This was my first pre-ride (the ride the volunteers do before the scheduled brevet so as to scout out the course, verify the route and get credit for the ride). 6 of us started out from Mark’s house at 6am on Saturday morning. It had been raining on my drive over so I’d put on full rain gear which quickly proved to be too hot in the immediate climbing to get out of Mark’s neighborhood. 30 minutes into the ride I heard a loud bang behind us as Mark’s tire exploded so that gave me an opportunity to shed some layers while he put on a new tire and tube. It was the first of many flats for our group during the course of the ride (6 total by the end). My gatorskins proved to be resistant enough so that I was spared needing to fix one myself but all the stops added a fair bit of time onto the ride.
As a contrast, for the 300k I was off the bike for less than an hour while for this 400k I was off the bike for over 4 1/2 hours. We made decent enough time while we were moving and had good pacelines going along low traffic roads and the Centennial Trail through Marblemount, most of it in rain. The climbing started on the way out to Baker Lake as we left Concrete with a steep 3 mile stretch or so which started to spread our group out a bit. Then it was up and down to the Panorama Point Campground before turning around immediately as there was no shelter there from the rain and riding back to Concrete. On the official ride we’ll have a manned support stop out there to break up this stretch and provide some sustenance before the ride back.
We stopped for some food at Concrete (a nice burger and chips) and then headed off with about 100 miles to go as it started to get dark. We started to split up along this stretch as people started riding at their own paces and I rode mostly with Hugh and Kevin until Arlington where we waited for Mark and Michael to catch up at a Safeway for about 20 minutes before Hugh and I decided to carry on as we reckoned he had decided not to stop. It turned out we were right and we caught up to them at Granite Falls just as they were leaving the control stop there.
Hugh and I rode the rest of the way in together and finished up at 3:18am (21:18 hours after we had started). All in all my legs felt pretty good and no real soreness. I still need to work out some alternative food options to give me more variety with real food for deeper in the ride. My ham sandwiches tasted a bit dry by the time I got to them so I’ll try some mayo next time to moisten them up a bit.
Some shots from the ride:
