Three Volcanoes 300k Pre-ride: Better than Perfect

Mt. Adams from Babyshoe Pass

Can a bike ride be too perfect? I was mulling over this question, and the nature of perfection in general (gettin' all filosofical and shit) as I did the pre-ride for the Seattle Randonneurs Three Volcanoes 300k last Saturday.

Lonely Roads - Approaching Elk Summit

The Three Volcanoes 300k has everything I love in a good long bike ride. The roads are as remote and car-free as anything you could hope for in this part of the world. Views of snow capped volcanoes and sparkling streams abound. A variety of climbs, some short and steep, some long and relentless, others with occasional rest stops as they step up in gentle stages keep you physically challenged. Thrilling winding descents pay you back (plus interest) for your sweaty investment in the climbs. Mossy old massive Douglas firs keep you shaded and cool when the sun comes out.

Descent from Babyshoe Pass

But in addition to the things I love in a ride, the 3 Vs also throws some challenges at you. About 10 miles of unpaved road as you climb up and over the summit of Babyshoe pass is rutted and dusty. 9% grades with loose gravel over nasty washboard make it tough to keep traction. On the unpaved descent from Babyshoe, the loose gravel gets deep enough in places to make a skinny-tired road bikes whimper. Occasional cracks and potholes in the paved sections hide in shade and threaten to swallow your front wheel whole if you don't pay attention.

Mt. St. Helens from Near Elk Summit

As I was struggling with the climb over Babyshoe pass I was thinking about how without the dusty unpaved 10 miles, this ride would be so perfect as to be downright boring. It would be like a rose without thorns. Like a big wad of cotton candy dipped in hot fudge, way too sweet to stomach. But there was Babyshoe pass with its deceptively innocent sounding name. The wasabi on the sushi. The olive in the Martini.

It's the the 3 V's imperfections that make it a perfect ride.

Wait a second... That makes no sense at all. Perhaps I should stick with randonneuring. My filosofer skillz aren't so great.

Anyway, whether you call it perfect, or perfectly imperfect, or just fabulously flawed (like most of my favorite people), I have to say that the Three Volcanoes 300k was among my favorite bike rides ever.

On Randonneuring and Time

Wet pavement, gray skies, pickup trucks and single-wides...

March: In like a lion, out like a soggy, hypothermic ruminant. That’s what we say up here in Seattle anyway. And the saying was dead-on accurate on Saturday as I rode the Seattle Randonneurs 300k. The ride started in the dark with a cold hard rain falling, and though the sun came up an hour or so into the ride, it was pretty hard to tell.

I spent the first half of the ride from Tacoma to Centralia and back up to Olympia riding with Todd Sahl and Andy Ziegler. Todd and Andy are strong riders, nice guys and great riding partners, but together we managed to sort of bungle our way through the first 100 kilometers.

First we missed a turn on our way out of Tacoma, venturing a couple miles off course. After a couple of sessions of head scratching and smart phone consulting we figured out where we were and got ourselves back on the route.

Then a couple hours later Andy got a flat tire. Andy’s hands were too cold and numb to deal with fixing the flat so Todd and I got to work on it. We got the new tube in and pumped up and then the valve stem of the new tube came apart. Not a big deal, these things happen… However, while Todd and I were fumbling with the tire in the cold rain, Andy was going hypothermic. He was shivering uncontrollably and literally turning a pale shade of gray. Luckily there was an open Subway sandwich shop close by (isn’t that always the case?) so we decided to take our wheel in with us and fumble around with it in a slightly warmer environment. Andy had more clothes with him so he added dry layers while Todd and I fixed his flat for the second time. Eventually with mechanical issues sorted out and core temperatures back to life-sustaining levels we were able to get back on the road.

By this point we were only about 50 km into the ride and well behind all of the other riders but we rode hard to make up lost time and to stay warm. We were making such good time (thanks in part to a tailwind) that by the time we got to Olympia, about half way through the ride, we had caught up with the most of the other riders.

