m2tiguy

anybody planning on the double in 3 weeks ??
looking for a carpool to drive up Friday afternoon, returning Sunday
I live in the south bay
thanks

Rick@OCRR

I'll be there.

This will be my 10th Knoxville Double; first one back in 2003. Over the whole double century season, this one is always my favorite.

The Quacks do a great job pre-start, all through the ride, plus the post-finish dinner and the excellent breakfast with Triple Crown awards on Sunday morning.

Quacks rock! https://www.quackcyclists.com/



Rick / OCRR

PS: Sorry, no car-pool opportunities . . .

200miler

I'll be there too! With plenty of spare water bottles!
-dg

Biker395 

Nuts. Too close to the 508.

I've always wanted to do the Knoxville Double ... and I know a few people entering the Hall of Fame this time around.

The Quacksters rock indeed.

Rick@OCRR

Re: Knoxville Double, the bikeforums poster known as laurettafetta is now signed up for Knoxville as her first double. Plus, her parents have signed up a volunteers to work one of the checkpoints (probably lunch) so they will be exposed to all the wonderful crazy antics of double century riders ("Do we want our daughter associating with there people?" they may think).
Lauretta training on Hwy 38 for the Knoxville climbs.

Hopefully they will stay for the Very Inspirational California Triple Crown awards breakfast the next morning and be appropriately enlightened!

Rick / OCRR

anotherbrian

What's this, the Southern Cal forum hosting a Knoxville thread, but not the Northern?

I did the workers ride yesterday. Saw 200miler sag'ing throughout the day (thanks for keeping my camera dry!). It rained; oh man did it rain. From five minutes into the ride, until at least Detert Reservoir, it was either dumping heavily, or just sprinkling lightly -- the roads were always wet. From Lake Hennessey to the finish it was dry, but by that point I was so saturated that I was still wet when I got back to the finish.

I'm not ashamed to say that I don't ride in the rain ... if I get caught out and it starts to sprinkle, I head home. I use Kool-Stop salmon pads on my bike year round, and they've worked really well in the dry ... I figured no problem with rain. Going down Howell Mountain with rivers flowing over the road elicited a super pucker factor. Brakes?, what brakes.

I wish you guys good luck on the weather next weekend. I really enjoyed the lack of heat on Knoxville Rd, Seigler Canyon, etc., and the low clouds covering the hills was scenic, but I really could have done with a whole lot less wet.

Rick@OCRR

Thanks for the report anotherbrian, This will be my tenth Knoxville double and I don't remember rain on any of the previous ones. Brutal hot-yes, freezing cold, yes . . , but thankfully not rain.

Will check the forecast close to next Sat. and bring my rain jacket just in case.

Rick / OCRR

anotherbrian

This was my second year (both doing the workers ride). I had always read it was deceptively difficult -- last year I was in an allergy-induced haze and barely remember anything more than the torn up highway at the start (which they routed around a week later) and baking in the sun on Knoxville, but came away agreeing it was harder than it looked. This year I had rain until mile 150, and achey knees from mile 50 to the end, and it was even worse. The Quack's are fantastic though, and I suspect I'll be back next year.

Rick@OCRR

That's interesting since I'd always thought Knoxville was fairly easy. It was my 3rd double back in 2003 and no problem. This year we have a bunch of riders going up from SoCal. From the OC Rebels it will be Lauretta, David Slaton, Andrew May, Peter Chen and myself. Then David said there will also be a couple of riders from San Diego. Chris Hedberg is also going up (car-pooling with me) as a Quack volunteer.

Should be a fun day on the bike! I can't decide if I should wear OC Rebel kit or CA Triple Crown kit but one or the other for sure.

Brian, do you know where you'll be working? If I'm wearing OCRR kit I should be pretty visible but in CA Triple Crown kit I will just be one of very many!

Rick / OCRR

anotherbrian

I'll be volunteering on Thursday (tomorrow), helping get supplies out of storage and staged. I did the same last year; Fall is a bad time to try to sneak out for Saturday bike rides with kids soccer going on, so volunteering mid-week works well.

Maybe it belongs in the Solvang Spring Double thread (wtf?), but I will be riding Death Valley in October. If weather looks like it's going to cooperate (not too hot, not too windy) I plan on riding a fully faired recumbent (big yellow banana), so I should stick out there even if I wear a CTC jersey.

hamster

Are you the same fully faired yellow recumbent guy I keep seeing at every double, or are there more than one of you?

anotherbrian

Na, that's Willie Hunt in his velomobile (three wheels, no balance required). Except for riding my roadbike on Mt. Tam this year, all my doubles have been on recumbents though. I figured I'd ride the faired bike at Death Valley this year to give Willie some competition though.

Rick@OCRR

We always drive up early on Friday (tomorrow) and meet Scott and the Quacks at Costco to shop for all the food and drinks for the Knoxville double. Then we retire to the Quack House to split up the food and drinks to the different checkpoint locations, put names on numbers, stuff route sheets or whatever else needs to be done. Happy to help out!

Rick / OCRR

Rick@OCRR

Well, the wind wasn't always at our backs but we made it through just fine and now Lauretta has her first double completed! We started at about 4:45AM (she forgot her water bottles so her Dad had to go back to the hotel to get them) . . . but we eventually got on the road about the same time as Linda Bott and Ron Smith Jr. who we would be with (pretty much) all day.



