sorted out. The team was riding together and consisted of Robin, Greg, Bob, Bill, Ken, James, Alex, Ian and me. For the next couple of hours we were moving along well, using a rotating pace line whenever the traffic would allow it. We got to the control stop in Buckley a little before 9:00. We were right on schedule and we did a good job getting in and out of the control quickly.

Not long after Buckley we found ourselves on quiet roads that allowed us to use the rolling pace line well. Unfortunately for me, we were using it a little too well. We were moving along for long stretches at well over 35kph (22 mph). I think that’s when I first started to realize that this group was a little over my head. I knew I couldn’t keep a pace like that for 600 kilometers. I suggested to others in the group that maybe we were going a little too fast, but they all seemed pretty comfortable with the pace, so we blazed on.

We maintained a similar pace most of the way to Packwood, 200k into the ride, arriving at about 1:10. Seven hours ten minutes is the fastest 200k I've ever done, so definitely not a good way for me to be starting a 600k. After a "leisurely" break at Packwood--about 13 minutes during which I wolfed down a convenience store mini pizza and a chocolate milk--we were back on the road. With a light tailwind and a long slight downhill for the next 30 miles to Morton we were quickly back to a... um, spirited pace. After Morton we turned south and did some climbing on Centralia-Alpha Road. It was somewhere along that road that things started turning bad for me. My stomach was the first to protest. Maybe the pizza back in Packwood wasn't such a good idea (do you think?). Maybe I was low on electrolytes. Whatever the reason I started feeling nauseous. And then I started getting cramps in my thighs whenever I hit the slightest incline or tried to accelerate. We were now about 300k and eleven hours into the ride. We had a control stop in Centralia, about 20 kilometers away, so I did my best to hang on and not throw up until we got there.

In those last 20 kilometers I decided that I would let the team leave Centralia without me. So after they had all filled their bottles and grabbed a quick bite to eat they were off and I sat down for a few minutes to take stock. 15 minutes of just sitting did me a world of good. I was finally able to eat a little, drink a coke and get back on the bike. I took the next 50 kilometers to the overnight control in Elma at a very comfortable pace. My legs were still cramping badly whenever I tried to push hard, but I was able to keep moving. I arrived at the overnight control in Elma at about 8:35pm.

When I arrived in Elma, the CM team was still there but getting ready to get back on the road to ride on through the night. I had actually been looking forward to riding through the night, but since I was still having bad cramping problems, I decided it would be safer to stay Elma for a few hours to try to get some sleep. Gary, Bob and Bill had arrived with the rest of the team but had all decided to stay for some sleep and then head out at 4:00am the next morning. I ate, showered, set an alarm for 3:30am, and then tried to get some sleep.

Bill, Gary and I left in the dark at 4:00am (Bob left early because he wasn't able to sleep). I was feeling much better than the night before, but I was still pretty rung-out. Obviously the previous day's pace was a too much for me.

The rest of the ride from Elma, through the Tahuya hills and up and down the Kitsap peninsula was fantastic. The hills were non-stop, and some pretty darn steep, but they didn't bother me much since the pressure to "do a time" was off. The majority of the day was spent on shadow-dappled roads with no cars to be seen.

Bill went ahead at some point and we met up with a couple of other riders here and there, but mostly I rode with Gary. We traveled at a comfortable pace and took time for ice cream, sandwiches, soup, and more sandwiches at several stops along the way.

We rolled into the finish a little before 3:30pm. Our trusted RBA, Mark was there to greet us offering cold beer, hot pizza and congratulations. Lynn was offering massages at the finish, which I would have loved to taken advantage of, but having been away from home far longer than expected already, I decided to pass on the massage and catch the next ferry for home.

Epilogue: My solo ride from Centralia to Elma and the casual pace all day on Sunday gave me a lot of time to think about PBP and the Charly Miller goal. I've decided to give up on the goal and embrace a kindler and gentler PBP. Since this will be my first (and quite possibly only) PBP, I've come to think it would be wrong to spend my time on the ride staring at the rear wheel of one of my teammates when I could instead be meeting other riders, talking to the locals, enjoying French pastries, and snapping pictures of the French countyside. If I ride PBP again someday, I suspect I'll get caught up once again in the idea of trying to make the Charly Miller Society, but for my first time, I'm ready to just ride my own pace and soak it all in.

To my former teammates, I'll be cheering you guys on in France. I think you have a great chance of making your goal. You're a bunch of great riders and good people to hang out with. I've learned a lot over the past few months. I hope to see you on the road in France when you blow by me.

Packing for a 600k: Eeny meeny miney moe...

2011-06-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

Bright and early tomorrow morning I'll set off from downtown Seattle with a big ol' group of nerdonneurs. We're doing a 600k route that will take us along the Western and Southern flanks of Mt. Ranier to Packwood, WA., then West through Centralia to Elma (not 20 miles from the birth place of Kurt Cobain donchyaknow), and finally North to the Kitsap peninsula where we'll ramble around in the allegedly haunted Tahuya Hills a bit before making our way back to the ferry on Bainbridge Island.

I'll be riding with the Charly Miller team on this ride, and our plan is to ride on through to the end with no sleep stops. If all goes according to plan (which it never does on a ride this long) we should finish in somewhere around 25 to 26 hours.

This course has a lot of ups and downs, so I'm trying to pack as light as possible. It's always a challenge to balance a performance-minded minimalist approach with the more sensible desires for comfort and safety, but as I do more of these rides and get more experience I'm finding that I'm able to get by comfortably and safely with less stuff. Hopefully I'll stop short of heading off for cross-country tours wearing nothing but a loin cloth with a buck knife in my teeth.

So, here's what I'll be taking with me on this ride:

On Me
Bike shorts
Polypro base shirt
Polypro bike jersey
Arm warmers
Leg warmers
Socks
Bike shoes
Wind vest
Sunglasses
Bike cap
Helmet with map light

In the Handlebar Bag
Tool kit (multi-tool, tire irons, chain tool, patch kit)
2 Spare tubes
Zip ties
Space blanket
Spare tail light
Wallet
Sunscreen
Lip stuff
Cell phone
Camera
Fistful of Ibuprofen and Enduralytes
Reflective ankle straps
Reflective vest
Pen
Reading glasses
About 1400 calories worth of Sustained Energy powder (food-like stuff)
4 packages Shot Bloks (even more food-like)
12 Fig Newtons (practically food)

On the Bike
2 Water bottles
Pump
Lights, front and back

In My Drop Bag (drop bags will be waiting for us in Elma)
Wool Jersey
Wool bike shorts
Long sleeve wool base layer
Raincoat
Bike gloves
Socks
3 Spare tubes
Misc bike tools
Spare headlight
Sustained Energy powder
Shot Bloks
Fig Newtons

If the forecast is right and I have no mechanical problems, then I shouldn't need anything but the food from the drop bag. We shall see...

Loaded up with all of this stuff (including full water bottles), my bike weighs about 32lbs (22 lbs bike, 4 lbs water and 6 lbs food and gear). That's slightly more than the typical 15 lbs that a pro cyclist's bike weighs, but not bad for a fully loaded rando rig.

Nothing left to do now but try to get a decent night's sleep and then go for a ride.

Beyond Naked on Kickstarter

2011-05-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

Back in December I blogged about riding the Seattle Randonneur's Second Annual Solstice Ride. The ride was a lot of fun and as I mentioned back then, it may (or may not) be immortalized by local documentary filmmaker, Dan McComb in a film titled Beyond Naked.

Dan is now trying to raise money for the project using Kickstarter. I'm not sure what they will be spending the money on, but I'm pretty sure it's not for costumes. I made a pledge because I'm intrigued to see how silly Randonneurs look compared to truly courageous people like those who ride in the Fremont Solstice Parade. Besides, I just love the idea of Kickstarter and how it allows us "normal" folks to help bring more art into the world.

So, if you want to support a worthy project, click on over to Kickstarter and make a pledge to Beyond Naked.

The Kindness of Strangers

2011-05-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

The other day on my way home from work I headed out to Magnolia for a quick couple laps around one of my favorite short training routes. It was a beautiful day to be out riding. The sun was shining and I was feeling great, enjoying the view along the Magnolia bluff and the ups, downs, twists and turns of the road.

After one and a half laps, when I was as far away from home as the route gets, I heard the hiss-hiss-hiss of a tire going flat. Ordinarily not a big deal, it just adds a few minutes to the ride. ...except that, being sort of a dope, I had taken the tool bag off my bike at home for some reason and forgot to put it back on. You know, the tool bag with the spare tube and tire irons and the patch kit? With no way to fix the flat tire, I had no choice but to start walking. This still was far from disastrous since I could easily walk to a bus stop, and while I'd probably have to wait for half an hour for a bus, then change buses a time or two (waiting another half hour each time), eventually I could get myself home.

I hadn't walked more than a block when I came upon another cyclist, in full team kit with a super deluxe high-zoot bike. He was just standing astride his bike beside the road. Now, all cyclists know that the guys in full team kit with super expensive bikes are all... well you know the things that porcupines have? It's true. Anyway, I said howdy and kept walking, but Mr. Team Kit immediately asks if I need a spare tube or anything. I stopped and explained my dopey situation and said, no worries I could just catch a bus. But he persisted and insisted on giving my his spare tube. So I graciously accepted his offer. Not only did he give me his spare, but he also did most of the work fixing the flat. He was one of the quickest flat fixers I've ever seen, and I've seen some fast ones riding with Randonneurs and all. I tried to pay him for the tube but he wouldn't have it. So, I thanked him several times and wished him all the good karma he could carry and then we rode off our separate ways.

Moral: Kind strangers come in all kinds of outfits.

To My Wife

2011-05-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

See Honey, it could be worse...

Breaking News: Cycling Hip Like Khaki Slacks

2011-05-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

You'd have to have been living in a house in Pakistan without a phone or internet connection for the past several years to not notice that bikes have become a fashion accessory of the hip. But today while on my bi-annual pilgrimage to The Gap to buy new underwear and socks, I ran into this (please excuse the crappy cell phone picture):

This takes it to a whole new level. When The Gap starts using bicycle parts to sell suburban leisure wear to the masses, then cycling as a fashion statement has clearly hit the mega-mainstream. Or maybe jumped the shark.

Of course this means the hipsters will have to abandon anything related to cycling and find a new non-mainstream and currently dorky fashion statement. I'm thinking maybe stamp collecting or curling will be the next big thing.

Seattle Randonneurs Baker Lake 400

2011-05-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

This weekend I rode Seattle Randonneur's Baker Lake 400k, and while my ride was generally uneventful in the best sort of way, it was a good reminder that riding a bike on busy roads in the dark and the pouring rain, while wrung out physically and mentally can be a risky business. Even under the best of conditions, there's a lot that can go wrong on a 250 mile bike ride. I know of three people who crashed during yesterday's ride, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear about others given the conditions. Luckily, of the crashes I heard about nobody was seriously injured.

The ride didn't start out dark, wet and forbidding. It was actually looking pretty nice when we all gathered at Mark's house in Woodinville for the 6:00am start. According the forecast, we had about 12 hours before the rain would set in. For once, the forecast was dead-on accurate.

Route Map

The course covered some really beautiful roads from Woodinville, up through the cascade foothills to Baker Lake and back again. As the elevation profile shows, there was a lot of fairly flat riding on this course, but with a bump in the middle that sort of knocks the starch out of you, especially coming 115 miles into the ride.

Elevation profile

My plan was to ride with the Charly Miller team from the start, but knowing my fitness still isn't quite back to where it was, I figured I'd probably drop off when we got to the big climb up to Baker Lake. Apparently I waaay overestimated my abilities. There was a lead group of about 12, including four of the Charly Miller team that took off like carbon fiber bats out of hell from the start. They were flying. I knew I'd regret it if I tried to keep up that pace, so I dropped off the back about a half hour into the ride. I found myself in a familiar place, in the no-man's land between the lead group and everyone else.

"God light" over Snohomish

Cruising the Centennial trail

Lonesome roads with Mt. Baker in the distance

Luckily I enjoy riding alone, because I was by myself for the next 50 miles or so until a small group overtook me about half way between Arlington and Darrington.

The cavalry arrives

The group lost some members off the back, and gained a couple more that had fallen off the back of the lead group, but most of the group stayed together for the rest of the ride.

Me and Paul approaching Baker Lake

The route had a short out-and-back section from Concrete up to Baker Lake and back. As we approached Baker Lake, the lead riders were heading back the other way. I saw the Charly Miller crew about a mile from the turn-around point, so I cheered them on and tried to quickly whip out my camera before they were gone. Unfortunately this is all I got:

The Charly Miller crew riding toward Paris

Kole, Vinnie, Jennifer and some other SiR volunteers were waiting for us at the Baker Lake control with hot soup, sandwiches, boiled potatoes and a truck load of other goodies. For some strange reason boiled potatoes were the thing that most hit the spot. I ate three there and stuffed a couple more in my bag for road food.

Bikes and backhoes at the Baker Lake control

The route from Baker Lake back to the start was deeper into the foothills than the first half of the route had been. That meant two things: more hills and more likelihood of rain. But before the rain and hills started, we enjoyed a nice stretch along the Skagit River from Concrete to Clear Lake on the South Skagit Highway and even saw our shadows a couple times.

Skagit Valley Highway outside Concrete

Just before the rain started falling

Around Arlington the rain started falling steadily and it was getting dark. We only had 50 miles to go, but the last 50 miles of 250 has a way of seeming a bit longer than the first 50 miles. I read Sunday morning that it rained just under an inch at SeaTac between 7:00 pm and midnight on Saturday. I’m guessing it rained more than that where we were. It was the kind of rain that comes down in sheets and creates small rivers in the road. Amazingly I was feeling pretty good through it all. Yes, I was looking forward to being done with the ride and getting out of the rain, but I was feeling comfortable on the bike and still had some strength in my legs. So, our group rolled on through the rolling hills, darkness and sheets of rain until eventually we were climbing the final hill (a steep MF, that one) up to Mark’s house. They had the holy trinity of dry towels, hot food and cold beer waiting for us at the finish. It was 10:50 pm.

My wrist was a bit sore at times during the ride, but then I could say the same about several other parts of my body. So, it seems like my recovery from the FOOSH is coming along pretty well. The rest of my body still needs some work if I expect to rejoin the Charly Miller team in Paris. I’m looking to the Tahuya Hills 600k in three weeks as the test that tells me whether I’m back on target for that big fat goal.

Spring is for Bonking

2011-05-09T20:35:00.000-07:00

Could it be that spring is finally coming to Seattle? I went for a 200k training ride on Saturday and was only rained on for about five minutes out of the eight hours I was out riding. I don't usually do such long training rides, but I'm still not quite as fit as I should be at this point in the season, so I decided to punish myself a little with a fast and hilly 200k. No pain, no gain, and all that, ya know.

Most of the ride went well. I felt great for the first 100k or so as I rode over some of my favorite cycling roads: up to Snohomish, Dubuque Rd, Old Pipeline Rd, Ben Howard Rd, High Bridge Rd... I hit a little slump around Carnation, but a quick stop for some real food and a cup of joe got me rolling again.

I was still maybe an hour away from home when I ate my last shot block. There were plenty of places I could have stopped to grab a candy bar or something, but even though I knew "the fuel light would be flashing" by the time I got home, I figured I could make it without food, so I kept going. Then as I rolled through Montlake, I came upon this:

It was opening day of yachting season in Seattle so the Montlake bridge was up to let the parade of yachts through. The police officers standing there said it would probably be about 20 minutes before they'd lower the bridge. It was warm and sunny and there were lots of people milling around to watch so I just sat down and waited.

When you've been riding hard for nearly eight hours straight, your body doesn't just suddenly stop burning fuel the second you get off the bike. I don't completely understand the physiology, but I know from experience that it takes at least an hour or so for your metabolism settle back to normal. I hadn't really counted on this when I did the whole flashing-fuel-light/coast-in-on-fumes calculation. So when the bridge finally opened--and I spent another ten minutes working my way through crowds of pedestrians--I started pedaling the last two or three miles for home, and suddenly I BONKED.

I thought I had experienced a bonk before. Apparently not. This was like nothing I've ever felt. I was seeing spots, I had tunnel vision, my head was spinning, my legs felt like they were made of clay... The last mile to home (all up hill of course) was at a snail's pace.

As soon as I got home, I shoveled in a huge mountain of leftover pasta and flopped on the bed. Slowly I started feeling human again. It was about 45 minutes before I had enough energy to take a shower.

While bonking isn't much fun, I think this was probably a good learning experience for me. It reminded me of an episode of Car Talk I heard a while back. One of Tom and Ray's callers explained that the first thing he does whenever he gets a new car is put a can of gas in the trunk and then go run it out of gas. This is so he knows exactly how low the gas guage goes before the car is really empty. Yes, Tom and Ray made a lot of fun of the guy.

Coming up next weekend: Baker Lake 400k. It's been a long time since I've done that kind of distance...

On Randonneuring

2011-04-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

Over the course of fifty-some posts on this blog one of the things I've tried to do is paint a picture of what randonneuring is all about. Or at least what it's about for me. I doubt I've painted a very clear picture because... well, randonneuring is a surprisingly difficult thing to explain.

Today I ran across this description of randonneuring by Alec Burney on the Velo Orange blog. I thought it was well-written and did a good job of succinctly explaining the sport, so I thought I'd pass it along. It was one of those pieces that made me think, "I wish I could have said it that well."

Addicted to Old Steel

2011-04-26T20:35:00.000-07:00

Uh oh... I think I may be developing an addiction. No, it's not to pain pills (although I did spend a few days in a very pleasant Percocet-induced stupor after the surgery on my arm). My addiction is to cheap old bikes on Craig's List.

It started so innocently when I ran across a 1982 Trek 311 on CL last fall. I’m not sure why I was even looking at bikes on CL, it’s not like I needed another bike. But I’ve always heard great things about those old lugged steel Treks, and for $75 I couldn’t afford to not buy it, right? I bought it in the same way you might pick up a box of those deep-fried jalapeno poppers at Trader Joe's after they hand you a sample on a toothpick.

That Trek 311 turned out to be a really great old bike and I’ve had a lot of fun fixing it up and trying out different configurations. I’ve come to love the the simplicity of friction shifting and a two by six speed drive train. Since I bought it, the Trek has become my most ridden bike even though I already had two much newer and "nicer" bikes.

The only thing about the 311 that isn’t quite perfect is that the frame is just on the edge of being too big for me. The problem is that back in the day Treks came in only five sizes: 19.75" (or occasionally 19" instead), 21", 22.5”, 24" and 25.5". The right size for me is really about halfway between 21” and 22.5”. The 311 is a 22.5” and I’ve made it fit by using a shorter stem and scooting the saddle forward a bit. It’s very comfortable as it’s currently set up, but I’ve really wanted to try a similar Trek in the 21” size so I could find out if that works even better.

As a result, I've spent the past several months scouring Craig’s List looking for a similar Trek with a 21” frame. The idea (aka, "rationalization") was that I could buy it, try both for a little while and then keep the one that fits the best and sell the other. Well, last week I finally found a good candidate. It’s a 1984 Trek 560. The price was reasonable and it was in decent shape, so I bought it. It’s not quite in as good condition as the 311 which was virtually unused and totally original when I bought it. The 560 has most of the original parts, but somewhere along the way it got some funky replacement wheels and a new saddle, and the frame shows it's age with a lot a scratches and chips. But mechanically it's all there and working well.

So, here’s where the addiction comes in. I've only ridden the 560 a couple times, but I'm definitely feeling like I have to keep both bikes. The 560 is completely different than than the 311 (somewhere, my wife just rolled her eyes at that comment). The 311 is a "sport touring" bike with a relatively long wheel base and solid predictable handling, while the 560 is a full-on racing bike with short chain stays, tight clearances and snappy handling. The larger frame of the 311 allows a more upright position that's really comfortable for all day rides. The smaller frame of the 560 puts me in a more aggressive position that just makes me want to ride hard and fast. So you can see why I need to keep both, right? Right?

The good news is that Sarah hasn't dropped the either-the-bikes-go-or-I-go ultimatum on me yet, and it's cheap old bikes we're talking about here rather than boats, cars, motorcycles or methamphetamine. Still, just to be safe I think I'll lay low for a while and try to stay away from Craig's list. I suspect 1980s Treks are just a "gateway" bike. It won't be long before they no longer get me high and I'll move on to Italian or French bikes.

Tailwinds and Sunshine

2011-04-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

(Sorry about the photos. I touched the lens with a schmutzy finger and didn't notice until after the ride.)

Pine Canyon Rd. a.k.a "the Orondo Grade"

Yesterday was a good day. Not only did I complete a 200k brevet--my first solo brevet since FOOSHing myself two months ago--but I did it under warm sunny skies, with friends, and with the wind at our backs for much of the last half of the ride. It doesn't get any better than that.

The ride started and ended in Wenatchee as part of SIR's "brevet week" a.k.a Northwest Crank. NW Crank is a several days long cycling orgy with a full Super Randonneur Series worth of brevets and as well as a bunch of other "normal" rides. Sarah, Adam and I just went over for the 200k. Actually, I went for the 200k while Sarah and Adam went for the mini golf in Leavenworth.

