"The Alps"

For the month of April I wasn't able to do any of the organized SiR rides, so to keep my R-12 going I decided to ride a permanent. I picked the toughest route I could find since one of my new year's resolutions was to spend less time on the bike, but to make it count when I do ride. As far as I know, the toughest 200k permanent is #517, The Alps (sort of a presumptuous name for ride the goes through towns like Auburn and Hobart). It packs 10,000 feet of climbing into 200 km, without ever going over 1200 feet above sea level. The route starts in Redmond and meanders around South King County, hitting every good climb it can find. It's a little like a bad action film with a bunch of chases and fights and shoot outs, but not much of a plot to string them together.

My aim was to start at 7:00am at the Whole Foods in Redmond. I got there a bit late so didn't get on the road until about 10 after. A minute or so after getting on the road I realized one of my brakes was rubbing, so I had to stop and adjust it a bit. So, a couple blocks into the ride and it was already 7:15.

The ride follows the west side of Lake Sammamish to Eastgate, climbs up to the top of Summerset, then heads down toward Issaquah, and climbs up Cougar Mtn on "Zoo Hill."


Route Map

In my brief Randonneuring history I've heard many stories about other Randonneurs struggling to make the control cutoff times. Apparently I was just dealt a pretty good genetic hand when it comes to cycling, because it's never been a concern for me at all. I've never even really had to think about it. So it was a bit of a shock on this ride when I was approaching the second control near the top of Zoo Hill and realized I was going to be pretty close to the control cutoff. The combination of the late start, stopping to adjust the brakes, two big climbs already, a couple of minor navigational mistakes, and the control being only a few miles into the ride so I hadn't had much of a chance to build up a buffer all meant I was starting up zoo hill with 30 minutes to make the second control. I assumed the control was at the top of the climb, and the climb up Zoo Hill usually takes me about 20 minutes. But since this was the second of 10 big climbs on a 200k ride, I wasn't heading up the hill as fast as I usually do. If I kept my conservative pace, I realized I'd probably make the top of the hill about three to five minutes before the cutoff. But what if I got a flat tire? What if there was road construction up ahead that held me up for a few minutes? I'd be cutting it very close. For the first time in my Rando career, I was actually worried about making a cutoff. I decided to resist the temptation to pick up the pace, and just hope for the best.

Did I mention that the navigation part of Randonneuring is not one of my greatest strengths? So it turns out that the control is actually only about 2/3rds of the way up the climb, so I got there with several minutes to spare. But still it was by far the closest I've ever been to the cutoff. And you know, it was actually kind of fun having that pressure for a few minutes. Not sure I want to always ride with that kind of pressure, but a little bit of it is fun.

From Cougar Mtn the route continues south toward Auburn, climbing every hill it can find along the way. The Alps is one of those routes that makes you a slave to the route sheet. You rarely ride more than a mile or two without making a turn, and the turns aren't all that obvious. If you aren't paying close attention to your route sheet, you'll get lost for sure. Navigation has never been my strong suit in Randonneuring even on the simpler routes.

And to make matters worse, while studying the route sheet somewhere south of Cougar Mtn I realized that when I printed it, any of the cues that had instructions with more than one line got cut off. All I could see was the bottom line. So an instruction like, "Turn right to stay on 196th. DO NOT continue straight onto Sweeney Rd." Showed on my cue sheet as simply, "straight onto Sweeney Rd." "Hmm, this could cause problems," I thought. Sure enough, I missed a turn or two but figured it out fairly quickly just because I was familiar with some of the roads and knew where I was headed more or less. But eventually I found myself hopelessly off course with no clear idea of where I went wrong or how to get back on course. I scratched my helmet for a couple minutes and then decided to use a life line. I called Sarah and asked for help.

At first I spent a lot of time whining and complaining to her about how lame I was for printing the route sheet without noticing the formatting problem. Then we spent a few minutes trying to figure out where I was. Then she tried to figure out a route to get me to where I needed to be, but that got far too complicated, so I decided I just need to backtrack about four miles to where I went off course. Throughout this conversation I kept thinking this route sheet mess was too complicated and I should just bail on the ride (DNF??). Then she found a copy of the route sheet on my computer and read me all of the instructions that got cut off on my version. I took notes and scribbled all over my copy. All of this took over a half hour or more, and once again I started worrying about whether I would be able to make the next control on time. Luckily I had built up a decent time buffer so it looked like, assuming I could get back on course AND I didn't get lost again, I should be able to make the next control with 15 - 20 minutes to spare.

