The SIR season officially kicked off with the Spring Populaire, a 100k ride starting in Woodinville and looping around country roads through Carnation and then back via Redmond.
There was a great turnout of close to 100 riders and it was great to see so many familiar faces from previous years.
My meticulous planning the night before ran into some snags when I realized that my two water bottles were still at home in the fridge and my Garmin GPS had no battery charge (it must have not charged properly after Thursday’s ride which had drained the battery). So it was off with the heart rate monitor and I scrounged a temporary bottle of regular bottled water so at least I would have some water with me. I reckoned I’d just need to drink when I stopped rather than as I rode.
The peleton took off at 9am at a leisurely pace along the trail before we left it a couple miles along and started our climb out of Woodinville. My legs were feeling good despite a 110 mile ride on Thursday so I moved up the pack as we ascended the hill and then hopped on the Ragsdale express as it swept by me with Bob, Mike and other fast riders in the group. (They can ride a lot faster than me but I can hang on drafting for a while on any given day). It was fun riding some of the same roads that I’d been on solo on Thursday at a much faster pace. I stuck with them until the first control but then my extra minute spent drinking my make shift water meant they had left ahead of me.
I took off chasing and got on another group. My chain had been shifting a bit strangely on Thursday and I was planning to drop the bike in for a service this week. While I thought I could get one more ride out of it my chain didn’t go along wiht the plan.
I was pushing uphill on one of the rollers when it snapped. This had never happened to me before and lacking a chain tool (which was also safely at home) I didn’t have many options. Thankfully there were other riders who stopped and walked me through the steps to take out a couple of links and attach the chain back together again with their tool. It was great to have gone through this on a sunny day so that I should be able to do it again if need be (particularly if I’m by myself at 3am on a mountain pass in the rain … ). That will be the last ride that I don’t have a chain tool along with me.
I also checked my maintenance logs and that chain had about 3000 miles on it which is really too much. I think the average life expectancy is around 2000 miles.
Once the chain was back together (now a couple of links shorter) I babied it in for the rest of the ride, staying out of the big chain ring and staying seated on all the climbs. It survived but it meant my time and pace was a bit slower than usual.
A good stop at Sandy’s for refueling and then a climb over the hills to Redmond and back up along the trail to Woodinville. Next up is the 200k in 2 weeks as the first of my 4 qualifying rides for PBP this year.
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