So this year’s ride started very early once again. 3:30am to be exact. Doing it alone this time so I don’t know what that means. It’s trivia.
I departed from the start-line at 5:15am, which is of course the UW Husky stadium parking lot. It really is some great riding along Lake Washington in the early morning. Sunrise, partly cloudy skies, very nice. As it should be, things were really rather uneventful heading into the first main pitstop (REI HQ). I had decided earlier that I was going to try to focus on taking smaller rest stops, more so that I wouldn’t cool down to a point where it’d get less and less inviting to actually get back on the bike.
I suppose I should mention at this point that I decided to pre-load with the ibuprophin. Just the OTC stuff, and the minimul dosage (so you can read that as 1 every 6hrs). I started @ 5pm Friday night, one @ 10pm, then one at 5am. Well ok, from 5am on until 10pm ish, I took them every 4hrs. (which is the maximal OTC dosage). One benefit of partly cloudy weather is that it stays cooler out. A possible downside (if you can even call it that) is that you don’t sweat as much. Pair that up with taking the proper steps to hydrating yourself, and you can see the potential for many “mini” stops. The problem there is I try my best to not just pull off on the road, and in this event you really can’t unless you go a bit off the path. One such incident had me putting 50 cents into a mini-market’s change bucket and a hearty thank you.
The ibuprophin was working spendidly, and I wasn’t all that eager to join up with pacelines. I’m guessing in total I pacelined 20% of the ride. Actually there is an interesting ibuprophin story. At the lunch stop (Yelm or so?) I was walking past a rider who was on the phone and had just said “All I really need is some ibuprophin”… and so I stopped, took out my mini bottle of pills and gave her a couple. Feeling like I had done a good deed, I then continued on. I rode in to Centralia around 11:45am. They ran out of Gatorade. I had brought 2 Endurox drinks so I made one here and drank that, had a bagel, fruit, and some gorp and set back off. Remembering last year, this is when the clouds really burned off. Not so this year. It stayed partly-cloudy to cloudy the rest of the way. A few things to note on this leg was a mini-mart stop for Gatorade, a stop where a couple had put up a table and donation thing with some banana bread. The trick was that in the middle there was a cinnamon/sugar mixture with walnuts. Heaven. Castlerock came at around 2:45pm, and I was once again starting to feel like I had been on the bike for quite some time. Around this point my right achilies started to let me know it was there. I say that because it wasn’t painful. Really it felt warm if that makes sense. I think it was the beginnings of perhaps a pull? It never got any worse than a warm sensation at one point.. then it was pretty fine.
Longview was around 4:30, the bridge around 4:45, and Rainier at 5pm. Something cool happened at this point. I knew I was going to finish. Something else also happened. I nasty headwind (which turned out to last the whole way in to Portland). I’ll state the obvious here. What sucks about a headwind is that if it’s a nice enough one you’ll end up putting out say a 15-16mph effort, and you’ll get 11-13mph in return. It sucks. This was happening now. It also meant that something that would take say 3.5hrs was now going to take well over 4. So I trudged along, gave a blasphemous curse to John Deere (where I stopped last year), and cycled along. The last pitstop was in a town called St. Helens. This is about oh 20 miles out of Portland. Last big food stop. I had a PB/J in my jersey pocket from awhile ago (reserves you know) so kept that there and had a turkey wrap. Again very, very tasty. I suppose anyone will say this, but around mile 180 you discover that bike shorts alone just doesn’t do the job. The first aid station had appropriate supplies, and I’ll leave it at that. As I was getting to the end of the wrap I over heard a woman talking to her son “He said he was 6miles from here and that it was going to take him 30 minutes. That just doesn’t sound like him”. I decided to comment that there was a pretty decent headwind, and that doing 12mph was actually about good. You might be asking why I didn’t paceline it. Two reasons really. 1. I don’t think I could have kept up. 2. I felt that I should just finish on my own. Back into the wind.
Ok, so I lied a bit. I met up (well actually they were passing me) with a fun bunch of guys about my age just as we were entering into Portland (which was about 8:45pm), and that is when the adrenaline kicked in. I mean I knew so many hours ago that I was going to make it, but there’s something about seeing the “Entering Portland” sign that really cements it in. So with that and the paceline.. we were all cruising along around 20mph or so having a great time. The finish line was moved from where it was last year, and it tacked on another 4 or 6 miles (one of the 2 I can’t remember) A guy in the group commented near the end that the Portland city of commerce must have planned the route. We hit about every major attraction you can in Portland. After a mix up, and some of us crossing a bridge that it turns out we weren’t supposed to, we crossed the finish line to cheers at 9:15pm. 16hrs exactly.
Daily Log
Stats:(by my cyclocomputer)
Distance: 206miles miles
Total Time: 16hrs
Food
# ~230oz fluids (water, gatorade, powerade, chai tea, starbucks frap)
# 1 turkey wrap
# 2 PB/J sandwichs
# 1 vitamin water thing
# 3 Clif bar shots
# 1 Clif bar
# 2 bananas
# 1 handful of grapes
# 2 Endurox drinks
# 1 protien shake (what we have in the mornings.. ~400cal)
# 2 toaster waffles (butter, sour cream, and syrup)
# 1 Jack in the box small shake, small fry, Bistro burger
So this year’s ride started very early once again. 3:30am to be exact. Doing it alone this time so I don’t know what that means. It’s trivia.