At the Blue Heron bakery in Olympia I had a yummy Spinach and Ricotta croissant and would have had five more if it hadn't been the last one. I was a bit worried about staying too long because I knew my core temp would drop quickly and it would take a long time to warm up again if I didn't get moving quickly. Also, my legs were pretty cooked from keeping up with Todd and Andy in tailwinds for much of the morning. I was on my single speed bike and they were both fully geared which meant a lot of time with them in their big gears pedaling along casually at 25 mph while I was spinning like an eggbeater on speed. Todd and Andy wanted to stay for a while to have some coffee, so I told them I was going to take off at my own pace and see them down the road a ways when they caught up.

That was the last I saw of Andy and Todd other than a brief fly-by on the out-and-back section out to Hoodsport. Apparently Andy had had another flat that kept them from catching up to me. So I was mostly alone for the last 90 miles of the ride.

The weather never really cleared up for the rest of the day, but at least it went from constant rain to intermittent drizzly showers. The sun even managed to peek through the clouds a time or two as I meandered along the shore of Hood Canal on highway 106.

Hood Canal from Hwy 106

I spent a lot of that alone time thinking about the relationship between Randonneurs and time. Someday, thousands of years from now, the language of the Randonneur will have adapted to the Randonneur's environment similarly to how the Inuit languages have adapted to the Inuit's environment. They say Eskimos have [insert made up number here] words for snow (cough, cough, urban legend, cough). Perhaps Randonneurs will develop a rich language to describe the many various flavors of the passage of time experienced while pedaling a bike miles from nowhere.

There's the time left behind you on the road you've already traveled, limp and empty, like a discarded banana peel, its usefulness completely depleted.

And the time that lies before you when you're all alone, the sun is setting and you're not even close enough to the finish to start counting the miles yet. That time flows toward you like dark cold molasses oozing down a 1% slope. And then a headwind comes up and the slope goes from 1% to 0%. The molasses is still flowing out in all directions, but only imperceptibly so.

Time standing still

Then there's the time that swirls around you like a dust devil on a scorching day, while you're at the control but trying to get in and out quickly so you can stay with a fast group. "Fill the bottles, get the card signed, put on sunscreen, get some food for the next leg..." "Oh crap, there goes the group and I still need to pee!"

Of course there will be a special word for the Randonneur's version of Zeno's dichotomy paradox. I've experienced this one many times... "I'm moving 10 mph, and I'm 10 miles from the pass. I'll be there in an hour." Then a little later, "Now I'm moving 8 mph and I'm still 8 miles from the pass. Just one more hour..." Then a little later, "6 more miles to the pass and I'm rolling at..." (looks at speedometer and groans).

Or maybe we'll just develop a rich and complex language to describe saddle sores.

Tacoma is a lot of things, but it ain't Purdy

Anyway, my afternoon alone was long and quiet but really pretty pleasant. I was riding at a more comfortable pace but still making decent time, or at least decent enough to be able to finish before the sun had gone down. As I approached the Tacoma narrows bridge, the rain had stopped for long enough to tempt me into taking off my rain coat. And then as soon as I was across the bridge the rain started again (There will someday be a Rando word for that too).

A brief sun break as I approach the narrows bridge

This was my longest ride to date on a single speed, and I finished feeling purdy good. It seems like the 400k is doable, though I have to keep in mind that this 300k was an extremely flat route.

Next weekend is the flèche. Randos already have their own word for that.

What a Difference a Week Can Make

Yesterday the Seattle Randonneurs Spring 300k brevet was held on what turned out to be a beautiful spring day. There were some clouds here and there, but there was also a fair amount of sunshine, and the temperatures were warm enough to entice a few riders to show off their blindingly pale arms and legs.

I wasn't riding in this event. No, I was one of the martyrs who made the sacrifice to the velo weather gods (their names are Campagnolo and Shimano) last weekend by attempting to preride the route in a blizzard. But I was glad to do it to assure perfect weather for yesterday's ride.

Just so I could get a little riding in this weekend, I rode my bike up to Machias where I was helping to man the penultimate control on the 300k. I have to admit I was startled when I looked over and saw this stranger next to me as I was approaching Snohomish.