It looked like there were about 25 of us at the start of the 200k. Several of the other riders had already ridden a 600k and a 300k earlier in the week. There was a lot of talk about the wind on the earlier rides. Apparently both rides had become horrendous slogs into cold headwinds. I heard stories of riding at 10kph on flat ground for hours at a time. Sounds like fun.

But Saturday's forecast was for calm winds and clear skies. It was chilly as we rolled out at 7:00am, but nothing that couldn't be overcome by pedaling harder.

Bread Pudding 200k

The ride headed up highway 2/97 to Orondo, about 15 miles up the Columbia river. I led the pack for most of this stretch since I was feeling strong and having aerobars on my bike makes it much easier to lead than to follow. At Orondo the route turned east on highway 2 and started climbing up Pine Canyon. Highway 2 climbs 2,000 ft here in about 6 miles, so I knew this would be a good test of how much fitness I had lost in the previous two months. I started the climb with Robin, Bill and Michael. Robin and Bill are on the Charly Miller team, and Michael is someone I've ridden with on previous rides. These guys are all strong riders, but I've never had a problem staying with any of them before. I was dropped like a brides panties on her wedding night. Either these guys were doping or I had taken a big step backward in my fitness.

About an hour later I caught up to Robin and Bill at the first control in Waterville. Thankfully they decided to sit down at the coffee shop for some bread pudding and a cup of coffee. (This 200k is named the "Bread Pudding 200k" in honor of this coffee shop's bread pudding.) I joined them and we had a nice civilized little break, far better than the usual chocolate milk outside a convenience store.

Bill and Robin pulling away as we start up the Orondo Grade

At this point the ride entered a new world of rolling wheat fields. I was reminded of riding through this same stretch last year with Kelly on the Cascade 1200 and how amazed we were by the vastness of it (it's still vast, Kelly). On the rolling hills it was a little hard for me to ride smoothly with Bill and Robin since they were faster on the ups, and the aerobars made it difficult for me to draft them on the flats and downhills. But they rejected my suggestions to leave me behind and were committed to staying with me for the full ride.

Bill and Robin pulling away again. This time Sagebrush Flats.

After a screaming descent into Moses Coulee we headed south toward Ephrata on a beautiful quiet road. There was a bit of a rolling climb before heading down into Ephrata and again Robin and Bill left me in their dust. But again, they were waiting for me at a the control in Ephrata, this time the more typical chocolate-milk-on-the-sidewalk situation.

From Ephrata the ride was mostly flat and uneventful, through farmland, and on roads as straight as an arrow. I was really starting to poop out at this point so I did more than my share of wheel sucking. Robin and Bill slowed down so I could stay with them and happily dragged my unfit butt along. Through this section we had some tailwinds so even though I was dragging, we were often moving at better than 20 mph.

Straight as an arrow

As we approached the Columbia River we were treated to a nice 40mph descent which was a little scary since I'm still getting used to the whole aerobar thing. Once down to the river we had a few more easy miles back to the start at the Inn at the River in East Wenatchee. We rolled in a few minutes before 3:00 making for a sub 8 hour 200k. Not bad for being out of shape (never mind that without Robin and Bill's help I would have finished about an hour later).

Robin and Bill dragging me home

With this 200k in the bag I'm back on track to qualifying for PBP. I obviously have some work to do to get back in shape if I want to make a time at PBP, but at this point my wrist isn't holding me back as much as my general fitness. I'm hoping to ween myself off the aerobars after the 400k in two weeks.

Risk of Cycling: Broken Arm

2011-04-16T16:09:00.000-07:00

After six weeks of feeling pretty pessimistic or at least anxious about my hopes for riding PBP this summer, things are looking decidedly up. My cast came off last Wednesday. Initially I was pretty concerned about the soreness and lack of mobility in my wrist, but day-by-day it's getting better. It's far from back to normal, but it's improving enough that it seems conceivable that it could be 100% by the time PBP rolls around.

I asked my Dr. when he thought I might be able to get back on a bike, and he tilted his head in a doctorly way and said, "let's see how it feels in a couple of weeks." Then I told him that I rode 300k last Saturday. I got the tilted head look again, plus a doctorly furrowed brow. Then I said, "Look... I'm going to start riding right away. So what are the risks?" We talked about risks for a while and basically it came down to this: The greatest risk is that I'll crash and re-break my arm. I pointed out that every time I go for a ride there's a risk that I'll crash and break something. My good Dr. didn't really have an argument for that, and more or less agreed that I might as well start riding right away.

I felt good enough on Friday to ride to work as a little test. The test went well so I decided to push it a little harder and went for a ride around Lake Washington this morning. My wrist definitely felt every bump in the road, but I finished the 50 mile ride feeling like I could keep going. A good sign. I was careful to take it easy on the ride and never really put a lot of stress on my wrist. Actually I sort of had no choice other than to take it easy since I seem to have lost some fitness over the past month and a half (anybody seen it?). Luckily PBP is still over four months away. That should be plenty of time to get back in shape assuming I don't crash and break something (which, as my doctor pointed out, is a risk faced when riding a bike).

One of the things I've done to make it easier to get back on the road is, I installed some clip-on aerobars on my bike. The aerobars allow me to take weight off my wrist and put it all on my forearms. I never really thought of myself as an aerobar bar person before. I usually think of colorful lycra and funny helmets when I think of aerobars, you know? But I have to admit that they work quite well once you get used to them. I doubt if I could have done the 50 mile ride this morning without them. So, I guess I'll just try to ignore the cognitive dissonance of aerobars on a 1982 Trek with a Brooks saddle and fenders, and keep using them until my wrist is back in shape.

On the Road Again!

2011-04-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

After having spent much of the past couple weeks stressing about how on earth I'd be able to qualify for PBP if I couldn't ride the SiR Spring 300k, I'm very pleased to report that IT IS DONE! Yesterday, I finished the 307 kilometer (191 mile) course well within the required time.

Actually I should say we finished it. I was on the back of Robin and Amy's tandem with Amy as my trusted captain. There's no way I could have completed this ride by myself on a single bike. I can't begin to express how much I appreciate what Amy and Robin did to help get me through this ride. Robin, for being our "wrench" and helping to figure out the creative cockpit that allowed me to ride relatively comfortably with a broken arm, and Amy for captaining me through the ride when she really would have rather been at home enjoying the twin miracles of central heating and comfortable chairs.

This 300k turned out to be a pretty tough course with about 9,000 ft of climbing and a fair amount of urban and suburban riding that made navigation a challenge. Add to that the fact that I haven't been on a bike in nearly a month and a half, and my arm is still in a cast, and well... it was the toughest 300k I've ever ridden.

I was hurting nearly everywhere by the end of the ride, but the good news is that my broken arm was probably the least painful part of my body. Robin and I rigged up an aero bar arm rest sideways so that I could rest on my left elbow to get my weight off of my wrist. Here's what it looked like:

Amy, my apologies for posting a picture of your butt on the internet, but it's all in the interest of science.

This was my first ride of any more than a couple miles on a tandem. It wasn't bad, but it's definitely not like being on a bike by yourself. For one, you have to get used to having this as your view all day:

And without being able to see up-coming bumps in the road, you don't get much opportunity to take weight off the seat and absorb them with your legs. Amy did a great job of calling out bumps and twists and turns, but my backside was still feeling it by the end of the ride.

Other than the challenges of dealing with the broken arm and getting used to being on the back of a tandem, it was a very nice ride. It was cool and overcast, but I never felt more than a couple rain drops. The route put us on some beautiful rural roads with llamas, yard chickens and mostly friendly dogs along the way.

I'm pretty sure the farmer who painted that barn was colorblind. You just don't paint barns blue. It's somewhere in the farmer code of conduct.

While we rode long sections of the ride with no other randos in sight, we also spent a fair amount of time with a crowd behind us, apparently one of the pleasures of riding a tandem. This guy kept trying to grab our wheel but eventually we were able to shake him.

As with every SiR ride I've ever done, the ride was very well organized and well staffed with nice folks meeting us at the controls to hand us a Vietnamese sandwich or fill our water bottles. Thanks to Gary, Dave and the whole crew for putting on a fantastic event.

Having this ride in the bag is a huge load off my mind. I still have a long way to go before I'm qualified for PBP, but I feel like I have a little breathing room now. The 400k is a month away and my cast comes off in two days so I'm hoping that's enough time to get somewhat comfortable on a single bike again. "Speedy recovery" is my mantra.

Courtesy of Mark Thomas

Still Limping Along Toward Paris

2011-04-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

I pre-registered for Paris-Brest-Paris this morning! With my pre-registration and a €30 fee I've tentatively locked in a place at the start in August. Now I just need to complete the four qualifying brevets of 200k, 300k, 400k and 600k.

Ay, there's the rub. At the moment my left arm is still in a cast, and the brevet season is in full swing. I missed SiR's first 200k brevet a couple weeks ago and next weekend is the 300k. I'll still be in the cast next weekend, but I've decided to give the 300k a go anyway. I can't support much weight with my wrist and definitely can't squeeze a brake lever with my left hand, so a normal bike is out of the question. Luckily my friend, Amy has generously offered the back seat of her tandem. We're messing around with the set up, trying to create a position for me that keeps weight off my wrist and is tolerable for 300k. I've never gone into a brevet with more apprehension, but if I want to ride PBP this summer I have to take some chances.

The course for the 300k looks good. It's not too tough, no bumpy dirt roads (which would really mess with a broke wrist), and it covers a lot of familiar terrain.

The weather forecast is pretty meaningless this far out, but for what it's worth it's currently calling for partly cloudy skies on Saturday. I'm hoping for a break (no pun intended) from the velo/weather gods since this ride will be challenging enough without crappy weather.

P.S. Don't tell my orthopedic surgeon what I'm up to next weekend!

Seattle Bike Expo: The Future of Cycling is Compostable

2011-03-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

I made good on my threat the other day to attend the Seattle Bike Expo. And I'm glad I did because I was able to put to rest a sneaking suspicion that had been lingering in the back of my mind for the past, um... week or so, that I would find a bike expo to be extremely boring. Indeed. Honestly, I swear I'm not making this up, in the few minutes it took to walk from one end of the show floor to the other I heard the phrase "laterally stiff yet vertically compliant" three times. Well actually not the whole phrase, I just heard parts of it like, "...and that improves the lateral stiffness while.." Or, "...without sacrificing vertical compliance..." And all that without ever stopping to talk to any of the vendors.

I'm about as in to cycling as anybody I know, so I find it strange that mainstream cycling stuff like bike shows and magazines have virtually no appeal to me. I guess I must be more of a retro-grouch than I know. Oh well.

The bike show wasn't completely without items of interest. I was intrigued by these bikes with laminated wood frames.

Sure, they're a bit heavy and they cost several thousand dollars, but they're made out of a renewable resource, right? And if you get snowbound in a cabin and you're running low on fuel, you can always bust up your bike and throw it in the wood stove.

And after you've thrown your last wood bike on the fire you can resort to the bamboo bikes.

Gilligan and the Skipper would look right at home on one of these. I'm sure the Professor would appreciate the vertical compliance.

And I did enjoy listening to the BikeSnob's talk.

However I was disappointed to learn that in real life he looks nothing like Rip Torn

Community and Synergy

2011-03-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

It's been ten days since I FOOSHed and my arm is still quite broken. As a matter of fact, I'm really just beginning the real healing process today. I had surgery this afternoon to reduce (aka "set") the fracture and install a metal plate and some screws that will hold it all together as it heals. It had been set a few days ago but it was still a bit misaligned and unstable so surgery seemed like the best option to get me rolling again as soon as possible.

While this experience has been a bit of a downer overall, I'm also impressed with how an injury like this can turn your life sideways and help you to see and think about things in new ways. For instance, I've been riding with the Seattle International Randonneurs for two years now. In that time I've met a lot of great people and I've made some friends. But I mostly saw SIR as a group of folks to go riding with. But after the FOOSH SIR people came out of the woodwork offering sympathy, stationary trainers, suggestions on how to get moving quickly, encouragement, and the stoker position on a tandem. I realized that it's not just a cycling club that I belong to. I belong to a community. I can't begin to express the gratitude I feel for those who have reached out to me. Thank you all so much! It feels good to be part of something bigger than yourself.

I guess some of the other things I've learned over the past few days are not quite as profound, but still somewhat interesting. Like this:

Two useful hands have a lot of synergy. A good example is typing. One handed typing is not even close to half the speed of two handed typing. Maybe that's obvious but it had never occurred to me before.
Starting a coat zipper with one hand is nearly impossible.
Same with tying shoes.

(Hmm, maybe those last two are just extensions of the synergy thing)

One can ride a stationary trainer with one arm. And while it's not nearly as much fun as flying down High Bridge Road in the Snoqualmie Vally, it's still better than not riding at all.

Back to the two handed synergy thing, I haven't been blogging because my typing is ridiculously slow and frustrating. But I should be receiving a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking in the next day or, so stay tuned for some Kerouac style rambling stream of consciousness blog posts in the coming days.

In the meantime, play safe and by all means don't FOOSH.

P.S. By the way, this coming Saturday is the first SIR brevet of the season. I'm going to have to stay off the bike for this one but I'm looking forward to cheering on my rando friends from the safety of one of the controls. See you out there!

FOOSH!

2011-03-07T11:30:00.000-08:00

What's FOOSH, you ask? FOOSH is the sound that a big goal or dream makes as it rapidly deflates. FOOSH is also an acronym used by the medical profession that stands for "Fall On OutStretched Hand" and is often the cause of a wrist fracture. And it's a shockingly powerful energy mint.

This weekend Sarah and I went to the Oregon coast with some friends for a fun relaxing weekend on the beach. Saturday afternoon while Troy, Dave and I were walking on the rocky jetty at the end of the Nehalem spit, I slipped on a rock and landed on... you guessed it, my outstretched hand. On impact it made a sickening muffled crunch noise like breaking a 3/4 inch stick wrapped in a piece of flank steak. I knew before I looked at it that it was broken. But I still had to look, and a quick inventory told me that I had one new elbow in middle of my left wrist that didn't belong there.

The next thought that entered my mind a half second after the realization that my arm was broken was the realization that my chances for making the Charly Miller society at this summer's PBP were also broken. I let out a stream of obscenity that caused nearby barnacles to blush.

From where I fell we had to walk a couple miles to where Sarah was able to meet us with the car. As we walked, my friends Troy and Dave tried to convince me that I would still have time to recover from this injury and train for PBP. I appreciated their efforts to cheer me up, but finishing PBP in 56:40 was always going to be a long shot. This injury will probably keep me off the bike for at least 4 - 5 weeks. Then it will take me a while to get some strength and mobility back in my arm, not to mention regaining the cardiovascular fitness and leg strength I'll lose while I'm off the bike. I haven't given up hope completely on PBP yet, but at this point just finishing may be my new stretch goal.

We've Been Snobbed

2011-03-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

This just in: Bike Snob NYC will be making an appearance at the Seattle Bike Expo on March 12th and 13th. While no expert on Pacific Northwest history, BSNYC does write the best bicycle related blog in the blogosphere (believe it or not that's the first time I've ever written that word, and I'm kinda hoping it's the last).

I've never been to a bike expo before and I don't exactly get goose-pimply with anticipation when I imagine the scene. Still, a chance to see BSNYC in the flesh (not that I expect to see him naked) may be enough to get me there. We shall see...

Geeking the Numbers: PBP Training Plan

2011-02-28T22:46:00.000-08:00

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I'm putting together a highly scientific, NASA-approved training plan to try to get my aging carcass in shape for this summer's attempt at the Charly Miller Society. To be honest, it's not really NASA-approved. No men in short-sleeved white dress shirts in Texas or Florida have even looked at it. Yet. And while it may be scientific, I don't really fully understand the science. I just stole a lot of the ideas from others who I'm hoping understand the scientific part better than I do.

Really, all I've done is read a bunch of what other people have to say about training for ultra cycling events and then I mixed it all together in my osterizer of a brain, and I drew a pretty picture.

The basic idea is that beginning in a couple weeks I'll start doing some interval and hill training in addition to my usual daily commute, and my weekend rides will start getting a bit longer and more intense. The intervals will start off pretty easy but they will slowly ramp up in intensity until late July when I'll be doing things that will literally make my head spin.

What are intervals? Basically they are periods of intense activity alternating with periods of recovery. The idea is that you can train at higher levels for greater lengths of time if you break it into small intervals and allow yourself to recover between the intervals. It obviously works well because intervals have been integral to professional athletes' training plans for many years.

On paper it all looks simple and easy and great fun. Of course if it was really that easy we'd all be like Alberto Contador except that most of us wouldn't test positive for clenbuterol.

The Joys of Not Training

2011-02-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned a few days ago, I've been putting together a serious racer-boy type training plan to get myself into shape for PBP in August. I'm still researching and figuring out the details, but I have enough figured out to know that it's a little too early for me to be ramping up the hard training yet. The serious training will start in about three weeks. From then until the beginning of August, almost all of my rides will be with a purpose.

So, in the meantime I'm appreciating the fact that I can just go for a bike ride on a beautiful sunny Sunday and ride for the love of riding (and eating of course). I can even stop by the lake for a snack (careful to not let those waterfowl get any of my Fig Newton crumbs) and enjoy the view without paying attention to interval schedules and heart rate monitors.

PBP: Getting Started

2011-02-17T20:15:00.000-08:00

One of the many things to think about while planning and scheming for Paris-Brest-Paris is the start time. With up to 6,000 riders, letting them all start at once would be a bit like a snake swallowing a hippopotamus, so the organizers spread the riders out on the course by offering a few different choices for start times.

Start times are divided by the type of bike (solo bikes vs. special bikes, like tandems and recumbants) and by time allowed to complete the course. Riders can choose a 90 hour, 84 hour or 80 hour start, meaning they have 90, 84 or 80 hours in which to complete the ride. So, if you think you're going to need the entire 90 hours, you'll definitely want to choose the 90 hour start time. But if you're pretty sure you can finish in 84 hours or even 80 hours or less, you may want to choose the 84 or 80 start.

The advantage to choosing the 84 or 80 hour start is that it separates you from the 90 hour crowd (usually the biggest group) so the roads and the controls are less crowded with the slower riders. The disadvantage is of course you have less time to finish the ride.

According to the PBP web site, the different start times are:

Sunday, August 21, from 16:00 for a 80 hours time limit(solo bikes)
Sunday, August 21, from 17:30, for a 90 hours time limit(special bikes)
Sunday, August 21, from 18:00, for a 90 hours time limit (solo bikes)
Sunday, August 21, from 21:00, free starts for a 90 hours time limit (solo bikes)
Monday, August 22, from 04:45 for a 84 hours time limit(special bikes)
Monday, August 22, from 05:00, for a 84 hours time limit(solo bikes)
Monday, August 22, from 05:30 to 08h00, free starts for a return before Thursday 17h00

As you can see, one of the big factors is that the 84 hour start leaves in the morning while all of the others start in the late afternoon and evening. There are some strong opinions out there in randoland about whether it's best to start in the morning or the evening. Some feel that starting in the evening and riding through the first night immediately leaves you with a sleep deficit that you'll be struggling with for the rest of the ride. Others feel that you're better off getting some of that night riding done while you're fresh and well rested.

I've done a couple rides that started at night (a 600k and a 200k) and I actually felt pretty good throughout that first night on both rides. But they were both a lot shorter than PBP, so there's no telling how a night start will affect me 40 or 50 hours into the ride.

The group I'll be riding with likes the 84 hour start, primarily because they all tend to fall into the morning-start-is-best camp. So far I'm not sold on the idea. I like a lot of things about the 80 hour start, like:

It gets you out in front of almost everyone else. Assuming you keep moving fast enough you'll never even see most of the other riders so you won't have to work your way through them on the road.
Controls will be clean and uncrowded when you arrive so getting to food, bathrooms, etc. should be quick and easy.
You have the day to take your time getting to the start. Sleep in, take a nap, relax, no rush...
At least at the start you'll be surrounded by fast riders giving you plenty of choices to draft on.
You arrive in Brest in the evening which might make it easier to get some sleep there.

Of course there are also some things to not like about the 80 hour start like:

Given our planned schedule, the 80 hour start would have us doing a slightly higher percentage of night riding.
Historically riders choosing the 84 hour start have had a higher finish rate than riders in any other start group (it's not clear why, though possibly starting in the morning has something to do with it).

Ultimately I'll go with whatever my team chooses since my only hope of achieving my big fat goal is to ride with a team.

I'm interested in what start time other PBP riders are choosing and why. And am I over-thinking this a bit?

Training with a Capital T

2011-02-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

I've never really trained for a randonneuring event before... Well, that's not exactly true. I should say, I've never used a well thought-out structured training plan of any kind. I commute to work by bicycle nearly every day year-round, and I find time for a ride of some kind on most weekends. That all amounts to a decent amount of riding in a year and a lot of "normal" people might call that training. But, that's not really Training (with a capital T); it's what serious cyclists call "junk miles." Sort of the Doritos and Cheese Whiz of cycling.