I departed from the start-line at 5:15am, which is of course the UW Husky stadium parking lot. It really is some great riding along Lake Washington in the early morning. Sunrise, partly cloudy skies, very nice. As it should be, things were really rather uneventful heading into the first main pitstop (REI HQ). I had decided earlier that I was going to try to focus on taking smaller rest stops, more so that I wouldn’t cool down to a point where it’d get less and less inviting to actually get back on the bike.
I suppose I should mention at this point that I decided to pre-load with the ibuprophin. Just the OTC stuff, and the minimul dosage (so you can read that as 1 every 6hrs). I started @ 5pm Friday night, one @ 10pm, then one at 5am. Well ok, from 5am on until 10pm ish, I took them every 4hrs. (which is the maximal OTC dosage). One benefit of partly cloudy weather is that it stays cooler out. A possible downside (if you can even call it that) is that you don’t sweat as much. Pair that up with taking the proper steps to hydrating yourself, and you can see the potential for many “mini” stops. The problem there is I try my best to not just pull off on the road, and in this event you really can’t unless you go a bit off the path. One such incident had me putting 50 cents into a mini-market’s change bucket and a hearty thank you.
The ibuprophin was working spendidly, and I wasn’t all that eager to join up with pacelines. I’m guessing in total I pacelined 20% of the ride. Actually there is an interesting ibuprophin story. At the lunch stop (Yelm or so?) I was walking past a rider who was on the phone and had just said “All I really need is some ibuprophin”… and so I stopped, took out my mini bottle of pills and gave her a couple. Feeling like I had done a good deed, I then continued on. I rode in to Centralia around 11:45am. They ran out of Gatorade. I had brought 2 Endurox drinks so I made one here and drank that, had a bagel, fruit, and some gorp and set back off. Remembering last year, this is when the clouds really burned off. Not so this year. It stayed partly-cloudy to cloudy the rest of the way. A few things to note on this leg was a mini-mart stop for Gatorade, a stop where a couple had put up a table and donation thing with some banana bread. The trick was that in the middle there was a cinnamon/sugar mixture with walnuts. Heaven. Castlerock came at around 2:45pm, and I was once again starting to feel like I had been on the bike for quite some time. Around this point my right achilies started to let me know it was there. I say that because it wasn’t painful. Really it felt warm if that makes sense. I think it was the beginnings of perhaps a pull? It never got any worse than a warm sensation at one point.. then it was pretty fine.
Longview was around 4:30, the bridge around 4:45, and Rainier at 5pm. Something cool happened at this point. I knew I was going to finish. Something else also happened. I nasty headwind (which turned out to last the whole way in to Portland). I’ll state the obvious here. What sucks about a headwind is that if it’s a nice enough one you’ll end up putting out say a 15-16mph effort, and you’ll get 11-13mph in return. It sucks. This was happening now. It also meant that something that would take say 3.5hrs was now going to take well over 4. So I trudged along, gave a blasphemous curse to John Deere (where I stopped last year), and cycled along. The last pitstop was in a town called St. Helens. This is about oh 20 miles out of Portland. Last big food stop. I had a PB/J in my jersey pocket from awhile ago (reserves you know) so kept that there and had a turkey wrap. Again very, very tasty. I suppose anyone will say this, but around mile 180 you discover that bike shorts alone just doesn’t do the job. The first aid station had appropriate supplies, and I’ll leave it at that. As I was getting to the end of the wrap I over heard a woman talking to her son “He said he was 6miles from here and that it was going to take him 30 minutes. That just doesn’t sound like him”. I decided to comment that there was a pretty decent headwind, and that doing 12mph was actually about good. You might be asking why I didn’t paceline it. Two reasons really. 1. I don’t think I could have kept up. 2. I felt that I should just finish on my own. Back into the wind.
Ok, so I lied a bit. I met up (well actually they were passing me) with a fun bunch of guys about my age just as we were entering into Portland (which was about 8:45pm), and that is when the adrenaline kicked in. I mean I knew so many hours ago that I was going to make it, but there’s something about seeing the “Entering Portland” sign that really cements it in. So with that and the paceline.. we were all cruising along around 20mph or so having a great time. The finish line was moved from where it was last year, and it tacked on another 4 or 6 miles (one of the 2 I can’t remember) A guy in the group commented near the end that the Portland city of commerce must have planned the route. We hit about every major attraction you can in Portland. After a mix up, and some of us crossing a bridge that it turns out we weren’t supposed to, we crossed the finish line to cheers at 9:15pm. 16hrs exactly.
Daily Log
Stats:(by my cyclocomputer)
Distance: 206miles miles
Total Time: 16hrs
Food
# ~230oz fluids (water, gatorade, powerade, chai tea, starbucks frap)
# 1 turkey wrap
# 2 PB/J sandwichs
# 1 vitamin water thing
# 3 Clif bar shots
# 1 Clif bar
# 2 bananas
# 1 handful of grapes
# 2 Endurox drinks
# 1 protien shake (what we have in the mornings.. ~400cal)
# 2 toaster waffles (butter, sour cream, and syrup)
# 1 Jack in the box small shake, small fry, Bistro burger