STP Day 1 report
Well, my big event finally arrived! Started off by waking up at 3am to get a good breakfast and drive to Seattle. Rode with 2 friends. I was a bit worried hearing their stories from riding STP last year and averaging like 12mph and getting passed all day. I didn't want to ditch my buddies, but that would have been brutally slow for me. But much to my surprise, everyone came ready to put in some work!
We rode Seattle to Vader, 130 miles. Averaged 15.5 mph. 8 hours in the saddle, but a pretty brutal 11 hour start to finish due to mass amounts of people at the food stops. That was my only gripe was there were so many people. At the half way point I had to use the restroom and waited in line for like 20 minutes while the line moved by maybe 3 people (I was number 5,345,348 in line). I gave up and rode with a stomach ache to the next gas station! I was pretty proud of our pace lining. 15.5 mph, but we stopped and slowed down at a lot of stop lights and got stuck behind some slower riders on busy sections with heavy traffic. But when things opened up and we had room to move, we were riding in the 19-22 mph range most of the day. The "big hill" in Puyallup wasn't too bad, but every since I did a 6500 foot mountain climb last month, all hills pail in comparison! Anyways, it was fun. 70 miles to go tomorrow and we have a friend picking us up and driving us home so I plan on drinking tons of beer!