Real Training involves a mix of specific kinds of riding (intervals, hill climbing, long steady distance, etc.) according a schedule, which alternately stresses your body and then allows it to recover, and then stresses it some more. Done correctly it increases the strength and efficiency of your muscles, the potential of your body to store carbohydrates (a.k.a. fuel), your body's ability to deliver oxygen to your muscles, and its ability to convert stored fat into energy. The schedule is one of the most important aspects of a real training program as it attempts to get your performance to a peak at a specific time, which hopefully coincides with the event for which you're training.

I guess that's a long drawn out way of saying, training makes you faster. Hopefully.

With a concrete yet very "stretchy" goal for PBP, I've decided I need to take training a little more seriously this year. As it stands now, I know next to nothing about real training. But luckily I know how to use one of those interweb search engine thingies (JumpStation is my favorite) and there seems to be an enormous load of information available out there for free (and probably worth every penny).

But don't worry, I'll resist any urges to turn this into one of those training blogs. I've read of few of those and while they sometimes provide some useful information, they are BORING (unlike this blog).

And for those of you who landed here because you were searching for good detailed training information, you may want to go back to JumpStation and try again. I'll probably talk a little about things I learn about training over the coming weeks that are interesting or amusing, but I won't attempt to provide yet another authoritative source of endurance training info. Like I said, there's already an enormous load of that available.

My Big Fat PBP Goal

2011-02-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that the history lesson on Charly Miller posted a few days ago was really just a setup for this post. I've already told a few friends this, but I figure you haven't totally committed to a goal until you've blogged it, right? So here goes:

My goal for PBP is to finish in less than 56 hours and 40 minutes and be added to La Société Charly Miller honor role. There, I said it.

Is it possible? Well, I'd say it's a long shot; what my bosses in corporate America refer to as a "stretch goal." And it definitely wouldn't be possible for me to do this by myself. But... with the right group of cyclists working together, plus good luck with the weather (especially wind), plus no big mechanical issues, plus no navigation mistakes, plus no serious physical problems, and with a heapin' helpin' of suffering, it seems possible. In theory anyway.

This goal grew from a seed that was planted on the second brevet I ever did back in the spring of '09. I rode almost the entire 300 km brevet with a group of six fast riders, and together we finished the ride in just under 12 hours. Bob Brudvik and Wayne Methner were in the group of six and somewhere along the way they told me about a group that was forming that wanted to make the CM list in 2011, and that they thought I should join them. At that point I knew next to nothing about PBP and had never heard of Charly Miller. I couldn't even imagine riding any distance greater than 200 miles in those days. So of course I said, "oh yeah, I'm in," thinking the conversation would be forgotten.

Over the remainder of the 2009 brevet season and through the 2010 season, I'd often see Bob on rides and again we'd talk about the Charly Miller society. Bob's a good salesman and I'm sort of a sucker for a pointless challenge so it wasn't long before I started believing it really could be done. See the deal is... (I'm channeling Bob a bit now) all you have to do is maintain a pace of 4 hours per 100 kilometers (including controls) all the way to Brest. That get's you there in 24 hours. You spend 4 hours eating and sleeping and then get back on the bike for the return trip. This gives you 28 hours to get back, which lets you ride a bit slower on the return trip. Sounds simple, right?

I've done 200km, 300km and 400km brevets at a pace of better than 4 hours per 100 km before. It's not easy, and for me it can only be done riding with a group, but it can be done. It's kind of like golf. Even if your a lousy golfer (which I was back when I used to golf), every once in a great while you hit a shot, like maybe a hundred yard approach shot, that looks just like something Tiger Woods would do. While that one shot is in the air, you're thinking to yourself, "hey, I'm pretty good." But in reality you're not that good, you just hit a good shot. The difference between you and Tiger is that you hit one like that out of about 115 shots while he does it every time.

So my point is, I can ride a 100 km in 4 hours, but it takes a Tiger Woods... er or maybe Lance Armstrong would be a better example? Anyway, it takes something more to maintain that pace for 1200 km.

But like I said, it's a stretch goal.

Charly Miller

2011-02-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

One of the things that makes the Paris-Brest-Paris event so special is its rich history. PBP is the oldest bicycling event still regularly run. It was first run in 1891 primarily as an attempt to sell newspapers. Apparently it sold some newspapers since it's still going strong 120 years later.

In the second PBP in 1901 when it was still a professional bike race (though amateurs were always allowed as well), the first American professional cyclist, a 26 year-old from Chicago named Charles Miller, joined the competition. I suspect some of Miller's story has been romanticised a bit over the years, but here's how it generally gets told in randonneuring circles these days:

Miller, under-funded and unsupported, was riding alone amongst 112 European professional racers. Many of the Europeans rode with pacers and had support crews providing food and helping to maintain their bikes along the way. Miller rode alone, finding food and water where he could and fixing his bike himself when it broke down. His bike completely gave out 350 kilometers from the finish, but he was able to quickly borrow another bike and ride on to the finish. Despite the odds,* Miller finished in a very respectable fifth place with an elapsed time of 56 hours and 40 minutes. Miller apparently was still going strong up to the finish as he set the fastest time over the final kilometer of the course (1 minute 26 seconds or about 26 mph!).

The course has changed (it's a bit longer and much hillier now), the roads have improved (one word: asphalt!), bikes have changed (they're REALLY expensive and look way more uncomfortable now), and physical training and nutritional science has improved considerably (yet I still eat PopTarts on rides). All of these changes make it difficult to compare Miller's achievement with what I'll be attempting in August. Still, American randonneurs almost universally recognize Miller's PBP performance in 1901 as nothing less than heroic. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until 1979 that another American (Scott Dickson) was able to better Miller's time!

To honor Charly's achievement, Randonneurs USA (RUSA) recognizes any American who finishes PBP in less 56:40, as a member of La Société Charly Miller. In the century since Charly's PBP ride only 26 solo riders and four tandem teams have made the list.

* After the first day of racing the August 17, 1901 New York Times reported, "The betting to-night is 3 to 1 against Lesna and 6 to 1 against Miller"

The Road to Paris

2011-02-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

I've had the 2011 Paris-Brest-Paris randonnée in the back or front of my head ever since I first learned about it almost two years ago. But until recently it had seemed pretty hypothetical. There were a lot of hoops that needed jumping through before I would actually be able to ride it, and I wasn't even sure if I really wanted to do it or was even capable of doing it. And of course there were rumors of registration limits and tough competition to get in.

With Audax Club Parisien's recent announcements about the registration limit and quotas by country, it's now all but certain that I'll be able to register. As a matter of fact, the rumors of tough competition to get in now appear to have been unwarranted and most likely no Americans who meet the minimum requirements will be turned away. And the fact that I completed the Cascade 1240 last summer suggests that I may actually be capable of surviving PBP.

So PBP is quickly looking much more real. Sure, there are a still more hoops to jump through, not least of which is that I have to complete a Super Randonneur series before July 17th in order to qualify. I've done two SR series now, but finishing one is still far from a slam dunk. So far I've been lucky enough to get through every brevet I've started without serious physical, mechanical or mental breakdowns. I contribute about 10% of that success to good training and smart planning and the other 90% is just dumb luck. But at this point I have little choice but to assume I'll finish the qualifying series and eventually find myself registered, qualified and on a flight to France with my bike in pieces in a box.

Not only is PBP looking less and less hypothetical, but it also now seems to be approaching at the speed of a TGV. So I've spent a few evenings recently researching lodgings and flights and working out the details of our trip. Sarah, Cody and Adam are all going to France with me and we'll spend a little over two weeks there in total. The first couple days will be in and around Paris (we're actually going to stay in Versailles which is very close to the start of PBP but still an easy train ride into the city) getting ready for the ride and seeing sights. Then while I ride to Brest, Sarah and the kids will take a much quicker and more comfortable trip there on the TGV. They'll stay in Brest for two nights, hopefully long enough to watch me sleep for a couple of hours and then we'll all meet back in Versailles, me of course taking the much slower and more painful route. After I've caught up on sleep a bit we'll all head to Annecy for a week of hiking, hanging out, and eating well before heading back to Paris and then home. Sounds to me like the trip of a life time!

It Runs in the Family

2011-01-31T20:22:00.000-08:00

That's my father, Stan competing in the Redmond Bike Derby race sometime shortly after World War II. He won the race that year, which consisted of a single lap around Lake Sammamish, about 25 miles. He was riding a borrowed bike, a single-speed with a coaster brake. He stripped off the fenders to lighten it up, flipped over the handlebars, and pedaled like hell. His best "gym whites" and a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors were all the gear he needed. I suppose he stopped to drink out of a stream along the way.

These days it's easy for cyclists to get caught up in the gear. The riders whirring around Lake Washington on a typical sunny Sunday ride carbon fiber bikes worth thousands of dollars, some with electronic shifting to move the chain through the Nigel Tufnel approved rear cogs ("these go to eleven") and triple front chainrings. Every component on the bike has been optimized, minimized, ovalized or oversized. And of course you gotta have Zertz inserts to keep it laterally stiff yet vertically compliant.

And that's just the bike. Then you load it up with computers with GPS, altimeters, thermometers and power meters to track your speed, position, power output, pop tart intake, slope, altitude and attitude.

You've got bottles, tubes, packets and pockets full of electrolyte sport drinks, energy gels, and power bars. This isn't food, it's high performance nutritional "fuel" and "supplements."

You can't wear plain old clothes on a bike anymore. It's gotta be high performance, technical gear made from merino wool, lycra, spandex, and Thermoroubaix fabric with the logos of your team sponsors. What you wear is not supposed to just cover your naked body. As Assos says, "Each and every item is conceived, designed and engineered to compliment other pieces in the range, so that they function together as a system." Whatever that means... From the top down: helmet, cycling cap, sunglasses, base layer, jersey, arm warmers, jacket, shorts, leg warmers, socks, cycling shoes, and toe warmers. And that's on a nice summer day.

Anyway, I get caught up in it sometimes too. And when I notice it, I like to look at the picture of my dad winning the Redmond bike derby race and then go for a ride on my 1982 Trek. I don't know how far or fast I go when I ride that bike because it doesn't have a computer.

2010 Cycling Recap

2011-01-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

I've been off the bike for the last few days. Between holiday activities and icy roads it seems like a good time to stay indoors and reflect on what I did on a bike in the past year and think about goals for the coming year.

At the end of last year one of my goals was to spend less time riding. In 2009, my first year of randonneuring, I went a little nutso and spent what felt to me like a little too much time on a bike. In 2010 I was successful in dialing back the amount I rode, and yet luckily was still able to achieve all of my randonneuring goals. Basically, I cut out most of the long training rides and just rode the official randonneuring events and continued to commute to work by bike. Initially I was a little afraid I wouldn't be in shape for some of the tougher events, but I managed to get by. On the rare occasions that I did get out for a training ride, I kept it short and intense.

My rando goals for the year were to complete another Super Randonneur series (200k, 300, 400k and 600k brevets), get an R-12 award (an official rando ride of 200k or more in 12 consecutive months), and finish the Cascade 1200. I achieved those goals by riding a total of 4680km (2908 miles) of rando events. I'm sure there was a fair amount of pain and suffering in all those kilometers, but I can only remember having a great time on every event I rode. Some of the highlights were the fastest 300k I'll ever ride, the four passes 600k, the Cascade 1200 and the Winter Solstice ride.

The rando medals I earned this past year.

My commute amounted to a little over 3,000 miles for the year. That's about 44% of the total 6876 miles I rode in 2010. I feel very lucky to be able to commute by bicycle. I still enjoy the ride on all but the crappiest days.

Once again, nearly half of the miles I rode were on a single speed bike. My main commuter bike is a single speed and I rode it on a few of the 200k rando events too. I think riding single speed is a big part of what keeps me in shape well enough to survive the harder rando events.

In 2011 I really only have one serious cycling goal: ride in and finish the 2011 Paris-Brest-Paris Grand Randonnee, the granddaddy of randonneuring events. I'll still need to complete a SR series in order to qualify for PBP, so it's not like I'll be sitting around doing nothing for the first half of the year. :)

Solstice - Waiting for the Eastern Glow

2010-12-20T21:36:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday night I rode the Seattle Randonneur's Second Annual Winter Solstice Ride. Yes, I know we missed the actual solstice by three days, but for working stiffs like me doing the ride on Tuesday night would make for a rough day at work on Wednesday. Besides, from the saddle of a bike one long, cold, wet night looks much like any other.

The idea of the solstice ride is to take advantage of the longest night of the year by spending as much of it as possible on a bike. It's a 200k ride that starts at 8:30pm, so if you ride slow enough you can roll into the finish just as the sun is peaking over the eastern hills. That of course assumes the sun does any peaking at all which it rarely does around the Winter solstice in western Washington. The ride was also billed as a Festivus celebration so it included the traditional Festivus pole, airing of grievances, and feats of strength.

About 25 of my hardy randonneuring buddies showed up at the start at Peet's Coffee in Redmond. Also at the start was a documentary film maker named Dan McComb. Dan is working on a feature length documentary called Beyond Naked that follows some "ordinary" folks as they prepare to ride in the Fremont Solstice Parade naked bike ride. Somehow Dan heard about our ride and decided to incorporate it into his film. I suppose our solstice ride makes a nice compliment to the annual naked ride in Fremont because of the obvious similarities. For instance, riders in both events probably wish they had more clothes on at times, and in both events many of the people who see the riders probably think they're totally crazy or maybe just dumb. It's also possible Dan, desperate for material, just Googled "bikes and solstice" and we were the only thing that came up.

I decided to decorate my bike for the event, so I zip-tied and duct taped some battery powered christmas lights to the frame and the wheels. Though it's hard to make out the lights, here she is anxious to roll outside Peet's at the start.

The lights were a big hit, especially once we got away from street lights of the city though the high-speed wobble that comes from duct-taping battery packs to the rims is a little spooky on the high-speed descents. A weight weenie I am not.

The route was a big loop that went from Redmond up to North Bend, then through Issaquah, Maple Valley, Renton and up around the north end of Lake Washington back to Redmond. It was about 38 degrees at the start and the moon and stars were out which was a bad sign. Clear skys mean cold and ice.

Sure enough as soon as we came over Novelty Hill into the Snoqualmie Valley, the temperature dropped and the roads turned very icy. I had ridden the first part of the ride with some of the "fast boys", but at that point they all decided that while the idea of an all night ride sounded neat in theory, it wasn't worth risking a broken hip or dislocted shoulder for. So the fast boys all turned around and rode home. I decided to press on, so I slowed down and waited for some other riders to catch up. At least if I crashed and broke my hip there would be someone there to call 911. Not long after I was joined by a group of familiar faces including Greg Cox, Mark Van de Camp, Warb Beebe, Bill Dussler and Michael (whose last name I've forgotten).

As we started to climb up out of the valley toward Snoqualmie Falls the wind picked up and the temperature with it. We traded icy roads for vicious head winds which, all things considered, seemed like a reasonable trade. With tempertures back into the upper 30s the riding was almost comfortable for the next few hours.

By far the nicest part of the ride for me was from Fall City to Issaquah on the Issaquah Fall City Rd. The wind had died down and it was warm enough to keep the roads wet instead of icy. Dan and his film crew (of one) drove along and filmed our little group as we rode the winding ups and downs. It sort of made us feel like we were something special.

Halfway through the ride we stopped at a minimart for a bite to eat. It was 1:30am and the ride was going pretty well, considering. But as we pulled out the rain started to fall and within a few minutes it turned to snow. As we rode up May Valley road we were soaked by big fat snowflakes mixed with sleet and rain. Lovely stuff.

The snow and sleet continued for about an hour and a half as we continued on down to Maple Valley where Joe Platzner had kindly parked his RV and was serving up hot cup of noodles, coffee and other snacks. Dan and his film crew were there too and they filmed us gobbling down noodles. Dan asked me some questions about why we do what we do and I gave completely incoherent answers which I'm going to blame on the time (about 3:30am), the cold (about 35 degrees) and on my IQ (low 70s). Hopefully none of that interview makes it past the editing process.

Another shot of my bike in the dark:

From Maple Valley on, the ride was uneventful and pleasant. There wasn't a lot of talking as we were all ready to get to the end and get out of the cold. Led Zeppelin's Battle of Evermore was playing in my head ("Oh well, the night is long, the beads of time pass slow/Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow"). We timed it right as the sun was indeed starting to show itself as we rolled into the parking lot at Peet's Coffee. I think it was around 7:00am when we finished.

As with all good randonneuring events, the painful memories of cold, rain, snow, wrong turns and endless hills had almost completely evaporated as I loaded my bike into the car for the drive home. Thanks to Joe P for throwing a heck of a Festivus party!

Bring it!

2010-11-24T18:14:00.000-08:00

Crappy photos courtesy of my crappy cell phone.

Seattle got it's first good winter blast this week and as usual it brought the city to a standstill (If Canada would just keep it's weather to itself we wouldn't have these problems). Anyway, I'm usually pretty wimpy when it comes to bicycling on snow and ice so I rode the bus to work on Monday when I saw snow in the forecast. And snow it did. The commute home Monday night was a mess. I got on a bus in the bus tunnel around 5:00, and by 6:00 the bus was only about two blocks past the end of the bus tunnel and going nowhere. From there I took matters into my own hands and got off the bus and started walking. It was really quite a fun adventure to walk home in the midst of a blizzard, passing hundreds of cars doing little more than idling and sliding. It took me about an hour and a half to walk the six miles from downtown Seattle to Ravenna where Sarah came and picked me up about a quarter mile from home. I'm pretty sure I beat the bus.

While I was walking, I saw three or four cyclists go by. They seemed to be getting along reasonably well in the snow. The only thing about it that looked a little scary was all of the two-ton four-wheeled hockey pucks sliding around on the road around them.

But mostly I was inspired. I worked from home on Tuesday, but by Wednesday morning with a bit of cabin fever starting to settle in and the snow still on the ground, I decided to give biking to work in the snow a try.

The roads in our neighborhood were hard-packed with some icy patches. The main arterials had been plowed and had some pavement showing through, but mostly I stay off of the main arterials on my route to work. It definitely wasn't my fastest ride to work. It usually takes me about 35 minutes each way, but today it took nearly an hour.

My bike probably doesn't have the ideal setup for riding in the snow with standard 28mm road tires. Still, it was much easier than I had expected. I did a little bit of squirreling around on some of the icy patches, but managed to keep the shiny side off the road for the whole trip. I have to admit, I had more fun riding in to work this morning than I've had in a long time. I mean, I'm not ready to move to Minnesota or anything, but… well… bring it on!

There's hardcore and then there's hardcore

2010-11-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday was Halloween so I decided to dress up as a Randonneur and go for a ride. This was a special ride for a number of reasons:

This was my twelfth consecutive month with an official rando ride of 200km or more thus earning my first R-12 award.
It was the first real ride on my new bike, a Velo Orange Randonneur.
It was Halloween. duh.
It didn't rain even though it was late October. Well, it didn't rain much.
Near the end of the ride I rode through the drunken procession to a Sounder's game at Quest stadium... on Halloween!! (The only thing more entertaining than a bunch of drunk Sounder's fans in full green game regalia, is a bunch of drunk Sounder's fans in Halloween day full green game regalia.)
And if the Sounder's fan's weren't enough, I finished the ride on the top of Queen Anne where thousands of miniature Power Rangers, Princesses, Sponge Bobs, Wonder Women, Cowboys, Storm Troopers and Mermaids were parading down Queen Anne Ave and harassing the local merchants for free candy.

I really couldn't have asked for a better ride to put a fork in 12 months of Randonneuring.

The route started and ended on the top of Queen Anne. It headed North up to Edmonds, then over to Woodinville, Snohomish, Monroe, South through the Snoqualamie river valley to Fall City, on around the south end of lake Washington, and finally through downtown Seattle and back to the top of Queen Anne.

A nice Raleigh Superbe at the ferry terminal in Edmonds

I really enjoyed this entire route. It was a great mix of urban and quiet country roads. It had a bit of suburbs too which I'm never fond of, but you just can't get from the city to the country without going through the 'burbs.

The weather was pretty fantastic all day too. Cool, mostly clear, a few sprinkles but I never really got wet.

My new 'neuse taking a break near Carnation

Ah, and the new bike seems to be working out very well. It rides like a Cadillac, very smooth and steady. It's not a bike to win a Criterium on, but it loves to gobble up the miles. Even though I haven't been riding a lot lately, I felt good at the end of the fairly hilly 200km and I attribute that to the ride quality of this bike. It also doesn't hurt that it's a couple pounds lighter than the old Cross Check.

This sort of reminded me of that Rembrandt painting with all the guys standing around looking at a cadaver.

As I came through the Mt Baker/I-90 tunnel heading for Queen Anne and the end of the ride, I came upon a bike polo game underway in Judkins Park. Some people think I'm hardcore because of the long rides I do. Pffffft! These guys playing bike polo? They are hardcore! I was humbled watching what they could do on a bike.

Semi hardcore - Bike polo in Judkins Park.

Anyway, overall it was another perfect day on a bike. And I even made it home in plenty of time to head out trick-or-treating with Adam. Wait... did I say the bike polo guys are hardcore? Maybe, but Adam trick-or-treating is as hardcore as it gets.

