Countdown to the Cascade 1240

I'm now down to counting the hours until the start of the Cascade 1240. This Saturday at 6:00am about 80 of us Rando-whackos will set off on a 1240 km tour of Washington. The riders will come from all over North America with a few from Europe and even a couple from Japan. We'll have 93 hours to finish the ride. Seeing as how I've never done a ride longer than 600 km, I have no idea which levels of hell (or heaven) I'm likely to visit along the way.

I've been trying my best to guess at how fast I'll be riding the various sections so I can figure out how much time I'll get for sleeping each night, if any. I think I'll probably average about 15 - 16 hours a day on the bike. If I don't lolly-gag too much at rest stops along the way, that should give me an opportunity to get a decent amount of sleep each night. But there's no telling how fast I'll be moving when my legs turn to clay somewhere during day 2 or 3.

In case you're wondering, 1240 kms translates to about 770 miles. That's pretty close to four times the length of the STP route but with 15 times the climbing. Below you can see the route broken into four sections by day.

Day one - Monroe to Naches - 223 miles.

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Day 2 - Naches to Quincy (with a side trip up Chinook Pass) - 214 miles

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Day 3 - Quincy to Mazama - 180 miles

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Day 4 - Mazama to Monroe - 162 miles

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I've been going back and forth between really excited about this ride, and scared shitless. But the bottom line is that events like this are what got me into Randonneuring. For some sick reason I love heading off on a ride not knowing whether or not I have what it takes to finish it. There's so much to be learned from success and even more to be learned failure. Still, I'm hoping for success. Wish me well.