I had a great time hanging out at Machias and seeing a lot of my fellow Seattle randonneurs as they came through the control. The perspective you get hanging out in a control and watching everyone flow through is so different than what you experience from the saddle of your bike in the midst of the pack of a long brevet. Often when I ride a brevet, I'll see everyone at the start for a few minutes, but we quickly scatter ourselves across the field and then it's not unusual for me to see only a handful of other riders for the rest of the ride. Hanging out at a control is sort of like seeing that MRI slice through the brain of the entire rando club. You can clearly see the similarities and differences between the "fast boys" (apologies for being sexist, but they were all boys) who come blazing through on their carbon fiber race bikes (except Jan of course), and the mid-pack crowd, all smiles and getting their money's worth out of the ride. Unfortunately I had to leave before the lantern rouge crowd came through, but I bet most of them were smiling too since they were getting the most ride for their money.

Even though I hadn't ridden nearly as far as the brevet riders, my ride home felt like the end of an epic journey. I was alone on mostly empty roads.

As the sun set and I rode on into the night, it was cool but I was comfortable without having to put on every piece of clothing I had with me. It reminded me of so many other nights riding brevets as I rode on lonesome roads alone from daytime into night. That experience has always been one of my favorites of randonneuring. Ah, what a difference a week can make.

SIR Spring 300k Pre-ride: Riding in a Winter Wonderland

My 2012 Randonneuring season is off to an ignominious start. Yesterday morning I set out bright and early to meet Gary and Dave, the organizers of the Seattle Randonneurs spring 300k, and Tom and Bill who will be helping to run the event. We were planning to pre-ride the route before next Saturday's official event.

With a steady rain falling and a temperature of about 35 degrees we sat around for a few minutes talking about whether it might be prudent to wait until Sunday to do the pre-ride. But the forecast for Sunday wasn't any better, so we rode off into dark wet streets at 5:30am. As we rolled through Lake City, Bothell and Woodinville the rain never let up an iota. Then near Cottage Lake we came upon a road closed sign due to a flooded roadway ahead. Had we been normal intelligent people rather than randonneurs, we might have taken the flooded road along with the mixed rain and snow falling from the sky as an omen or maybe even just a good excuse to go home and go back to bed. But we were convinced that the clouds would part at any minute and the temperature would rise, so we detoured around the flood and pressed on.

By the time we got to Monroe, Gary had come to his senses and decided he was going to grab a cup of coffee and then catch a bus for home. The rest of us didn't share Gary's good judgement (possibly due to hypothermia) so we decided to keep riding.

From Monroe to Granite Falls the route leaves civilization and gets into the Cascade foothills. The route never got much higher than 500' above sea level, but that was enough elevation to turn the mixed rain and snow into just plain snow. And then heavy snow. Then the snow started to accumulate on the road. By the time we were five miles away from Granite Falls it had become obvious to me that continuing the ride was not just plain stupid, but it was "rando stupid." My feet were soaked and aching cold, my hands were like lifeless stumps of numbness. As long as I kept peddling my core temperature stayed warm enough, but I didn't want to think about what might have happened if one of us got a flat tire and had to try to fix it with numb frozen hands. The last five miles to Granite Falls rank up there with some of my all time most miserable randonneuring experiences, and that's saying something.

Of course once safely in a coffee shop in Granite Falls, the misery quickly melted away into a puddle on the floor. I spent a few minutes thinking about whether I would try to ride home or call Sarah for a ride, but I didn't for a second consider riding the rest of the 300k. Luckily Sarah was happy to come get me, otherwise I might still be in that coffee shop in Granite Falls.

Hopefully we'll have better weather next weekend for the actual event. It's hard to imagine how it could be worse. I'll probably be working at one of the controls and I'll make sure we have hot drinks ready for everyone who comes by.

I successfully rode the pre-ride for the SIR 200k a couple of weeks ago so I'm now batting .500 for the 2012 rando season. Not a great start. I blame climate change.

On the Road Again!

After having spent much of the past couple weeks stressing about how on earth I'd be able to qualify for PBP if I couldn't ride the SiR Spring 300k, I'm very pleased to report that IT IS DONE! Yesterday, I finished the 307 kilometer (191 mile) course well within the required time.