Mountain Loop Highway 200k

2010-08-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

Early last week as I was riding my usual route in to work, I ran into one of my fellow Seattle randonneurs, Gary Prince. We rolled through the downtown traffic talking about upcoming rides and the fact that neither of us really had the time to drive all the way up to Bellingham for this weekend's scheduled 400k brevet. I had been thinking of doing a 200k permanent closer to home and Gary liked the sounds of that so we made plans to do the Mountain Loop Highway permanent on Saturday.

I've wanted to do the Mountain Loop Highway permanent for quite a while. I was intrigued by 14 miles of unpaved and seldom traveled road. Somehow the lack of pavement translated to adventure in my mind; not exactly exploring-the-upper-Amazon adventure, but still something more interesting than just another lap around Lake Washington.

So I picked Gary up early Saturday morning and we drove up to Snohomish for the start of our little adventure. The route starts in downtown Snohomish and heads up the Centennial trail for a bit until it jumps off and follows bucolic backroads to Arlington. From Arlington the route heads east on highway 530 to Darrington, then turns right and follows the Mountain Loop Highway over Barlow pass and on down to Granite Falls. Some more back roads from Granite Falls get you back to Snohomish, but not before doing a few odd twists and turns to make sure you don't miss any of steep hills along the way. The 14 miles leading up to Barlow Pass are all unpaved and make the gradual climb a little more challenging.

We parked in front of the antique store where I eyed the selection of cowboy boots, contemplating whether I was properly outfitted for our little adventure. Gary was hoping to hit the bakery across the street before we got started, but they weren't open yet so we opted for stale donuts at the 7-11 and had a nice chat with the guy working there before taking off just after 7 AM.

The first 25 miles to Arlington were about as pleasant as a ride can be. The temperature was upper 50s and the scattered clouds were getting more scattered by the minute. I mentioned the bucolic back roads, right?

We took our time at the first control in Arlington and sat down with a cup of coffee and my second donut of the day (chocolate old-fashioned this time). Gary made some comments about the way I eat on Rando rides. Ok, generally I'm a pretty healthy eater, but for some reason when I'm on a long ride good nutrition and all that great food culture stuff that Michael Pollan writes about get tossed out like some wilted organic lettuce that's been hiding out for too long in the crisper drawer. For me, ride food is not really food, it's fuel. My body doesn't seem to be too picky about fuel. It has simple needs. Sugar for energy. Salt to replace the lost electrolytes. Fat... um, because it tastes good.

So, after a nice leisurely breakfast stop we headed east on highway 530 toward Darrington. This stretch of highway isn't bad, but it's the busiest road on the route. Cars and trucks whiz by pretty consistently at 50 mph and keep you focused on that fog line.

In Darrington, again we took some time to sit and relax and enjoy a bite too eat, this time I had a relatively healthy sandwich. Apparently Gary had made me self-conscious about my eating habits.

As soon as we left Darrington the road became much quieter and started tilting upward ever so slightly. A few more miles out of town the pavement ends. The road has a pot hole here and there and some washboard and loose gravel now and then, but for the most part it's pretty pleasant riding.

We stopped at a nice view point for wardrobe changes and other important business. The scenery was gorgeous, but of course I chose to take a picture of my bike instead. That's my converted single speed Bianchi Volpe. The climbing as we approached Barlow pass never got so steep that I regretted having only one gear.

In 14 miles of road leading up to the pass there are about 200' of pavement if you count the two bridges along the way.

After Barlow Pass, the highway heads slightly downhill for 30 miles on wonderful smooth pavement. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the unpaved section, but after an hour of bumping along in the dirt, pavement feels like you're riding on a pool table.

Since we had already blown any chances for a speedy time by enjoying leisurely stops at the first two controls, we figured we may as well see the sights on this second half of the ride. First we stopped at the Big 4 picnic area to soak in the tourist thing. We had a nice chat with an old Italian guy there who seemed to know a thing or two about bikes. He asked if we had ever heard of "Campagnolo". Yep, we had both heard of the brand before.

We stopped again not long after Big 4 at the Verlot Ranger station to refill water bottles (for those of you planning to do this ride, make sure you fill up a couple of bottles in Darrington as it's the last chance for water until Verlot, 43 miles down the road). At the ranger station a guy approached us and asked if we were riding a permanent. This isn't the kind of question a normal person would ask. Then we noticed he was wearing a Cascade 1200 T-shirt from a few years ago. Nope, definitely not a normal person. His name was Dave Johnson and he said he used to ride the ML Highway back before it was a permanent. Apparently he's not riding much with SIR these days since neither Gary nor I knew him, but obviously he's spent a few hours on a bike in the past.

As we continued on toward Granite Falls, we passed a 70s (?) Rolls Royce Silver Shadow going the other direction. Apparently this would be a day for rare sitings, Randonneurs, British luxury cars... later we saw a cocky coyote trotting down the road looking like perhaps he had just eaten someone's cat.

In the final few kilometers of the route it does some odd twists and turns for no apparent purpose other than to send you up a hill that climbs a couple hundred feet in less than a half mile, the last part being probably a 10% - 12% grade. Gary grumbled about the hill being "completely gratuitous" and I shifted into my granny gear (i.e. I got off and walked). I'm pretty sure the course designer was just thinking it was a funny joke. But, the payoff was a screaming fast descent down into Snohomish which put a nice cherry on top of what was already a beauty of a ride.

Back at the Bakery in Snohomish ice cream seemed like just the thing. "This is about one hour of cycling" said Gary as he held up his generous scoop. Indeed, this is a big part of why I ride. Two donuts, two sandwiches, two bananas, two Starbucks Frappuccinos, a cookie and an ice cream cone, and it wasn't even dinner time yet.

Cascade 1200 Ride Report

2010-07-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

I’m going to start with the end because it was by far the most memorable part of the ride for me, maybe just due to recency effect, but quite possibly because there was magic afoot.

After having covered about 760 miles in the past four days, Kelly Smith and I pulled in to the McDonalds in Granite Falls. The rain had started falling about 20 minutes before we got there and we were starting to get wet. This was the penultimate control stop on the Cascade 1200. I mentioned to Kelly that I hadn’t eaten at McDonalds in several years since I swore off corporate fast food after reading Fast Food Nation. But after a couple of minutes within Mickie D’s the smell of french fries had worked it’s way into my soul and I was ready to set aside my anti fast-food oath for one special occasion. Filet O’ Fish and fries have never tasted so good.

While we were enjoying our meal, Joe Platzner pulled in looking a little tired but in good spirits. We had been riding with Joe an hour or so back but he decided to drop off to ride a slightly slower pace for a while. We decided to wait for Joe so the three of us could ride the last 20 miles into the finish in Monroe together. Joe wolfed his food, and with the brief rain shower all drizzled out we set off into the approaching dusk. The route from Granite Falls to Monroe follows rolling, winding quiet roads through a typical Snohomish county rural setting with a mix of cows, horses, llamas, BMW SUVs and pickup trucks.

We were taking this last stretch at what Randonneurs call a “social” pace. As we rode, we talked about rides we’ve done in the past, people we’ve ridden with, bikes, and even a few non-biking topics. Kelly is from Virginia and came out just for the Cascade 1200. As we rode and talked, Kelly and Joe found that they knew people in common and had ridden in some of the same places since Joe had spent some time living back east.

We were about five miles from the finish and any doubts about finishing the ride had completely vanished when something odd occurred to me. We were riding in the dark now, and our headlights lit up rectangular patches of the road ahead of us. The odd awareness I had was that nothing on my body hurt. I mean, if I really focused on it, everything was hurting a little, but there was no specific pain gnawing away at me like it had been for the past three or four days. Nothing from my butt, my hands, my feet, my back or neck, not even my legs. Not only was nothing hurting, but I didn’t have any of that typical dark randonneuring mind stuff going on that usually goes on at this point in a ride, either focusing on some source of pain, or worrying about falling asleep on the bike, or constantly checking the mileage that seems to be frozen in time or moving at a geologic pace.

I mentioned to Joe that I wasn’t hurting anywhere and he looked at me with wide eyes and said, “you know, I’m not hurting anywhere either! Isn’t that weird?” We had been struggling through pain, fatigue, hunger, hypothermia (for Joe), headwinds, plenty of doubt, and a few mechanical issues for the entire day, but suddenly we were just three guys on a really pleasant bike ride, just a few short miles away from the end of the ride. Joe and I were both nearly giddy with the realization that we felt so good after so many miles.

I’m not sure whether it was endorphins or magic or what, but I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed 20 miles on a bike more than I enjoyed those 20 miles from Granite Falls to the finish of the Cascade 1200 in Monroe with Joe and Kelly.

Okay, so I guess I should go back to the beginning of story…

Day 1 – Monroe to Naches.

Saturday morning at 6:00am 94 riders set off from Monroe for the 2010 Cascade 1200. Riders had come from all over North America, and there were several from Europe and a couple from Japan. Apparently the Cascade 1200 has achieved near legendary status among Randonneurs. I had no idea when I signed up.

For the first several miles as we wound through the Snoqualamie Valley, the entire group stayed together as one massive peloton traveling at a very casual pace. On most brevets, everyone splits up almost immediately as the fast riders race off the front and the slower riders settle into their own pace. I made a point to drift to the very back of the peloton just so I could take in the whole thing. It was fantastic to see the mob of cyclists, two, three, sometimes four abreast extending a couple hundred yards up the road.

The hill up to Ames Lake finally split the peloton up and at that point I started working my way back up through the pack. I rode alone for much of the morning, passing people I knew and chatting briefly, but not settling in to any pace lines at first.

The route went on through Issaquah, Enumclaw and along the west side of Mt. Rainier through towns like Buckley and Elbe. The weather was cool and overcast and the riding was easy. I hung with Gary Prinz for a while, a fellow Seattle Rando who I sometimes see on my commute to and from work.

At Morton, the route turns east, first parallel to Hwy 12 on quiet roads, then on the busy highway. The wind had picked up and was blowing our direction, so the trip east on Hwy 12 was a fast and easy one. From Packwood the road tilts up toward White Pass, about 4,500 ft of elevation and 20 miles from Packwood. The last time I had been on White Pass was coming the other direction on the second day of the Four Passes 600k three weeks before. That day we were worried about hypothermia as we flew down the pass in the pouring rain with temperatures in the low 40s. This time it was a very different story. The sun had come out and it was starting to get a little warm on the climb. But for the most part I found the climb up White Pass to be much easier than I expected, and before I knew it I was bombing down the eastern slope heading for the control at Clear Lake.

At Clear Lake SiR volunteers made us sandwiches and I was very happy to sit for a bit. I left the control with a guy from Vancouver, WA named Michael who I had played leap-frog with on the climb up to the pass. Michael pushed hard and I did my best to keep up with him as we flew downhill with a strong tailwind (the stuff of dreams) for the last 35 miles into Naches. When they signed our cards at Naches Middle School, it was exactly 21:00 (9:00pm). I had logged a little over 225 miles for the day at an average rolling speed of about 16.5mph.

The volunteers at the overnight control in Naches treated us like kings and queens, though we were kings and queens who had to be content with cold showers and sleeping on wrestling mats on the gymnasium floor. With the aches and pains from a 225 mile day and the chorus of snores from dozens of tired Randonneurs, I didn’t manage to do more than doze off and on for a few minutes at a time. It seemed like a long night from when I lay down at 10:30 until I got up at 4:00am.

Day 2 – Naches to Quincy.

After a breakfast of pancakes, eggs and sausage, I rolled out at about 5:00am. The wind that had blown us into Naches the night before was still blowing, which was now a bit of problem. The first leg of the day 2 route was an out-and-back up to Lodgepole Campground near Chinook Pass. This meant we were heading into the wind for the first 45 miles. I’ve done the ride up Hwy 410 to Chinook Pass before, but the last time was in the middle of the night and it was after a very difficult night and day of riding without any rest. This time I was feeling strong and moving along pretty well. At first I was riding with Michael and I was pulling and passing a few other riders as we went. I had thought it was just Michael behind me, but when I pulled off to the side to drift back and let Michael pull for a while I found that a pace line of about 15 riders had formed behind us.

We made great time up to Lodgepole, getting there a little after 8:00. After getting our cards signed and hanging out for a while we started back down the way we had come. At this point I was still riding with Michael, but we had also picked up Kelly Smith. The three of us rode together well and we continued back to Naches to finish the first 90 miles of the day.

From Naches the route followed a bike path through Yakima until we got on Hwy 24 heading east. Hwy 24 is pretty busy with fast moving semis blasting by constantly, not the most pleasant riding conditions. At this point I was riding in a pace line of seven or eight riders. The pace seemed to by inching upward and was getting to the point where I had to work pretty hard to keep up. The old me would have stayed with this group thinking, “this is killing me but at least I’m making good time.” The new me is a slightly wiser randonneur, so the new me dropped off the back of the pack and decided to go it alone at a more reasonable pace. Kelly was going through the same thought process as me and he dropped off a couple of minutes later.

Together Kelly and I rode the remaining 100 miles or so for the day. From the time we let that fast group go until we pulled into the overnight control in Quincy, I don’t think we saw more than a dozen trees. It was hot, there was no shade anywhere and we were riding roads that continued on in a straight line for miles until they just disappeared over the horizon. There’s something about being able to see the next two hours of riding laid out in front of you in a long straight ribbon of asphalt that puts me in that dark rando place really fast.

By the time we pulled into the Vernita rest stop just south of the Columbia River, I was ready to be done with this day. Unfortunately we still had another 60 miles or so of hot desolate headwinds ahead of us.

As we arrived at the control stop in Mattawa, Michael, my riding partner from the previous evening was already there and talking about dropping out of the ride. Michael broke his collarbone a couple of years ago and he was finding that the old injury was giving him some problems. He seemed to have no strength left in his left shoulder. As he rode he was unable to hold himself up and he was nearly collapsing on the bike. It was sad to see him struggling with this decision, but clearly he didn’t have much of a choice.

The last 10 miles from George to Quincy was especially brutal. Even though the mileage was less than the first day, and there was less climbing, by the time we rolled into Quincy I had decided that the second day was much tougher than the first for me.

We covered 210 miles on the second day and we rolled into the control at Quincy at 20:57. Since I had arrived at the previous overnight control at exactly 21:00, I decided to wait a couple minutes so once again my card would be marked 21:00 exactly. It seemed like that would have to bring me some sort of luck, good or bad.

The overnight at Quincy was at the High School. Luckily the showers were warm this time and I was able to lie down on a gymnastics tumbling mat that was a little cushier than the wrestling mats from the prior night. Still, it wasn’t the best night of sleep I’ve ever had.

Day 3 – Quincy to Mazama.

With another good breakfast in our stomachs provided by the wonderful volunteers at the overnight control, Kelly and I got on the road at about 5:20 am. The days route started winding through cherry orchards on a beautiful quiet road with almost no traffic. I was definitely feeling the effects of two long days on the bike and not much sleep, but Kelly is full of interesting stories and facts, so the conversation eclipsed most of the aches and pain I was feeling.

After the orchards, the route turned north through Ephrata and Soap Lake and then through the Grand Coulee to Dry Falls. This has to be one of the most fascinating geological features in Washington state. It was created during the last ice age when glacial floods from Lake Missoula flowed through central Washington several times. It created a 400ft deep canyon but with no remaining river flowing through it.

From Dry Falls we climbed up out of the coulee on highway 2 to rolling wheat fields. On this climb, I barely missed a three foot rattle snake who was sunning himself on the side of the road. As slow as I was moving at that point, it would have been pretty easy for him to bite me if he had had a mind to.

Before turning north on SR-172, we were treated to a great control stop at the “town” of Farmer. I put town in quotes because there don’t appear to be any living people in Farmer. There’s a nice old grange hall (outfitted with two craps tables and not much else), two grain silos across the street, and a cemetery. That’s it. The ride organizers had rented out the grange hall and had sandwiches, watermelon and cold drinks inside. It was nice to sit down out of the sun as shade was very dear in this part of the state.

Thirty miles out of Farmer we were treated to probably the most fun descent of the entire ride as we dropped from the Columbia plateau down to the level of the Columbia River at Bridgeport. About eight miles at near 40 mph! Gotta love it. But what goes down must ride back up and the next 30 miles had us climbing back up to the next control at Malott which marked the beginning of the climb over Loup Loup pass.

The climb up to Loup Loup pass was long and hot and pretty steep. But having done this mountain pass climbing a few times, I’m getting pretty good at just finding a rhythm I can live with, zoning out, and grinding up the hill. It had cooled considerably by the time we reached the pass. The trip down the west side was a little slower than I had hoped with a headwind to fight. That was probably a good thing since apparently this stretch of road sees more than its share of deer collisions. I saw two dead deer on the side of the road on the way down.

Once on the other side of Loup Loup, we just had 35 more miles up through the Methow Valley to the overnight control in Mazama. Unfortunately wind karma was continuing to pay us back for 100 miles of tailwinds on the first day.

We decided to stop at a grocery store in Twisp to refill water bottles. I walked into the store alone while Kelly waited outside with the bikes. The store was pretty busy with normal folks picking up something for their evening meal, and as soon as I stepped into to the bustling store I went totally tharn. Something about the past two days of seeing few people, trees or buildings, and the lack of sleep, and the fatigue of many hours on the bike hit me like a ton of bricks. I probably stood there with my mouth hanging open for a couple minutes before I got my wits about me and remembered why I was in the store.

Later as we rolled through Winthrop, I looked at the time and realized that with 14 miles to Mazama, we could keep my perfect streak of signing into overnight controls at 9:00pm alive if we could just maintain 15 mph. Cool! (little things become amusing after days on a bike) Kelly and I had picked up Noel Howe at the store in Twisp, so I told the two of them about my mission and we started pushing hard toward Mazama. About that time, the headwind also decided to redouble its efforts to teach us humility. Our speed dropped from 17 mph to 15, then to 14, and eventually we were crawling along at 12 mph. I was ready to give up on the mission, but Kelly wanted to keep pushing, and Noel selflessly offered to give us one more good strong pull before he dropped off to let us finish alone. In spite of Kelly and Noel’s valiant efforts, it finally became obvious that we weren’t going to make it to Mazama by 9:00. When I handed my card to the SiR volunteer she looked at her watch and wrote “21:04”. I thought about offering her a bribe to get four minutes taken off my time, but it didn’t seem like that would be in the spirit of Randonneuring.

The overnight control at Mazama was at a very nice little resort where we had real rooms with beds and most of the comforts of home, although sharing a bed with a fellow Randonneur is not something I have to do at home. My computer showed 182 miles for the day and 8,800 feet of climbing. My average speed was telling the story of three long days in the saddle. My rolling average was just under 14 mph for the day.

Day 4 – Mazama to Monroe.

I actually got some good sleep for once, probably five hours or so, and woke up at 4:30am feeling pretty good considering… Which is to say, I still felt like I had been hit by a truck. We had a good breakfast served by the resort staff, and spent way too much time procrastinating before finally heading out at about 6:10am.

Immediately we started a gradual climb up the North Cascades highway toward Washington Pass. At about three miles from the pass you can clearly see the highway do a big switchback and climb another 1,000 ft or so to the pass. The road is about 7% grade here, so I was climbing at a banana slug's pace of about 6 mph. That gave me about 30 minutes of staring up at the road ahead and thinking I’d never get there. But sure enough I was getting there, until about 10 minutes from the pass my front tire went soft, one of those slow leaking flats, and I had to pull off the road to fix the flat and spend even more time staring at “the pass that would never arrive.” But as often seems to happen in Randonneuring, if you keep turning the cranks eventually you seem to get where you’re going. I got to the top of Washington Pass around 8:30am.

For the past few weeks I had been thinking that if I could just make it to Washington Pass, then the ride was as good as done. From there it’s almost all downhill. Well, actually there’s about 2,500 ft of climbing between the pass and Monroe, but for some reason that seemed very insignificant. Oh yeah, and there were another 145 miles of road between Washington Pass and Monroe. Nonetheless, at Washington Pass I was totally reveling in the “the rides basically in the bag” vibe.

Kelly had pulled ahead of me on the climb to Washington Pass, and with my flat tire I figured there were perhaps several miles between us now. So I started down the west side of the pass looking forward to the screaming descent. But the screaming descent never came. The wind was continuing to blow out of the west and seemed to have increased considerably on the west side of the mountains. What should have been 20 miles of coasting ended up being 20 miles of having to pedal to maintain 15 – 17 mph which would be slowish on flat ground. It was also quite cold. The temperature at the pass was somewhere in the mid 40s, and with the wind blowing, the windchill factor worked out to be somewhere between damn cold and colder than a welldigger’s ass (incidentally, there’s a peak near Steven’s Pass named Welldigger’s Ass, seriously).

