Category: Cycling

This past Sunday saw me down in Olympia for a final pre PBP tune up ride of 200k.  Generally over rolling terrain I rode with most of the people I’ll be riding with at PBP and we made good time despite some rather ragged pacelines due to additional people in our group who have not ridden together as much.

Bob and I had to chase down the group at one point after we had an extended toilet stop only to emerge to discover the group had rolled off. We chased for about 7 miles averaging over 25 mph to catch up. Quite a wake up to the legs as we had been averaging around 20mph on the flats for the ride in general up to then. Words were exchanged ….

Finished in 7 hours and 55 minutes which beats my best time for a 200k by about an hour. It’s also the first step in the Cyclo Montagnards R60 (completing a brevet series in less than 60% of the allowed time).

Fitness levels are looking good for Paris.

 

This was my first successfully completed grand randonee (although I had ridden this distance at the Cascade 1200 that I completed as a 1000k/260k option last year). It was a stunning ride with great scenery, wildlife, thunderstorms and high altitude. I ended up with a time of 82 hours 28 minutes, finished in daylight each day and averaged around 8 hours at each overnight control. This was quite a change from a year ago on Cascade when I was finishing each day at ~2 am and getting 2-3 hours rest.

Day 1

The ride was limited to 50 riders and we started at 4 am from Louisville. Susan drove down to the start with me, or rather followed me in the car as I biked the 3 miles down to the Inn. The first 100k was on rolling terrain and I rode with the front group. We averaged over 20 mph and actually arrived at the first control only 5 minutes after it officially opened. 3 hours for a 100k (with a secret control along the way) was the fastest I’ve ever done that distance and we still had 1100 km to go. I fueled up at Verns and then started the main climb of the day up Cameron Pass.

This was a 60 mile extended climb up the Poudre Canyon with a steeper stretch for the last 12 miles cresting at 10,276 ft. I was riding with a couple other people for the first 20 miles or so but then I let them go as the altitude started to kick in and my energy output dropped. I settled into a steady rhythm and eventually made it to the top. The altitude meant that any time I stood up on the pedals I had no extra power available and ended up sitting back down and spinning again.

A thunderstorm was just starting to roll in as I reached the top so I raced down the other side to Walden and managed to avoid all but a couple drops. I drafted off one guy into Walden which helped wrap up this stretch pretty quickly. At this point we were about 150 miles in and had 67 more to Saratoga climbing progressively higher ridges to get there. This was a tough stretch for me and when I felt the altitude most during the ride. I was racing to stay ahead of a number of very dark lightning storms that passed across the road behind me. I’d see them sweeping across the plains towards me and feel drops from the edge of the storms but managed to avoid getting hit by the full downburst. I stopped for a Coke at Riverside across from the Mangy Moose bar and debated waiting out another storm that was approaching but the swarms of mosquitos got me back on my bike to finish off the day.

I arrived at the overnight at around 7:30pm, ate a bit of food and went to bed to rest ahead of my planned 3:30am departure.

Day 2

Day 2 started with a 40 mile climb up the Snowy Range. I was taking it pretty slowly, which was a pattern which repeated over the next day as well i.e. start slow and then get progressively faster as the day progressed. There were various people suffering from lack of sleep along the climb, some of them stopping to walk or take a short nap beside the snow.

I soon had all my layers on as we reached 10,700ft before our descent down into Centennial.

By the time I reached Centennial after a great descent I was in need of calories and stopped for a eggs, toast, bacon etc.. at the cafe there. Nice fast service and a large calorie intake soon had me back on the road to Laramie. I rode with Jim for about 10 miles into Laramie before we parted ways as I took off ahead of him back to Walden.

This was a non-descript 20 miles or so to Woods Landing before starting a steeper climb and then a nice descent down the other side. I caught up with Vinnie in Walden and waited for about 30 minutes while some pizza was cooked before leaving for the final stretch of the day to Steamboat Springs (via Muddy Pass and Rabbit Ears Pass).

I left at the same time as Vinnie and 2 other riders but they were going at a slower pace so I took off ahead. I was feeling strong along this stretch and made good time. The mosquitos were out in force and were swarming all over me when I dropped the pace down to 15 mph. It was a good incentive to keep pushing faster. I kept getting different views of Rabbit Ears Pass as I wound my way over to it.

This climb felt pretty good and as I reached the top the dark clouds that had been threatening over the pass started to rain. I put on all my rain gear and rode the brakes hard for the 7 miles at 7% downhill grade down to Steamboat Springs. I let the bike run free at the top to check my stopping distance and it was a long way, from that point on I took it pretty cautiously down the wet roads.

I managed to get in just as it was getting dark, ate and got into bed to rest up ahead of my 4 am planned departure.

Day 3

Yet another extended climb to start the day, this time over Gore Pass. I rode with George for the morning stretch and we took it easy and chatted all the way up. It made the time go quickly as we rode up in the morning fog. As the day heated up we stopped near Kremmling for an icecream cone which hit the spot. I was starting to feel like picking up the pace more so we parted ways and I rode with another group of 4 riders up to Grand Lake.

We stocked up on slaty food and drinks at Grand Lake as it was pretty hot now (high 80s) before returning to Granby for our last climb of the day over Willow Creek Pass. I headed on by myself at Granby as I felt I was climbing a bit slower than the rest of the group and thought they’d catch me after their stop for more drinks. I started to climb better though and didn’t see them again until the overnight control.

Willow Creek Pass started steeply but then settled into a nice gradient for 20 miles or so. I caught up with Ian at the top and we rode into the overnight at Walden together, over a 20 mile stretch of frostheave cracked road (ba bump, ba bump, ba bump all the way). We were smiling once it ended!

