jyl

Sorry! I was wrong - looked it up on the GPS app - I got to Centralia by 12:30. My apologies, I remembered the earlier time but it did seem too good to be true.

Left 5:19 am (second group), 5h48m riding, 1h05m stopped (food/drink/pee stops), avg speed 17 mph, rode solo.

Two other things.

Everyone told me to eat as much as I could at every stop (stay fueled). I took this a little too literally and was stuffing my face at the stops and even took extra food and ate it after getting back on the bike. By the time I got to Centralia I was so full, practically bloated, and wasn't hungry until that evening. During my training rides I didn't eat, so I failed to learn a good eating pace, and that was a rookie mistake.

Also, on the bike checkup - on day two, I lost nearly an hour fixing both a shifting problem and a braking problem on the road, and a week after the ride, I noticed that my rear wheel seemed loose, turned out the axle was broken! I had failed to really check out my bike before the ride, and that was another rookie mistake.