While I have not been blogging as much since PBP I have still been riding. Here is a summary of some of my rides since August. All in all I rode over 7000 miles for the year, my biggest year to date.
Mountain Populaire 110k
Fresh from PBP my form was still good and I hammered through this hilly course in a little over 4 hours. By the end it was just myself, Robin and Bob off the front as other people who had been riding with us earlier on fell behind due to either fitness levels or mechanical issues.
Olympia 200k
This relatively flat course allowed for some nice tempo riding. I had no rain gear along so when the rain set in I carried on with Tyler to keep warm while the rest of the group stopped to don their gear. I thought they’d catch up to us relatively quickly but it was only about 40 miles later when we stopped at a control that we regrouped. I was debating going for a 7 ½ hour 200k but in the end decided to wait at the control and ride in with more people for a more social ride. In the end we came in just under 8 hours and were treated to some nice hot pizza at the finish.
R12
I’ve kept the R12 going with a number of solo and group permanent rides, many of them organized by Chris Heg. It’s promoting a higher level of fitness going into the start of 2012 so it’ll be interesting to see how I can build on that for the year ahead.
5000k
Going into December I realized that I was within shooting distance of the RUSA 5k award, for riding 5000k of brevets or permanents within the US. I needed around 420k and so lined up a solo 250k (Whidbey-Mambo) and signed up for the Solstice Ride on December 21st.
Solstice Ride 200k
One of my more memorable rides though not one I would do again in similar conditions. This started at 7pm on the longest night of the year with predictions of freezing fog and low temperatures forecast. I was bundled up in 7 layers and felt like the Michelan man as we took off into the night. There were a number of top ultra racers along for the ride, Chris Ragsdale, Brian and Mick so the pace was a reasonable clip out of the gate. I was wondering if I’d overdressed as I was getting a bit hot but as the night progressed and the temperatures dropped it turned out to be about right. The course was pretty flat with an out and back section which meant we ended up seeing all the riders coming up the Centennial Trail as we headed back. For the later half of the ride my legs started feeling a bit weary from my 250k a couple days previously and I dropped off the pace a little on the final climb back out of the valley. I was covered in ice and my rims froze up so that on the last steep descent I had to walk the bike as my brakes were no longer slowing me down. I finished in about 9 hours which was pretty good for the conditions so I was able to get some sleep before heading into work.
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