We shared a room and got up at 3am to head out around 4am. I didn’t feel I got any real sleep as we were at 8000ft but I did manage to rest and felt fine once I got up.

Day 4

This was the final day and yet another climb to start us off. This time just a 30 mile ascent up the other side of Cameron Pass. It was a great ascent as the sun came up with numerous moose sightings along the side of the road.

Then it was a 60 mile descent to Verns, woo hooo! Ian and I traded 1 mile pulls once the wind started to pick up lower in the canyon and made good time.

George joined us as we were leaving Verns as he was concerned that his odometer wasn’t working and might have difficulty following the cue sheet. We were all in the same boat as all of our units had failed as well but the cue sheet was straightforward enough. We made short work of the last 60 miles despite the heat as we smelt the barn, stopping for drinks at a nice little store at Hygiene. It was impressive to see the number of fit bikers on nice bikes who were out riding mid week along the roads back to Louisville.

We finished in 82 hours and 28 minutes feeling strong. I felt I’d paced myself well and the long rest stops at the overnights had made this a pretty comfortable ride.

Earlier this year I set myself some target times to achieve in the spring brevet series. These were created by the Cyclos Montagnards group as a series of speed awards for those who are motivated by trying to go faster on these longer rides.

The R70 honor requires completion of a brevet series (200, 300, 400 and 600 km) with each brevet completed in 70% or less of the maximum allowed time limit.

I managed to hit the targets (my actual times are in brackets, the 400k was from 2010 as I did a more leisurely pre-ride for this year’s brevet).

200 km: 9:27 hours (08:54)
300 km: 14:00 hours (12:33)
400 km: 18:54 hours (18:36)
600 km: 28:00 hours (24:58)

You can find a list of people who have also achieved this and submitted their results here.

Saturday morning was the start of the final ride I needed to complete to qualify for PBP later this year. This was a 600k ride that I’d first ridden in 2007 in my first year of randonneuring. In actual fact it was my first ever 600k. Back then I took 37 hours and 13 minutes and still have memories of being pretty stiff after the couple of hours of sleep at the overnight stop at Elma before battling the hills in Tahuya to the finish.

This year’s plan was a bit different in that I’d decided to ride the whole distance with no over night stop with the group training to ride PBP this year in Charly Miller pace (56:20 or less for 1200k). My projections for this ride had a target time of 24:59, based on 10 minute stops at controls and 20 minute stop at Elma. While we ended up spending longer at some controls and less time at others we actually ended up completing the ride in 24:58. That’s 12 1/4 hours faster than 4 years ago!

On to the ride — I rode down to the start from Ballard with Jan, Chris and Bob at 5am, registered and chatted with various people as we all waited for 6 am to come along and a chance to start turning the pedals. I tried to stay near the front as we headed out from downtown so I wouldn’t get separated by the various traffic lights that can split the group up early on. We rolled past a line of people at the stadium who were already queuing up for the U2 concert that evening and climbed up the hill to the I90 tunnel and bridge. I had a bottle of Ensure fall off the back of my bike just before the bridge so had to stop and get it and then chase back on (checking my stats I ended up setting a PR across the bridge of over 20mph to rejoin the pack).

The group headed out to Buckley with a stop to try to figure out a mechanical issue with Greg’s chain. Robin joined us here and we then got rolling proper with rotating pacelines. We had quite a large group for a while before people started dropping off the pace and we got down to the core group. A quick stop at Buckley and it was on to fast rollers to Eatonville. This stretch took it’s toll on various people as the pace may have been a bit high for the heat and terrain. We were going 20/21 mph with a fair bit of climbing.

By the time we got through Packwood, Centralia and reached the “overnight” control in Elma there were various people in the group who changed their plans and decided to get some sleep here to try to recover before completing the ride the next day. We’d averaged 18.3 mph to this point and had hit 300k in 11 hours which was well ahead of planned pace. I’d had to take breaks from pulling in the pacelines for the last stretch so as not to fry myself. We took a 40 minute stop at Elma which allowed me to have a quick shower, change of clothes, bite to eat and to restock my supplies. Then it was off into the dusk to ride through the night to Bainbridge.

We reached Potlatch in good time and added a couple bonus miles searching for a Chevron station before backtracking to the Shell station that was the actual control. (It was labeled correctly on the brevet card but differently on the cue sheet and as my garmin had run out of power I was simply going by what things were called). Then it was on to Tahuya, for a great manned control in the middle of the night and the chance for some warm soup, tea and banana bread before tackling the infamous final stretch through the Tahuya hills, a series of pretty steep little climbs in and out of Seabeck.

Our group of 6 made it to the finish in Bainbridge at 6:58 am to be greated by Mark Thomas and his wife in a hotel room they had set up with some food and grub. We hung out for a couple of hours as we waited for the drop bags to be brought over from Elma. The overnight control actually only closed at 7:08 am so the bags weren’t going to brought to the finish until the last rider had headed off from there.

Then it was down to the ferry and a ride back home up to Ballard, ironically with a heavy backpack on my back this felt like one of the toughest parts of the weekend.

All in all the ride went really well. It was great to ride with a good group of strong riders and to keep stops to a minimum. No real aches or pains to complain about compared to previous years. Nutrition still remains a bit of a problem as I haven’t found quite the right thing to eat after a couple hundred miles in the saddle. My mind knows I need calories but my stomach rebels at the thought of another gel block and energy bar and the liquid fuels just seem to much drinking. The bottles of Ensure I had worked well for a quick calorie fix so may need to work out how to carry more of those. Will keep experimenting …

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: