I finished the San Francisco Randonneurs 300k almost two months ago, and for the month of April, I didn't do any bicycle rides over 10 miles long. In my favor, I did commute to work nearly every work day, so my base level of fitness was maintained. Nevertheless, at the beginning of May I knew that I would need to ramp it up to be able to do a 400k at the end of the month.
During the week, when I had time (about 2x a week), I added a bonus ride of 5.7 miles and 1,076 feet of climbing. Over two weekends on the 11th and 18th I managed to get in a ~40 mile ride with some good hills. After this bit of training, my legs felt like they were going to be able to do the 400k, so I began to feel more confident of a good outcome. When it got close to the event date, Bill Bryant, the ride organizer, told me that there were only two people registered to ride. By ride date, it turned out there were three riders, but still, I was getting mentally prepared to ride alone for the ride if needed. The weather for the ride was supposed to be cloudy and on the colder side, at least for the morning, so I brought some warm full fingered gloves, a jacket (thankfully a showers pass rain jacket), and a couple of vests to keep me warm. I've done a number of rides Memorial Day weekend, but it's usually the 600k. This time it worked out for me that the 400k was run this weekend because I could not do the SFR 400k (and wasn't ready for a 600k this year). The worst weather I had over the previous three rides was a little coastal foggy drizzle, so I wasn't expecting too much inclement weather. To my surprise, there was a wet drizzle as I rode to the start and my glasses were dripping wet. Luckily I rubbed my glasses prior to the event with an anti-fog cloth, so my lenses weren't fogging up, despite the raindrops accumulating on the outside of my lenses. The two other riders were Ioannis and Tim. Unfortunately Tim patched a flat tire, but the patch didn't hold, so he started late having to replace a tube. Ioannis and I made our way up North from Santa Cruz up towards Pescadero. The drizzle turned into several bouts of real rain coming down, and we were getting pretty soaked on the outside, but I had a cycling cap on under my helmet, so my head remained dry, and luckily I brought a real rain shell that kept the water out from my torso. Also, I was lucky that the weather was on the cooler side, so I didn't get hot underneath, so I remained relatively dry under the rain jacket. My bike has fenders, and although I didn't expect to need them, they came in really handy. Ioannis expected that it was the beginning of summer season, so he ended up taking off his fenders a week too early. I suggested that if I wasn't too slow for him that he follow me up the coast, since my full coverage fenders block the spray that would hit trailing riders. He seemed happy to go at my pace up the coast, as we were both passing time waiting for the sun to clear away the clouds and stop the rain in the afternoon (or so we hoped). Going north of Pescadero on Stage Rd., Tim caught us and we rode to San Gregorio and backtracked our way to Santa Cruz. Unfortunately as we were going to Santa Cruz, Tim's knee was bothering him and he decided to call it a day once we returned to Santa Cruz. Luckily for me, Ioannis was willing to ride with me instead of speeding ahead (he was a 78 hour PBP finisher last year, when he had 90 hours to finish--fast!). We continued to make good time as we headed to Greenville in the Salinas valley. This area is known to cyclists for the extremely strong winds. The winds going to Greenville were in our favor, so we sped along going 20 mph+ without really pedaling at all. However, we were wondering how bad it would be during our return. At this point we went approximately 169 miles and were about 2/3 done with our ride. We weren't rushing to leave Greenville because we knew that the wind would die down as the sun set, so we ate some dinner and relaxed a bit before fighting the wind. The wind was not as bad as we feared and after about an hour and half of not too crazy wind (we were going about 10-11 mph), the sun set and the wind died down to a very tolerable level (easy for me to say, because at this point I was drafting most of the time!). We worked our way through Marina and then back to Santa Cruz for the finish after a little over 21 hours. Many thanks to Ioannis for his great company and willingness to ride with me, despite me being slower than his normal pace. There were a couple things I continued to do well (as a lazy randonneur) that allowed me to finish decently despite not too heavy training. 1. I knew what I could eat to sustain my energy. My sausage/egg/rice "sushi" rolls sustained me for 2/3 of the ride through mile 165. If I could change 1 thing, at night I would open some bars/snacks for my top tube snack bag while I'm stopped, because I could not easily open the packaging with my heavy full fingered gloves while riding. 2. I know what pace I can sustain for the full ride, so if the ride pace got too fast, especially on uphills, I would take it easy and go at my pace to the top of the climb. It's better to go slowly at a good pace than to flame out and then go REALLY slow the rest of the ride (I have unfortunately done this too!) 3. Randonneuring is not racing, and especially for the longer rides where we ride into the night, I have never failed to find someone to ride with. (Yes, I was worried with 2-3 riders on the ride!) There is safety and camaraderie in numbers and sometimes the best rides are those where I went a little slower than "full speed" but increased my enjoyment factor many-fold because I had great company and wasn't completely suffering trying to hang onto a paceline or maintaining a super fast pace. There is undoubtedly type 2 fun involved in a 21+ hour bike ride, but there was plenty of immediate fun flying through the Salinas Valley in full sun with the wind at our back, green all around, flowers yellow and white on the roadside, and the hills as beautiful as I have seen them. If I'm gonna do PBP before 60 years old, I've gotta do it in 2027. I'm starting to feel like this lazy randonneur may have to take a shot at it if I can keep it up for a few more years. Toshi in Oakland, CA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CAGB59xzVEK7CJMYBgLKVik01vV6Rw6ZvEtAymiw8DDPaoNA7Jw%40mail.gmail.com.
