Month: April 2011

One of the awards available in the world of Randonneuring is the “Randonneur 5000”. In 1961, the Audax Club Parisien created an award for those randonneurs who have completed 5000 km in BRM events. It is called the Randonneur 5000. To qualify for this award, the successful randonneur must complete the full series of ACP brevets (200, 300, 400, 600, and 1000k), a Paris-Brest-Paris randonnée, a Flèche Vélocio, and additional ACP brevets to bring the total distance up to at least 5000 km. Kilometers from a Randonneurs Mondiaux 1200k event (e.g., BMB, Cascade 1200) can be used as supplementary kilometers but cannot take the place of the ACP 1000k.

Last year once I started thinking about doing PBP in 2011 I rode a 1000k to get an optimal pre-registration opportunity. This left me with just a Fleche to complete in order to be eligible for this award once I complete PBP later this year.

I’d been wanting to ride a fleche anyway for a while so this year took the plunge and joined a team. Myself, Wayne, Hugh and Jan formed team Ocean Breeze and Wayne designed a nice route for us starting in Bremerton and heading out to the coast before looping around to the mass finish in Olympia. The Fleche has some unique rules which makes it a little different from other brevets. Each team participating (this year there were 11) designs their own route to finish in a common location after riding at least 360km in a 24 hour time period. The historic intent was for each team to see what was the maximum distance they could ride in this 24 hour period. You have to ride at least 25 km in the last 2 hours and can’t stop at any one location en route for more than 2 hours. These rules would all come into play as our ride went along.

We’d decided on a night time start as good practice for PBP and caught the 9:10 ferry for a 10pm start in Bremerton.

Once the ferry docked it was off into the dark on relatively low trafficked roads for our planned breakfast stop on the coast at Westport 8 hours down the road. With a fleche everyone needs to stay together as at least 3 of the possible 5 team members (in our case we had only 4) need to finish together for the ride to count. We all ride at compatible paces so were able to ride at a steady pace (averaging around 15mph, which is pretty good for riding at night).

We reached our first planned stop at about 2:15 am, a post office in the middle of nowhere. A useful feature of country post offices is that the heated lobby with post boxes is never locked and so we huddled in there for a snack and quick warm up before hitting the road again.

Shortly afterwards we stopped for Hugh to put on some more layers at a misty crossroads when a figure emerged walking down the middle of the road. He was as surprised to see us as we were to see him and we had a surreal conversation before he staggered on home. We passed the pub were he had originated from a little further down the road.

The night went pretty smoothly and we arrived at Westport a little after day break for a well earned breakfast.

Then it was back down the coast beside the sea to loop around to Olympia. Some great views along this stretch with the odd scattered shower hitting us even while the sun was shining down on us.

We reached Centralia just after 3pm which left us 7 hours of our 24 hours to go and only around 2 hours of riding left on our route. So it was off to a beer garden to kill 2 hours with some food and beer before heading on to our next stop 12 miles down the road were we stretched out in the sun for another 2 hours.

It’s a strange experience to be deliberately killing time on a ride rather than trying to keep moving as efficiently as possible!

Finally we hit our 22 hour mark and could depart for our final 25 km to the finish at the Red Lion Hotel in Olympia. We got in around 9:20 and had a quick beer and then off to bed for a good night’s sleep.

The next morning saw all 11 teams getting together for a breakfast banquet and chance to share tales from all the respective rides.

Susan, Ashley, Ethan and Sean came down to pick me up and caught the tail end of the tales from the rides.

All in all a fun ride and weekend.

I’d lined up this 300K for Northwest Crank this year as I’d ridden some of the roads before last year and loved the scenery. I was anticipating finishing around sunset and was initially heading out without a jacket until I heard that I might run into snow (despite the sunny forecast). I raced back to my room to get my jacket and got back to find that everyone had left promptly at 6am, it was now 6:03am. I chased down the various people out there until I got to what I thought was the front and settled in there with Ken Bonner and Suzanne. I found out later that Chris Ragsdale was further out in front but I wouldn’t have caught him 🙂

The route headed up into the Pallisades on a road I hadn’t been along before which included a 7 mile stretch of gravel. I had to walk the bike up a couple of the steeper stretches as my wheels were spinning out on the loose gravel but all in all it went all right on my 25s. I was happy to back onto pavement but it was at this point that the wind started to pick up and impact us more. I still made reasonable time along this stretch to the Dry Falls Visitor Center for the first 100k as some of the stretch had a tailwind. I hit there in about 4 1/2 hours but then took around 13 hours for the next 200k, most of it into very strong headwinds.