After a few miles of fighting cold headwinds, I came upon Joe Platzner and Kelly on the side of the road. Joe had stopped because he was getting too cold and Kelly had stopped to make sure Joe was okay. Joe was eating everything he could hoping it would warm him up, and it seemed to be working. So after a few minutes he was feeling much better and we all took off again. I pulled ahead on some steep descents over the next few miles and left Kelly and Joe behind. I kept moving thinking I would wait for them at the store in Newhalem. By the time I got to Newhalem it was really becoming a struggle to stay awake on the bike. Apparently 6 – 7 hours of sleep in the past three nights wasn’t quite enough. So I had a couple of Starbuck’s Mocha frappuccino at the store and waited for the caffeine to kick in. I was there about 20 minutes before Kelly and Joe showed up. Apparently Joe had become hypothermic and ended up holing up in an outhouse for a while to get out of the wind so he could warm up. Nice trick.

From Newhalem on, Joe, Kelly and I mostly stuck together except for a short stretch that I mentioned earlier leading up to Granite Falls. For some of the long stretches between Marblemount and Granite Falls, I continued to fight the sleepies. When we stopped at a grocery store in Oso, Kelly went in and I stretched out on a wooden bench out front. I immediately fell asleep and was deep in dreamland when Kelly came out a couple minutes later.

As I’m sure you already gathered from the beginning of this story, we eventually rolled into Monroe to finish the Cascade 1200. We got there at 22:05 (with the 21:00 streak blown on the previous evening, the pressure was off), 88 hours and 5 minutes after the start. I rode 165 miles on the fourth day at a rolling average crawl of 13.25 mph.

The Cascade 1200 was an amazing experience and it definitely pushed the limits of what I thought I was capable of on a bike. Kelly Smith was a great companion for the last three days and deserves a big thank you for keeping me moving when everything in my body was saying, "no, no, no." Joe Platzner also deserves a huge thanks for keeping me entertained and laughing for much of the hardest part of the ride for me.

I also want to send a million thank yous to the many volunteers who helped make the Cascade 1200 a first class event. I couldn’t begin to name them all, but every one of them helped me along the way some small or large way.

And I also want to compliment all of the riders. What an amazing group of people. I met only a small fraction, but I was impressed and inspired by every one I met. There were some truly exceptional athletes on this ride and I felt honored to be among them.

Sorry about the lack of pictures. Sarah took the camera with her to Michigan so I was camera-less for this ride. You can find some pictures taken by others and lots of other ride reports here.

Countdown to the Cascade 1240

2010-06-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

I'm now down to counting the hours until the start of the Cascade 1240. This Saturday at 6:00am about 80 of us Rando-whackos will set off on a 1240 km tour of Washington. The riders will come from all over North America with a few from Europe and even a couple from Japan. We'll have 93 hours to finish the ride. Seeing as how I've never done a ride longer than 600 km, I have no idea which levels of hell (or heaven) I'm likely to visit along the way.

I've been trying my best to guess at how fast I'll be riding the various sections so I can figure out how much time I'll get for sleeping each night, if any. I think I'll probably average about 15 - 16 hours a day on the bike. If I don't lolly-gag too much at rest stops along the way, that should give me an opportunity to get a decent amount of sleep each night. But there's no telling how fast I'll be moving when my legs turn to clay somewhere during day 2 or 3.

In case you're wondering, 1240 kms translates to about 770 miles. That's pretty close to four times the length of the STP route but with 15 times the climbing. Below you can see the route broken into four sections by day.

Day one - Monroe to Naches - 223 miles.

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Day 2 - Naches to Quincy (with a side trip up Chinook Pass) - 214 miles

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Day 3 - Quincy to Mazama - 180 miles

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Day 4 - Mazama to Monroe - 162 miles

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I've been going back and forth between really excited about this ride, and scared shitless. But the bottom line is that events like this are what got me into Randonneuring. For some sick reason I love heading off on a ride not knowing whether or not I have what it takes to finish it. There's so much to be learned from success and even more to be learned failure. Still, I'm hoping for success. Wish me well.

SIR Four Passes 600k

2010-06-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

While life has been getting in the way of blogging lately, I haven't completely let the daily chaos keep me from squeezing in a long ride now and then. For instance, on June 5th and 6th I rode the SiR Four Passes 600k. This is a ride I've heard about and wanted to do for a while. In the typical SiR fashion, the route meandered through some of the most gorgeous parts of the state, on both the west and east sides of the mountains. Also in the typical SiR fashion the route did it's best to avoid any flat easy riding. Most of the time we were riding either up or down a mountain pass.

The ride started in Issaquah and headed up and over the Sammamish plateau on it's way to Sultan. From Sultan we headed east on Highway 2 toward our first big climb up Stevens Pass. From the start until the part where Hwy 2 starts tipping skyward, I rode with a fast group consisting of Brian Ohlemeier, Kole Kantner, Erik Andersen and Allan deCamp. We made great time, and I really enjoy riding with all of these guys. But before this ride had even started I had decided I was going to do this one at my own pace. I wanted to find out if it's possible to do a long tough ride like this without a lot of suffering. So, somewhere around Index, I dropped off the back of the group and found a nice comfortable pace for the long grind up Stevens pass.

For a few short but precious miles the route left noisy Hwy 2 to travel the old Cascade Highway that parallels Hwy 2. The old road is an amazing little stretch of bicycling paradise with no cars and beautiful glimpses of waterfalls. I rode this stretch alone and took my time, smelling the roses along the way. Far too soon, the route dumped me back on Hwy 2 with semis whizzing by.

I was taking my time climbing up Stevens Pass because my stomach was mighty angry. Generally I can get away with eating just about anything, but the mini-mart jalapeno cheddar object that I ate back in Skykomish had crossed a line. At this point in the ride the only people who were ahead of me were the four I had been with at the start, but with my stomach problems I had to slow down so that a couple other riders passed me on the way up the pass.

By the time I got to the summit, my stomach was starting to feel better so I was able to enjoy the trip down the east side of Stevens. It wasn't as fast of a descent as I had hoped for due to a bit of a headwind. I got passed by a couple more riders on the way down in to Leavenworth and spent a little while riding and chatting with Charlie White who I had ridden with briefly on the 400k last month.

Charlie and I pulled into Leavenworth around lunch time to find several other riders at the Subway, wolfing down calories, smearing on sunscreen and getting ready for the next climb up Blewett pass. I took a few minutes to enjoy a sit down lunch, actually sitting at a table rather than on the sidewalk for once.

I headed out from Leavenworth alone and actually looking forward to the climb up Blewett Pass. The weather was beautiful if not bordering on too hot. But as the elevation increased, the temperature decreased and in general it was perfect cycling weather. The climb up Blewett Pass never really gets very steep but it goes on for long time. So I settled into a pleasant pace and just kept grinding away until I reached the summit at around 3:00 pm. Robin Pieper was manning a secret control at the summit and had some of the usual salty and sweet rando snacks not to mention some much needed water.

The ride down Blewett was a fun one, though again a headwind kept the speed down some. The route headed south on Hwy 97 toward Ellensburg. Somewhere along this stretch I joined up with Vincent Muoneke and Geoff Swarts for a few miles. Together we enjoyed the scenery and the rhythm of the ride. Eventually Vincent, Geoff and I caught up to Matt Newlin, Mark Roehrig and Wayne Methner, and the six of us rolled into Ellensberg together looking for some dinner.

After Ellensburg, the route headed south on Canyon road along the ?? river. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky and the bugs were out in force. I consumed enough bugs on that stretch of road to save me a few shot blocks. I rode most of the Canyon road stretch with Matt and Wayne, and eventually we joined up with Mark again and the four of us stuck together all the way through Selah and on up Hwy 12 to the overnight control near Rimrock lake. We rolled in to the overnight just before midnight. There we found wonderful volunteers bearing hot soup and other goodies, and better yet, hot showers and warm beds. We also a few other randonneurs looking very ragged, but happy to be done for the day.

I got up around 5:00am the next morning after a few hours of tossing and turning and unfortunately very little real sleep. As exhausted as I was, the aches and pains that come from 250 miles and two and a half mountain passes made sleep elusive. After some pancakes, I was on the road with Wayne, Matt, and Charlie just before 6:00. Overnight, the weather had definitely taken an ugly turn and it was now raining pretty hard. At the top of White Pass the temperature was in the low 40s and the rain wasn't letting up at all. We all put on all the clothes we had for the screaming cold run down the west side of white pass.

By the time we got to the turn off to Hwy 123 Wayne was so cold he was shaking uncontrollably and was having a hard time controlling his bike. Luckily a couple of SiR volunteers had a control set up with a propane heater and hot drinks. Without them there, we could have been in serious trouble. I was cold, but no where near as cold has Wayne and a couple other riders I saw arriving while we were there.

From the control the route started the climb up to Cayuse Pass. I was happy to be climbing again so I could get warm, but my legs were feeling pretty darn useless by this point in the ride. But somehow I was able to keep turning the cranks up the the summit of Cayuse.

The group I had been with split up on the way up Cayuse, and since it was very cold at the top I didn't stop to wait for them. I wanted to carry some of that warmth generated on the climb with me on the chilly descent. The descent down Cayuse toward Enumclaw was a fun wild ride that went on for a long time. The last time I did this descent was on last year's mountain 600k. That time it was in the middle of the night, my lights were too dim, I hurt everywhere and I was going on two nights with virtually no sleep. This time I felt terrific in comparison and was really able to enjoy the trip down.

I stopped for a quick sandwich in Greenwater and chatted with one of the local boys about the ride. He asked where I started, where I had been and where I was going. When I told him about the route he asked why I didn't just drive it. He had a point.

The rest of the ride from Greenwater was on familiar roads and I was really starting to feel the miles. Every brevet has its stretch where time stands still, and on this ride the temporal distortion was somewhere between Enumclaw and Issaquah (the 'claw and the 'quah).

One feature of this brevet that was either extremely annoying or extremely charming (I still haven't decided) was that it ended with a little victory lap around lake Sammamish. After arriving in Issaquah, about a mile from the finish, you had to do a counter clockwise loop around the lake. I like a bike ride around Lake Sammamish as much as the next guy, but when it comes after about 350 miles it takes on a different flavor. But I did my obligatory victory lap and pulled into the finish at Brad Tilden's house. It was 34 hours and 47 minutes since I had left Brad's house the previous morning. Brad's wife served up a great plate of pasta and tolerated my incoherent ramblings and sweaty wool smells.

So I stuck with my plan to ride at my own pace and really enjoyed the ride as a result. But I also learned that suffering is pretty unavoidable on a 600k ride.

SIR Spring 400k

2010-05-16T18:09:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that in the Super Randonneur series of brevets (200k, 300k, 400k, and 600k) the biggest step up in difficulty is from the 300k to the 400k. I'm not sure why exactly. Maybe it's because the 400k is the first distance which requires some night riding for all but the very fastest riders. Or maybe because it's the longest distance most Randonneurs do without a sleep stop. It may be because there's just something magical about 400 kilometers (249 miles) and what it does to your body. Whatever it is, I've now experienced it twice and there's no doubt in my mind that the step from 300k to 400k is like going from walking around the block to running a marathon.

On Saturday SiR held their 2010 Spring series 400k. The course was flat by SiR standards with about 7,000 ft of climbing in the entire route. The weather forecast was excellent, with no rain expected and temps in the 50s and 60s, winds would be light. This is the kind of route and forecast that gets a lot of Randonneurs thinking about setting a personal best time for a 400k.

Leaving Seattle behind on the 6:00am ferry

The ride started in Bremerton at 7:00am, so the 6:00am ferry from Seattle was loaded with dozens of bikes and eager randonneurs. On the way over, a lot of people were talking about the fact that the last ferry from Bremerton to Seattle would be at 11:40pm. If you miss that one, you have to wait until 6:20 the next morning. This fact tossed a little more fuel on the fast ride fire. If you finish the ride in about 16 1/2 hours, you can make that last ferry. If not, you share a hotel room with a half dozen other smelly randonneurs in conditions slightly better than a slave ship. 16 1/2 hours for a 400k is pretty darn fast. But... for quite a few, with good weather and a flat course, it's within reach.

Bikes on the ferry

We congregated at the Starbucks in Bremerton as Joe Llona gave the traditional pre-ride pep talk, and then we headed out a few minutes after 7:00. The route would take us out to the coast at Westport, then south to Raymond via 105, and then back North through rolling hills along 101. It followed back roads up to Potlatch state park on Hood Canal and then back to Bremerton.

Since a lot of people were trying to make good time, the name of the game at the start was to find the right group to ride with. On a long flat ride like this one, traveling with a group is much easier than going it alone. Of course, if you find a group that's too slow you'll miss the ferry, and if you find one that's too fast, you end up getting spit out the back in the middle of nowhere, completely cooked and forced to limp in the rest of the way alone. I chose the latter option.

Struggling to stay on the freight train

A few miles out of Bremerton I settled into a long pace line including Mike McHale and several other big strong oxes. On a course that doesn't have much climbing the big guys are always fast. Allen deCamp was also in this pace line. Allen is a strong rider, but like me is built more for the hills than this flat freight train riding. I think we both knew we were going to get worked.

Allen over my shoulder

As the group worked it's way out toward the coast through Shelton, Montesano, Cosmopolis, I was doing all I could to just stay at the back of the line. One of the golden rules of long distance cycling is to avoid letting your heart rate get into "the red zone." Too much time in the red zone and you're cooked. Recovery takes a long time. As we were approaching Westport, I kept falling off the back of the line and then sprinting like mad to catch up again. Every one of those sprints was bringing me closer to the inevitable crash and burn. Finally about two miles from Westport, I fell off the back and decided to let them go. By this point, it was already too late. I was completely cooked. The paceline had been doing better than 20 mph into a head wind. Now on my own, I could barely manage 15 mph. The group was out of sight within a couple of minutes.

This is what I look like when I'm completely cooked

After sitting for a few minutes in Westport and having a sandwich and some other salt delivery mechanisms, I headed off down the coast toward Raymond by myself. With the change in direction, the winds had become favorable. Still even with a tailwind, I was so wrung out that I could barely do 17mph. The paceline I was with before must have been doing 25 mph through this section. But I was happy to be traveling my own comfortable pace.

I took this lovely picture of the guardrail to prove I made it to the coast

Somewhere on the stretch between Westport and Raymond, Michael Gray, Mark Roerhig, and Peter Rankin caught up with me. I rode with them for a while, but quickly realized that I was still too spent to do anything but ride my own pitiful pace, so I dropped off the back once again.

I rode with Michael, Mark and Peter briefly on the way to Raymond

Then a couple miles outside of Raymond I came upon Allen de Camp beside the road with a flat tire. Allen was in the same condition I had been in about an hour back. He had hung on to the Mike McHale freight train for a while longer than I had managed, but also eventually got chewed up and spit out the back. I figured Allen would be the perfect riding partner since at this point neither of us had any loftier goal than to just finish the ride. Allen and I pedaled together at a pitiful pace into Raymond.

At the convenience store in Raymond we saw Michael, Mark, and Peter just about to head out, and then a few minutes later as we were about ready to get back on the road, another group pulled in made up of Bob Brudvik, Robin Pieper, Jan Acuff, Erik Anderson and Rick (?). We chatted briefly and then Allen and I got on the road figuring the group would catch up to us soon enough.

From Raymond we headed North on hwy 101 up and down hills that all looked exactly the same. It was like ground hog day. Climb for twenty minutes, descend down the back side for a couple minutes, repeat. On about the fourth or fifth hill, the group that we saw back in Raymond caught up to us. Neither Allen nor I were completely recovered yet but we decided to join the group so we could get through the rest of the ride a bit faster. At first it felt like a repeat of the too fast freight train from earlier in the day, but eventually we got our legs back and started enjoying the group thang again.

The group I finished with, near Elma

After Elma, the route headed North on a beautiful back road with gentle rollers which was definitely my favorite part of the ride. With very little traffic, we got into a double paceline and chatted and peddle at a comfortable but still fairly quick pace. The sun was getting low in the sky and the light was beautiful. The highlight of this part of the ride for me was riding by the maximum security prison near Shelton. I've never seen so much razor wire in my life. Not that I've ever really considered a life of crime, but that place is enough to keep you living right. As we rejoined 101 again, it was getting dusky so we turned on lights and rode the last couple miles up to Potlatch State Park on Hood Canal.

Joe Llona was at Potlatch with his son and a nice spread of typical Rando food. A cup of noodles was exactly what I needed and Joe had it. The group relaxed and kicked back for a few minutes as we did the math on what we had remaining. We were about 39 miles from the end, and it was a little after 8:00pm. All we had to do was ride 15 mph to make it back to Bremerton with plenty of time to catch the 11:40 ferry. So we rolled out as the last light was fading away with little pressure and a few easy miles remaining.

The last part of the ride was fun. I love riding in the dark. Somehow the aches and pains of a long ride seem to diminish once the sun sets. Again we were in a double pace line and traffic was light. We chatted and dreamt about greasy, salty meals as the final miles ticked by.

Queuing up for the last ferry back to Seattle

We pulled into the finish at the hotel in Bremerton a little before 11:00pm. We had plenty of time for some pizza and a beer before getting on the 11:40 ferry. I think several of us set personal best times for a 400k on that ride. More importantly, I did some good learning on how hard I can push myself before it all falls apart. And I also learned that I can push myself over the edge, and if I take some time, eat some food, get some fluids in me, I can even recover enough to finish the ride. Yep, another good day on the bike.

"The Alps"

2010-04-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

For the month of April I wasn't able to do any of the organized SiR rides, so to keep my R-12 going I decided to ride a permanent. I picked the toughest route I could find since one of my new year's resolutions was to spend less time on the bike, but to make it count when I do ride. As far as I know, the toughest 200k permanent is #517, The Alps (sort of a presumptuous name for ride the goes through towns like Auburn and Hobart). It packs 10,000 feet of climbing into 200 km, without ever going over 1200 feet above sea level. The route starts in Redmond and meanders around South King County, hitting every good climb it can find. It's a little like a bad action film with a bunch of chases and fights and shoot outs, but not much of a plot to string them together.

My aim was to start at 7:00am at the Whole Foods in Redmond. I got there a bit late so didn't get on the road until about 10 after. A minute or so after getting on the road I realized one of my brakes was rubbing, so I had to stop and adjust it a bit. So, a couple blocks into the ride and it was already 7:15.

The ride follows the west side of Lake Sammamish to Eastgate, climbs up to the top of Summerset, then heads down toward Issaquah, and climbs up Cougar Mtn on "Zoo Hill."

Route Map

In my brief Randonneuring history I've heard many stories about other Randonneurs struggling to make the control cutoff times. Apparently I was just dealt a pretty good genetic hand when it comes to cycling, because it's never been a concern for me at all. I've never even really had to think about it. So it was a bit of a shock on this ride when I was approaching the second control near the top of Zoo Hill and realized I was going to be pretty close to the control cutoff. The combination of the late start, stopping to adjust the brakes, two big climbs already, a couple of minor navigational mistakes, and the control being only a few miles into the ride so I hadn't had much of a chance to build up a buffer all meant I was starting up zoo hill with 30 minutes to make the second control. I assumed the control was at the top of the climb, and the climb up Zoo Hill usually takes me about 20 minutes. But since this was the second of 10 big climbs on a 200k ride, I wasn't heading up the hill as fast as I usually do. If I kept my conservative pace, I realized I'd probably make the top of the hill about three to five minutes before the cutoff. But what if I got a flat tire? What if there was road construction up ahead that held me up for a few minutes? I'd be cutting it very close. For the first time in my Rando career, I was actually worried about making a cutoff. I decided to resist the temptation to pick up the pace, and just hope for the best.

Did I mention that the navigation part of Randonneuring is not one of my greatest strengths? So it turns out that the control is actually only about 2/3rds of the way up the climb, so I got there with several minutes to spare. But still it was by far the closest I've ever been to the cutoff. And you know, it was actually kind of fun having that pressure for a few minutes. Not sure I want to always ride with that kind of pressure, but a little bit of it is fun.

From Cougar Mtn the route continues south toward Auburn, climbing every hill it can find along the way. The Alps is one of those routes that makes you a slave to the route sheet. You rarely ride more than a mile or two without making a turn, and the turns aren't all that obvious. If you aren't paying close attention to your route sheet, you'll get lost for sure. Navigation has never been my strong suit in Randonneuring even on the simpler routes.

And to make matters worse, while studying the route sheet somewhere south of Cougar Mtn I realized that when I printed it, any of the cues that had instructions with more than one line got cut off. All I could see was the bottom line. So an instruction like, "Turn right to stay on 196th. DO NOT continue straight onto Sweeney Rd." Showed on my cue sheet as simply, "straight onto Sweeney Rd." "Hmm, this could cause problems," I thought. Sure enough, I missed a turn or two but figured it out fairly quickly just because I was familiar with some of the roads and knew where I was headed more or less. But eventually I found myself hopelessly off course with no clear idea of where I went wrong or how to get back on course. I scratched my helmet for a couple minutes and then decided to use a life line. I called Sarah and asked for help.