Actually I should say we finished it. I was on the back of Robin and Amy's tandem with Amy as my trusted captain. There's no way I could have completed this ride by myself on a single bike. I can't begin to express how much I appreciate what Amy and Robin did to help get me through this ride. Robin, for being our "wrench" and helping to figure out the creative cockpit that allowed me to ride relatively comfortably with a broken arm, and Amy for captaining me through the ride when she really would have rather been at home enjoying the twin miracles of central heating and comfortable chairs.

This 300k turned out to be a pretty tough course with about 9,000 ft of climbing and a fair amount of urban and suburban riding that made navigation a challenge. Add to that the fact that I haven't been on a bike in nearly a month and a half, and my arm is still in a cast, and well... it was the toughest 300k I've ever ridden.

I was hurting nearly everywhere by the end of the ride, but the good news is that my broken arm was probably the least painful part of my body. Robin and I rigged up an aero bar arm rest sideways so that I could rest on my left elbow to get my weight off of my wrist. Here's what it looked like:

Amy, my apologies for posting a picture of your butt on the internet, but it's all in the interest of science.

This was my first ride of any more than a couple miles on a tandem. It wasn't bad, but it's definitely not like being on a bike by yourself. For one, you have to get used to having this as your view all day:

And without being able to see up-coming bumps in the road, you don't get much opportunity to take weight off the seat and absorb them with your legs. Amy did a great job of calling out bumps and twists and turns, but my backside was still feeling it by the end of the ride.

Other than the challenges of dealing with the broken arm and getting used to being on the back of a tandem, it was a very nice ride. It was cool and overcast, but I never felt more than a couple rain drops. The route put us on some beautiful rural roads with llamas, yard chickens and mostly friendly dogs along the way.

I'm pretty sure the farmer who painted that barn was colorblind. You just don't paint barns blue. It's somewhere in the farmer code of conduct.

While we rode long sections of the ride with no other randos in sight, we also spent a fair amount of time with a crowd behind us, apparently one of the pleasures of riding a tandem. This guy kept trying to grab our wheel but eventually we were able to shake him.

As with every SiR ride I've ever done, the ride was very well organized and well staffed with nice folks meeting us at the controls to hand us a Vietnamese sandwich or fill our water bottles. Thanks to Gary, Dave and the whole crew for putting on a fantastic event.

Having this ride in the bag is a huge load off my mind. I still have a long way to go before I'm qualified for PBP, but I feel like I have a little breathing room now. The 400k is a month away and my cast comes off in two days so I'm hoping that's enough time to get somewhat comfortable on a single bike again. "Speedy recovery" is my mantra.

Courtesy of Mark Thomas

Still Limping Along Toward Paris

I pre-registered for Paris-Brest-Paris this morning! With my pre-registration and a €30 fee I've tentatively locked in a place at the start in August. Now I just need to complete the four qualifying brevets of 200k, 300k, 400k and 600k.

Ay, there's the rub. At the moment my left arm is still in a cast, and the brevet season is in full swing. I missed SiR's first 200k brevet a couple weeks ago and next weekend is the 300k. I'll still be in the cast next weekend, but I've decided to give the 300k a go anyway. I can't support much weight with my wrist and definitely can't squeeze a brake lever with my left hand, so a normal bike is out of the question. Luckily my friend, Amy has generously offered the back seat of her tandem. We're messing around with the set up, trying to create a position for me that keeps weight off my wrist and is tolerable for 300k. I've never gone into a brevet with more apprehension, but if I want to ride PBP this summer I have to take some chances.

The course for the 300k looks good. It's not too tough, no bumpy dirt roads (which would really mess with a broke wrist), and it covers a lot of familiar terrain.

The weather forecast is pretty meaningless this far out, but for what it's worth it's currently calling for partly cloudy skies on Saturday. I'm hoping for a break (no pun intended) from the velo/weather gods since this ride will be challenging enough without crappy weather.

P.S. Don't tell my orthopedic surgeon what I'm up to next weekend!

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.

Pre-Blog Ride Reports - April '09

Originally emailed on Monday, April 06, 2009 10:46 PM under the Subject: April CAM09 Ride Report

My pursuit of at least one century ride in every calendar month in '09 rolls on... Saturday's SIR 300k helped me get April's ride out of the way early in the month. Four days before the ride it was snowing in Western WA, but the velo gods smiled upon us by giving us a beautiful clear day for the 300k.