We even had some snow pellets hitting us out at Banks Lake on our out and back leg from Coulee City. I rode most of this ride on my own as my knee was twinging a bit so I wasn’t pushing it to stay with any group that wasn’t going at a pace that my knee felt all right with.

As dark fell up on the plateau it started getting quite a bit colder and the fact that I was only going about 6 mph into the headwind pushing hard meant that it was going to be a long day. Susan was tracking me on my iPhone and I was able to call her from Waterville as I huddled behind a bale of turf trying to get some shelter from the wind before moving on.

I got in around 11:20 pm. Probably the toughest 300k I’ve done due to the wind.

Friday evening was spent getting my bike all set up for Saturday’s 300k brevet. This ride was starting from the U-Village so I decided to ride to the start (a 6 mile warmup for the day ahead). My alarm woke me at 4:30am and I left the house a little after 5. This ended up being the only riding in the dark I had to do, which gives a sneak preview of how fast I was on the official ride.

Around 80 or so riders were milling around the Starbucks near Barnes and Noble (one of 4 in the village and naturally open at this early hour). There was a good buzz and we left promptly at 6am essentially biking back towards Ballard before turning North for our big loop up to Mt. Vernon via Mukilteo. I try to work my way up towards the front early on in a ride to find a group going at a compatible pace. The risk is that you miss a group that you could ride with if the large initial mass of riders gets separated by a changing light that splits the group and then you never see the people who made the light again.

Made good time out to Mukilteo via familiar roads and then started climbing out of the port.  This was about 20 miles in and a larger group caught up with me and the guy I was chatting with as we climbed along. This was the group training for Charley Miller type pace at PBP (they’d stopped for a puncture earlier on hence they were behind us). I joined up with them and ended up sticking with them for the rest of the road.

Great organized pacelines and short control stops meant we motored along and made good time. I ended up finishing the ride in 12:33, which is about 3 1/2 hours faster than my previous times for this distance and 1:20 faster than my target time for the ride.

I was pretty tired after the ride but no real aches or pains. All the P90X is definitely helping I think. I was pleased that I was able to hold my own with this group of faster riders and take my turns up front in the pacelines. The electrolytes prevented any cramping though I could have used a bit more variety in my food. The gel blocks get a bit too sweet about 100 miles in and I can only stomach so many energy bars.

This bodes well for a considerably different experience in my longer rides this year if I can keep riding faster and have more time in the bank for sleep or cafe stops in France!

A quick catch up on my riding since the 200k. I’ve started riding the Native Planet Thursday night rides again (well one so far). It was good to be back riding with the NP crowd and hitting some familiar hills. I’ll try to make it a fairly regular ride. I’ve also been introduced to a new website for tracking biking stats called Strava. It allows you to easily break up rides into segments so you can compare your times on the same climbs over time (and hopefully see how you improve). You can also see how you’re doing against other people who have ridden the same segments. Very cool.

http://app.strava.com/athletes/15349

I’ve also done a couple of shorter Cascade rides on the weekends with the CATS groups. The one two weekends ago started at Magnuson Park and rode down south hitting some new climbs that I hadn’t done before. I rode with the fastest group and the pace seemed fine. This last weekend I went down to Southcenter to start the CATS ride there. This was a larger group and everyone was in the same group. As such there were a lot more breaks and the rhythm of the ride was a bit different than I’m used to with a lot of regroups and waits. I went solo after a couple hours as I wanted to be back home in the early afternoon to work on building a Playhouse with the kids.

A busy month of rides ahead with the 300k this weekend, Northwest Crank later in the month (with plans to ride a 200, 300 and 400k at it) and rounding out the month with a 370k Fleche. A lot of good base miles ahead.

P90X is also progressing well. Susan and I have entered Month 2 now. It’s helping to work on the other muscles that are needed, but not necessarily developed, by riding and should help prevent injuries. Before and after photos will be provided once we complete the 90 days!