At first I spent a lot of time whining and complaining to her about how lame I was for printing the route sheet without noticing the formatting problem. Then we spent a few minutes trying to figure out where I was. Then she tried to figure out a route to get me to where I needed to be, but that got far too complicated, so I decided I just need to backtrack about four miles to where I went off course. Throughout this conversation I kept thinking this route sheet mess was too complicated and I should just bail on the ride (DNF??). Then she found a copy of the route sheet on my computer and read me all of the instructions that got cut off on my version. I took notes and scribbled all over my copy. All of this took over a half hour or more, and once again I started worrying about whether I would be able to make the next control on time. Luckily I had built up a decent time buffer so it looked like, assuming I could get back on course AND I didn't get lost again, I should be able to make the next control with 15 - 20 minutes to spare.

Well, I did make it to the Green Valley Meat and Minimart with plenty of time to spare. (Note to self: Need to go back there sometime in a car. It's a strange and fascinating store.) After the Meat and Minimart, I had nearly 10 miles of flat riding trough the Green River Valley that gave me a good time buffer for the rest of the ride. I didn't have to worry about cutoff times from there on out.

Elevation Profile

The rest of the ride was far less eventful. I stayed on course and rode up and down hills and just kept turning the cranks. I saw some good riding roads that I had never been on before, like Issaquah - Fall City Rd (the old part after it leaves suburbia), and climbed some great hills I've never climbed before, like Lake Alice Rd with a fairly long stretch of >15% grade.

I was good and tired by the time I finally rolled back into the Whole Foods parking lot in Redmond. The ride took me 11 hours 18 minutes which is by far the longest I've ever taken to finish a 200k. But I figure if I could subtract about an hour for the late start, getting lost, and whining on the phone to Sarah I'd end up with a respectable time.

The Alps is a really nice route, but I definitely am no fan of routes that have cue sheets that are longer than my arm. I'll have to ride it again, now that I know the route, so I can just enjoy the ride and look away from my cue sheet once in a while.

300k with the Cyclos Montagnards

2010-04-04T20:11:00.000-07:00

This is a late, late post. Sorry. Life has been getting in the way of blogging lately...

Last Saturday I rode the SiR spring 300k. The ride started and ended at University Village, about a mile from our house so I definitely had no excuse for not riding to the ride. Before I get into the actual ride I have to fill you in on some of the back story. A couple weeks before this ride I had agreed to ride this year's SiR Fléche with the Cyclos Montagnards team. Yes, I realize that last sentence was full of words that mean nothing to you if you aren't a card-carrying randonerd.

So what's a fléche you ask? Well, its a randonneuring event that even seasoned Randos find confusing. Basically, a fléche is like a brevet that you ride as a team of 3 - 5 riders. Teams have to cover at least 360 km in 24 hours. Each team chooses their own starting point and route, but all of the teams end in the same place at roughly the same time. The idea is for everyone to converge on some nice place where they can all get together for Sunday brunch after the big ride. The fléche rules are designed to keep teams moving for most of the 24 hours. For example, a team can't stay at any one stop for more than 2 hours.

How about Cyclos Montagnards? Cyclos Montagnards is an organization that exists under the randonneuring "tent" and is all about riding farther and faster than you ordinarily need to or want to as a "normal" randonneur. So given their mission, the Cyclos Montagnards fléche team was definitely out to win the overachiever's award by planning to ride over 600 km in the 24 hour fléche when 360 km would do just fine, thank you very much. So, I was a little surprised they asked me to ride with them because having never ridden 600 km in just 24 hours, I'm not sure I'm even capable of it. But I was flattered that they thought I could do it so I agreed to join the team.

Ok, now back to last weekend's 300 km brevet... All of the members of the CM Fléche team (Ryan Hamilton, Brian Ohlemeier, Jan Heine, Hahn Rossman and I) were supposed to be riding the 300 km, so we decided to ride it as a team just for practice. Jan, the CM team captain, decided we were shooting for an 11 hour finish and he even put together a detailed schedule of when we needed to be at each contrôle along the way and how long we could stay (He gave us a whopping 4 minutes at the "lunch" stop, and a minute or two at the others). We gathered in the dark for the 6:00am start and the team chatted a bit amidst the 80 or so other riders who had turned out for the brevet. Just before 6:00 am the ride organizer, Gary Prinz, said and few words of warning and encouragement and sent off the horde into the cool calm morning.

Immediately the CM team took off like a shot trying to get ahead of all the other riders. I figured we would start fast to get ahead of everyone else, and then eventually settle into a more relaxed pace once we had put some distance between ourselves and the other riders. I figured wrong. the pace never really slowed much for the entire ride. I remember thinking for the first 150 km that there was no way I could maintain such a fast pace for the entire ride. But somehow I kept hanging on and staying with the team despite the voice in my head that kept screaming at me to just sit down beside the road and give my legs a rest.

Route Map

The route headed up around the north end of lake Washington and then turned south toward Redmond and Sammamish. After climbing up and over the Sammamish plateau we then had a long flat stretch up through the Snoqualmie Valley heading toward Monroe, Sultan and eventually through Granite Falls to Conway before turning south and working our way back to University village.

Even though we were still riding faster than my legs thought prudent, the flat ride up through the Snoqualmie Valley was insane fun. With a group of six (Hahn never showed up, but Mike McHale and Eric Anderson hopped on the train with us) we ran a rotating pace line. This was the first time I had ever ridden in a rotating pace line. It's a bit intimidating at first, and a little like being a part in a big, fast machine. It requires some serious concentration, and you never really get to rest like you do in a standard single-file pace line. It's also pretty hard to find enough time for eating and drinking. Other than a few minutes to stop and fix Jan's broken fender, the rotating pace line helped us maintain well over 20 mph average all the way to Sultan.

We made a quick stop in Sultan to get our cards signed and refill water bottles and then started the biggest climbing section of the ride. From Sultan up to Lake Roesiger, the route has some ups and downs (mostly ups), adding up to over 1,000 feet of climbing over a dozen miles or so. One short section on Reiner Road has a pitch of about 18% which definitely gets your attention. During this section I started noticing that my legs were on the verge of cramping every time I stood up and pushed hard. Fortunately for me (not so fortunate for Ryan), Ryan was also fighting cramps about that time, so the group slowed down a bit to let Ryan recover. Nope, not for me, it was all for Ryan (wink, wink). Of course, "slow" for this group was still faster than just about any group I've ridden with before.

Ride Elevation Profile

While we were slowed down a bit I gobbled a couple of Endurolytes (amazing things, those Endurolytes) and caught up a bit on "food" and fluids. Amazingly, I was feeling pretty strong again by the time we rolled into Granite Falls.

The next section rolls along Hwy 9 with ups and downs but nothing steep or long. We were back into our rotating pace line and moving along at a good rate again. We kept this up most of the way to Conway where the course turned South into the teeth of a head wind.

The headwind from Conway wasn't too strong, but it definitely slowed us down. It was tough to work together here because the wind was at an angle forcing us to spread out across the road in order to stay in each other's draft. Needless to say, cagers aren't crazy about a group of cyclists taking up the entire lane on a busy highway.

By the time we got to Arlington, and on to the Centennial Trail, we were mostly out of the wind. Unfortunately I was also mostly "out of wind." Jan, Brian and Mike were still riding strong, so I just sort of hung on to the back and let them do most of the pulling as we flew down the trail. Thanks for the hard work, guys. This isn't the first time I've received a free ride behind Mike. The man is pretty amazing on the flats and into the wind. He always modestly claims it's entirely due to his fancy-schmancy carbon fiber deep section wheels. But it certainly doesn't hurt that his legs can generate about as many watts as a Toyota Prius.

Somewhere between Snohomish and Woodinville, I got a flat tire. I came to a stop and threw my leg over the bike to get off and my leg immediately cramped to the point that I could hardly stand up. While I stood there beside the road screaming in pain and massaging the back of my thigh, Ryan, Brian, Mike and Eric were fixing my flat. Note to self: When riding with nice guys, fake a bad cramp whenever you get a flat. Moan and groan and massage your leg for a few minutes while your buddies fix the flat. When they're done, you just hop back on the bike and say your cramp is much better, thanks, and ride off into the sunset with your hands still clean. By the way, those guys fixed the flat in about half the time it usually takes me.

The last fifteen miles of the ride were on the Burke-Gilman trail. We were all starting to smell the barn at this point, and as a result, were probably riding a bit faster than we should have been given all the Saturday afternoon traffic on the trail. So, I'd like to send an open apology out to all those folks on the trail that we blew by. But, I hope you can all appreciate that a randonneur's judgement can get a bit cloudy when they get within a few miles of the end of a brevet.

We rolled into the finish in U Village at 4:10, 11 hrs 10 min after the start. We didn't make our 11 hour goal, but I'm going to blame my flat tire and Jan's broken fender for that.

This was the third brevet (counting the 100k populaire) of the season, and the third one in which I ended up riding with a fast group of riders. One thing I'm starting to realize about riding with some of the faster riders is that fast rides tend to make for boring ride reports. I spend the entire ride clinging desperately to the back wheel of the rider in front of me so I have no time for taking pictures or watching for interesting sights along the way. Working as a team is a lot of fun, but it's definitely a different kind of fun than when I take a brevet at a more leisurely pace. Both approaches have their pluses, and I probably won't know how I'll approach my next brevet until I get out there.

By the way, a couple of days ago I learned about a work commitment that's going to make it impossible for me to ride the fléche. I'm disappointed, but I have to say, the thought of riding the pace we rode on the 300k for 24 hours straight was a little intimidating. I was doing some serious suffering for about 10 of those 11 hours. No doubt I would have set a new personal best (or worst) for suffering on the fléche.

Chili Hilly

2010-03-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

Somewhere up there are the fast riders

Last year's SiR Chili Feed 200k was my first ever Randonneuring event so this weekend's 2010 version of the Chili Feed 200k (and absolutely last one, he means it) marks the first anniversary of the event that ignited my obsession with riding bikes over long distances in horrible conditions while doing paper work.

I remembered starting last year's ride wondering if I'd make it, worrying about following the rules, whether I had the right kind of mud flap, was I wearing enough wool... I'm hardly a wise old veteran with a single year of randonneuring under my reflective belt, but at least I was able to relax, enjoy the ride, say hey to some friends from past rides, and make a few new friends.

A very quick stop at the Black Diamond bakery. Next time I'm staying for a donut.

Actually there's not much of a story to tell about the ride, so I won't say too much. The weather was pretty good for mid-March. A few minutes of hail, a few more minutes of rain, some chilly head winds here and there, but otherwise a pretty decent day.

I rode the first third of the ride mostly alone, caught in that no man's land that I often get caught in ahead of the main pack, but behind the fast riders. When a group caught up with me after the Flaming Geyser climb I decided to stick with them to get some rest in their draft. It was a strong group and Mike McHale in particular was like a diesel locomotive on the flats so there was no reason to do anything but stay with them for the rest of the ride. We finished the ride in 7:47 which is almost an hour faster than my time last year.

Muddy freckles, but worth it for the draft

Next up is the 300k in two weeks. This will be my first ride of over 200k since last September.

Running with the Big Dogs

2010-02-28T21:46:00.000-08:00

Today SiR held their 100k Spring Populaire. A Populaire is a brevet that is free and open to the general public. Populaires are basically the Randonneuring open house to get new members.

Populaires usually draw quite a few people, especially when held on a day with great weather. At the start I noticed that there were a few of the fast riders there, guys like Jan Heine who is almost always the first to finish a brevet, and Chris Ragsdale who won one of the top endurance events in the country last year, the Furnace Creek 508. These guys are endurance cycling monsters who could keep up with just about anyone.

I decided that since it was a relatively short ride, it might be a good time to try staying with the lead group, to see what life is like at the front of the peloton. I generally tend to finish brevets in the second or third group which is often quite a ways behind the lead group, so I figured I could stay with them for at least a short while. And if I completely blew up 20 miles into the ride, it wouldn't be such a big deal to limp along for 40 miles to finish the ride.

Out of the gate the lead group was cruising along at 25+ mph on the flats. It was fun to be part of that, but I knew right away I wouldn't be able to keep up that pace for 100km. Sure enough, about 12.5 miles in we came to Montreux hill which climbs several hundred feet in a couple miles and during that climb I got completely chewed up and spit out the back of the lead group. So, my time with the elite riders was brief, but it was fun. At the top of the Montreux climb, I could still see the lead group a couple hundred feet ahead of me but I knew that catching them would mean burning every match in my book with 50 miles still left in the ride. Not a smart strategy, so I let them go.

There were a couple of other riders that also fell off the lead group at Montreux and the three of us ended up working together for most of the the rest of the ride. In the last five miles or so that small group dropped me too, so I rolled into the finish alone. Still, it was a fantastic ride. It's great to finish a ride like that with absolutely nothing left in the tank; it lets you know you really gave it your all.

I finished the ride in about 3hrs 40-something minutes. This was a pretty hilly ride, with over 4,000ft of climbing, so I felt pretty darn good about finishing in under 4 hrs.

In which I don't get lost or crash and the sun shines the entire ride

2010-02-21T17:30:00.000-08:00

On Sunday I rode my February 200km permanent. With sunshine and temps in the 50s by the time I finished, I had to keep reminding myself that it is indeed still February, and whether or not that big city groundhog back east saw his shadow, we still have months of crap weather ahead of us. But the start of the ride was pretty February like. The thermometer near Marymoor on the way out of town said 30 degrees.

I rode the Redmond - Carbon Glacier permanent. I chose the route because I wanted something with easy navigation and not too much steep climbing. I decided to ride this one on my single speed bike just for "fun."

The route is a straight out-and-back that heads almost directly toward Mt. Rainier from Redmond. Then when you're almost there, you turn around and head back along the same route.

View Larger Map

I dressed with the assumption that it would be warming up as the day progressed. That turned out to be true, except that it didn't really get warm until over halfway through the ride, so I had frozen fingers and toes for the first five hours. The Carbon Glacier Ranger station is up at 1,700 ft. and deep down in a valley, so it was still below freezing when a got there with plenty of frost on the road and ice on the puddles.

This was really a nice route without a lot of traffic and some interesting scenery along the way. Like the Mowich Mall. (I guess "mall" has a slightly different meaning if you live in Mowich. Do you think the Mowich teenagers hang out here?)

And the Wilkeson cemetary was beautiful with frost still on the grass. It was also a sobering reminder to keep my eyes open for frosty patches on the road lest I end up road kill.

The climb up Highway 165 to the Carbon Glacier Ranger station is gradual enough that it's not a problem at all on a single speed.

I hadn't seen this guy in a while.

A glimpse of Mt. Rainier from Enumclaw.

(In my very best Eeyore voice) Nice barn. A bit drafty.

Overall the ride was uneventful in the best possible way. I never got lost. No flat tires or other mechanical issues. I felt good the whole way. Didn't waste too much time hanging out in convenience stores.

The ride took 8 hours 20 minutes, which is the fastest I've ever done a permanent. That probably has less to do with fast riding than not getting lost and not hanging out too much in convenience stores.

Next weekend is the SIR Spring Fever Populaire which officially kicks off the 2010 Randonneuring season here in Seattle. That means this was probably my last permanent for a while since we have a pretty full schedule of brevets for the next few months.

Cougars and Rabbits

2010-02-14T15:02:00.000-08:00

One of my riding goals for this year is to spend less time riding. That's going to be a challenge since I'm planning to ride in the PBP in 2011 and the more official ACP sanctioned miles (kilometers actually) I ride, the better my chances are of getting into the PBP. So I'm trying to maximize the official Rando rides I do while minimizing the unofficial training rides. But it's tough to do those long brevets without any training so my strategy is to make the training rides short but intense.

Yesterday I did one of those short but intense training rides. It was about 50 miles with 3,450' of climbing. That works out to about 69' per mile. Anything over about 55' per mile is what I would call "hilly" and makes for a good workout. Here's what the elevation profile looks like:

I rode from home out toward Issaquah to the base of Cougar Mtn, rode up and over Cougar Mtn, and then did a quick loop around Mercer Island on my way home.

On my way around the Mercer Island loop, I came up behind a guy in full team kit. I saw him look over his shoulder and see me when I was about 100 ft back. There's nothing better to keep you hammering on the pedals than having a rabbit to chase down. Even better when they know you're chasing them and they want to make a race of it. As soon as he saw me, he picked up the pace some so I was no longer gaining on him. So I picked up the pace a notch. It took me about 5 minutes, but finally I closed that 100 ft between the two of us and immediately passed him. If it were really a race, I would have sat on his rear wheel for a while to rest a bit before attacking, but I was out more for exercise than the race so I just kept hammering past him. So of course he grabbed my rear wheel and hung there for a couple minutes and then passed me. I let him get ahead a bit and then chased him down again. We traded places a couple more times before finishing the loop. Each time one passed the other, we gave a friendly nod and a smile. I'm not sure about him, but by the time I finished the Mercer Island loop I was pretty gassed, but it was a lot of fun.

Demonstratin' My Mad Skillz

2010-02-07T20:47:00.001-08:00

January is the third month of my bid for an R-12 award. So, to keep the R-12 ball rolling I rode a 200k permanent by myself on January 24th. It was a good thing that I decided to ride this one alone, because it ended up being a comedy of errors that would have been pretty embarrassing if there had been any witnesses.

The route I chose starts in Leschi and heads around the north end of Lake Washington to Redmond on its way out to North Bend. The route then comes back to Lake Washington and continues around the south end of the lake with a short detour out to Maple Valley.

It was cold and mostly clear and the sunrise was glorious as I headed north along the lake. Even though I was shivering it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. Good thing I forgot my rain coat because I hate hauling that thing around with me when I don't need it.

As I was leaving Redmond heading toward Novelty Hill, I rode through a wall of warm air. I watched the thermometer on my fancy-schmancy bike computer jump from 32 to 46 degrees in about 2 minutes. And then the wind started to blow and the sky almost instantly turned black and angry. Before long it was raining. I spent the next couple of hours mostly riding into a nasty headwind and driving rain as I worked my way out to North Bend. The rain continued to come down for the rest of the day but luckily the wind let up a bit.

So, my weather forecasting abilities aren't much, but how about navigation skills? On my way to North Bend, first I rode right by two of the controles, the second of which I didn't notice until I was about 5 miles farther on down the road. I also made more wrong turns than I could keep track of. I noticed most of the wrong turns pretty quickly so they didn't cost me too much time, but still extra miles in the driving rain sting a bit more than sunny day extra miles.

At least my bike handling skills are rock solid. I've been riding seriously for about two years now and in that time I've never crashed. Impressive, huh? About 14,000 miles without ever making contact with the pavement. So, if you're going to break a streak like that you might as well do it on the day you "decide" you don't need your rain coat and it starts pouring, and the day you can't seem to follow a route sheet to save your life, right? Sure enough, as I was rolling through suburban strip mall hell near Issaquah, I came around a turn a little too fast and hit the brakes a little too hard on pavement that was a little too wet, and before I knew what was up I was down. Luckily the part of me that hit the ground first is the part of my body with the most padding. It hurt but did no real damage to me or the bike, so after a couple of minutes of loud cursing I got on the bike a kept going.

Eventually I rolled into the finish at the Leschi Starbucks, cold, wet, bruised and annoyed by my lack of navigational skills. The wrong turns and missed controls added about 12 extra miles to the route. Not too bad considering. Still it made for one of my slowest 200k rides ever at just under 10 hours to cover 139 miles. But as I sat there at Starbucks drinking some expensive and delightfully hot coffee reflecting on the ride, the pain and suffering was already starting to evaporate from my memory. It's amazing how for me, even a miserable ride makes for a pretty good day.

Cascade 1200

2010-02-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

I signed up for the Cascade 1200 a couple of days ago. Honestly, my palms got sweaty just filling out the online registration form and confirming the PayPal payment. The Cascade 1200 is a 1200 km "grand randonee" put on every two years by the Seattle International Randonneurs. It generally follows a pretty mountainous route, crossing the Cascade range a couple of times with plenty of other ups and downs along the way. I've done a couple of 600 km brevets now, still a 1200 scares the heck out of me. But since my long term goal is to ride the PBP in 2011, I suppose I'd better get comfortable with the idea.

Between now and the start of the Cascade 1200, I'll be riding a full SR series (200k, 300k, 400k and 600k brevets) so I should be in decent shape when it rolls around at the end of June.

I'm Back!

2010-02-07T20:35:00.001-08:00

Sorry, my blog has been down for a while. And some of my old posts are gone. Call it technical difficulties… Anyway, I didn't quit riding while that was going on so I'll probably do a few posts over the next couple days to catch y'all up.

First, some thoughts about my riding in the past year. I’ve been keeping a log of my cycling over the past couple of years. It’s nothing too fancy, just an Excel spreadsheet with the date, miles, time and a brief description of my rides. I’m pretty religious about entering every ride, unless it’s a quick trip to the grocery store or a ride around the block with Adam on the trail-a-bike. I realize I’m a little late for the whole year-end recap thing, but like I said, I’m doing some catch up blogging here. So, here’s what my year of cycling looked like in summary:

I rode on at least 248 days in 2009. In total, I covered about 8,018 miles which is 2/3rds of what the average American drives in a year. I drive a lot less than the average American, so I’m guessing I racked up more bike miles than car miles last year. (Maybe I should keep track of car miles next year so I can compare.)

About 3,383 miles (42% of the total) were covered in my daily commute to and from work, or running errands on the way. I went into the office about 230 times during the year and 192 of those commutes were by bicycle. The rest were using public transportation.