Well, I did make it to the Green Valley Meat and Minimart with plenty of time to spare. (Note to self: Need to go back there sometime in a car. It's a strange and fascinating store.) After the Meat and Minimart, I had nearly 10 miles of flat riding trough the Green River Valley that gave me a good time buffer for the rest of the ride. I didn't have to worry about cutoff times from there on out.


Elevation Profile

The rest of the ride was far less eventful. I stayed on course and rode up and down hills and just kept turning the cranks. I saw some good riding roads that I had never been on before, like Issaquah - Fall City Rd (the old part after it leaves suburbia), and climbed some great hills I've never climbed before, like Lake Alice Rd with a fairly long stretch of >15% grade.

I was good and tired by the time I finally rolled back into the Whole Foods parking lot in Redmond. The ride took me 11 hours 18 minutes which is by far the longest I've ever taken to finish a 200k. But I figure if I could subtract about an hour for the late start, getting lost, and whining on the phone to Sarah I'd end up with a respectable time.

The Alps is a really nice route, but I definitely am no fan of routes that have cue sheets that are longer than my arm. I'll have to ride it again, now that I know the route, so I can just enjoy the ride and look away from my cue sheet once in a while.

300k with the Cyclos Montagnards

This is a late, late post. Sorry. Life has been getting in the way of blogging lately...

Last Saturday I rode the SiR spring 300k. The ride started and ended at University Village, about a mile from our house so I definitely had no excuse for not riding to the ride. Before I get into the actual ride I have to fill you in on some of the back story. A couple weeks before this ride I had agreed to ride this year's SiR Fléche with the Cyclos Montagnards team. Yes, I realize that last sentence was full of words that mean nothing to you if you aren't a card-carrying randonerd.

So what's a fléche you ask? Well, its a randonneuring event that even seasoned Randos find confusing. Basically, a fléche is like a brevet that you ride as a team of 3 - 5 riders. Teams have to cover at least 360 km in 24 hours. Each team chooses their own starting point and route, but all of the teams end in the same place at roughly the same time. The idea is for everyone to converge on some nice place where they can all get together for Sunday brunch after the big ride. The fléche rules are designed to keep teams moving for most of the 24 hours. For example, a team can't stay at any one stop for more than 2 hours.

How about Cyclos Montagnards? Cyclos Montagnards is an organization that exists under the randonneuring "tent" and is all about riding farther and faster than you ordinarily need to or want to as a "normal" randonneur. So given their mission, the Cyclos Montagnards fléche team was definitely out to win the overachiever's award by planning to ride over 600 km in the 24 hour fléche when 360 km would do just fine, thank you very much. So, I was a little surprised they asked me to ride with them because having never ridden 600 km in just 24 hours, I'm not sure I'm even capable of it. But I was flattered that they thought I could do it so I agreed to join the team.

Ok, now back to last weekend's 300 km brevet... All of the members of the CM Fléche team (Ryan Hamilton, Brian Ohlemeier, Jan Heine, Hahn Rossman and I) were supposed to be riding the 300 km, so we decided to ride it as a team just for practice. Jan, the CM team captain, decided we were shooting for an 11 hour finish and he even put together a detailed schedule of when we needed to be at each contrôle along the way and how long we could stay (He gave us a whopping 4 minutes at the "lunch" stop, and a minute or two at the others). We gathered in the dark for the 6:00am start and the team chatted a bit amidst the 80 or so other riders who had turned out for the brevet. Just before 6:00 am the ride organizer, Gary Prinz, said and few words of warning and encouragement and sent off the horde into the cool calm morning.

Immediately the CM team took off like a shot trying to get ahead of all the other riders. I figured we would start fast to get ahead of everyone else, and then eventually settle into a more relaxed pace once we had put some distance between ourselves and the other riders. I figured wrong. the pace never really slowed much for the entire ride. I remember thinking for the first 150 km that there was no way I could maintain such a fast pace for the entire ride. But somehow I kept hanging on and staying with the team despite the voice in my head that kept screaming at me to just sit down beside the road and give my legs a rest.


Route Map

The route headed up around the north end of lake Washington and then turned south toward Redmond and Sammamish. After climbing up and over the Sammamish plateau we then had a long flat stretch up through the Snoqualmie Valley heading toward Monroe, Sultan and eventually through Granite Falls to Conway before turning south and working our way back to University village.