And a beautiful day it was, though kind of cool starting out (my Garmin shows a low of 37) and a bit toasty in the afternoon (Garmin says 105 but it didn't feel that hot). Some of the climbs really challenged Lauretta, esp. the Knoxville Grade with its 14% sections and the Cobb mountain climb after lunch . . . but in both
cases she kept going and made it to the summit wihout stopping or walking.



The photo below was taken by Lynn Katano at the Triple Crown breakfast the morning after the double. Lauretta, her proud parents and me. Her parents were impressed with the whole Triple Crown community. One of the Quack workers was deaf and I hadn't realized that Lauretta was fluentin sign language. She had a fun time signing with that guy! I have no idea what they said of course!



David Slaton was inducted into the Hall of Fame, so that was the highlight of the breakfast meeting. Andrew and Peter did well on their first Knoxville and Ulmont said it was "easy," plus David's friend Alysia had no trouble; very fast and excellent endurance (a tri-athlete too).



Lauretta had one flat tire, torn at the bead, so I booted it to get to lunch, then her parents were there (working the lunch stop) and had a new tire in their car. The Quack mechanic put on the new tire and tube and we had no flats or mechanicals after that.

Due to the lower speed of Lauretta I ran into trouble by not riding fast enough to get to my lights in time at dusk, but fortunately a friendly Quack drove up to the #5 rest stop, picked up my lights, and drove them to me back to me on the course. Very nice of him! He drove a Mini Cooper with "MINI-SAG" license plates!



After that our only worries revolved around our light batteries, i.e. would they last long enough, so we would turn one of our lights off and both Lauretta and I used the same light to roll down the road. That worked okay but whenever we saw a SAG vehicle we had to turn them both on to stay "legal" with the rules.

Here is the Garmin: https://connect.garmin.com/activity/383530465

Coming into the last checkpoint my light bracket came loose and while a kind Quack did fix it for me, I think he accidently turned off my Garmin too . . . so the last 13 miles didn't register on the Garmin feed, so you have to add 13 miles to the total. Lauretta text'd her parents from the last checkpoint so they were there to meet us when we finished. We finished at 11:45 PM, just 15 min. under the Midnight cut-off, but (big picture) the Quacks aren't enforcing the cut-offs so it really wasn't an issue.

Overall, quite the adventure but a very positive experience for Lauretta and her parents. Near the finish, Lauretta was hammering along the steady climb after the final checkpoint and I said, "Here you are, finishing your first double, riding strong up this climb, so you see; it really wasn't very hard was it?"

She gave me really funny look (for Lauretta), shook her head and replied, "Oh no, this was hard, this was really hard."

Still, she finished in good spirits with no real issues (a little knee pain at one point) and quite triumphant finishing her first double . . . and not an easy one at that. Linda Bott and Ron Smith Jr. finished just after us so that worked out well too.

So, a very unusual Knoxville for me (my 10th), riding at Lauretta's speed instead of my own. A few times I've finished this double in daylight, so it was very different finishing at almost midnight! Still, a fun day, and good seeing Lauretta through.

Thanks to the Quacks for a wonderful weekend!

Rick / OCRR

200miler

Just got home from a relaxing drive down from NorCal. The descriptor "anotherbrian" was using about the "30% chance of rain" on staff ride day is a bit deficient. I would use the term "bucketing down" to describe the rainfall. I saw water sheeting down roads [Howell MTN for one] that turned them into overflow spillways! I stopped on one such descent to allow overtaking traffic [no, not riders!] to pass; stepped outside to clear some dreck from the windshield wipers and was ankle deep in running water! FIE!

Nice pictures Rick. I remember seeing you all out "there". Public ride day goes down as one of two [possibly 3, but we're still arguing that] of the best ride days in the 13 years we've run KNX. To top it off, from a SAG's point of view, we had the least amount of rescue work that I can ever remember, and I've been there for all of them.

I'm now headed for Furnace Creek for a noodle-around ride, and to see how far south of Badwater I can get before the roadway disappears. Between the road closures, and now the park closure, it expects to be VERY quiet there!

Ride safe. Ride careful.
YMMV
-dg

Lesper4

Looks like a nice area to ride just a long drive. I know some people who do Davis and yet they have not done ESD. If you are in shape, I can not see why one would not want to do ESD considering it is closer then Davis, Knoxville is near Davis right?

Rick@OCRR

Well Lesper4,

The only reason I can think of for not riding ESD is that some folks (note: not me) have a problem with Planet Ultra and therefore boycot their rides.

Yes the Knoxville double actually covers some of the same roads at the Davis double, only in the opposite direction. Both are long drives from SoCal. Well worth the drive though, in my opinion. Fantastic support by the Davis Bike Club on their double, absolutely over the top support by the Quacks on Knoxville.

I usually car-pool up for the NorCal rides. For this Knoxville I put the hardtop on my Miata (holds in the A/C better, plus is quiet compared to the soft top) and drove up with Chris since she was working the ride. I drove on the way up, Chris drove most of the way back (as I slept!). Took the 5 North and the 99 South, just for some variety.

Rick / OCRR

Lesper4

That does make sense about $$ and personal.