I have both single speed and multi-speed bikes. I generally do my commute on the single speed, but sometimes ride that one on recreational rides too. Overall, 3,922 of my total miles (49%) were on a single speed or fixed gear bike.

Of my recreational rides, 25 were between 50 and 100 miles in length and 15 were over 100 miles. How long was my longest ride? It sort of depends on how you define “ride.” I did two 600k brevets both of which extended over more than a day, so I’m not sure whether to count each of them as one ride or more. Both were somewhere around 380 miles and I completed the first one in 28:50 and the second in 33:45. My greatest distance covered in 24 hours was a little over 300 miles covered between 6 am on June 13th and 6 am on the 14th on the first 600k brevet.

Okay, here’s the statistic that makes me feel a little bit sick: I spent over 533 hours riding a bike last year. Whoa, that’s a lot of hours. That’s 22 days on a bike. In my defense, remember that about 2/3rds of that was time spent commuting to and from work, and my commute doesn’t take much longer by bike than it does by bus. Still that leaves 180 hours last year that I could have spent curing cancer or inventing a better mousetrap or something more useful. Did I mention that one of my resolutions for the new year is to spend less time bicycling?

Are Too

2009-12-20T17:10:00.000-08:00

I'm now two rides into my pursuit of my first R-12 award. Call it R-2. The R-12 is an award for riding at least one randonneuring event of 200km or more for 12 consecutive months. Yesterday I rode the Leschi - Auburn - Leschi 200 km permanent. I started with a group of five including Robert Higdon, Chris Gay, John Whitenack and Joe Llona. Joe was on his fixed gear bike (pushing a massive 78 gear inches).

I rode down to the start in Leschi in the dark with a fine mist falling from the sky. Not really rain, but it gets you wet, just the same. The temperature was about 45 degrees. The weather never really changed all day except that the light misting slowly turned into a light drizzle, and then just good old rain.

I met the rest of the group at the Leschi Starbucks and we hit the road a few minutes after 8:00. The ride heads south along Lake Washington to Renton and then out toward Maple Valley on the Cedar River trail. Every time I ride in this area south of Lake Washington, I think I need to get out here on my bike more. There are really some great roads and trails out there. We followed a little road from the Maple Valley highway out to Ravensdale that was as good as it gets, with fun little ups, downs, twists and turns.

From the first controle at Ravensdale, the route heads back west to Auburn. When we got to Auburn Robert and Chris decided to head home from there. I can't blame them at all. By this time the rain was coming down steadily and there was no sign that it would get any better. Chris was just getting over a cold and Robert just wasn't feeling right. So they headed for hot showers while Joe, John and I headed off into the rain toward Flaming Geyser.

The climb near Flaming Geyser park is the biggest climb of the ride. With grades up to about 8% and nearly two miles of climbing, it definitely gets your attention. I needed to get home by six, so on the climb I realized I'd have to get a move on to make it on time. I apologized to Joe and John for leaving and then kicked up the pace a bit.

For the rest of the ride I was on my own, riding through Black Diamond, Cumberland, Issaquah and then familiar territory along Lake Sammamish. The last part of the ride follows the Sammamish Valley trail and Burke Gilman trail from Marymoor Park, up to Woodinville and then down the West side of Lake Washington back to Leschi.

Just before University Village I got my only flat tire of the ride. In the dark. And the rain. I was a little over a mile away from home at that point and it would have been very easy to just walk the bike home and call it a day. But I still needed to make it to Leschi to finish the route, and then ride home from there. So, I reminded myself that it's good practice to fix a flat on a dark rainy night, and I fixed it and then rode on to the finish.

I finished the permanent in about nine and a half hours. With the ride to and from the start, it was a 142 mile day. A hot shower has never felt so nice.

Three Rivers and a Frozen Crow

2009-11-15T22:58:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to ride a permanent this weekend. I joined Robert, Chris, John, Jeff and Alan for the "Three Rivers Cruise" out of Arlington yesterday. The Three Rivers Cruise is one of the most popular SIR permanents and it's easy to see why. The scenery is beautiful, the roads are mostly smooth with light traffic and the ride has very little climbing. It's almost too perfect for Randonneuring. Seems like it needs a rough section of road construction or maybe a steep mountain pass or two to make it feel more official. In spite of the lack of suffering and hardship, we had a great ride that even featured a sitdown meal in Concrete.

Starting the day by scraping frost off the windshield had me a little concerned about the weather. And then about a mile into the ride I nearly ran over a dead crow on the side of the road covered with frost. It was kind of beautiful in a creepy sort of way, with the white frost on the jet black feathers. But, even though it was pretty cold throughout the day, I mostly managed to keep all my bits warm enough.

Here's Chris and the rest as we're just getting started, a few miles out of Arlington. Chris selflessly got the lone flat tire of the ride shortly after I took this picture.

Hay, Robert! (get it? heh, heh.)

Heading east on hwy 530 about to cross one of the three rivers (don't ask me which one). The snow was low in the hills around us. For a while we even saw some snow along the side of the road between Darrington and Rockport. The temperatures were in the low 30s for the first three or four hours.

Robert, Chris and a nice shot of my ear as we were approaching Darrington.

The sun peaked out a few times throughout the day, though it never offered much warmth, nor did it stick around for long.

Somewhere along Hwy 530 I stopped to deal with some "mechanical issues" behind a tree. Here I am trying to catch the group again as they try to hide from me in the fog.

The road between Darrington and Rockport was a classic biking road. Smooth pavement, no cars, moss covered trees. It could only have been better if there had been shot blocks growing on the bushes.

Here's the group riding on Hwy 530 trying to pretend like they don't know me as I almost become the hood ornament on a minivan coming the other way.

Hwy 20 is closed for the season so Marblemount is literally a dead end town until the road opens again next spring. Still, they have a bike rack in front of the Shell station!

Snow in the hills.

We stopped at the Red Cedar Cafe in Concrete for a good hot sitdown lunch. Picking a place to eat wasn't difficult since some guys milling around in the streets told us that the Red Cedar was the only place in town that was open. One of the nice things about long bike rides is that it's impossible to find bad food along the way. Whatever you find is fabulous. Halfway through this meal, we started talking about what we were going to have for dinner.

I have a hunch that if this place had been open they would have told us that we weren't the kind of biker they were talking about. Not twenty feet from this sign, there was another sign on the street that said bicycles, skateboards and rollerskates were prohibited.

Here we are with full stomachs, moving a little slower now along South Skagit Highway.

Not sure what to make of this...

("I'm a lowlife. My name is asshole" is painted on the side)

Unfortunately the last little stretch is a busy section of Hwy 9 that's not terribly pleasant, but it's hard to complain since the other 90% of the ride is near perfect. We made our way back to Arlington at about 5:00pm, more or less in one piece and already talking about the next ride. Thanks for letting me ride with you guys!

Permanently Lame

2009-10-26T23:30:00.000-07:00

I tried to ride my first permanent this past weekend but due to poor planning, and poorer execution it just wasn't to be. For the non-randonneurs (hi mom!), a permanent is basically a brevet without all the planning and hoopla. You can ride a permanent by yourself or with others. You just tell the official permanent coordinators what route you're going to do, when you're going to do it, and then they send you the brevet card and off you go. You record the ride in the brevet card and send it in to be blessed by the Pope or whoever it is who blesses such things, and you get credit just like any organized brevet. And what do you do with that "credit" that you get? Um, I'm still trying to figure that out.

Anyway, I had planned to join a few other SIR members for the Three Rivers Cruise on Saturday at 7:00am. The TRC is a 200km route from Arlington that goes through Darrington, Marblemount, Concrete, Sedro Wooley and ends back in Arlington. I've heard it's a very pretty route and fairly flat the whole way.

Well, I slept too long and didn't have my stuff together in advance, so I scrambled around in the morning trying to get my gear together, my water bottles and tires filled, etc. I headed out the door about 15 minutes late and then half way to Arlington realized that I had forgotten the directions to the ride start and some other key pieces of equipment. So after some cursing, I turned around and headed for home.

But, with nice weather and permission from the family to go for a long ride, I figured I couldn't completely waste the opportunity. After a cup of coffee at home I headed out for one of my favorite routes. It's a route I've done several times and it never gets old. I rode up the Burke Gilman trail to Woodinville, then up back roads to Snohomish. A little north of Snohomish I picked up Dubuque Rd which connects with Old Pipeline Rd and took me all the way to Sultan. From Sultan there's another nice little country road called Ben Howard Rd that gets me back to Monroe. Then it's familiar roads to Woodinville and home on the BG trail.

Here's a little stretch of the Burke Gilman trail:

The whole ride is just over a hundred miles and spends very little time on busy roads.

The weather was cool and beautiful, the trees were turning all those great Pottery Barn colors and lamas were friendly.

It just doesn't get any better than that. I also found some interesting road side debris. Somewhere along Dubuque Rd there was a big pile of vinyl coated canvas in primary colors that I'm pretty sure was a deflated bouncy house. Adam would have been thrilled if I could have figured out a way to carry that home.

Somewhere Bollenbough Hill Rd...

Let There Be Light

2009-10-08T21:47:00.000-07:00

And the Randonneur said, “Let there be light.”
And there was lightAnd the light flowed forth from a light emitting diode.
And the light’s energy flowed from the SON*.
And the Randonneur saw the light, that it was good…

*Schmidt Original Nabendynamo

I’m finally entering the 21st century. Well, at least with regard to bike lights. I’ve been riding brevets with two Cateye HL-EL530 lights as headlights. I actually think these lights aren’t bad as far as cheap battery powered headlights go. They were able to get me through an SR series plus a 600k brevet that involved two full nights of riding over mountain passes. That’s something. But I have to admit that descending mountain passes in the middle of the night with those lights was one of the scarier things I’ve ever done. I was way out-riding my headlights at times and was lucky to have survived unscathed.

I decided that since it looks like I’m going to keep doing this Randonneuring thing--and I want to live to see my kids graduate from high school--I need to get a serious “lighting system” for my bike. And among Randonneurs, a serious lighting system generally begins with a Schmidt dynamo front hub. The brightest bike lights these days are battery powered, but the good battery powered lights don’t have the run time to survive a full night of riding without carrying heavy and expensive spare batteries or somehow recharging along the way. A dynamo hub powering an LED headlight comes pretty close to the light output of the battery systems and has the advantage of always being available, as long as you can keep the bike moving. Essentially your lights are powered by Fig Newtons and Gatorade instead of batteries.

So, I’m having a new front wheel built with a SON 28 hub by Peter White. Peter is the exclusive US distributor for Schmidt and his web site is the source of information on dynamo lighting systems not to mention a lot of other oddball niche bike gear. For a headlight, I ordered the Busch & Müller Lumotec IQ Cyo. I struggled a bit with this decision. The Schmidt Edelux and Supernova E3 are both very highly regarded but cost about twice as much as the B&M. After talking to Penny at Peter White Cycles and poring over every review I could find of these headlights, I decided the B&M light sounds like at least 95% of the light for 50% of the price. I also ordered a B&M taillight that can be mounted on the rear fender and wired into the dynamo.

Now I get to wait. Peter is going on vacation, so it’ll be a month or so before I get my wheel and lights. Stay tuned… once it arrives and I get everything installed, I’ll let you know how it all works.

My Computer Doesn't Like Long Rides

2009-09-28T22:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've had a blog for over two weeks now and I haven't posted a rant yet, so it's high time, don't ya think?

I use a VDO MC 1.0 computer on my Surly Cross Check to keep track of how far, how fast, and for how long I've been going. It's a pretty nice computer for the most part, it does the basics of speed, distance and time reasonably well, and adds an altimeter to track things like total climbing, % grade, current elevation, etc. It's worked well for me in the 2,500 or so miles I've been using it with the exception of two rides.

Since I've had it, I've done two 600k brevets with it. Both times, about 300 miles into the ride it spontaneously reset itself. Not a full reset, but all of the ride data went away and started back at zero. The first time it happened, I just assumed that it was either a loose connection that momentarily disconnected the battery, or maybe it was pilot error and I accidentally pushed the wrong buttons (quite possible after 300 miles). When it happened on my second 600k I got suspicious. It had never happened on any other rides and both times it happened about 300 miles into the ride. That's just too much coincidence to be... well, coincidence.

So today I finally got around to doing some googling to see if this is a known problem with this computer. Lo and behold, right there on page six of the owners manual it says, "Important: If the ride timer overflows 19:59:59 h, it is automatically reset to 00:00:00. Simultaneously, your average speed counter AVG SPEED is reset to zero. If your trip counter overflows 999.99 KM or M, it is automatically reset to 000.00 Simultaneously, your average speed counter AVG SPEED and your ride timer RIDE TIME are reset to zero." Note that I have the Instruction Manual at home, but had to use Google to find this information. And to rub it in, the manual repeats this information in Deutsch, Français, Italian, Español, and Nederlands.

Finding this in the instruction manual (or Manuel D'Installation Et D'Utilisation if you prefer) tells me that this is not a bug, but it's actually a feature of the product. Okay.

I mean, I realize that not a lot of VDO's target market is out there doing 20 hour rides, but still you'd think the failure point would be somewhere so far outside the norm that you wouldn't run into it unless you're really looking for it, right?

Apparently not.

So since this information had me a bit annoyed, I posted this on Bike Forums in the Long Distance Cycling section to see if anyone there could recommend another computer that didn't have the feature. It turns out that this feature is not unique to the VDO MC 1.0. For example, I'm told the CicloMaster 4.3A only displays ride times up to 9:59:59. Another poster mentioned that he didn't know of any computers that would record more than 24 hours.

So, I guess I'm just going to live with this feature of the VDO MC 1.0. After all, it's not like knowing my average speed over an entire 600k is essential information. Still, I'm starting to notice an annoying trend in cycling products designed for the mass market. The product designers are apparently making the assumption that the users of their products don't actually do much cycling. I suppose they have a point. There are an awful lot of bicycles in this country that are stored in the basement next to the Nordic Trak and are used primarily for drying laundry.

Budget Randonneuse

2009-09-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

A non-randonneur friend of mine saw the pictures in the post about the SIR Mountain 600k and was curious about my bike and the way it’s set up. It definitely doesn’t look like the typical mass-market racing oriented bike, so I thought I’d write a thing or two about my bike and why it’s set up the way it is.

First of all, to understand my bike you have to understand something about me. I’m basically a cheapskate. I think my bike has worked pretty well for the few brevets it’s been through so far, but it’s far from the dream randonneuring setup. Many of my fellow randonneurs have spent several times as much money on their rides, and it shows. Anyway, here’s what I’m riding on brevets:

Frame
The frame is a Surly Cross Check. I went with the Cross Check because it had the features I wanted, it fits and it’s inexpensive. I wanted a frame that would allow the use of wide tires (more about that later) with fenders, uses cantilever brakes, has braze-ons/eyelets to attach fenders and racks easily, and is made of steel. The Cross Check isn’t the lightest frame available with these features, but it is inexpensive and has a great reputation for reliability and ride quality.

You can buy a Cross Check as a complete bike or as a frame only. I went with the complete bike because even though I intended to swap out some of the key parts, it’s still a bargain and many of the parts are quite usable.

Drive Train
The Cross Check came with a 2 X 9 speed Shimano Tiagra drive train with bar end shifters. I kept the Tiagra front and rear derailleurs, but changed out the shifters to Dura Ace ten speed downtube shifters. I like downtube shifters for randonneuring because they are about as simple and reliable as it gets. If the indexing gets messed up on a long brevet, you just switch them to non-indexed shifting and ride on. They may not be quite as convenient as the ubiquitous brifters, but it doesn’t bother me at all to have to take my hands off the bars to shift gears. The Tiagra derailleurs are nothing special, but they work. I’ll probably upgrade to Ultegra when they wear out.

Gearing
I’m using the stock Sugino crank set with the 48t and 36t chain rings on the front, and a 10 speed 12 – 28 cassette on the back. A lot of randonneurs use lower gearing than that, but this setup has worked for me just fine. I ride a single speed bike a lot, so I’m used to standing up and grunting to get up hills once in a while.

Wheels and Tires
The wheels are hand built with DT Swiss r520 rims laced to Ultegra hubs. These wheels came on another bike I bought a while back and they seem to be very reliable so I moved them over to the Surly and they’ve performed well. They are not particularly light but they are tough, which is fine because that’s sort of the theme for this bike.

I use Panaracer Pasela 28C tires. They last fairly long and are pretty flat resistant, but what I like best about them is that they roll very smooth and cushy. So why wide 28C tires when most of the racer bike crowd uses the much skinnier 23C width? It’s basically a trade off between speed and comfort. Narrower tires are supposedly faster because of reduced rolling resistance and the aero advantage. Wider tires are more comfortable and generally get fewer flats. In my experience the difference in speed is minimal (if there even is a real difference). The plusher ride and flat resistance of wider tires on the other hand are very real and noticeable differences. And the smoother ride becomes a huge factor once you get beyond about 200 miles on a ride. So why do most road bikes sold in the US have 23C tires? Because that’s what Lance and his buddies use, and what they use is sexy. Randonneuring is the anti-sexy.

Cockpit
Here’s where I did the most customizing and didn’t worry too much about cost. The handlebars, seat, pedals, brake levers, are the user interface of the bike. If you spend a lot of time on your bike, you’ve gotta get this part right. I use a Brooks B-17 saddle. Brooks has been making saddles like this since Moses was riding brevets. They aren’t light, they aren’t sleek, and they are about as sexy as Sandra Day O’Connor, but they are comfortable for many hours of riding.

I use Nitto Noodle handlebars. They have a non-ergo old school shape that allows a lot of different comfortable hand positions. Being able to move your hands around to different positions is key to staying comfortable on long rides.
I swapped out the cheap stock stem for a Velo Orange stem which is pretty and shiny and otherwise does what a stem is supposed to do.

Another reason I like downtube shifters is because it allows me to use these Tektro brake levers which are cheap, well made and very comfortable for riding with your hands on the hoods, which is where I spend most of my time.

I use Shimano SPD MTB style pedals. SPD pedals are easy to get in and out of and they make for more walkable shoes than typical road pedals, which is good when you’re heading into the convenience store for some Jojos and V8.

Fenders
Fenders are pretty much required for Randonneuring in the Pacific NW. They keep you and your bike much cleaner and drier when the road is wet, but probably more importantly, they make it much more pleasant for the person behind you when you’re riding in a pace line in the rain. My fenders are from Velo Orange and they’re aluminum. They don’t weigh much more than plastic but they’re much tougher (once again, not light but tough).

Rack and Baggage
I have a Nitto M12 rack on the front which is there to support a Velo Orange Campagne handlebar bag. There are lots of ways to carry stuff on a bike; panniers, saddlebags, trunk bags, handlebar bags, etc. I like having a handlebar bag because it can carry enough stuff for a 600k ride up front where it’s all accessible while I’m riding. I can get to food, clothing, my camera, and anything else without having to pull over. It also has a nice little map holder on top that works well for cue sheets. Carrying a full load on the front of the bike effects handling a little, but not so much that it bothers me. It probably creates a little more wind drag than a trunk bag, but the easy access makes it a worthwhile tradeoff for me.

Lighting
So far of the six brevets I’ve ridden, only three really required riding at night. I was able to get through all of those using two Cateye EL530 headlights and a couple of Planet Bikes Superflash taillights. The EL530s work okay for speeds up to about 16 mph. But I learned on the SIR Mountain 600k that they don’t really cut it for descending mountain passes at 35 mph. A lot of randonneurs use dynamo front hubs to run powerful headlights that almost rival car headlights. They’re expensive systems, but after some really scary descents in the middle of the night I’m now ready to jump on the band wagon and upgrade to a dynamo hub system. Bright lights and no more batteries to eventually end up in a land fill…

So if you put all that stuff together, you get a bike that is part touring and part racing, which is pretty much what randonneuring is all about. It’s tough and reliable and most of the parts can be serviced on the road if you’ve got the right tools and parts. Without baggage and water bottles and lights, it tips the scale at about 23 lbs. That’s a lot more than a high end race bike, but pretty typical for a randonneuse. When it’s loaded up with everything I need for a 600k ride, it’s more like 35 lbs.

SIR's Mountain 600k - Because Finishing Was Easier Than Quitting

2009-09-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

When asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, George Mallory famously said, “because it’s there.” Maybe… but I suspect Mallory was also stuck in a trap similar to the one I got myself into this weekend. Sometimes when you take on some incredibly difficult and foolish endeavor, you get yourself to the point where backing out becomes more unpalatable than actually doing the stupid thing. So you just do the stupid thing. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

This weekend the Seattle International Randonneur’s held their “Mountain 600k” brevet. This would be my second 600k, so I thought I could handle it… until I started learning about the details. Not only did it included four major climbs for a total of over 25,000 ft, but the organizer also took a very Spartan approach to support on this ride. Most of the contrôles (checkpoints) were unmanned and far away from any services. There would be no SAG wagon, no drop bags, no tables filled with yummy snacks along the way. Nearly the entire course was out of cell phone service areas. The ride organizer and other volunteers were traveling by bike so even if you could call them, there’s not much they could do for you other than to tell you to harden up and get on with it. There would be stretches of well over 100 miles with no open stores and few opportunities for water. And to top it all off, the ride started at 9:00pm Friday, so it was nearly impossible to avoid riding most of the course during the night.

