Well, FWIW, this is how it went:
The route is basically a 21 mile loop around Palos Verdes. For the full (400) Monte, that's 19 loops. Almost none of it is flat ... you're always going up or going down. We parked our cars in Malaga Cove, and people came out to support us with food and drink at the top of the switchbacks at Marymount.
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2830919
It was HOT. Flippin ridiculously hot and humid. At one point, it was 98 degrees and nearly 100% humidity. I spent almost the whole day completely soaked in perspiration, throwing down endurolytes like a drug addict, trying desperately to stay ahead of it. I also ate as much as I could, as I knew my appetite would soon disappear ... and it soon did.
I resolved to gut it out until it cooled off, and boy, was that long in coming. Even at 10PM, it was hot and humid enough to get me soaking wet at the top of the switchbacks. By the time I came out of the bonkfest, it was midnight, and by 4AM, I had had enough and called it a day.
Some thoughts:
1. It was hot but ridiculously beautiful. We had the kind of popcorn clouds you get in the morning after an evening of thundershowers:
And great sunsets:
(2) Not in shape for the 508. I have a long way to go and precious little time to get there. I'm not sorry I bagged the 400 mile option. All that would have done was chew me up (including my rear end), and then I'd need a couple weeks to recover, and be even further behind.
(3) I used to think I did pretty well in hot weather. I'm not so sure now. Felt pretty good in the morning, though. Here's me putting my camera back in my rear pocket:
(4) DZ Nuts is good stuff but does not eliminate saddle sores.
(5) Save the Mt. Dew for later. Then again, at 170 calories, I think it accounted for most of my caloric intake during the day.
(6) The Enduro light still rocks. It went all night and kept ticking. Gotta find a better way to mount it on the handlebars/aerobars. The shadowing from the aerobars is a problem on descents.
(7) Rides can be tough physically and/or mentally. This ride was both. The climbing and the weather made it physically tough. Returning back to your car after an endless series of loops made it mentally tough. In retrospect, I think it was a mistake to have people meet us at the top of the switchbacks on every loop. We'd have been much better off with one stop in Malaga Cove, and stopping there every other loop. All those stops took a lot of time.
(8) One thing I was very concerned about was looping around a suburban area on a holiday weekend in the wee hours. Lots of drunks out, for sure. At about midnight, about 1 in every 20 cars was a Sheriff, thankfully. Still, at about 12AM, we all saw something you don't see every day. Check this out:
That's a pristine, 60s vintage Rolls Royce, piled up into a tree. I took this on our second pass. On our first pass, there as an attractive blonde standing next to the car, with a lot of police about. The car looks to have lost control (on a low-speed road, mind you), crossed over the center median, and struck the tree on the other side of the road. Yikes.
