To be honest, I'm not sure I could have kept up for the rest of the ride. The wind just wore me down and I think my decision to call it a day was the right one. There were some good riders who also DNF'd so I suppose we were in good company but, I keep going back to the five that finished - that's where I want to be. I made a couple of mistakes and learn some valuable lessons in the process.
We'll work on our training to attempt to avoid this in the future. We hadn't had any issues at the 300 or 400-km distances but 600/1200 are completely different games. We'll get there.
Our next 600 is the Orange CA PCH Triple loop and that looks like a good next step. Lots of what they refer to as Class A bike paths and the climbing appears to be minimal esp for a 600.
After that, we *may* try the Grand Canyon 600. That one includes 19,000 ft of climbing which will be a stretch for us:
First 300 loop that has 9400 ft:
Second loop w/ 9500 ft:
I'm not making excuses but climbing on a recumbent is more difficult for me personally. That's something I'll work on before this event. It's all good!