Route Elevation Profile :(

I rushed home from work Friday and scrambled around making sure I had all my gear together. After quadruple checking my list and loading the bike in the car, I headed down to Enumclaw for the start. I got there at about 8:15 with plenty of time to get checked in, pass the bike inspection and then sit around worrying about the ride. If the intent of the choices of a tough course, minimal support and a dreary start time was to scare riders away from this event, then the turnout proved them successful. Thirteen riders showed up (cue the ominous music). After a brief pre-ride talk from Jan Heine, the organizer, it was time. We rolled out into the night with 374 miles ahead of us and our sanity falling off into the distance behind us.

Jan and Kole Kanter immediately disappeared off the front and the remaining eleven stayed together as we left Enumclaw headed for Mt. Rainier and the first big climb. At this point, nothing was feeling right to me. My knees were hurting, my hands were going numb, my neck was sore, it just felt weird to be on a bike. I suppose that was mostly because I’m not used to starting a ride at night, but it had me worried. We rode on as a group moving along pretty well. I’m not crazy about riding in a pace line at night, but the first couple hours of the ride required a bit of navigation so I stayed with the group. If we got lost, we’d get lost together.

As we approached Eatonville, I realized the navigation was easy from there on out, so I pulled ahead of the group. I figured they’d catch up to me again if they stayed together. Heading out of Eatonville I was all alone and heading into some pretty dark and lonely stretches of road. A little scary, but it’s always easier when you know there’s someone behind you.

I made a quick stop in Elbe to refill my water bottles but kept it quick. I made the entrance of the Mt. Rainier park at about 12:30. My goal had been to get there by 1:00am, so I was moving well (too well?). Once in the park, the climbing started. The Paradise climb is really not too bad. Maybe it’s because it was early in the ride, but I was feeling great at this point. All of the aches and pains and awkwardness I had felt early in the ride were gone now and I was just enjoying the solitude. Every time I came to an opening in the trees, I’d look up and see Orion lying on his side in the sky above me. The moon was also up and quite stunning. Unfortunately it’s tough to look up at the sky much when you’re on a bicycle, but I snuck peeks whenever I could.

Going by Longmire on my way up to Paradise at about 1:00am Saturday morning

I pulled into the visitor center at Paradise (elevation 5,400’) at about 2:00am. Kole was there in the parking lot when I arrived asking if I had seen Jan. I hadn’t passed him so apparently he had snuck off the road to attend to some business or something because he pulled up behind me a couple of minutes later. I went into the lodge to fill water bottles and there was a group of about ten people having a little party in the hallway that lead to the bathroom. They had a guitar and hamonica, and apparently a LOT of beer. What the musicians lacked in talent, they easily made up for in drunkenness. As I walked past and said hullo, I’m pretty sure most of them were trying to figure out whether or not I was an hallucination, what with the spandex and helmet and all. I’m certain I wasn’t. Kole and Jan had left while I was in getting water, so it was time to roll.

The descent down from Paradise was freezing! I don’t think it was really that cold out, but I had got myself good and sweaty on the way up and I didn’t put on enough clothes for the trip down. It was all I could do to keep the bike traveling in a straight line since I was shivering so violently. But once the descent leveled some and I was able to start pedaling again, I warmed up.

From Paradise to Packwood, it was almost all downhill. There were virtually no cars on the road (actually I’m not sure if I saw any) and I was feeling good so I made pretty good time. I rolled into Packwood around 5:00am. When I pulled into the Shell station in Packwood, Kole was just coming out the door. He had a problem with his tire that he had fixed there, and he was eating some deep fried convenience store monstrosity. I decided I didn’t really need anything, so I got back on the bike and pushed on to Randle another 15 miles or so down the road.

I stopped at the convenience store in Randle and actually had to stand in a line to buy my breakfast. Apparently the convenience store is the place to be in Randle at 5:45 in the morning.

Breakfast in Randle. I washed that down with some Gatorade.

Rolling out of Randle heading toward Windy Ridge

The sun was starting to come up as I pulled out of Randle heading for Windy Ridge. The ride up to Windy Ridge is one I had done before, in the High Pass Challenge last summer. I would be taking a slightly different route up this time, using FR-26 instead of the main route on NFD 25. FR-26 is a beautiful bike road. I think I saw only one car and six elk, so the elk far outnumbered cars. There were some steep sections near the top that were 15% grades according to my fancy-schmancy cyclocomputer. Luckily they didn’t last too long. All along the way I had stunning views of Mt. Rainier in the distance, and the Mt. St. Helens blast zone as I approached the top.

FR-26 on the way up to Windy Ridge

Mt Rainier from FR-26

One thing that often strikes me on these rides is the incredible distances you can cover on a bike. That’s Mt. Rainier in the distance. I was leaving Paradise on the slopes of that mountain about five hours before this picture was taken. Now it looked to be a long ways away.

FR-26 goes right through part of the Mt. St. Helens blast zone

At 9:45am I got to the Windy Ridge overlook. I saw Jan and Kole briefly on the way up since there’s an out-and-back section of about seven miles to get to the overlook. They had both already been to the overlook and were on their way down. Jan was a little over an hour ahead of me at that point, and Kole was maybe 45 minutes ahead. On the way down from Windy Ridge was one of the two contrôles that was actually staffed. A fellow named John Pierce (?) was there with pancakes and some other very welcome goodies. He had slept there in the back of his car and told me stories about hearing elk calls while he was off in the weeds with his pants around his ankles (no, really). I also saw Vincent Muoneke heading out to Windy Ridge as I was coming back. He was about 45 minutes behind me. Vincent was the first I had seen of another rider behind me since Eatonville about ten hours before.

The velo takes in the view at the Windy Ridge overlook

While I was at Windy Ridge, I talked to a tourist who had driven up to the overlook. He was asking the usual questions about where I had ridden from, when I started and where I was going. I’m positive he thought I was pulling his leg every time I answered another question. He was giving me a look like, “what kind of idiot do you think I am?” I suspect most Randonneurs love to be asked those questions because of the crazy looks and weird responses you get when you answer honestly. Yes, we get that 99.9% of people think we’re insane for doing what we do.

The descent from Windy Ridge is a screamer with some tight turns and the occasional pothole and crack in the road to keep you awake. I was glad to be doing this one in the daylight. It was warming up as I came into the lowlands. My fancy-shmancy cyclocomputer said it was about 85 degrees as I pulled into Packwood for the second time at 1:30. Time for lunch.

A nice barn near Packwood with Mt. Rainier peeking through

I decided to spend a little time in Packwood, eating some “real” food and resting a bit. I had a phenomenal meal of a turkey sub sandwich with chocolate milk (I love the way a long bike ride can turn convenience store “food” into the best tasting delicacies you’ve ever had). After 30 minutes, which was by far my longest stop so far, I was back on the bike and headed for White Pass.

Pardon my French, but the climb up to White Pass is a bitch. It goes on and on and on… It didn’t help that I was climbing during the hottest part of the day and it was nearly 90. This climb was really where the suffering started on this ride. I mean, there were some painful little climbs on the way up to Windy Ridge, but there’s pain and then there’s suffering. White Pass was all about suffering. I also made a bit of a tactical error when I left Packwood. I had two full water bottles. I thought about filling a third because I knew I couldn’t make White Pass on only two bottles. But, I figured I’d save the extra weight and find a place to refill on the way… There was no place to refill on the way. About five miles from the summit and moving at a snail’s pace, I was nearly out of water and really thirsty because I had been trying to stretch what water I had as far as possible. I pulled into a scenic overlook to rest for a minute and take a picture. There I met a couple of angels driving a motorhome. Pat Something-or-other and his wife (whose name I can’t remember) from Iowa were on vacation and had stopped to take pictures of Mt Rainier. Pat came over and started asking about my bike and what I was up to. It turns out that Pat, now 68, had done a century ride back when he was 45 and it had been one of those special achievements in his life that he loved to relive. That century ride was Pat’s winning touchdown pass in the last minutes of the homecoming game. When I mentioned that I was a little low on water, Pat invited me into the motorhome and pulled a couple of ice-cold water bottles out of the refrigerator. A chorus of Pat’s angel buddies burst into song as I chugged that water. After hearing all about Pat’s ride twenty-some-odd years ago, I thanked Pat and Mrs. Something-or-other profusely and told them I needed to get on the way. Pat got me another of bottle from the fridge for the road and wished me safe travels.

After my encounter with the angels, the last five miles to the pass weren’t so bad. I reached the summit at about 5:00. I snapped a couple pictures and then hopped back on the bike for the easy coast down to Rimrock Lake and the overnight contrôle about 13 miles away.

The obligatory summit sign picture. Thought I’d never get there.

The overnight was at a nice little cabin on the shores of Rimrock Lake. Ryan Hamilton was there generously serving up chili, soup and sandwiches, filling up empty water bottles, and offering a shower and a cot to rest on.

Because of the 9:00pm start time of this brevet, the overnight contrôle really wasn’t much of an overnight. Traditionally, the overnight contrôle is about 400km into a 600km brevet. Most riders will finish 400km in the neighborhood of 20 hours, so if you start the brevet early in the morning you’ll usually get to the overnight late at night, generally a great time to stop and rest for a while. I arrived at the contrôle at about 5:30pm, 20 ½ hours into the ride. Even though I hadn’t slept in about 36 hours at that point, my body just isn’t wired to sleep at 5:30 in the evening. I had a couple of bowls of chili, took a shower, got back into my gritty sweaty clothes and then laid down on a cot to rest. After tossing and turning for a while, I eventually dozed for twenty minutes or so. But real sleep was elusive so I just decided to get on with it. I thanked Ryan for the hospitality and started getting ready to ride. The sun was going down, so I put on nearly all of the clothes and reflective gear I had and headed out at about 7:40.

Leaving the overnight contrôle. Not crazy about the idea of spending another night on the bike.

While I was napping at the overnight, Vincent had arrived. He had wolfed down some food quickly and got back on the road a couple of minutes ahead of me. Vincent and I played leapfrog for a little while as we cruised down the long gradual downhill to Hwy 410. Eventually I pulled ahead and was once again, alone with the night.

Looking back at the sunset over Rimrock Lake as I head toward Hwy 410 and Chinook pass.

I reached the junction of Hwy 12 and Hwy 410 near Naches at about 9:00pm. Here the route starts a looooong, albeit gradual climb up to Chinook Pass. At first there were plenty of cars on the road, and this being the part of the state where you wear lycra only if you’re a pro football player and it’s Sunday morning, many of the drivers were shouting obscenities and honking their horns. As the hours slipped by, there were thankfully fewer cars on the road until eventually only the bicyclists and the drunks remained.

Now I don’t have a lot of experience as a Randonneur, but from what I’ve seen every ride of 300km or more has a stretch where time seems to come to a stop. I had reached that stretch of road. One of the good things about riding in the dark is that you can’t see your computer to see how slowly the time and the miles are going by. But every so often, curiosity would get the better of me so I’d turn on my headlamp and take a peek at the computer. “Oh great, a half mile since the last time I looked! Woo hoo.” From the junction to the pass was the longest 47 miles I’ve ever traveled on a bike. I talked to myself, I sang, I hallucinated, but through it all I just kept turning the cranks. I didn’t really feel too bad all things considered; still the time and the miles went by incredibly slowly. But amazingly if you just keep turning the cranks you’ll eventually find yourself at your destination. I crept over Chinook Pass to the sound of elk calls shortly after 2:00am. I was wide awake at that point since I had had a bit of scare a few minutes earlier when a big shrub beside the road had me convinced that it was a mountain lion.

Back at the overnight contrôle Ryan had said that once you reach Chinook Pass, the ride is basically in the bag. Sure, there’s another 60 miles of road between you and the finish, but it’s almost all downhill. Ryan is a big fat liar (I mean that in the nicest way). Okay, you know how I said that last stretch was the longest 47 miles I had ever traveled on a bike? Well, at that time it was. But that’s only because I hadn’t done the stretch from Chinook Pass to the finish yet. Surprisingly it was on the downhill that everything started to hurt. I was also having a hard time with approaching cars not dimming their high beams and forcing me to slow way down to avoid going off the road from being blinded. And I was freezing my ass off. Oh yeah, and then there was the little side trip up to White River campground. Someone said it was basically flat. NOT. I suppose at any other time this measly 60 mile ride from Chinook Pass to Enumclaw would have been a stroll in the park for me, but after more than 300 miles, and nearly 30 hours on the bike, not to mention two nights without any real sleep, I was ready to be done.

Somewhere along this part of the ride I started thinking seriously about quitting. I mean really, I didn’t need to finish this stupid ride. Then I started thinking about what quitting meant. Here I was, nearly hypothermic, nowhere near cell phone range, in the dark, what traffic there was was all going away from civilization. Quitting would mean curling up in the ditch wrapped in my space blanket. Yeah, that idea was even less appealing than just soldiering on. And the idea of telling my friends and family that I had to quit was almost as painful as my sitbones. So, I did what Randonneurs do. I kept turning the cranks and eventually… I… got… there.

I arrived at the Kings Motel in Enumclaw at 6:45am, about 33 hours and 45 minutes after leaving. I had traveled 375 miles, climbed ~25,000 vertical feet, slept 20 minutes, and had consumed an incalculable number of calories, mostly sugary goo or something from under the heat lamps at a gas station/convenience store. Of the 13 riders who started, nine finished. I was the third rider to finish.

What This World Needs is Another Blog

2009-09-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

Yeah, probably not... Anyway, I'm starting this blog as a service to my friends and family. For the past few months I've been emailing detailed descriptions of long boring bike rides to my friends and family, clogging their inboxes with jiggly photos and long descriptions about fascinating topics like gear ratios and what I wore and ate on a nine hour bike ride in the rain. Well, the emails are coming to an end. From now on I'll post my ride reports here for the whole universe to ignore.

If you haven't been getting my ride reports in the past, here's a little history:

Over the past 12 or so years I've commuted by bicycle from my home in North Seattle to jobs in downtown Seattle, Kirkland and Bellevue. It wasn't always every day, and it wasn't always year-round, but still I logged quite a few miles getting myself to and from work. But for most of that time, my bike was nothing more than a commuting tool. I almost never went for a ride for fun or exercise and I almost never rode more than 20 miles in a day. And then one night I got drunk with a friend...

In February 2008 my friend talked me into riding the STP--a 200 mile group ride from Seattle to Portland. Most do this ride in two days, but we were going to ride it in a day. So I bought myself a new bike and started riding more to get in shape. I finished the one-day STP later that year along with a few other organized (and some disorganized) century rides. Somewhere in the countless hours and miles I spent on my bike that spring and summer I had a bicycling epiphany. I - love - to - ride. I love riding in all weather, the longer the ride the better, up hills, down hills, on the flats, wherever... I love to ride.

In my search for new places to ride and new people to ride with, I stumbled upon the whacky sport of Randonneuring. I now ride regularly with the Seattle International Randonneurs, and am planning to ride the muthah of all Randonneuring events in the fall of 2011, the P-B-P 1200k.

I also really enjoy writing about some of the more epic rides I do. I realize that the ride reports aren't terribly interesting to anybody but me and a few other likeminded nuts. That's okay, it's really just for me. Oh yeah, and my mom.

Pre-Blog Ride Reports - June '09

2009-06-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

Originally emailed on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:59:15 under the Subject: June Ride Report - Long ride, long report

I'm still not quite sure if I actually did it or if I just dreamt it, but I have memories of riding the SIR 600k brevet this weekend. The pain in my legs is telling me that it was real, so I think I'll go with that.

About 65 riders set out from Auburn at 6:00 am Saturday. I was feeling a little unsure about how you ride a 600k, I mean what sort of pace do you set when you know you need to maintain it for the next day and a half? I also wasn't sure if I should try to find a group to ride with or go it alone. But within the first ten miles, I found myself riding with a small group that consisted of a couple of guys that I had ridden with on the 300k and three others who seemed to be strong riders and nice enough guys, so I let the group set the pace. We rode along the Tacoma waterfront, over the Narrows Bridge, up the Kitsap peninsula past Gig Harbor to Waterman Point. For the first 50 miles the pace was fast but comfortable. At the first control we caught up to the one lone rider who was ahead of us, a guy named Ryan who is almost always among the first two or three to finish a brevet. He joined our group and bumped up our pace a notch putting it at something I could hang with, but just barely. um... fun.

The view forward and aft as we went through Fife. Ahead are three of the group I stayed with for the first 400k (l to r: Bryan, Matt and Dan).

Crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

The next 125 miles were a bit of a blur. We rode along Hood Canal, and then headed for the coast through dried up little working class towns like Matlock, Cosmopolis and Aberdeen. We were riding into a headwind, not a severe headwind, but enough that you wouldn't want to ride it alone. Pretty early on in that stretch, we dropped one of the group (Dan). We were working as a disciplined pace line, taking 1 1/2 to 2 mile pulls each. I dreaded every time my pull came around, not because of my time out front, but because once I finished and dropped to the back it was all I could do to hang on. Being at the back of the line after a pull felt a little like how I've heard drowning described before. Drowning victims supposedly reach a point where they just let go and stop struggling, and a sense of calm comes over them. I'd be there at the back of the pack, struggling to hang on thinking how it would be so easy to just let go and slowly drift off to the bottom…

Heading toward the coast (l to r: Matt, Bryan, Dan, and Ryan hiding behind Dan)

Somehow I stayed with the group to the coast, through Westport (I don't mean to bad mouth Westport, but my God in the minimart where we stopped for water there couldn't have been more than a dozen teeth amongst the three people working there), Grayland, Tokeland until we finally turned inland and had the wind at our backs. I had been thinking that as soon as we had a tailwind, I could let the group go and ride at a less painful pace for a while. It was about that time that I got a flat tire. The group stopped and a couple of the guys helped me fix it. I had been really hurting just before the flat, but somehow getting off the bike for a few minutes to fix the flat restored me quite a bit so when we started rolling again I decided to stay with the group until the overnight control in Centralia.

About 150 miles in and still able to fake a smile.

The last 75 miles to the overnight control weren't too bad. The first half of it is a very gentle climb, but with the wind at our backs we were still moving at better than 20 mph. I was tired and everything hurt a little bit, but I was feeling surprisingly good all things considered. We got lost looking for the control that was about 20 miles out of Centralia which added about three miles and a few minutes of pointing at cue sheets and arguing, and Ryan got a flat and went through a couple tubes before he found the piece of wire stuck in his tire, but other than that it was pretty smooth sailing and we rolled into the overnight control at about 9:30pm just as it was getting dark. 400km done, only 200km to go.

My trusty steed resting at the Rainbow Falls Control 20 miles before Centralia

At the overnight control we were greeted by enthusiastic volunteers, mountains of real food, cold beer, and best of all, chairs! Four of our group had decided to make it a short stop and press on through the night to see if they could finish the ride in less than 24 hours. I entertained the idea of going with them for all of two seconds but instead opted to have a huge meal and try to get a few hours of sleep before getting back on the road. So, the two of us who were staying behind sent our riding buddies off into the night and grabbed a second plate of spaghetti.

Real Food at the overnight control!

I slept for about three hours and woke up feeling pretty rested, so I figured I might as well get back on the road. The volunteers made me a huge breakfast burrito (which I ended up regretting for the next 50 miles) and some paint stripper-like coffee. Bryan, the other guy from the group who stayed behind, was also up and ready to roll, so we headed out together a little after 2:30am.

Ready to roll at 2:30am

The first 50 miles after the overnight was mostly uphill, not steep but relentless. Strangely enough I really enjoyed the riding from 2:30 until the sun came up. It’s so peaceful with no cars on the road and the tunnel of light created by the headlights makes it easy to just focus on the task and get into a rhythm. Our route took us up back roads toward Mt. Rainier to the town of Morton. The sun was up by the time we reached Morton and we knew from that point it was another 80 miles of mostly downhill. From Morton on, Bryan and I took turns sort of running out of fuel and pulling each other along when the other guy was dragging. A big chunk of the last 80 miles follows the RAMROD route, and it’s some very scenic countryside, but by that point in the ride it was hard to appreciate it.

Bryan and I arrived at the finish in Auburn at 10:50am Sunday, 28 hours and 50 minutes after leaving. We were the second group to finish, the first being the four that we rode the first 400k with. It turns out they didn’t make the sub-24 hour finish they had been shooting for, but still finished in a phenomenal 24:35.

My cycle computer mysteriously reset itself somewhere around Enumclaw, so I don’t know what the actual total miles, riding time or average speed were, but it was something like 382 miles, and I’m thinking about 22 hours riding time.

Completing the 600k along with the 200k, 300k, and 400k makes me an official “Super Randonneur” (please say that with a French accent so it sounds like “zoo-pehr ron-duh-newwr”) according to l'Audax Club Perisien, which gives me the right to buy myself a shiney medal and brag about it to people who have never heard the word, "Randonneur." Woot!

Next up: RAMROD on July 30.

Steve