About 50 entrepid Randonneurs and Randonneuses set out from the Clinton ferry dock on the south end of Whidbey Island at 7:00am. One thing about ferry docks: they're always at the bottoms of hills... But I was actually happy to start out on a hill since it was still about 32 degrees. Time to get the blood pumping. About a mile or two into the ride I caught up to a group of six other riders who were moving along pretty well, and I ended up staying with that group for the next 315 kilometers.

Our course would take us the length of Whidbey Island, up Chuckanut drive to Bellingham, then east toward Mt. Baker as far as Deming. At Deming the course headed South and stayed on Hwy 9 for something just short of eternity--which it turns out is just south of Arlington. From there we would hop on the Centennial trail to Snohommish, then back over to lovely Everett, over a big hump and back down the Mukilteo speedway to the ferry.

Here's the course: http://bikeroutetoaster.com/Course.aspx?course=40288

One thing I've learned to do on rides like this is to avoid thinking about the entire ride. Starting off up that hill out of Clinton thinking, "two miles down, only 193 to go" is a BAD idea. Breaking it into nice bite-sized chunks is the only way to survive. So, I started thinking about the beautiful views from Deception Pass and got to work.

The group I was riding with was awesome. All strong riders, they knew how to handle a pace line, fun guys to chat with, supportive if anyone was starting to drag, I couldn't have picked a better group. We had a couple others join us or drop here and there along the way, but basically the core group of six stayed together to the end. I was the only one in the group who didn't have at least a couple of seasons of Randonneuring experience, so I really appreciated how welcoming they were.

So, here's something I learned about experienced hardcore Randonneurs: These guys do not mess around with rest stops. If we stopped at a minimart for water or food it was, jump off the bike, run in and grab some water and a candy bar, get back on the bike and go. If you needed to get water AND pee, then you were going to need to do some work to catch the group again. No waiting around until everyone's ready. As soon as you're ready to go just get on the bike and start riding. Ride slow for the first couple minutes to let the group reform, then back to business. We stopped about six times in 12 hours, and five of those were forced stops because we had to get our brevet cards signed at the check point (Randonneuring = bicycling with paperwork).

I have to admit that while I'm sure the scenery was beautiful the whole way, I didn't see a lot of it on this ride. The benefits of riding in a pace line are many (drafting, encouragement, conversation, help with navigation, etc.), but one of the drawbacks is that it requires concentration to stay 12" off the wheel of the guy in front of you without killing yourself and everyone behind you. It doesn't give you a lot of time to check out the world around you. I experienced a lot of pace line riding in last year's STP and mostly hated it. But I realize now that the problem with the STP was that most of the people there don't know how to ride in a pace line. With a group of six strong riders with tons of pace line experience, it's really a thing of beauty. For about 20 miles down Hwy 9, we even ran as a double pace line, acting like we owned the whole damn road. Needless to say, some of locals trying to get by us weren't too impressed by our blue angel-like precision.

The pictures here were taken by one of the other guys in the group. I had a camera with me, but again the pace line made picture taking seem like more challenge than I was willing to take on.

Here we are gathering for the start

Early on, Bob and Mark taking the lead...

Our group taking the lane, critical mass style, as we cross over the Deception Pass bridge (I was at the back of the pack at this point trying not to worry about that semi on my ass)

Somewhere around the 150 mile mark I started hurting everywhere all at once. Back, neck, shoulders, butt, feet. Nothing horrible, but it was definitely annoying. Luckily we had to stop for a control not long after that which gave me a chance to swallow a couple Advil. That totally did the trick and I felt great for the rest of the ride.

We rolled into the finish at the Mukilteo ferry dock a little before 6, plenty of time to hang out and watch the sun set over Whidbey Island while munching on the BEST PIZZA I'VE EVER, EVER HAD IN MY LIFE (probably from Dominos or something...).

The numbers:
Distance: 195.8 miles/315 kilometers
Time:10:53 in the saddle/11:52 total
Climbing: 7,659 ft.