Even though we were still riding faster than my legs thought prudent, the flat ride up through the Snoqualmie Valley was insane fun. With a group of six (Hahn never showed up, but Mike McHale and Eric Anderson hopped on the train with us) we ran a rotating pace line. This was the first time I had ever ridden in a rotating pace line. It's a bit intimidating at first, and a little like being a part in a big, fast machine. It requires some serious concentration, and you never really get to rest like you do in a standard single-file pace line. It's also pretty hard to find enough time for eating and drinking. Other than a few minutes to stop and fix Jan's broken fender, the rotating pace line helped us maintain well over 20 mph average all the way to Sultan.

We made a quick stop in Sultan to get our cards signed and refill water bottles and then started the biggest climbing section of the ride. From Sultan up to Lake Roesiger, the route has some ups and downs (mostly ups), adding up to over 1,000 feet of climbing over a dozen miles or so. One short section on Reiner Road has a pitch of about 18% which definitely gets your attention. During this section I started noticing that my legs were on the verge of cramping every time I stood up and pushed hard. Fortunately for me (not so fortunate for Ryan), Ryan was also fighting cramps about that time, so the group slowed down a bit to let Ryan recover. Nope, not for me, it was all for Ryan (wink, wink). Of course, "slow" for this group was still faster than just about any group I've ridden with before.


Ride Elevation Profile

While we were slowed down a bit I gobbled a couple of Endurolytes (amazing things, those Endurolytes) and caught up a bit on "food" and fluids. Amazingly, I was feeling pretty strong again by the time we rolled into Granite Falls.

The next section rolls along Hwy 9 with ups and downs but nothing steep or long. We were back into our rotating pace line and moving along at a good rate again. We kept this up most of the way to Conway where the course turned South into the teeth of a head wind.

The headwind from Conway wasn't too strong, but it definitely slowed us down. It was tough to work together here because the wind was at an angle forcing us to spread out across the road in order to stay in each other's draft. Needless to say, cagers aren't crazy about a group of cyclists taking up the entire lane on a busy highway.

By the time we got to Arlington, and on to the Centennial Trail, we were mostly out of the wind. Unfortunately I was also mostly "out of wind." Jan, Brian and Mike were still riding strong, so I just sort of hung on to the back and let them do most of the pulling as we flew down the trail. Thanks for the hard work, guys. This isn't the first time I've received a free ride behind Mike. The man is pretty amazing on the flats and into the wind. He always modestly claims it's entirely due to his fancy-schmancy carbon fiber deep section wheels. But it certainly doesn't hurt that his legs can generate about as many watts as a Toyota Prius.

Somewhere between Snohomish and Woodinville, I got a flat tire. I came to a stop and threw my leg over the bike to get off and my leg immediately cramped to the point that I could hardly stand up. While I stood there beside the road screaming in pain and massaging the back of my thigh, Ryan, Brian, Mike and Eric were fixing my flat. Note to self: When riding with nice guys, fake a bad cramp whenever you get a flat. Moan and groan and massage your leg for a few minutes while your buddies fix the flat. When they're done, you just hop back on the bike and say your cramp is much better, thanks, and ride off into the sunset with your hands still clean. By the way, those guys fixed the flat in about half the time it usually takes me.

The last fifteen miles of the ride were on the Burke-Gilman trail. We were all starting to smell the barn at this point, and as a result, were probably riding a bit faster than we should have been given all the Saturday afternoon traffic on the trail. So, I'd like to send an open apology out to all those folks on the trail that we blew by. But, I hope you can all appreciate that a randonneur's judgement can get a bit cloudy when they get within a few miles of the end of a brevet.

We rolled into the finish in U Village at 4:10, 11 hrs 10 min after the start. We didn't make our 11 hour goal, but I'm going to blame my flat tire and Jan's broken fender for that.

This was the third brevet (counting the 100k populaire) of the season, and the third one in which I ended up riding with a fast group of riders. One thing I'm starting to realize about riding with some of the faster riders is that fast rides tend to make for boring ride reports. I spend the entire ride clinging desperately to the back wheel of the rider in front of me so I have no time for taking pictures or watching for interesting sights along the way. Working as a team is a lot of fun, but it's definitely a different kind of fun than when I take a brevet at a more leisurely pace. Both approaches have their pluses, and I probably won't know how I'll approach my next brevet until I get out there.

By the way, a couple of days ago I learned about a work commitment that's going to make it impossible for me to ride the fléche. I'm disappointed, but I have to say, the thought of riding the pace we rode on the 300k for 24 hours straight was a little intimidating. I was doing some serious suffering for about 10 of those 11 hours. No doubt I would have set a new personal best (or worst) for suffering on the fléche.